Paris!

Ok I know that I still owe my thoughts on Athens, and I'll get to it once I get through my pictures. But meanwhile, I'm in PARIS!

We arrived yesterday (Saturday), got to our apartment, and as it turns out, to even enter the yard of the building, we needed to call up, which of course we couldn't do since our landlord never told us the code. After knocking and pushing random buttons, a nice woman allowed us up, and we climbed to the 6th floor (as we are living on the last floor of the walk up), and then, as it turns out... we were in the wrong stairwell. With no phones and no way to contact our landlord, we asked a nice neighbor to call him, but alas, no one answered.

By the time we got down to the yard, a nice old lady was there waiting for us, who sheepishly looked at all our luggage (really only one suitcase and bag per person) and either pitied or wanted to laugh at us.

In any case, we ventured out in the evening to pick up some necessities to tide us over until today (breakfast stuff and tea and all). Since I'd been dreaming about French yogurt for months now, I decided that I might as well find some immediately. Well, this ended up taking about 15 minutes as I started by simply staring at the shelves, then picking random yogurts up and examining them in a feeble effort to understand which was best.

The adventure didn't end there. Since Olivia and I had been traveling for 3 weeks, we were both due for some laundry, and as luck would have it, our apartment has a little washer/dryer combo unit. Well... after staring at the French washer/dryer, I thought I set it to the right setting, but obviously not since my clothes were not even remotely dry. I then found the manual, which again, was in French (and the vocab for working a washer/dryer was not part of my classes in high school or college)! I swear, the machine washed my clothes two more times even though I set the machine to stop washing and they were more or less dry by morning.

This morning I wrote a list of everything I needed to buy (at the street market and the supermarche) plus joining a gym, getting a phone, figuring out how to get to the RER A, etc. The first gym was closed (to be expected as it's Sunday in Paris), the RER A was an experience and I tried to break out my lame french, which was ok-ish, and will help in dire straights, but overall needs to improve immensely! In any case, we then headed to the market and I bought fresh veggies and fruits!) Our trip to the supermarche was not very productive, as, surprise, it was not open! I walked around our neighborhood a bit more and finally found a little shop that was open and I got to pick up some essentials like carrots and salt (so I could make some yummy chicken soup).

Anyways, thus far, I'm liking Paris. Even the walk up to the 5th floor isn't so bad! The French are quite nice and they have no problems speaking English or slowing down to make sure I understand. So thus far, all is well!

Classes start tomorrow, so hopefully all will be well on that front.