Bon matin Paris!

Welcome to my first blog post from Paris!   I am in the City of Light for 6 months to do an internship  and also to eat lots of cheese.

I arrived yesterday, and took the train to the residence where I will be staying.  Because I arrived during the lunch break, there was no one there to check me in.  This was nice, because it allowed me to rest a bit after being on a plane for nine hours with what seemed like approximately 50 screaming babies.

I am now checked in and rested, and I've been to my first day of work.  It's an easy métro ride and everyone was very nice and welcoming (and impressed that I had found somewhere to stay for the whole six months before arriving!  Finding housing in Paris is super hard).  After leaving work to set up my bank account (HUGE perk with my job is that the process is streamlined; if all goes well I should be able to open an account this week, as opposed to the 3 months that it can sometimes take) I managed to lock myself out of the métro not once, but twice, in the span of about 30 minutes.  The upside to this was that I got to walk, and in doing so found a nice boulangerie.  

First pain au chocolate, fait.

I also found the Paris Musée de Vin.  I'm not exactly sure how reputable it is, but it will probably make a good sightseeing stop when my mom visits!

Musée du vin

There was a nice sunset tonight, so I left the building to go take some photos....and stumbled on a women's softball team!  In Paris!  I did the old  "Hey, can I play with you guys?" and next thing you know they had me paired with the one other anglophone on the team (who coincidentally also had the meanest arm).  The rest of the team was either french or spanish speaking.  I hung out with them until we couldn't see the ball anymore, and now it's time for me to stick it to jetlag by falling asleep at a reasonable bedtime.

OH, before I do that I should explain the blog name:  before I had a place to stay, some friends very kindly offered their completely unfurnished apartment to me in the event that I couldn't find anything else.  They said, if need be, they could put some camping gear there and I could stay for a month until I found an apartment.  I was explaining this, and my housing-search saga (it was a bit of a saga before I found a place), to my cousin's boyfriend and he said "Hmmm, camping in Paris.  Not bad!"

For more amusing anecdotes like that, and further adventures, please stay tuned.  Merci et au revoir!

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