Tuesday morning we had to wake up at 7 am (super suck for lazy college students!) for orientation at the Catho. Nina and I live in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, which is up in the northeast of the city. The Catho (Universite Catholique or Catholic University of Paris) where we have classes is in the 6th arrondissement, or the south-centralish area of Paris, next the Jardin du Luxembourg on the left bank of the Seine. (The left bank, or La Rive Gauche, is the area of the city south of the Seine; the right bank, or La Rive Droite, is the area north of the Seine. The left bank tends to be associated with the more artistic side of Paris, historically and even still today, while the right bank has been more business-y, upperclass, traditional historically.) Our commute from the 19th down to the 6th takes roughly 45 minutes, assuming there's no strike going on (which can happen fairly often as we have first hand experience from a few days ago). We spent the majority of Tuesday in various orientations: the city of Paris, safety, homestays, academics. Nina and I got in a bit of shopping and some slight sight seeing along the right bank after the orientations. We had an ISA welcome dinner at 7:30 at un petit restaurant called La Baladin, which was a bit of a challenge to find. It's located off some crazy tiny side street, that not even locals are guaranteed to know, which we found out the hard way when asking directions of the locals did us no good in finding it. Lesson learned for the day: leave more time than you think you'll need to navigate the city, and have a good map with even the smallest street labeled.


A video of our welcome dinner entertainment.



Le vin francais a diner.


Le dessert, tres delicieux!


me and rooms, aka Nina, at the welcome dinner.

After dinner a group of us made a much needed trip to la Tour Eiffel. Elle est tres belle et magnifique! By some feat of magic, we made it back to the metro before it closed. Another important bit of information for living in the city: the metro closes at 12:30 am Sunday-Thursday, and around 2 am Friday-Saturday. Also, make sure there are at least 2 people if you use the metro that late; sometimes it's simply better to take a cab if you're out so late.
(Sorry no pics of the Eiffel Tower yet, I used film there!)