Made it, now, who's got the camera?

This morning I awoke from my corpse-like sleep by the slamming of our french-style window against its seam.  With the 5 other girls in the apartment-style, sans kitchen, hostel room; I take advantage of the view from the 4th floor window that has both the Notre Dame and le Tour Eiffel in the distance.  Do not be fooled, the room isn't as glamorous as the view.  Yesterday, I went a full 35 hours without sleep, a personal best on my sleep deprivation scale where I would be perfectly comfortable falling asleep even without the g&t (finally legal) I had from our first night in Paris. 
All of yesterday and today could be summed up as a glorified walking tour of Paris as we haven't actually done anything substantial except for walk around and take pictures like the tourists we pretend not to be.  We did get a quick tour of Hôtel de Ville, which houses offices for the mayor and many other representatives of Paris and the larger France.  The building is beautiful, as expected, but the what most people dont know about it is that there are 5 metro lines that travel directly underneath the building, so every couple of minutes the rooms are consumed by a muffled humming and gentle vibration, that varies based on how deep the line runs, from the trains passing underneath. 
And then, I took a nap.  At 4.  Because I just felt that I earned it.

Airports all look the same

But not all airports are created equal.  There are a few redeeming qualities of the Salt Lake International airport: free wifi that doesn't have a countdown in the corner of my window, the big windows let me see the Wasatch front and the sun peaking over the top of the range at this unreasonable hour which is made bearable by the nonexistant security lines and my free luggage feat (exactly 50 pounds after removing 3).
The first leg of my flight connects me to the beloved Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, then Amsterdam, and finally Charles de Gaulle.  Judging by the first hour, it's going to be an uneventful journey.  Hopefully the airline will throw some major delays my way or lose my luggage to make things a little more interesting. (knock on wood that they don't, please). 
Next post will be from Paris.  Maybe.

Cliché is French, too

After trying, unsuccessfully, to fly under the radar and escape to France without having made a blog, I was called out by none other than FrickAbroad (see http://frickabroadinireland.wordpress.com/) to follow suit.  Hence the birth of my blog.  For those of you who don't speak French, my name means "she/her" in the land of wine, cheese, and cigarettes and I am forced to find another nickname so as not to sound ridiculous when I introduce myself to the French who are critical even when you don't give them a reason to be.

To catch you all up to speed, the itinerary is as follows:
Arrive in Paris August 23...act like a tourist until August 26 when we get herded onto a bus to the capital of Bretagne, Rennes.  Our arrival in the city is the first step to knowing where we will live.  I have no bleeding idea who with/where I am living for the next 4 months.  My best hope is that my host family has little kids so they know how to talk slowly and with a basic vocabulary.  Christmas break will be spent in the company of the beautiful Sarah Chao (see http://europeanchaos.blogspot.com/) - plans are up in the air but Germany was thrown around as a potential destination.  Arrive January 3 in Paris to learn the trade of the chic Parisian women, then fly Home at the end of January kicking and screaming. 

Still to do:
-buy a thoughtful "thanks-for-putting-up-with-an-uncultured-american-for-4-months" gift for my host family. (ideas?)
-master my french expletives so I can curse fluently and not sound "cute" if I want to mean it

C'est tout! For now at least.