Joyeuses Fêtes!

So, it's been a little while since I've updated and this is because I've been both a little bit busy, and too lazy to update my blog.  Mostly the lazy part though.  The good news is, that means you get tons and tons of pictures today!  Wee, I bet you are so excited!

One day I saw this boy wearing a sports shirt and on the back it said, "Gobelins."  I thought for sure that he was playing for a sports team with a goblin mascot.  Turns out that Gobelins is actually a place and it's also not at all pronounced like goblin.  That doesn't stop me from pronouncing it as goblins though.  

Peter and I take lots of walks all around the city.  One day our walk ended up taking us past the festively decorated Pantheon.  It's fancy.  

This one is for Jay.  Hey, Jay, maybe you can see about a transfer to the Paris branch.

We took a lovely walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg.  We sat by this pretty duck pond for a really long time.  Peter likes to watch the ducks.  He's going to be one of those old guys that walks to the park to feed the ducks someday.  

We visited Galerie de paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée (paleontology and comparative anatomy).  It had lots and lots of bones, as well as organs and heads in jars of formaldehyde.  Peter liked the organs in jars.

Lots of whales!  

We stopped by the Galeries Lafayette, a huge and very expensive department store in Paris.  They have a giant, 65 foot Christmas tree in the middle of the store.  It's pretty impressive.

I really liked the store, even if I can't afford anything in there.  They had sections for Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Dior, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, and Tiffany to name a few.  I checked the price of a plain black dress out of curiosity and it was almost $1000.  

Oh, and there's a cocktail bar by the Louis Vuitton section.

We saw some jeunes hommes (young men) playing soccer outside of a beautiful old church.  

Waiting to cross the street.

The Bastille.

These trees were made from recycled soda bottles.  I thought that they were pretty cool.

The front of another department store.

We went to Champs-Élysées Christmas market with our friend Barrett.  It was near quite a bit of the famous tourist attractions.  Here is a ferris wheel set up behind the Obelisk.  

It was so much fun to walk around and look at all of the stands.  

A blurry Peter and Sara in front of some Christmas decorations.  Peter drinking his Glühwein (hot wine) to help keep him warm. 

We wandered past some of the famous museums.  

Peter crossed the street before we did.  I managed to snap a picture of him waiting for us, just before crossing a bridge over the Seine.  

Standing on a bridge over the Seine.  It looked like we were a lot closer to the Eiffel Tower than we were.  It was a bit of a hike.

Icicle lights!

After about a thirty minute walk, we finally made it!

It's huge.

Peter and I posing with le Tour Eiffel.

Peter and I woke up this morning and opened our presents from his mom and grandparents, and exchanged gifts with each other.  He got me a train ticket to any place of my choosing in Europe!  I'm not sure where I'll pick yet, but probably someplace more South!  I got him ten things, nine of which were food items, haha.  Hopefully later we will get to Skype with all of our family members!  Lydia will be here on Tuesday, and Oliver will be here on Wednesday!  I'm really excited for them to get here.  We're going to have a very crazy time in the City of Lights.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas and/or Hanukkah!

Joyeuses fêtes!

An evening out on the town.

FYI, for those of you that can't figure it out (Dad), you can click on the pictures to make them bigger!

Yesterday was spent mostly sitting around while Peter and Esteban worked on a presentation that they are giving tomorrow.

I sat on the loft bed for multiple hours while they did this.  There just isn't enough room for all of us down there.

After they were finally done working, Esteban wanted to go shopping.  I don't think I've ever said no to shopping.  So, we started off towards the closest metro station to our apartment, Maison Blanche.

Unfortunately, Esteban realized that he forgot his metro card back at the apartment.  He ran back for it while Peter and I stood around in the cold.

While we waited for Esteban, I took a picture of the street.

We walked around a little bit by the Seine before we got to the shops.

Peter and Esteban found something to climb on.  Peter can't resist climbing on things.

Esteban looks like he is playing dead.  I love this photo.

A bridge over the Seine.  Riverboat cruises kept going by.  I want to take a riverboat cruise!

Notre Dame is pretty badass looking.

Peter will climb on anything and everything that he can.  In front of Notre Dame.

It was getting dark and the river looked really pretty.

Here we are hanging out in front of the pretty tree at the breathtaking Notre Dame.  Seriously, it's amazing.  I can't wait to go back and actually take the time to check it out.

Their picture turned out way more adorable than ours did.  Jealous.

The little market streets were adorable.  I can't wait to go back again.

