Parlez-vous francais?

I haven't had much time to update, between getting ready for my trip and working, and then actually getting here and getting settled, but I did make it to Paris!

My flight was something like 4 or 5 days ago (the time change really messed me up!) and it went pretty smoothly. Actually "smoothly" wouldn't be a great word to use since it was pretty turbulent which prevented me from sleeping and also made me pretty nauseous, but the lines at the airport were surprisingly short, I amused myself in the terminal by myself for about an hour, and I wasn't sitting next to anyone obnoxious. When I got to Charles de Gaulle airport, I got through customs fine (even though they didn't stamp my passport which made me angry...I want proof!), got my bag, and found the woman from API who was waiting for me and another girl on the same flight. Then we made our way to the Hotel Citadine, where everyone from our program would be staying during our orientation. They stuck 5 of us in each room, but everyone was very nice and easy to get along with so it was kind of fun, though if it had been for more than 3 days I can see it getting old.

After we checked into the Hotel, we explored the area a little bit, got sandwiches (I got a croque monsieur, which is a grilled cheese with ham, even though I don't like ham just because I loved the name) and waited around for the rest of the people from our program to make their way in. There were a lot of delayed flights (some up to 3 hours), which made my half hour delay seem like a joke. We had dinner at a cafe, and there was some kind of gay pride event going on all night that we explored, but we went to bed pretty early since most of us had missed out on sleeping through the night because of our flights.

The next day we had more orientation meetings, got European cell phones, and visited Versailles, which was hot, crowded, and way longer than it needed to be, but impressive nonetheless. The gardens in particular were spectacular, but I might just think that because it was a lot less crowded and hot outside. A group of us went to a pub that night and watched the Eurocup finals (Spain vs. Germany, spoiler alert: Spain won) and afterwards watched people go nuts in the streets.

Yesterday we visited Notre Dame cathedral after finishing up our orientation, then took a tour en Bateau Mouche on the Seine, where we saw le Musée d'Orsay, le Louvre, a bunch of fancy bridges, and the Eiffel tower from the boat. We went to another cafe for dinner, then my roommate's aunt took us on a little driving tour through Paris, and we caught a glimpse of the Eiffel tower lit up at night.

Today we had to get up early for our placement exams, so we saw our school (l'Institut Catholique de Paris, or le Catho) for the first time and it is really pretty. When we got back to our hotel we checked out and brought all of our bags to the dorm, and now we're all getting settled (slash checking Facebook since we all have wireless in our rooms now). The dorms are so nice, everyone has a great view and the rooms are enormous! They're all singles, but I had a single at school in America and my room here is easily twice the size of it. There's a sink and a huge closet and a desk...it's so nice. The only thing is, it's not that close to where the school is so we're going to have to take the metro/RER and switch lines at least once, but I guess we'll figure it out.

Tomorrow is our first day of classes, and we'll be visiting le Musée d'Orsay.

I'm realizing how truly terrible I am at French. I think I can write it fine, but I have a difficult time understanding people when they are speaking it, and coming up with things to say on my own, but hopefully it will improve in my time here (really, it can't get worse).