My Poor Macaroon

    So much has happened in the past few days! Okay so we had a bunch of orientations which were painful to sit through, but semi-helpful nonetheless. So far my roommate and I have done Notre Dame, walked around the Eiffel Tower, and yesterday we did the "bateaux mouches". False, it was not the real bateaux mouches. It picked us up at school because it's right on a canal. So we get on at 2pm we we're like oh this will be so cool because it was with all the international students (it's still weird to think that I'm now the one that's an international kid). So we go through about 6 different gates, which is the weirdest thing ever. Once the boat gets put in to place, we started going down and down and down and it looked like we were sinking, but we weren't (I know you got worried there for a sec). So after about 2 hours of doing this we finally got on to the Seine and basically raced around the Ile-de-la-cité which is where Notre Dame is. We didn't even go by the Eiffel Tower. Everyone was sitting inside for the most part because it was so cold out, but because everyone was inside, the windows were all fogged up, so we could barely see anything anyway. Finally we got off at 5pm in some random spot that we had to figure out how to get home from there.

    Today we went to Versailles with ISA. It was gorgeous! SO COLD. But so worth it. It was so cold that it hurt to breathe. And I kept getting the hiccups which is so annoying. We will have to go back since there was still snow on the ground and the gardens were closed, and lets face it, the gardens are the best part. It was a little disappointing though because pretty much all of the furniture inside is a replica. And they also showed us a video of everything being restored so it was weird to see people painting on gold. But it was still cool. There was a Ladurée there too. So of course we had to stop and get a macaroon. After that we went to a restaurant and got nutella crepes and hot chocolate then hopped on the train back to Paris. In the midst of trying to figure out where to get off once we got into Paris, we scrambled to get off the train just as the doors closed behind us and my macaroon was whisked away. My poor little lonely uneaten macaroon, sitting on a train to some unknown place wondering where it's rightful owner is. Once we got back we finally went grocery shopping and stocked up a bit. Now we're sitting in our tiny, freezing, dimly lit apartment. But hey... I can't complain... I'm in Paris!!

Here's a cool link to the Versailles website. You can get a virtual tour... http://www.versailles3d.com/en/ 

Shaner candle at Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

The French version of Silver Linings Playbook is Happiness Therapy

Lindsey!

Eiffel Tower

L'école Miltaires

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

Musée D'Orsay

Galleries Lafayette

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Strudel

    Yesterday and today were the longest days of my life. At first I was all happy because it snowed in Paris. I was like oh this is perfect! There will be snow at the Eiffel Tower and it will be so pretty and all that stuff... Well, I was sorely mistaken. My flight from Newark to Paris was cancelled. So then my roommate and I and our parents were frantic trying to find another flight to get us here. We find a flight from Newark to Frankfurt, Germany, then on to Paris. So we get on the flight to Frankfurt then we are circling for a good 45 minutes, then the pilot makes an announcement that the plane is running out of fuel so we need to be rerouted to Hamburg, Germany. So we're there for two and a half hours, then back to Frankfurt we went. Everyone was so happy to have landed and not to have to deal with the craziness but then the jetway wasn't working so we had to get off the plane on the tarmac and take trams back to the terminals. Then we look at the departures board and it says that our flight is cancelled again. Then we start to panic. So we go through customs out into the main area where the rebooking counters were and there is the longest line I have ever seen in my life. My roommate and I were swapping places in line so we can go call our parents. We had lined up a hotel that was right across the street and there was a train that we could have taken the next day so we were set just in case. Well luckily enough, there was a flight to Paris that left later in the day so we were able to go standby on that flight. Since the two previous flights had been cancelled, there wound up being 63 people on the standby list. So the airline decided to roll out a bigger plane to accommodate all the extra people. Well that plane still wasn't big enough so they wound up rolling out a third plane and we were all able to get on.
    So we get to Paris and we're all jazzed and completely exhausted and we get our bags... never got checked in through customs or anything like that so that's a bit strange... but anyway, we're trying to call our program's number and the pay phone isn't working so of course we're freaking out even more. Plus the fact that there was a miscommunication on where we were supposed to. We were told to go right to the office and they would bring us to the apartment. So we get in a taxi with all our stuff and we're like okay this is great. The roads were kind of slippery though and the visibility was awful, but we still made it. So we get to the office and its completely dark and my roommate and I have absolutely no idea what to do. We were stranded on some random alleyway with suitcases looking like scared puppies. But then we found a hotel not too far from where we were so we lugged our suitcases through the slush and into the hotel. I think the guy working there felt bad for us because we were so frantic. But finally we got a hold of someone and we were able to meet up at the apartment. We're too tired to fully unpack tonight so we'll save that for tomorrow. In the morning we have orientation so that should be fun. Hopefully we get up in time...

Frankfurt, Germany

Hamburg, Germany

Hamburg. Germany