Whoops. It seems I let myself get quite behind and need to update!
So, this past week was 2 midterms (I got one of them back and did well on it) and then this Friday, instead of having grammar class at 10am, I was up and out the door to catch tram ligne 3 vers Neustrie to Commerce to switch to tram ligne 1 vers Beaujoire to Gare SNCF Nord at 6:15! I was up at 5:40 voluntarily, Dad. Granted, it was not to chop wood or listen to the On Eagle's Wings cd (haha), but rather to go to Paris for the day.
The train ride was non-eventful and we arrived on time, headed over to the Jardins de Luxembourg and the royal palace (where the French Senate is) and wandered around for about 20 minutes until our tour started. The tour guide was nice, offering to take group pictures at just about every set of huge stairs we went by and we saw the hall of busts (marble heads of important dead senateurs) and the library, which was a bit like Beauty and the Beast and made me smile.
My govt. professor, M. de Villers was really funny and mischevious, trying to thwart our tour guide at every turn so we could peak into the central chamber and see the senat in session. We did get to go at the very end of our tour once the session was over, but it just wasn't the same minus all the senateurs in the room.
Once the visit to the Senat was over, we had free time until 2:30, so I headed to Angelina's with one of my friends. It was obnoxiously expensive (7 euros for a hot cocoa) but it was so worth it. It's supposed to be THE BEST place for hot chocolate and Mont Blanc in Paris, so we each got a hot cocoa (more like drinking chocolate and comes with heavy whipped cream) and split a Mont Blanc. Total bill for all that: 20,50 Euros. Yowch. It's okay, because it was so rich I didn't have lunch or dinner.
Then the most mind-numbing tour of 16th century French art in the Louvre followed - I can't believe it was only an hour long, it felt like three. After that, I had about an hour and a half before we had to take the metro back to Montparnasse and so a group of IESers and I took lots of really fun pictures mimicking the lovely, classical Greek and Roman statues.
Saturday I was able to sleep in after that looong day and then my host mom and I went to an art exhibit and over to her friend's house for dinner and to play the Chicago version of Monopoly I gave her. It was a pretty fun time and everyone got along decently well, so by the time we got back to the apartment around 9pm, I was tired.
Today, I tried to go to church in the morning, but once I got there just a little late, the gates were locked. I was quite taken aback to think that they lock people out of church, but because we had been on vacation last week we had missed the announcement that church was somewhere else. I figured that one out after I got back to the apartment and saw the announcement online. Oops. So instead, I listened to a church service online from home and got booking on my translation essay, which was not as difficult as I had expected.
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