I don't really speak French..

Here I am, finishing my first week in France. It goes without saying that I'm having a wonderful time, even though I very much miss everyone back home in the States.

On Sunday, I went exploring with my friend Deniz, who is also in the Astrophysics program and is from Turkey. We got off the Métro at Saint Michel-Notre Dame and just wandered with no regards to direction and with no goal in mind other than to see what we saw.

The first store we walked into was a graphic novel shop (not really a comic book store...really just graphic novels and related memorabilia) called Tin Tin. Named, of course, for this fellow:

It was one of those scenarios when I wanted to buy everything in sight, so naturally, I bought nothing.

We stopped in a pet store on the Seine and fawned over puppies and canaries.
We zig-zagged back and forth along narrow cobblestone streets lined with shops and cafés and bars and full of people from everywhere. And every now and then we'd round a corner and run into something like this, the Saint Michel Fontaine:


We finally decided to rest our feet here, l'Église Saint Eustache:

This church is another early example of Gothic architecture blah blah blah flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings.
It also had a pretty sweet organ:


Got lost, but after some very roundabout paths, made it back home.

Since then, I've been going to classes. Astronomy, French, French Phonetics, and an Astro Lab. I LOVE Astro, and am pretty surprised about the fact. Prof. Kron is very friendly and our class of 11 just gets into fun discussions about the process of discovering extra stellar planets or something. My French professor loves purple and has yet to wear an outfit that doesn't feature the color prominently, including her hair. Oh, and we also need to use a fingerprint scanner to get into the Paris Center every day. Unnecessary and high tech; love it.

Tuesday evening the Astro group went to l'Observatoire de Paris:
It's this beautiful stone building built in 1667, I believe. We hung out in the observatory for a few hours, eating, drinking wine, and looking at Mars and its polar ice caps, Saturn (which looked amazing), and the Orion Nebula (also amazing).
This is the telescope:

The coolest part is that the observatory room is not technically connected to the rest of the building, because it needs to be able to spin 360º in order to point the telescope at different sections of sky. These days, it's run by a remote control, so we would just be standing and talking to one another (or to Jay, who works for the Hubble Telescope Institute and was very fun to talk to), and then the whole room would start to rotate.

It was incredible.

Oh, I've also been seeing some work by a street artist I like, Space Invader:

Can you see the alien?

So I'm pretty much a pro at the Métro by now, of course (hah). I'm figuring out where the cool places to do things/eat things/drink things are. I'm getting the hang of this whole "speaking French" thing.

Demain, les Chateaux de la Loire!

The story of my first French hangover...

Je suis arrivée à Paris!

My day of travel went pretty smoothly. Chicago O'Hare --> Dallas Fort Worth --> Paris Charles de Gaulle. I left the dorm at 9:00 a.m. Central time on Thursday and finally got to my dorm in Paris at 10 or 10:30 a.m. Friday.

That afternoon I stopped at the corner store and made two purchases: a bottle of water, and a bottle of wine (1€69).

So me and a couple of the guys who are also in the Astro program just hung out for a while and each drank a bottle of wine.
Mind you, the only thing I had had to eat all day was a miniature croissant on the plane for breakfast (at about 7:00 a.m.) and a small sandwich for lunch (at about noon).
I stumbled back to my room and promptly passed out.
In the morning I was very surprised that I had actually bothered to change into pajamas.

First French hangover: Check.
I found out I had left the water bottle in my friend Ethan's room. It was sorely needed.


Today was a long day. They took us to the University of Chicago Paris Center, where we'll actually have our classes. Brief tour, longer wine and cheese reception.
They herded all of the study abroad students onto a tour bus and took us to the Basilique Saint Denis:


You know, the birth of Gothic architecture and all that jazz. Also known as the "Necropolis of Kings" because many were buried there.

We all (like, 55 of us, I believe) went to dinner at this swanky restaurant near the Paris Center. You know, the modernist "chic" sort of restaurant where you pay more money for less food on your plate, but at least it's nicely arranged. Regardless, it was tasty, and we didn't have to pay for it. (This was also the first meal I'd had all day).
I was seated at the dinner table with the "adults" (meaning some of the Center's staff and a professor). The director of the Paris Center is hilarious. I think I convinced him to wear his "Who the Fuck is Mick Jagger?" t-shirt to work on Monday.

Well, if I'm to have anything resembling a normal sleep schedule I'd better go to sleep soon. Au revoir et à bientôt!

'Twas the Night Before Departure...

Greetings!

Tomorrow morning I begin my day-long travel venture from Chicago --> Dallas --> Paris.
I'll have to wake up early, but I'm not exactly tired yet, considering I've been staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning for the last few days.

Basically, I'll have this handy-dandy blog to let people know what I'm up to. I'll try to make it less-than-boring.

Here we go...