Bienvenue

Well, I’m in Paris!

Paris itself is pretty amazing from the little bit of traveling around I’ve done so far. Today was orientation at IES, so I took the Metro from my closest station, George V, to Champs-Elysees Clemeneau, then switched lines and got off at Gaite for IES! It’s a short, simple journey, which is good since I’ll be making it every day! Two other girls from school live by me, too, so we may commute together. I’m currently typing this entry out on my laptop at about 11pm on Tuesday night, but it won’t be posted til tomorrow morning.

Many of you probably know what I’m talking about when I mention my “don’t eff with me” face. Well, I’ve decided that all Parisians always have their “don’t eff with me” faces on. On the Metro, people go out of their way to make sure they don’t look you in the eye. People will stare at their shoes, pretend to be really interested in advertisements, or just stare into space just to avoid eye contact. No one smiles on the street except for foreign tourists. In fact, one of easiest ways to spot an American tourist (that I’ve noticed so far) is that they are walking around, looking at everyone and smiling at them. A Parisian will just walk briskly with no expression on their face, ignoring other people around them. Also, Parisians seem to wear lots of black, don’t do flip flops, and love the whole leggings trend. A couple of the girls I’ve met at IES today and I walked around the Champs-Elysees after class because we wanted to look for places to update our wardrobe and be more Parisian. I don’t think I’m going to give in to the whole no flip flops thing (unless it keeps raining like it has been) because I love them far too much, but I’ve got the other two pretty well covered without buying more stuff…which is excellent because the exchange rate definitely is not in my favor here! Also, people wear scarves all the time, even though it’s almost June. And I brought my red-and-black checkered scarf and, while wearing it today, got mistaken for a French person by an actual French person at the Metro station (she asked me if I had a lighter…French people still smoke a lot, too).

As you may have gathered from the last paragraph, orientation is going well. Today was day one and tomorrow is the last day. I met a lot of very cool people today. There are only two guys in my group, and they went shopping for a bit with us, but wandered off when the girls all started getting excited by all the stores. So, me and 5 or 6 other girls ended up forming something of a group…we went to Laduree, the patisserie that I have wanted to go to for a very long time! We bought macarons, which were amazing! I bought 4 and ate them over the course of the afternoon…caramel et fleur de sel (caramel and sea salt), citron (lemon), chocolat (chocolate), and chocolat amer (dark chocolate). If you’ve never had a macaron…you should! And I’m not talking about the coconut macaroon things that you all know from the US. Macarons are meringue sandwich cookies filled with either ganache, fruit preserves, buttercream, or caramel. Here’s a picture I took of my citron and chocolat amer ones…

Really, the only thing that isn’t going so well is the host family thing. My family is very, very nice, but it’s very lonely living in their apartment. They have five grown children (not young children like I thought before) with kids of their own spread all over Paris, so they aren’t really home often. When they are home, they like to keep to themselves and pretty much stay in their room after dinner. It’s kind of annoying because I was hoping to be able to talk more in the house so I could learn more French. We speak French at dinner when I eat with them (which is only 3 nights per week), but when they have dinner guests (as they did tonight), they start speaking very rapid French and I just kind of sit there confused. It’s also annoying because it kind of just leaves me sitting alone all evening with very little to do. They do not have Internet (not even dial-up) or TV. They have a handful French DVDs, but I can’t use them on my laptop because they’re a different region (and they’re located in one of the rooms that is generally closed off to me). So, I’ve kind of just been sitting in my room after dinner listening to music or watching Heroes on my iPod. However, I’m very quickly running out of Heroes episodes to watch. They told me I could get free wireless at McDonald’s (which they call “McDo,” pronounced “Mac-Doe,” here), so I walked 15 minutes or so to the nearest one (on the Champs-Elysees…it’s a very creepy McDonald’s in the basement of a shopping center) only to find out that they do not actually have working wireless. My iPod managed to pick up a weak signal from somewhere along the Champs-Elysees so I checked my email…but then it stopped working again. So, yes, I am going slightly stir crazy. I’m in Paris, a huge, amazing city, yet I am sitting in my room bored for hours at night. I thought maybe other people in my group were in the same situation…but it turns out I’m the only one who doesn’t have wireless Internet in their homestay and most of the other families are young and very open and conversational. So, I’m going to talk to the IES people tomorrow about this and see if maybe I can get switched. M. and Mme. De Pommery are very, very nice, but I like to talk and get to know people beyond just casual dinner conversation! And I want to learn French and I can’t do that if I’m only speaking it over dinner!

So, that’s my very lengthy update for now! I have to give a HUGE thank you to Mom, Drew, and Jordan, because their texts have caught me just at the moments when I really needed to hear from someone at home. And American humor trumps French humor any day, and goodness knows many of those texts have made me laugh and stop feeling sorry for myself. My cell phone bill may be ridiculous, Mom and Dad, so I apologize for that…but I will write you a check because I think my sanity’s worth it =)

Love you all, and I’d love to hear from you.

Riley =)