The first real day

Here’s what happened during my first full day in France: I woke up at 4:45 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so after two and a half hours of homework, I got ready and when everyone had assembled, we headed off to the BYU director’s apartment. My roommate, Sarah (who went there yesterday) told me that it reminded her of the house on the Bourne Identity. I think it’s a little bit smaller than that, but maybe it just felt that way because there were twenty-seven of us trying to use the space.
Anyway, after we took care of “business” (a.k.a. untraceable bills and fake id’s), we were ready for our first mission: Le Tour Eiffel. For those of you who don’t speak French, that’s the Eiffel Tower. ;)

It was pretty cool and I realized that every time I saw something I recognized I cooed a little (like, oooh!). I did that when I first saw the Eiffel Tower from the plane, I did it again when I saw l’Arc de Triomphe and when I saw Notre Dame for the first time. I thought it was a little nerdy of me until my director told everyone that you could see the Eiffel Tower from his window. All of the girls cooed and tried to crane their necks to see it. That’s when I knew it was nerdy.
I have to admit, the closer I got, the cooler it became. At first I thought, “Well, there it is. I’ve seen it a million times and there it is again,” but when you get right down under it,
its size begins to press down on you until you think, “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”Also, there were these guys there who were break-dancing under one of the legs. It was pretty cool, but my pictures do it more justice than I think it deserved. ;)

Then we headed off to l’Institute de Réligion (I think you can translate that one yourself) to see where class and church is going to be held. It was built in 1642 (or something, maybe 1624?) and is a national landmark.
By this time I was getting to be a pro at the metro (we’ll see if I still feel that way tomorrow when I take the RER into Paris and then the metro to where classes are held), so Sarah and I decided to do a little exploring ourselves before we had to be back to the hotel. Notre Dame is about a stone throw’s away from the Institute of Religion (or maybe three or four stone throws), we decided to head there. But shoot, this building was on the way, so we had to take some pictures of it. Darn (by the way, it is l’Hôtel de Ville, or the city offices, I think).
I’m sure I’ll visit this one a couple of times while I’m here, especially since it is so close to where I have class.
(in my defense, it was really bright and I was looking into the sun)

P.S. I want one.