Bonjour mes amis! I'm not in Paris quite yet; I have another 10 hours or so here in London Heathrow before my connection flight. As someone just pointed out to me, my layover is much longer than all my traveling time. Great planning, right?
So normally I'm not the type to write a blog (my life is not all that interesting) but I thought this might be easier/more entertaining for me to update people on my trip than doing emails and such. But in exchange, if you do choose to read you might be subjected to my everyday life. I apologize.
I had a lovely flight over; it was nearly empty so I had room to lie down across a bunch of seats. I've been sick for a few days, but I'm getting better...except that I can't really eat anything. So I'm really hungry but all the food I see makes me feel more ill. My life is hard, I know.
Anyway, as I said, I have a ton of time in the airport and I'm ridiculously bored already. What does one do during a long nighttime layover in an airport? Well, normal people might get a hotel or something. Nope. I'll be hanging around Heathrow until 6:20am (it's about 8:30 now).
I'm sitting in a Starbucks near the airport exit, watching people coming and going, milling about. The drivers waiting for their drivees look even more bored than me. What if I pretended to be one of the people they're looking for? Maybe I could get a ride into London. But if I recall correctly, the Tube closes at 1am here (I guess Brits like to sleep, hm?) so I wouldn't have much time to get about the city.
The music here is really bad, too. So far I've heard old-school Beyonce, Shaggy (whyy???) and a selection of other late '90s, early '00s pop crap. It's loud. On the bright side, I'm wearing Hanukkah socks.
Okay - Paris! I get in around 8:30 tomorrow morning and then get shipped to my homestay apartment. I'm living in the 13eme arrondissement, close to the 14eme. Mine features the National Library (which, when viewed from above supposedly looks like a bunch of open books - I looked on Google and didn't get it), Chinatown, approximately 8.6 thousand hospitals, and several sites from Les Misérables. Yay! Within walking distance are a couple of cafes where Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald and co. used to write. I've already researched the closest boulangeries, patisseries, and charcuteries. (That's bakeries, pastry shops, and delis.)
I'll be taking Colonial Literature at the American University of Paris, which is right next to the Eiffel Tower and across the river from the Champs-Elysees and shopping districts. It's a more touristy area than the location of La Sorbonne, the other university where I'll be studying. At the Sorbonne I'll just be taking French classes, but 10 hours a week: I think it's going to be a typical class and a phonetics/practice class. That's a lot of French. Also I'm supposedly taking a cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu but I haven't heard anything about it yet so am rather suspicious.
I will also be traveling around France quite a bit - I plan to go on the trips to Strasbourg, Rheims, Normandy, Provence, Avignon, Mont St. Michel, and Giverny. If I have time I'll go to some other European countries, too, but the two universities' spring break aren't at the same time, so we'll see how that works out. My goal is to get to Moscow.
There's an overview of my trip; I don't have much else to say at the moment, except that I'm still really bored. Oh well, only about 9 hours left here now!
Bisoux,
Angie
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