I had many visitors in this month. First my friend Mira came to stay with me for a weekend, then my uncle Bruce and my aunt Pia stopped by for a few days, then, my mom for a week, and then, Nadia for a day! It was sooo great to have a constant flow of visitors, it made the month fly by! Good thing I live in one of the greatest cities on earth--this makes it a pretty simple task to lure guests onto my domain :)
Classes also started in February, which are all going well. I'm taking 3 at Dauphine and 1 at Paris 3 (Nouvelle Sorbonne) offered by my program, MICEFA. At Dauphine, I'm taking International Business Ethics, Cross Cultural Barriers and Paradoxes, and Econ of the European Union. At Paris 3 I'm taking A Litterary History of Paris. The Dauphine classes are in English with Erasmus students from all over the world, and the other is with other Americans in the MICEFA program and is in French.
I'm definitely all settled into my room, it definitely feels like home whenever I walk in the door. I've tried to make it as comfy and colorful and homey as I can, with the help of ikea :) Seriously, when I for real get my own apartment, I am going to go to Ikea in the morning, and walk out at night with everything I could possibly need for it. I love it.
The weather is starting to get better, it's usually blue skies, although still really cold in the shade and at night. But honestly, I like being here in the winter, I'm not really looking forward to being in the metro when it's warmer, shoved against a bunch of sweaty, smelly people haha. But seriously, I like being relatively covered up on the metro, and how everyone else is too. Plus, I love winter clothes :) I have this really thick, long, knit scarf that I got here (every girl seems to have one here) that I love wrapping around my neck like 3 times. I'll be sad when it's too warm for it.
I've pretty much done all of the touristy stuff at this point, and am beginning to figure out where my favorite neighborhoods are. I love walking through the Jardin des Tuileries, the garden that stretches out in between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde. I really love where I live too, the Bastille area. It's right next to the Marais, which might be my favorite area. It's the oldest area in Paris, and is traditionally the Jewish area. I went to this really popular falafel place there with my mom, it's called l'As du Falafel. I had my first and certainly not my last falafel there.
Another obsession of mine is a department store called BHV. It stands for Bazaar de Hotel de Ville. "Department store" is kind of a really big understatement. It's like, everything and anything you could ever want to buy, all in one place. The basement floor is the most extensive hardware store you've ever seen, the main floor is designer clothing and bags, the next floor (my fave) is arts and crafts and stationary and music and books and picture frames and office supplies, and the next floor I think is like towels, bathroom stuff, home organizations etc, and so on and so forth for a few more floors. It's CA-RAY-ZEEE.
The next place I love is the mosquée de Paris. It feels like another world. They serve little glasses of tea, and there's also a restaurant and a little place where you can get little snacks. It's such an escape from city life. I highly recommend it.
Also, when my mom visited we went to Strasbourg, France for a couple days. It was a very small little town on the eastern border of France, right next to Germany. It is one of the locations of the EU parliament. The whole town could be walked in ten minutes from end to end. Although small, there were still major designer stores and department stores. My mom and I stayed in the Sofitel Hotel, which was sooo nice. It was nice to live in the lap up luxury for a few days. The BED was INCREDIBLE. It was for sale and I was tempted to buy it, except for the fact that it was like, really expensive haha.
I guess that's it for now, I'll try to elaborate on other things that I failed to write about for the month of February later.
My first falafel!
Strasbourg!
The inside of one of the rooms of the mosquée
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