Waking up this morning it still hadn't hit me just where I am. At 8:45 all the students staying in my residence met in the lobby to walk over to campus for orientation. We had a few info sessions, a tour of the school, free sandwiches for lunch (which were actually really good; I had smoked salmon), filled out some forms, and finally got our student ID cards.
My American friends, my Canadian friend James, Mathias from Finland, and a new Canadian friend named Erika all went into Paris for the afternoon. After getting off the metro at l'Arc de Triomphe it hit us that we were finally here. We were all teaming with excitement. We made one last attempt to get our phones set up, but they said we had to have our French bank cards. We gave up and started sight seeing around Paris.
We walked the Champs Elysees, went shopping in Zara, and bought pastries at the world famous Laduree. We then walked to the Eiffel Tower and basked in its Parisian glory. After we went to dinner at a small brasserie nearby. I had the most delicious duck confit. After dinner we went back to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up at dark. Getting back to Cergy after that was the fun part.
We got all the way outside of Paris and realized that construction shut down all the RER lines to Cergy. 6 of us were stranded in some nameless suburb of Paris with no way to get home. Thankfully James and Cassie had phones set up and were able to order us a couple Uber cars. We walked into what happened to be a really trendy bar down the road to use their wifi to order our rides. Thankfully from this point everything went just fine, minus getting home a lot later than expected.
Tomorrow is the second day of orientation. After I think we're going back into Paris to continue sightseeing. My French language evaluation is Friday morning and afternoon. Class starts Monday with the 3 day International Negotiation seminar. It's after midnight here and I'm exhausted. I've uploaded several pictures to instagram and my profile is public. All the pictures are available at instagram.com/pailum520.
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