"please make my dreams come true!"

what a first week in Paris.

i'll be honest. i'm struggling to remember what i did but i will give you as much as i can remember.

i began my week with no classes. i love mondays because i have zero zero zero classes to go to. but then on tuesday, i attended my first french class (yes, in france!) and my professor is truly epic. he laughed and made faces at our attempts to speak the language and our accents when saying words. this is the best class because he rarely speaks in english, so you have no choice but to listen and grasp the language (like you're supposed to).

wednesday was my first art&architecture class and, although i was sketchy about it at first because of previous comments about it, its turning out to be pretty ok. like, for instance, i've got a free pass to the louvre until september and i basically get in free to practically all museums in paris! that first day, we went to the louvre to get our passes done and so i've got this nifty cool pass. it's pretty damn legit.

thursday, i had french again then art where we went to notre-dame. notre-dame is breathtaking and not at all like i had expected. no, i wasn't expecting the hunchback and esmerelda to pop up and start singing but it's decor is much more intense and somber than i had depicted.
friday was spent exploring the area 'round the eiffel tower. i took a plethora of pictures of the damned thing and i didn't even get to climb it! in the winter time, the eiffel isn't really anything. what brings out the eiffel would usually be the leaf-ridden trees lining up the sides and its big, green lawn which draws your attention to le tour eiffel, but i wasn't quite feeling it. it's just a big hunk of metal anyway, right? (lol, ok, don't shoot me. i know it's more than a big hunk of metal) i didn't realize how close the campus is to the tower, as well as arc de troimphe! the arc is quite intense, too, because it overlooks champs elysees and the obselisk at the end. walking down champs elysees was surreal, especially as i passed the huge louis vuitton flagship store (hm, is that the original one?). instead of heading towards the over 3,000 year old obelisk, we turned and headed to le grand palais and le petit palais and crossed pont alexander and then looked at hotel de invalides which had this sort of military exhibition goin on. then it was straight down boulevard invalides back to campus. we found these drawings on the side of buildings of the same woman. i have named her, Elizabeth.

saturday was super exciting because i went to DISNEYLAND PARIS! EuroDisney was so much fun. after a bit of a rough start, the large group of approximately maybe 15-20 of us caught the train to disneyland. more showed up to this than anything the school actually tried to put together, lol! anyways, so we couldn't get a student discounts even though we begged and i spent a ridiculous amount of euros (you don't even want to know the conversion to dollars). despite my desire to cry over money, i made sure i was going to enjoy myself. the first ride was space mountain: mission 2 and it 'rocked my world'. then did a bunch of stuff in fantasyland, then headed to disney studios to grab some lunch. went on the tower of terror, rock'n'rollercoaster with some fastpasses, back to disneyland to do a few more things and caught our last rollercoaster at around 8pm. we rode into the dark night filled with stars and overlooked the park all lit up. it was awesome. did a mediterranean buffet for dinner then ran for a train back to the heart of Paris.

on sunday i woke up and didn't eat breakfast. stupid me. i walked back to the grand palais, expecting it to be open. but alas, twas not. went to the petit palais instead and bullshitted some time there and then went back for a tour of the college of bernardins (i think that's what it was, lol). the tourguide was this super cute old french man with this hecka stylish little paisly scarf around his neck. he was the coolest. and apparantly we were the first ever english tour of the college! pretty damned cool. then i rushed back to campus, starving, but needing to go to mass. then had to find out the priest who served the english mass was called away to taiwan. of course. so i walked to a church called st. germain de pres (which is right across from the famous les deux magots!) and had my first french mass. it was beautiful. walking paris at night is such a treat.

and finally, today, i did my first morning of service in paris at a pre-school. i opted for little children rather than a soup kitchen again, lol. we all know how that went down in rome. the children are the CUTEST things EVER. forget the brats in America, i'd rather be a pre-school teacher here in paris. they are way more behaved and not causin' a ruckus everywhere they go. i love the way they say my name. hopefully, i can get a video of them saying it. haha. i spent most of my time with the youngest of the class which are 3-4 years old. they are the sweetest little darlings. sure, they love to pick their nose and sneeze on your face and cough on your hand as you pass them a green marker. but i love them to bits already! i can't wait for next week.

so here are some pictures because i'm being really nice this time:

au revoir for now!