where do I start...

So much has happened in the two days that I got here that I don't know where to start....
Paris: It's dreamy. It's old, yet feels so comfortable, new and fresh. It is filled with things that I've never experienced in my life in America. The Eiffel Tower at night (it sparkles like a million twinkling fireflies had just landed on it). The Louvre (didn't think I'd be to impressed, but I was so sad to leave after just a few short hours there. It's literally indescribable). Notre Dame (you can just imagine yourself seeing Quazimodo hunching up and down the narrow circular staircases). The Champs Elyeeses (crowded, fast, a mall in the middle of an ancient city). The row houses with window boxes full of red geraniums. The sounds of the French language floating around in the people standing next to me. The cobblestone roads and 100+ year old bridges. The Seine river lazily floating through the middle of the street full of boats. The whole city was like a story book that you love to read about and one day the city that you've loved to picture in your mind appears before you and you can walk around in it and feel it and smell it and live in it.
I was sad to leave it today. I keep saying French words even though they are no longer nessesary in England. The best part of the trip, by far, was sharing it with friends. Meeting Rachel and Ronny there and having Shannon with me was just perfection. It's the best way to get lost on the subway and the best way to try and figure out what the cashier is trying to explain to you in a foreign language. It felt like a huge adventure and a vaction of a lifetime. We saw so much and laughed our way through the city.
When I think of Paris now, it won't be black and white pictures of the Eiffel tower or scenes from Sabrina or Funny Face. It will be Rachel saving us all at the Metro ticket counter with her many semesters of French. It will be Shannon and I laughing on the get-on-get-off bus as we sat in the damp morning air on the top of the double decker and watched Paris in all it's glory go by. It will be chatting with Ronny as Rachel and Shannon shop in a local shop in the middle of a little alleyway with French flying about in the background. Oh, how I wish all of you could experience a day like that....

(more to come later)

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