Day 13: I love not having Friday classes!

Well again, this blog will be for the last two days because right after I turned off my computer last night I realized I hadn't bloged and was too tired to turn it back on. Yesterday was the last day of the "intensive" language class (otherwise known as rediculously easy language class even though it was the hardest one) and we had our "final' exam which took a whopping 15 mins. Needless to say I was really happy that it was so easy. After that I went to Rue Mouftard (which has just about the silliest name ever) where my friends and I had lunch at a very yummy restaurant that had curry chicken, I was quite happy. After that we took Rue Mouftard over to the Parthanon, there was some nice inexpensive shopping on the Rue so I finally found a cheap purse that I like that is big enough for me to put my school stuff in, and I am very happy because the previous purse I was using didn't have a zipper or anything at the top, it was just open so I was always paranoid that my stuff was going to get stolen without me noticing. Anyways, so we went in the Parthanon which was very cool, we saw the graves of such famous people as: Voltaire, Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Emilie Zola, etc which was really neat. Today was the first day of the three day weekend (I LOVE NOT HAVING CLASS ON FRIDAY!), and my friends and I took full advantage of it. We met at Saint-Michel and had lunch over there (near a mexican restaurant which made me really happy because everyone says you can't find mexican in Paris but clearly I did) which was super yummy. Than we went to Montmartre which was interesting. It was very touristy and the area is transitioning from being very trashy to being somewhat classy so its interesting. Like I said it is very touristy, so people have developed this trick of standing on the street with yarn for frendship bracelets and asking passer bys to hold the string for them so they can make the braclets, than right when they finish the quickly put it on you and make you pay 10 euro for it even if you don't want it, because they made it special for you and you have to buy it now blah blah blah. Thankfully we knew about this so when they hassled us we just kept saying no and walked away but I imagine many tourists fall for this trick. Anyways, we went to Sacre coeur which was fabulous of course. It was very beautiful and the view was stunning. After that we walked over to the Moulin Rouge (which was significantly less impressive that I had imagined) and on the way over there we walked through a small park where there were three americans playing jazz so we sat for a while and listened to it. It was really nice and reminded me a lot of New Orleans. After the Moulin Rouge we went to the Louvre, which is free for students on Fridays and Wednesdays after 6pm, so we got in for free which was really nice. Of course we only saw a very little bit of it, but we plan on coming back all the fridays that we are free to see more. One of the funniest things that we saw was a group of 10 construction workers putting up a portable stage right behind the louvre for something, they went about it in a very french way. It was entirely inefficient and uncoordinated which we found entirely amusing and we watched them for about 10 mins. After we left the Louvre night had fallen and I was absolutly struck with the beauty of Paris, and it reminded me of how happy I am to be here. I feel as though I had started to take the city for granted because I have been here for 2 weeks, but seeing it at dusk with the Eiffle tower in the background reminded me of how fantastic it is. We were planning on walking along the Seine to the Eiffle Tower and finding dinner along the way but that was expensive so we ended up just wandering around and finding a yummy pizza place where we shared a pizza. The cheese was brie which is AMAZING on pizza, they should definatly make pizzas like that in the USA. We have become very euopean in our eating habbits, we ate dinner for little over 3 hours (lunch was a little over 2 hours) so by the time we left it was time to take the metro back home. All in all it was a fabulous day in Paris, and I am very happy that I didn't have pesky classes to interfere with my exploring ;) The only downfall is my feet are quite sore right now so they are very content that I am laying in my bed writing this.