dear long airplane ride to france, you suck.

so basically, i'm in france now... :]

i knew i was in trouble the second i stepped on the plane and the hot french plane man said "bonjour" and i melted/died. no dating, yeah right!....suuure. kidding. kinda. 

anyways, about that plane ride, it SUCKED. especially because i took two dramamine and still couldn't fall asleep. maybe because the lady in front of me was totally laying on me and the lady behind me wouldn't let me lean back. yeah, i paid $1300 for this seat lady, pretty sure i'm gonna do whatever i want with it.
and also, i'd have a picture of me on the dang plane ride because the lady next to me was a so-called "professional photographer", but she made me look like frickin fat albert. "the photographer is only as good as it's subject" is what she said to me. ummmm, thanks? i'm hideous? cool.

so i flew into the charles de gaulle airport [without sleeping AT ALL] in the late morning on tuesday and met up with some other girls from the study abroad to then go meet up with some more girls to take a shuttle together. all with no phones to reach each other. yeah, super fun game! not. we somehow managed to find each other though and then made our way to paris. one super embarrassing side note: our driver dropped us off a little ways away from out hotel, so we all had to drag our luggage through the cobblestone streets with french people staring at us. yeah, real cool.
so after we checked in, me and tiffany [roomie] decided to do some sightseeing [aka go see the eiffel tower in our backyard]. it was so unreal!

[shoutout to my girl taylor who gave me my eiffel tower necklace! loooove it. also, don't judge my looks, this is riiight after my plane ride from heck]
 that's one thing that i just can't get over is that i'm actually in france. i know that sounds so stupid, but i just keep forgetting and then i hear people speaking french and it all hits me again.
after sightseeing, we met up with our program director daryl who sent us on a "scavenger hunt" to basically get used to walking around the city and taking the metro and stuff.

highlights:
-getting some delicious creamy semi-bitter hot chocolate and stumbing through my french to get it.
-seeing the notre dame cathedral. again, so amazing.

-going to dinner with all the girls and the lee's after opening orientation and eating THE yummiest food ever, aka:
[this vegetable tart. doesn't look good but it was seriously sooo good.]

[duck and fries. you heard me, DUCK. tasted kinda like turkey, and really wasn't super yummy. but the fries were perfectly crispy/chewy/mmmm]

[pear tart for dessert. cinnamon-y drizzle. so good fo-shizzle. i'm done.]

we ended the night suuuuper late because we [me, tiff, samantha] were packing for our trip down to southern france that we basically had to leave for at the crack of dawn the next day. crazy crap. thoroughly exhausted, but absolutely in love with this country.

 [just try with all your might to not throw back your head and laugh at my "serious" face. i suck at em'.]

[i was really trying to get a picture of the lady in the striped cardigan. stupid notre dame got in the way.]

more updates coming soon! duh.