When we got home we made dinner and then Peter had to do more work.  Lame.  We tried to go to bed at a reasonable time, but our neighbors didn't make that easy.  Apparently, on Wednesday nights they like to have parties.  Now, our walls are very thin.  So thin, in fact, that I can hear them just having casual conversation at a normal volume.  That's fine, no problem, it's their apartment.  I'm not going to complain about them talking in their apartment.  However, they don't see any problem with playing ukulele, harmonica, and ELECTRIC GUITAR at 1:00 in the morning.  Peter banged on the wall to try to get them to be quiet, and I could hear them singing a lovely tune.  "We don't care if we're being loud, we don't care if you bang on the wall."  Apparently, they speak English.  Lovely people.  We turned on a fan to try to drown them out.  I guess it worked, I fell asleep.  

Today I really didn't do anything.  I felt kind of bad about it, but then I remembered that I'll be here for three months and I can't do things everyday or I will run out of money really quickly.  I watched a lot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and played games online.  I also napped.  It was a big day for me.  Tomorrow we are going to go to a dinner party at night.  I want to make a dessert for it.  I think I'll wake up tomorrow morning and hit the grocery store.  Hopefully I can find everything that I will need.  We don't have the greatest kitchen, so we'll see how this goes.  Nevertheless, the dinner party should provide some good photographic opportunities.  

I hope everyone at home is having a great week!  I can't wait to speak to some of you via Skype and telephone very soon.  I miss all of you!

I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands.  Make sure you listen to it, or else.
Loud Love by Good Old War

XOXO

This is my first post.

Quite a few people have suggested that I blog or write about my experience while I'm here in Paris.  I'm not much of the sit down and journal about what is happening around me type of person.  My ADD doesn't really ever allow me to sit still for long enough to do that, but I thought it might be nice to make a sort of photo blog that I could share with my friends and my family while I'm away.  I'll be here for the next three months and I will have a lot of time on my hands, so it might help to keep me busy.  It might motivate me to go out and do more things if I know people are expecting to see photographic evidence of my adventures too!  I can't legally work, so unless something falls into place, I'll be relaxing and enjoying my time here sans work.  I'm hoping to find lots of things to keep me occupied, and considering I'm living in one of the biggest tourist cities in the world, that really shouldn't be hard.  Peter will be spending a lot of time working, so I'll have to keep myself occupied a lot of the time.

I guess I'll give you a little bit of an idea as to where we're living right now.  We live in the 13th arrondissement, which is just one of the 20 sections (arrondissements) of Paris.  Our street is really very quiet.  We are not in a touristy area of Paris at all.  We live on the 7th floor of our apartment building and we don't really have much of a view.  We apparently live in the mansard roof section of our building.  How very French!  We can see the mansard roof of the building across from us if we look out our window.  We live on the side of the apartment where the sun shines through all day, so I like that.  The apartment is VERY small.  It's pretty much just one room with everything squashed into it.  I took some pictures to show everyone what it looks like!

This is our kitchen.  The top part is a sink/ 2 stove burners combination.  Underneath of that is the refrigerator.  I discovered today that our tiny little freezer inside of the fridge does not work when I pulled out one of my ice cream bars and it was sadly melted.  

This is the desk/dining area.  Peter does all of his work here.  You can see the tiny kitchen to the left!  When Lydia comes to visit we are going to have to fold up the desk so that we can pull out the futon!

This is a view from the door looking at the desk and the futon.  

This is one of the closets where have have our clothes stored.  I decorated the top for Christmas!  We even have some Christmas presents from Peter's mom and his grandparents that we aren't allowed to open until Christmas!  You can also see Peter's egg stack.  He says it's the best place to keep them...  

This is the ladder that leads up to the sleeping quarters of the room.  Yep,  a lofted bed.  I want to hang up a sheet so it feels like we're in a fort.  That would be fun!  There's also a little bit of storage space up there, which comes in handy.  You can see the door to the right of my pink suitcase in this photo too.  That's the door to the bathroom.  I can barely fit in there.  Imagine how Peter feels.

Well, now you have a good idea as to where I'll be spending the next three months of my life.  Hopefully it doesn't rain as much as the forecast says it will in the next few days, so I can get out and take some pictures of my street and some of the places around the apartment.  Who knows, maybe I'll even be brave enough to try and take the metro someplace touristy.  I don't have a cell phone and I speak almost no French, so I'm a little bit afraid of getting lost.  I might just wait for the weekend and take Peter along with me.  Speaking of Peter, he should be getting home from his classes any minute now and I'm sure he'll be ready to watch Game of Thrones.  We've been watching that lately.  He's really into it since he read the books, but I don't know how I feel about it just yet.  It's pretty sad, rapey, and violent.  Not my favorite combination of television show elements.

I hope everyone at home is enjoying their afternoon while I will be shortly practicing some French and getting ready for bed.  Bonsoir!