Upon arriving to France, my first full 48 hours were very busy. I arrived to the airport around 11 in the afternoon and I had to hurry and get my bags and get to the McDonalds to meet the other girls. Soon after, Esty, Faith, Michaela, Lauren and Rebecca picked me up and we walked out to get on the metro. I was pretty tired and it took quite a while getting on the different metro lines and getting to our apartments. I have travelled internationally many times and have studied abroad in Europe before so I am pretty comfortable traveling and moving around. Being in the metro I didn't see much of everything outside yet. When we got to the apartments I put all of my stuff in my room and me and some of the other girls hopped back on the metro to go to the big supermarket called Carrefour. We did some grocery shopping and headed back to the apartments where I finally got to start settling down. Then a lot of the girls came into my room and we worked on some homework together.

My first full day started on Wednesday. I definitely slept later than I normally would. The jet lag is for sure slapping me in the face. I got ready to go and all of us headed to the metro to go to our language school. It took about two hours to get there. We didn't know it was going to take that long so we were about an hour late. But, the teachers were very nice. They both know English, but they don't use it in class as to make us use more of our French. After the school, it took about two hours to get back again. Thank God I am not going around to places alone because the metro lines are still a little confusing to me especially being in a language I don't know very well yet. When I got back I stayed up til about 4am trying to catch up on homework.

The following morning we left early to go on our excursion to Paris. I absolutely loved it. We went to a beautiful garden, we saw ruins of a 1st century roman arena, and we visited several cathedrals. My favorite for sure was the Notre Dame. That probably has a bit to do with my love for Disney movies and the Hunchback of Notre Dame that I have seen a million times. But honestly the Notre Dame and the other big churches were incredible. I love seeing big old buildings like that. Besides seeing all the churches, just walking around Paris was awesome. All the buildings, and shops and cafés were so pretty. Even though I was having a really good time, I was so tired from traveling and having only three hours of sleep the night before. When we stopped at a crepe place for lunch I even fell asleep at the restaurant, which was kind of embarrassing. Later, we went to a café and it felt like we were doing something that I've only seen in movies. Plus, the coffee is delicious.

I love how diverse the people are in France. To me, not one person looks the same. Also, everyone I have come in contact with so far has been so nice. I love everything so far. The food, the people, the buildings, the shops, the restaurants, etc. The first French person I met was Gaelle, She works here at the church and she is very sweet. I am very excited to get to know more people here and learn about a culture that I don't know much about. The thing I am nervous about is keeping up with our heavy homework load while trying to do everything we need to do here.