Day 4: Meeting my home stay family

Today was a big day so let's see if I can write this all down before passing out. I know that yesterday I said I was going to tour the Sorbonne, but I do not know how to read schedules and was wrong about that. I ate breakfast at my hotel and found out it was free! I could have been getting free breakfast this whole time but the maid was confused and told me it was 8€. But it a ton of food which I was glad of because I hadn't really been eating much and I wanted it to last.

Hot chocolate, apple sauce, pain au chocolat, croissant, cheese, and 2 different types of baguette with butter and jam

So I got to my interview appointment super early and got done with that in a jiffy, as did my friends. After that, I had to kill like 6 hours until I met the ACCENT coordinator back at my hotel to move into my home stay. So my friends and I decided to just tour around. I'm glad I've had so much experience on the métro, and my time using the DC metro has helped a ton, too. We saw Montmartre and La Basilique du Sacré Coeur with great views of Paris.

Sacré Coeur

The usual tourist crap further down the hill. 

Recycle your Christmas trees near Sacré Coeur!

The view

Sacré Coeur from close-up

Panoramic of the view. Paris is huge!

 Yay friends!

Obligatory. Don't hate.

Oh did I mention I have an unhealthy obsession with Stromae (hence the earbud I forgot to take out)? It makes me feel more French even though he's Belgian. There were also tons of shops around there.

Including this scary taxidermy one!

 Fun!

Cute!

We saw Notre Dame but are waiting for our other friend to arrive to pay to go inside.

We then took a bus and just rode it around to see where it took us because our unlimited métro passes also work on the busses. I don't have pictures of that because it was hard to see, but we saw L'opéra and some generally cool stuff. Oh, and fun fact: you probably can't see it, but in the picture below that white dispenser is a préservatif (condom) dispenser. They are EVERYWHERE. On the street, in the métro, in bathrooms, etc. Just interesting we don't do this in the US. You'd think it would be a worthwhile public health campaign. And France is pretty darned Catholic, so I think the US could do it, too. On a (probably) unrelated note, the cat calling continued. I think I'll just have to get used to it but it's super annoying. A guy asked for my number and another yelled "Hé, bébé!" ("Hey, baby!"). If I am not looking at you, don't talk to me unless you have something important to say!

Préservatif dispenser

After all that excitement I went to the hotel to meet the ACCENT coordinator and pick up my bags. I took a taxi to my home stay and now I am here! The family is awesome and I love them already. I get my own room and there's WiFi and I even get my own shower! Madame loves to talk and I understand most of what she's saying but I have trouble speaking. But she's patient and helps me through it. They have 4 kids but only 2 live here, and they're both close to my age. There's one boy and one girl. Basically I think it's going to be great and I'm super excited about the whole thing. OH, and I live very very close to Montmartre and can see it out the window! And I'm near a very convenient métro stop. So I will end this post for tonight because tomorrow I'm getting up early to tour an old market with MICEFA, which will FINALLY be my first MICEFA outing because I kept missing them for other things. I'm very excited and will keep everyone updated!

Bisous,

La vache espagnole