Officially here!

Hello all! It is my second day in Paris and let's just say that it has been an adventure. After flying out of Atlanta Monday night, I arrived in Paris Tuesday morning. I flew Air France and it was awesome haha! All the seats had a touch screen on the back of each seat which had over 100 movies, games, tv episodes etc. We got a delicous dinner with free wine (which was a plus.) The only issue is that I only slept for an hour and when we landed it was 8 am French time. After I landed I tried to find Adrianna my roomate with my cell-phone not working and neither was hers. It was really frustrating and took about an hour to find each other after she talked to information about making an announcement to the entire airport. Then we waited an hour in the airport for the Shuttle which somehow couldn't find us. Finally was dropped off to our apartment which is on the 2nd floor (3rd floor in America) and our landlord showed us the apartment, entirely in French. Unfortunately she doesn't speak any English, and my roomate Adrianna speaks a little French so it was mostly me communicating back and forth about different things with our landlord. It was difficult at times to understand and communiate with her but for the most part we worked it out. She is Portugese and 5 feet and such a nice lady.

 Our apartment is awesome, tiny tiny tiny though! I will post pictures later. The only issue is there is noooo closest at all which is unfortunate for 2 girls trying to live. We are sharing a small bedroom with a bunk bed, taking it back to freshman year. The whole apartment is 317 square feet which is something that I am going to have get used to. After unpacking all of our stuff and figuring out the internet and tv(all in French) we decided to walk around and go grocery shopping. We have a cafe every 10 feet near us which is great! We ate crepes for our first meal in Paris. I had a crepe with chicken, potatoes, cheese and mushrooms, while Adrianna had a delicous nutella and banana. It was amazing! Definitely going to learn the recipe for authentic crepes.  After grocery shopping and buying 2 bottles of wine for 2 E euro each we dropped off our groceries and went to find the metro, and after arguing (in French) we got a metro card. Unlimited usage but each month cost 58E which is pretty expensive. The Metro card includes buses, trains, the metro train and the night train so 24 hour travel anywhere in Paris and in the immediate suburbs. 

We also went to a local cafe where we had some wine (vins rouges) and camembert which I ordered off the menu without knowing what it was. It turned out to be a half block of cheese with poppyseeds which was pretty good, even though I'm not a cheese person. A big difference in French restaurants is tip is automatically included in the bill, and the waiter won't come to your table unless you wave them down. Its very typical for the French to eat dinner at 8 or 9 at night and can take 3 hours of more. The waiter doesn't want to disturb you, and it feels rude to yell and wave at a waiter but its normal. One major thing that I have noticed is that Parisians love animals. There are dogs everywhere, from inside the airport to the supermarkets to on the street without a leash. Very different from in the USA. Also cars don't stop for pedistrians, I think they actually speed up! If you get hit by a car when you are walking its actually your fault.Also went Adrianna and I went to Cafe Menilmontant we noticed that a man had a cat sitting on his shoulder for the entire meal.... a little strange.  Jet Lag hit us pretty bad since we didn't go to bed until 1:30 am here or 7:30 pm in the US.

Waking up this morning was pretty difficult, especially after going to bed so late. We had orientation today at American Business School Paris, which is one of the Universities in the IGS group, a large university body in France that encompasses over 15 different French universities. It was some really important information about the different arrondisements of Paris, the Metro pass, traveling in France, and  some good tips for living in Paris. Orientation lasted until 2 and then we took a boat trip on the Sein river for 3 hours. It was beautiful! We saw the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the National Assembly, Tuillerie Gardens and lots of other great Paris sights. I can't wait to tour all of these places later this week! It was cold and raining for most of the day, but luckily stopped most of the time that we are on the river. I met some really cool students that were studing abroad at ABS from all over the world.  After coming back to the apartment we tried to cook dinner and for some reason our oven/hot plate wasn't working. We called our landlord and it took about 5 minutes of speaking French back and forth to have her understand. After calling her husband and having him try to figure it out, he read the directions (in French) apparently you can't use teflon on the oven. Oh well! At least it works now. Tomorrow I have orientation almost all day so I will try to update :)