PARIS!!!

Yes, finalement I'm here! The city I will be living in for the next 9 months. Yesterday we said au revior to our Biarritz host-families and took a short plan ride into Orly airport. We were then split up into groups according to where our host families live. After much confusion with the not-so-organized cab drivers, I arrived at my apartment in the 15th Arrondisement.

I am living with the MOST ADORABLE woman ever in the most beautiful apartment ever!! Just to give you a little taste of what it's like here, I'm writing this at 11 o'clock at night in my room while watching the Eiffel Tower light show. Yeah, yeah, no big deal or anything... There will be pictures very soon I promise!! Ok, the adorable woman, Francoise, is a widow who lost her husband a few years ago. She has had many many students from the HCJYF program but I am the first Hamilton student she's housed. She has one son who is grown and had 3 younger children of his own. She is very easy to talk to and corrects me in a very nice manner when I make a mistake speaking. Her sister lives just 3 floors above us with her husband. She visits often and helps with dinner, etc. She also has some connection with the l'Ecole du Louvre but...not quite sure what that is...better get on that...

You will be very proud to know I successfully navigated the three Metro stops it takes to get to Reid Hall (I know its not a lot, but hey, give me some credit here). I was so early I decided to stop at a little café on the rue Montparnasse and get one of those shot-sized, caffeinated-so-much-it-made-my-hands-shake-for-an-hour cups of what the french call "coffee". IT WAS AWESOME. That little detour was also my first real "café in Paris". After countless hours of serving burgers and wings and scrubbing bathroom floors at the restaurant this summer, the only thing keeping me from strangling those 40-something, washed-out, drunk, biker chicks/dudes was the image of myself at a Paris café. This morning, I was finally at my café!!

Pictures to come!! Bises!