First Post (sorry it took so long)

So here I am in Paris, France. I've been here for 20 days now, so I apologize for taking so long to write this first post. I could make excuses or I can just own up to being too lazy. Anyway, I will now provide a summary of my life so far in the City of Light.

I arrived here the morning of February 3rd. My flight from Chicago was only about 1/3 full, so I had an entire row to myself and managed to actually sleep, which was good because my flight landed at about 9am Paris time, so I had an entire day ahead. Flying in over the north of France was amazing because everything was blanketed in snow, something which I had oddly not even considered before seeing it. My first few days in Paris were a bit odd. I was living in a hostel in the 19th arrondissement which is fairly far away from everything and just a little bit sketchy at times (one evening I walked out the front door to find 4-5 teenagers engaged in a fistfight in the square in front of the hostel).

I only really knew 2 people in Paris and wasn't able to get in touch with them/hang out with them really for the first few days so I spent my time just walking around. I did some important things like bought a French cellphone (if you think phones are expensive in the US, try paying €0,55 per minute to make a call), checked out the area around my school, Sciences-Po, and sending out enormous numbers of emails to people advertising apartments on Craigslist (only about 3 of whom ever responded). Having been to Paris twice before and within the last two years I've seen most of the touristy things in Paris at least once, so I was left with little do except simply walk...and walk...and walk. It was cold, really, really cold. I also injured my knee from walking so much to the point that for a few days I could barely walk at all, but I persevered. Of course, not wanting to look like too much of a tourist (I'm sure I look like one anyway) I didn't walk around with my camera, so I have unfortunately taken basically no photos so far in France (sorry, sorry, sorry, I'll get better, I promise).

After those first several days I moved from the hostel and started living on the floor of Katie's apartment (a former girlfriend and current good friend from back home who's living in Paris) while I continued to look for a place and wait for things at Sciences-Po to start. Her apartment was very small, so it was wonderful of her to allow me to stay there for several nights and impose on her space. She was also nice enough to take me out with her friends several times, all of whom are great (although my French skills still aren't quite good enough to have much of a meaninful conversation with most of them, they were wonderfully accomodating).

Finally, Ian (another student from UNC going to Sciences-Po) and I went to an agency and asked them to find us an apartment. Which they did. In like 2 days. Should have done that earlier. We moved in on the 11th (nice birthday present) and it's awesome. Our apartment is in the 13th arrondissement in the southeast of the city near Place d'Italie, a major roundabout with a shopping mall and some movie theaters and stuff. The area is great. The police station is a block away, the metro (three different lines) is a block away, there's a boulangerie (like a bakery) on our block with baguettes for €0,80 and pretty much anything else you could need is only a couple of blocks away, easily within walking distance (as are most things in Paris). The apartment itself is quite large for Paris; it has one bedroom that's the size of most studio apartments here, if not bigger, a dining area with a table for 6 and a desk, a family room sort of area with a couch that pulls out into a bed and a rather large flat-panel HDTV, an entry hall, a kitchen and a bathroom complete with shower, toilet, washer and dryer. From what I hear, it's rare to find all of those things together in an apartment in Paris. We also have wireless internet (yay).

That's pretty much it for my first week+ in Paris.

On the 9th the "Welcome Program" at Sciences-Po started, which was great because it finally gave me something to do and a way to meet people. It consisted of 2 hours of French and 2 hours of "Methodology" every day. It was pretty boring, but it was good for me as it made me work on my French and taught me about how to deal with all the crazy things you have to do at a French university. There are lots and lots of rules about how to do things, and everything has a prescribed structure that must be strictly adhered to. It's all very...well...French. Thanks to the Welcome Program I now have a group of (about half American) friends here. In our group I believe there were 16 of us to begin with, made up of about 8 Americans, 1 Finn, 1 Swede, 1 Russian, 2 Aussies, 1 New Zealander, 1 Dutch girl and 1 Argentine (I think that's everyone). We've had a lot of fun hanging out outside of class, going out on the weekends and I'm hopeful that we'll stay in touch as the semester continues.

Tomorrow real classes start. I'm taking 3 classes in English (Labor and Politics; Population Dynamics; and Media, the Individual and Democracy) and 3 in French (Sponsors: nouveaux dieux du stade? [Sponsors: The New Gods of the Stadium?]; Globalisation, etats et marches financier [Globalization, States and Financial Markets]; and L'industrie musical [The Music Industry]) Each class meets once a week for 2 hours, so my schedule sets up fairly nicely in terms of leaving me time to do things.

Thus ends the summary of my life so far, there are other things that I will post later about life in general, observations and random musings but for now this is all.