My first full weekend in Paris (the Pope was here!)

Hey everyone!!
Today marks my first full week in Paris and to celebrate, I did a lot of cool things this weekend!
Me and my new international friends (ha ha) saw a few new sights, including the Conciergerie, which is where the Paris courts are, but mostly we just hung out and talked about culture and politics (it sounds cheesy, but that's really what they do here!). I've heard so many different perspectives already from "this is why Belgian beer is the best in the world" to "this is what the Swedes think about the U.S. presidential election". It's all really interesting, but it's too much to talk about here, so if you want to know something specific, just ask me and I'll do my best to tell you what my friends said about it. Or I can find out.

But in case you haven't figured out who's who yet: some of my friends are Denise (American), Thijs (Belgian, and you say his name something like "dayzz"), Josefin (Swedish, "YO suh feen"), and the other Belgian whose name I have NO idea how to spell, but you say it sort of like "yeh ROON", and it's got some back-of-the-throat pronounciation in there too. :)














We also went to catch a glimpse of the Pope who came to Paris on Friday. He rode in his Pope-mobile through Paris, stopping at different cathedrals and his final stop was at Notre Dame, so that's where we were. It's too bad we couldn't get close enough to actually take a picture, though. :(













Then on Saturday, we all met up at this beautiful park in the north part of Paris. There was a ton of greenspace and a lake and waterfalls- it was gorgeous! You'd never know it was here unless someone told you- which is good that the Sciences-Po student groups organized a picnic there for us.


Also, since the Belgians have been teaching us Dutch, Denise and I decided to teach them about our culture of using hand gestures to symbolize our home towns! (Like how people in Atlanta do the upside-down peace thing, ha ha) So we all made up a sign for Cité U (our university city).




Oh, and I got my french cell phone! I saved about 10 euros by going to a smaller store than the popular ones here, and it's a pay-as-you-go thing with texting and calls.

And it's not finalized yet, but my future roommate, Shannon, and I found an apartment today! We already responded to the proposal from the agency and we're waiting to hear back, and we also found a couple back-ups just in case that one doesn't work out. I'll post pictures once it's ready to go. :)

Tour of my room and some sights in Paris

First order of business: I need to show you my place!! It's a bit delayed because of technical difficulties, but I figured out the problem so now you can see it. So voila! Here's a virtual tour of my dorm room:





After classes today, me and some friends from my group in our welcome program decided to go grab lunch and walk around Paris some. For lunch, we went to the Jewish quarter (which, by the way, was very traditional with the hats and beards and everything ha ha) and had falafels... SOOO delicious!! Then we saw a few tourist sights:







We saw the Tour Saint-Jacques, which used to be part of a church, but the church was demolished at the end of the 1700s, and it's where Nicolas Flamel is buried. We went to te Hotel de Ville, which is the office of the mayor, and we also saw the Centre Pompidou, which is basically a huge modern art museum/gallery. I think it looks a little out of place next to all the historical architecture, but that's just me.



Then we went to find a view of the river Seine. We all decided to hang around here and eat gelatos for a while. :)





And lastly, I wanted to introduce you to my friends!! There are 4 people, and each one has a different nationality: Belgian, American, and Swedish (2 of them are Belgian). See if you can guess which one is from where! (Hint: listen closely to their names)

My school and my dorm!

Here are some pictures of Sciences Po! The campus isn't at all like a normal college campus in the U.S. where it's like a mini-city- instead there are several buildings spread out around Paris. The buildings are clustered together right in the center of Paris too, so there's a lot of cool stuff really close by!






And here are some pictures of the University City where all the dorms are for Paris...

I'm actually not staying in any of these buildings, but I thought they looked nice! :)
The picture above is the street in front of my building (I'm on the right outside the shot). If you really really want to see what the building looks like, then I'll post a picture of it, but I honestly think the other ones are prettier from the outside. :)

This is me with my grocery cart!! Since my dorm is a bit far from the grocery store it's so much easier having one of these to carry stuff in! I see a lot of people around Paris using these every day (a lot of people don't have cars here), so I guess that makes me pretty cool to have one.

Yeah groceries!!