This city is continually surprising me, just today, while walking around St. Michel, I noticed a crowd gathered in front of Shakespeare and Co. watching as a man scaled the facade of the building and into an open window on the 3rd floor (4th floor if you count the American way). From the Graffiti in inexplicable places, the street performers and the space invaders, to the tucked away cafes and specialty shops, there is always something new to discover in this city. One thing I love about Paris is the music, everywhere. From the jazz manuche bands that play in the cafe's, to the musicians playing in the metro, you don't need an ipod for your ears to sample the sounds of this city. One of my personal favorite places is the "fleche d'or" (the golden ... read more

I had dreamed of this day before ever arriving in France; snow in Paris. Of course when I told my friends here that I wanted to see Paris covered in snow they said "yeah, well, that hardly ever happens, it's been 6 years since it has, and it's not that great anyways because it all just turns to brown mush in a couple of hours." There's that French optimism for you. But Thursday night, it snowed and on Friday January 2nd, I got to wake up to a world of white. Of course it was all gone by about 2 in the afternoon, but the point is, it was there and that gave me hope. Cold, wet, not necessarily comfortable, but beautiful hope. And then the magic day arrived. Monday, January 5th, it snowed. It had ... read more

13 hour meals, aperitifs with a monk, helping the baker get bread hot from the oven at 6am, scrambling around in the ruins of a 13th century chateau, a private tour of a 12th century monastery, the following are my experiences of the “France Profonde”. As November 11th is a national Holiday in France, and I don’t have classes on Mondays or Wednesdays, Guillaume invited me to spend a long weekend out at his family’s farm in the Centre region of France. We met his cousin, aunt and uncle at their house in the suburbs of Paris and from there drove 2-3 hours south, past the small town of Vendome, past the small village of Montoire, and into the France profonde. We pulled up to Helene and Stephan's house, Helene being the younger sister of Guillaume's ... read more

I believe I have finally gotten a schedule fixed for myself at University. This is good, considering that University started yesterday. I am enrolled in 16 classroom hours at Nanterre (Paris 10), which should transfer back as 16 units in the states. I hope. Pretty much everything I've been doing is done on a wing and a prayer and the blind hope that it will all work out just fine. So far, so good. I mean, I have a roof over my head and food in the fridge, what more does one need? So this last weekend was amazing. Guillaume took me out to a forest north of Paris with his friend. As he told me about it over the phone, I thought we were going to be having a picnic, as I heard the word ... read more

C'est ici l'Empire de la Mort. This is the inscription above the entrance to the Catacombs of Paris. Built in the late 18th century to accommodate the dead of the condemned inner-city cemeteries, the Catacombs are an underground labyrinth of passageways lined with over 6 million deceased Parisians. We descended into the damp, close, dark, down, down, down the winding stairs. And still the stairs continued. I must say I felt a bit like Dante, but I didn't have the luxury of a poet-guide. Instead Sophie, three of her friends, and I were left to our own devices as we followed the seemingly endless twisting tunnels. Suddenly the tunnels opened and there it was, the entrance to the Catacombs themselves, with the fore-mentioned inscription above. What followed was surreal and eerie in a way that only ... read more