It has officially been one full week since I left Kansas for Paris, France. C'est la fin d'une semaine tres magnifique. I met my roommate Nina at the airport in Chicago last week by crazy luck, so we got thrown into Paris together. We landed at CDG around 9:30 Monday morning and got to our homestay around noon. Sylvie, our hostmom, is really nice and very cool. She's absolutely amazing at putting up with us. She works in film, co-producing movies which is pretty cool. She's fluent in English and really enjoys American culture; a fact that makes life in our homestay a bit easier than other students in homestays have it. She has a 15-year old daughter named Alice. The more I learn about Alice, the more she reminds me of my 15-year old sister at home. It's kinda crazy how much the two of them seem to have in common. Both Sylvie and Alice are really nice and incredibly welcoming.

Nina and I spent Monday afternoon unpacking and sleeping (much needed sleep as I was running on about 20 minutes of uncomortable airplane sleep for the previous 24 hours). We went out to explore a bit when we woke up. We live a few blocks away from this great canal, which we wandered over to for some great first day photo ops. We came back to a tres delicieux dinner of Ratatouille that Sylvie had made for us. (Despite the line from the movie of ratatouille sounding disgusting, it really is a very good, traditional French, dish of simmered vegetables.) One major adjustment factor for American students living in France aside from the language, the French eat dinner around 8 pm. It's really late compared to American eating schedules, and it's always a full family sit down, legit meal; a guaranteed opportunity for families to talk about their days. After dinner Nina and I went to the Champs Elysees and Arc du Triomphe for our first official "famous place" visit..



C'est le chat de notre famille, Sourissette.
Our cat! Her name translates to "Little Mouse" in English.