last post from paris

jackie just left this morning and i am all ready to leave tomorrow morning. i'm going to rest and get a lot of sleep for tomorrow. i feel like i've done a lot here. last night jackie, arnaud, and i had some wine in the park next to the eiffel tower to "say goodbye." it was really nice. every night at 10 and 12 they light up the tower with these strobe lights for about 10 minutes and all of the tourists ooh and ahh. we saw both lightings, so we were there for a while.

i can't wait to get back and put together a scrapbook of everything!

as far as packing i have one small bag full of books. its got to be 50 lbs. we'll see. and the other big bag with my clothes and stuff in it is heavy too. i may be paying some overweight charges. but i've managed to fit everything.

au revoir to paris!

everyone is sick

except for me. jackie is sick still with her cold. and in french class today we had issues during the listening comprehension part of the test because everyone was coughing and we couldn't hear. my teacher is even sick! something is obviously going around.

so i had a very traumatic experience yesterday with a peach. i'm a little afraid to share. i took a bite out of it and then wrote joe a text message. when i went to take another bite...there was...a worm...crawling out of my peach!!!!!!!!!!!! i keep telling myself that i would rather have that than fruit covered in pesticides and hormones. but i think it will be a while before i have another peach.

jackie had a similarly devastating experience recently with a bunch of grapes. they had a giant giant spider in them. but that was in canada, not here.

lets hope i don't get sick everyone!

more random photos

this is the entrance to school from the street. i go through this gate, past the church, through a little tunnel, and then there's a little courtyard and the school building.


and this is for you dad! near school there is this place called invalides. its a place napoleon built to house wounded war veterans. outside it they have tons of old cannons!! and in this picture if you look in the distance, on the left, thats the grand palais, its all glass on the top. and the gold in the distance before the grand palais is the alexander III bridge, the one thas really fancy and big.

jackie and i just had lunch at a little restaurant near school. i had a great ham and cheese open faced sandwich (with an egg on top megan!!). it was really good. jackie is sick. boo. she has a cold. so we had some hot tea with lunch.

its kind of funny because she went to the pharmacy and they gave her this throat spray with this long tube thing that the spray comes out of. you can't just like, go to the store and get some tylenol here, you have to go to a pharmacy where everything in in french, and no tylenol products are in sight. they also have her a chest decongestant pill. and the throat spray inspires a numbing feeling. lets all hope she doesn't get me sick for my flight back to ohio!! that would be miserable. there are other people at school who are sick though.

today i'm writing my paper. thats all. just writing my paper.

4 weeks in Paris = physical exhaustion

its as if my body is saying "enough, we can't go anymore!!" i've been really tired since last thursday and have slept a lot. but i still managed to squeeze in some activity. on friday i took a nap all day, but then went to the orangery in the evening. and i walked around the tuilery gardens. at the orangery there are two oval shaped rooms with monet water lilies all the way around. its really spectacular. its a new museum just opened in 2006 that has these awesome water lilies and then a small collection of other impressionist paintings. it was a wonderful visit!

friday night i went back to sleep. then saturday was spent at versailles. oh boy. words cannot describe versailles. here are some of the many many photos i took:







(just to give you an idea of the distance here: it took 20 minutes to walk to the start of the lake/water thing from where this photo was taken)



then saturday night was laurie's last night here, she is jackie's friend from canada who was here working. we went to dinner at a greek restaurant in the very popular st. michel area.

sunday i slept some more and did my laundry. my laundry got locked into the laundry room!!! oh no!!! it closes at 10pm and i went to get it at 10:15 and it was locked! i had to go down to the main desk and ask them to let me in to get my clothes. the guy radioed to another guy and they laughed at me. boo them. but the guy with the keys who let me in to get my clothes was really cute, so i guess it all turned out well.

my paper for my fashion class is technically due tomorrow, although i can hand it in as late as thursday. i may not finish it by tomorrow. but i feel good about it. i'm hoping the exhaustion wears off and i can finish it asap.

all about eve

so last night we went to this park where they show free movies every week in the summer. it was amazing. we got there early to get a good seat. then we had a little picnic with bread, cheese, and wine (surprise, surprise). by the time the movie was about to start i bet there were like, 300-500 people there, all doing the picnic thing. the screen was this gigantic blow up thing. so at first it was just deflated on the ground and then then they blew it up. it was pretty cool. it was also amazing just laying there beforehand with all of the people around and it was absolutely amazing weather. the perfect temperature and breeze.

so the movie was 'all about eve' which i have never seen before but its jackie's favorite movie. it has bette davis as the main character. oh, and it was in english with french subtitles. i may buy it when i get home--it was so good! but i didn't see the end. so i'm even more excited to buy it. we had to leave early to catch the last metro train home. they stop running between 12 and 1. needless to say i had a late night, i didn't finish my homework until about 3:30. but thats okay, the movie thing was worth it.

yesterday in my fashion class we discussed our research papers (which are due tuesday, ahhh!) and when i told her about my topic she got so excited!! she had never heard of etsy.com before and was excited to take a look. so i think i'm definitely on the right track for the paper. i've done some research and found some articles that i can reference, and she said to just talk about my own ideas because there aren't articles written specifically about modern handmade fashion. so that is all good. yay.

jackie and i are starting to feel a little sad about how we're leaving next week. she's been writing on her calendar what she's done every day. i'm going to copy our mutual events and try to remember what i've done everyday and incorporate that into my scrapbook i make with my photos. we've done a lot!! and there's still more. this saturday we go to versailles. let me tell ya, its a really rough life over here, haha.