New Friends

Tuesday I was really early to pick the kids up from school, so I decided to wander around their neighborhood a bit. There's this lovely little park where the school is, and around it is this fantastic multicultural neighborhood. Part of it is classic French, but there's also a Chinese area and a Russian area with this GORGEOUS Russian Orthodox church. I found this little pedestrian street with a market and tons of cheap shoes. Very exciting.

I've also been walking around my school's neighborhood a lot. School is near the Montparnasse-Bienvenue metro stop, so it's a really cool area. The Jardin de Luxembourg is nearby, and there are lots of Italian restaurants and creperies. Love it!

Two nights ago I went out with some of my new friends from class. They are all here studying abroad with Davidson College, so it's a whole big group of students. We hung out down by the Seine near Notre Dame. There was this guy playing Johnny Cash songs on guitar and singing them with a STRONG French accent with this other guy beat boxing into a mike. Pretty bizarre, but entertaining nonetheless. We were out really late, so it was kind of a struggle to get home. I had to chill in their hostel until the metro reopened, so I clearly went home and slept pretty much all day. Last night I went out again, this time with Taryn and her roommate. We sat on the lawn at the Champ de Mars (basically right next to the Eiffel Tower) and drank some wine and were generally foolish. We met this Brazilian guy who became besties with Taryn's roommate pretty much immediately. Meanwhile Taryn and I giggled incessantly over the absurdities of people in our class, our professor, and the trendy men walking by wearing their japris.

On my way home, I made friends with some other students on the metro! Yes, yes, I know, I'm on a roll and becoming way too popular for my own good. I have 5 whole friends now. What's up. They seemed really nice though, very friendly. So now I have even more people to play with! I love this city!

I talked to Matt last night and he's hopefully going to come see me at the end of the month. I'm so excited! He's never been to Paris before so he's probably going to hate me because I'm going to make him see everything ever in about 3 days. I'm going to Versailles with the kids this Saturday to see the feu d'artifices (fireworks), so that should be really nice. Other than that, I'm free pretty much all weekend, so who knows what will happen! Love and kisses, hope everyone is doing well!