Paris at my feet! Paris in the dust!

Well, the past two days have been pretty exciting. Yesterday we took our placement exam (which is harder than one would imagine.. shows how much not speaking in about 2 years really affects you!) But I think all will turn out for the best with that... And then we 'toured' the left bank with Jenna. That was great, but it was super hot outside so we decided to cut that short a bit. A few of us walked around toward Notre Dame, and that, of course, was magical as always. Then, Paris decided to rain. So we all scurried onto the metro and went home.

Last night (the 2nd) we wandered around Paris... and a few of us happened upon The Eiffel Tower. No matter how touristy it may be, its one of the most magnificent places that exists in Paris, especially at night. Its standing, proud and tall, and beautifully lit up. It was great, although we were technically 'lost' when we ran into it... As my motto goes "Getting lost in Paris... Priceless". Well, that definitely proved true once again.

Today (July 3rd) was quite the day for walking! We met at 12:30 for the Louvre... got there, had a quick bite to eat and headed out. We were a group of 6; because most of the group had split up in order to not be a giant 17 people group wandering around together! After eating, we got going on looking around. Many things I had already seen, but you could walk around the Louvre forever and probably still miss a few things. Naturally, we saw La Jaconde (the Mona Lisa)...in honor of Mom :).

After the Louvre, a few of us decided to get some dinner, as we were walking... let's see who are the SUPER musical theatre geeks who got my title reference. We saw a sign for..

LES MISERABLES! So I, of course, had to investigate. We found out that they had student tickets and we had to get there a half hour before show time to get them. Sounded pretty good to me! So Jess, Brice and I ate a quick crepe and waited in line. We paid for our tickets, expecting nose bleed section seats... but... Quelle chance!? We had 7TH ROW SEATS! Absolutely incredible. Not only that, but it, apparently, is the 25th anniversary of the show and they have completely re-vamped it! New, beautiful sets, more set pieces than I have ever seen for Les Mis and different blocking. Naturally, I cried throughout the entire piece. It was incredible. While it was in English, they had set up French subtitles around the stage, which didn't distract at all, but were fun to read during the show!

As if that wasn't enough, we got back to the Cite, met up with some others from the program and decided to go wandering around for the evening. We ended up on the Pont Des Arts which is a "cool" hang out for young people around here, that's not a club or anything.. just a bridge to sit and chill. Met up with some Turkish kids we met in our building and had a lovely evening. Its time for bed and tomorrow is FREE museum day all over Paris! Looking forward to it!

Bisous,
Amy