"Vous êtes ici"

Well I finally arrived in Paris this morning!  It was a long week at home getting reading for my 7 week adventure in Europe.  From finding the perfect messenger bag (which I finally tracked down at Clarks), getting gel nails for the first time (hopefully to last 2 whole weeks without chipping), and cutting my hair EIGHT INCHES, I was ready.  Packing was a pain and I had to leave almost all my books at home including my french to english dictionary, french Rick Steves tour guide book, french Book of Mormon and preach my gospel.  My suitcase had to be 50 lbs. What a pain!

After arriving, we checked into our hotel and the rooms are the smallest little things i've seen! We checked in at 11, but they weren't ready with our rooms. We checked in again at 2 but they still weren't ready.  I was smelling by that point. And I really wanted to shower.  Only one of the 9 rooms was ready so we decided to drop all 20 of our full sized suitcases into a 8 by 8 foot room. It was complete chaos!  in order to avoid jet lag, our professor gave us a detailed itinerary for the days adventures including seeing Le Tour D'Eiffel, Notre dame de Paris, and taking the Metro at least once.  We had many exciting adventures on our first day here.  Here is Savannah, one of my friends here in a boulangerie where we bought yummy sandwiches and croissants

We asked two french people for directions. And they responded so nicely! Of course we (ok not actually me, another one of my friends I was with whoops!) used the magic words! (bonjour madame/monsieur, excusez-moi de vous deranger, mais j'ai une petite probleme...".  Everyone was very friendly! Except the metro lady. Who was scary and scowled at us when we couldn't figure out how to get through the gates with our passes since rubbing them on the machine like everyone else just wasn't working.  Opening the doors for the metro was intimidating too. The metro, in reality, was a fiasco.  I'm excited to move out to the suburbs and live with my host family.  I can't wait to take pictures to post of their house and to give detailed description of each family member!  Everyone here smokes and has dogs.  And wears scarves like they say in all the books! So far, so good.  After all, it is Paris!