Settling In

Oh hey!

This is my first blog, so bear with me. Well, I suppose I offered to be a guest contributor to Anna's cooking blog...but I think she posted three times. And I never did. Luckily I have lots of cool blogging friends whom I'll be looking to for inspiration.

Anyway, I've been meaning to send pictures and updates for a while...can't believe I've been here over a month already. It's a little overwhelming to write updates about everything, so I'll give a few highlights and try my best to be a regular writer. :)

I arrived here in mid-August and stayed at an apartment I found on Craigslist for a few weeks so I could look for a long-term place. It was in a really nice location (Hotel de Ville) and the guy living there was friendly and helpful, so it was a good place to crash for a bit. It was just a lot harder to find an apartment than I had anticipated (even though I had been warned), so that was a little stressful, and I had to ask to stay a bit longer.

I found an apartment though! It's by the metro Sentier in the 2nd arrondissement, and it's a block away from Rue Montogrueil, where there are at least 5 bakeries on the street (miam miam!), lots of cheese shops, wine shops, and chocolate shops, so I'm pretty happy. Some places are even open on Sundays, which is nice because usually a lot of places are closed.  The cheese shop also has a sweet sampler plate for 6 euros that has a variety of cheeses.  I've been eating a lot of warm baguettes and cheese lately...

I'm living with two French roommates - a guy who's 29 and a girl who's 23. They're both really nice and fun to hang out with, and I'm glad I'm living with people. None of us really cook though...our fridge consists of cheese, champagne, beer, perrier, milk, chicken, and yogurt.  But I do really like all those things. Perhaps I'll take up cooking while I'm abroad like Kat! She has a really good cooking blog if anyone is looking: culinary-correspondence.blogspot.com

Classes started last week, and they seem interesting so far. I am enrolled in a Masters in Sociology (specifically Studies and Evaluations in the Health and Social Sector), but I decided I will just audit a few courses so I can focus on my project and have some time to explore the city instead of being stressed out about school.  I'm planning on taking a French class, a class called Individuals, Family and Health and another one called Quantitative Investigations. I think the professors were a little confused when I said I just wanted to listen and not get credit because I think people don't really do that here. But hopefully it'll work out. The classes are pretty long - one is 4 hours...shouldn't that be two classes?  I was happy that I could understand a lot of what they were saying in the class! Hopefully they'll improve my vocabulary too.  And the people at the university seem nice, although a lot seem to know each other already.

I tried to go to the library after I ate lunch, but it was closed.  A lot of times in the U.S., I'd eat a quick lunch and then do some work in between classes...so I had nowhere to go after I ate, and I just sort of wandered around the halls for a while...

Last Monday, I met with the professor I will be working with. We discussed the project a little more, and she gave me some organizations and companies to try to contact (I'm still working on finding a place to do interviews). I'm not sure how closely we will be working (I think it's up to us to define it), but it's nice to have someone here with a network who can help.

Outside of school, things have been good!  My two French friends (Julien and Camille) who lived in Boston last year are in France right now, so they've been showing me around Paris and introducing me to a lot of their friends.  I also organized some things with the other Americans on the program, and it seems like they're interested in traveling and doing touristy things, so that's good.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my apartment! I will upload some more exciting ones of Paris and Versailles soon.

This is the living room....it looks a bit sparse, and we might reorganize, but we haven't figured things out yet.

The kitchen. There's a lot of light in the apartment since we're on the 7th floor, so that's really nice. It was even cloudy when I took the pictures!

Our bathroom is really tiny...and the tub has two open walls...so I designed this awesome shower curtain that hangs from the skylight and is attached to two hooks on the wall. It doesn't work very well...so if anyone has some suggestions, let me know!

 My bedroom! I have a skylight in the room which gives off a lot of light. Good for me to wake up because as everyone knows, I'm a really good sleeper. :)

Anyway, that's it for now.