I had class again today. It was a little exhausting. After class some friends from my ISA group and I had lunch at a cafe just down the street from where the school is. The owner is rather interesting. He speaks near perfect English so I'm not sure if he was originally American and has just spent a lot of time in France or if he is French and has just spent a lot of time in America. Anyway he has a really high admiration for military personnel, therefore he rates pretty well with me.

After lunch I headed out to explore Ile St. Louis which is the sister island to Ile De La Cite. It is a very quaint little Island. There are hardly any tourist there, which is surprising because there a lot of little cafes, restaurants, and many nice shops along the main street of Rue St. Louis en l'Isle. It is basically residential so that's why there are so few visitors. There is a church in the middle of the Island and a School of some kind right beside it.  Also there are some indoor markets and a cheese shop along the main street giving it an small town feel. It was a beautiful day for picture taking. It had just rained around lunch time so the streets were really wet. Of course after the rain storm passed the sun came out lighting up the streets and buildings. This is turning out to be the typical kind of weather here in Paris but I don't mind that too much. I definitely plan to return to Ile St. Louis because there are pretty good little bakeries there and it is removed from the rest of the hustle and bustle of people trying to get somewhere in record time.

I left Ile St. Louis went on a scavenger hunt for material related to Normandy and D-Day because the ISA group is taking an excursion to Normandy tomorrow and Sunday. I went to FNAC and Gibert Jeune but found nothing helpful at all, which was rather disappointing. I would have thought that the French would have been all over that subject, but I guess I thought wrong. In fact neither one of the books carried much in the way of any books about WWII. It such an important and relatively recent event in history that it seems rather silly and a little disrespectful to completely forget about what happened. Perhaps I was just looking at the wrong stores, but those are the two biggest bookstores around that I know of.

I posted another page of pictures, this one is about the Eiffel Tower. I plan to add more in the spring when the trees are green and there are people on the mall. There probably won't be another post until Sunday night or Monday because of the trip this weekend. I've almost been here two weeks but it seems like a life time.

I had my third class today. It's Histoire de France/ De Vercingetorix a Napoleon. Though it is three hours I really enjoyed it. The time really flew by rather quickly. It appears to set up like a survey class would be in the U.S. because we are going to cover quite a large span of time. The professor seems to be focusing more on the military aspect or the time period, but that's fine with me. Military History is more my forte. The difference though is that it is all taught in French so I have to relearn all the vocab and learn how to pronounce the names of people and places "en francais".

There are more Americans and other Europeans in this class. We actually out number all of the Asians for once. Which is interesting in itself that so many students from Japan, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Korea are studying at l'Institut Catholique. In my other two classes I am outnumbered by Asians and South Americans ( who are here in a fairly large number also). There aren't any Parisians or Frenchman from other parts of France in my classes. The program is designed to put all the international students together in classes based on their speaking and comprehension level. It is interesting though because you can meet people from literally all over the world.

I didn't do a whole lot of site-seeing today because I have class in the afternoon. But I did manage to take a few pictures at Place de Saint-Michel around 6:00 pm and Porte d'Orleans around 6:30 pm. The sun doesn't set here until almost 6:30 pm, I think, I'll check on that but it is still light outside.

I posted a page that is just pictures of the Musee d'Orsay. I am working on another page on the Eiffel Tower but it takes a long time to upload images here because the Internet in France is not as fast as the Internet in the U.S. I plan to return to a lot of these places in the Spring and play the tourist all over again because Paris will be very different in color.

My exploring today was guided by my need to buy a text book for my "Langue Francaise" class. l'Institut Catholique doesn't have a book like universities in the U.S. However there are several options to this problem. The first is a store called the FNAC. It is basically a combination of Barnes & Nobles and Best Buy. There are two FNACs within ten minutes walking of the school. The closest has five floors the top two possessing the books and the bottom three the electronics. The other FNAC is just for electronics, so no luck there. The best solution for finding text books is at a store called "Gibert Jeune". It is a very large store that resides around the Place Saint-Michel. However the store is split up in different locations around the square by subject, which can be rather confusing at first. However I found the text book at some time of searching. I wasn't looking to hard because it was fascinating to browse through all the books. One difference that jumped out at me was that many of the books published in France have a white exterior rather than lots of color and pictures like a American books.

The weather today has been quite odd, but weather everyday is quite odd. It rains here off and on. When the weatherman says scattered or isolated showers he means scattered and isolated showers. Clouds come and go dropping a little rain here and there. Often its sunny out with one city block getting lots of sun while the one just down the street is getting a downpour. A lot of the days have been like that so it seems that this kind of weather is normal. That's alright though because it makes for really good pictures.

Tomorrow I have my French history class in the afternoon so I can go to bed early and sleep in for once.

Palais Du Louvre

I began classes here on Monday. The class at l'Institut Catholique are three to four hours long. I am taking three classes. The first class I had was on Monday. It is called Langue Francaise which means French language and covers the French language. It is three hours long and meets three times a week; Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. The second class is Francais Oral. This is a spoken French class. It is three hours also and meets once a week on Monday afternoon. The final class is Histoire de France/ De Vercingetorix a Napoleon. This is a French history class that covers the time period from the time of the Gauls through the Napoleonic Era. This class also is three hours in length and meets once a week. I have this class on Thursday afternoon.

I am enjoying Paris so far, of course anyone would be crazy not to right? The transportation here is superb. There is a bus system, three tramways, and a metro system all working together to transport hundreds of thousands of people across Paris everyday. To go to school I have to take the Tram and then hop on the metro. The whole trip takes 20 to 25 minutes.

This afternoon after class I took the Metro to Notre Dame and took some more pictures. Notre Dame is my favorite famous landmark to visit because it is really easy to get to. I took some different angled pictures today and I took some pictures of the surrounding buildings and cityscape. Then I decided to explore the rest of the island, Ile de la Cite. It is a very nice area. Not too many people move past Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, and the Palais de Justice to explore. You really get a sense of how old the city is by the way the side streets twist and turn.

I have tomorrow off and I plan to some more exploring...