Finally in Paris!

I have finally arrived in Paris! The journey began with a 9 hour flight to Zurich, Switzerland. Although it was 9 hours long, I can't complain about one second of it. Swiss AirLines was amazing and we all had our own personal TVs and lots of room seeing the flight wasn't too crowded. I got to enjoy hours of my favorite TVs shows, movies, surprisingly good airplane meals, and of course wine. We then transfered through Zurich (got a Swiss stamp on my passport!) and went on to our 55 minute flight to Paris. The flight consisted of seeing the Swiss Alps above the clouds for the first 25 minutes of it which was super cool and then a nice French cheese sandwich. 

Everyone in my program amazingly got reunited with their luggage in Paris and the battle of lugging around more weight than I weigh began! It was not too horrible because our program director found us quickly and we bussed to our FIAP (foyer) where we will be staying for orientation week. A foyer is like a mix between a dorm/apartment/low-end hotel. Our temporary foyer is nice, especially because upon entering the room it feels like you've been time traveled back to Paris in the 60's. (pictures soon to come). The mix between the psychedelic colors and the European bathroom was a bit of a shock at first, but we're getting used to it. To shower here you have to continually press a button every 10 seconds or so to keep the water going. A little hard to get used to at first, but a really great idea to conserve water when it comes down to it.

After a meeting and dinner, 7 of us decided to drink some Heinekens in the bar of our foyer and then venture out on the town for our first night in Paris. We surprisingly found our way to cafes that were open (even at 10:00 on a Sunday night) and sat down at Cafe Rendez-Vous for some more drinks. It was (to me at least) a perfect Parisian bar. The color scheme was entirely black and red (including red velvet drapes), had dimmed lighting, and even some street mice running around inside collecting the scraps off of the floor. 

We called it a night at about 1:00 am and returned to our foyers. After an orientation on the geography of Paris this morning, we'll soon be on our way to a boat road on the Seine this evening.