Everyone finally arrived on Wednesday the 15th of July and we left early in the morning to check into our room at the aparthotel (that's cause it's extended stay...apartment/hotel, get it? Cute, huh? Oh, the French!). Rob, the professor in charge of the study abroad, was already checked in the day before, so he was there to greet us and help us check in. We then met for dinner that night at a Pizzeria and I had my first restaurant experience in France. I was reminded how much I love orange soda. In the States, the orange soda is very orange colored. While the Fanta in Europe is much lighter. In the states, the Fanta, Sunkist, whatever's your favorite is made with all artificial flavoring. In Europe, it's made with real orange juice! Mmmmm...many of you may have tasted Orangina...that's very much what the orange soda is like here.
The next day, my roommate was in town, so we hung out together. We arranged to meet at a Häagan Dazs near a certain stop on the metro. Unfortunately, when I got off, I realized that there were several metro exits and the one I exited at showed no Häagan Dazs nearby. So, I walked a little while until I found the Häagan Dazs at the next metro stop and no Jane. 45 minutes later, I was back around the right corner and down a small street to find a Häagan Dazs and my good friend Jane sitting with her friend Lena.
Jane and I decided to walk around the city until we planned to meet up with my classmates at the Palace at Versailles. The fountains in the palace gardens were going there only from 3 PM to 5:30 PM, so we only had a small window to see them. When we got there we waited in line for nearly an hour just to find out that the line was to get tickets to actually enter the palace and there was a separate line to enter the gardens. When we walked around to the side of the palace we discovered a line with nearly two people in front of us. Well done, Dan! It's okay, because we talked about the English language in line because we're teachers and we love talking about silly slang...plus, Jane said 'janky' and Lena wanted to know what it meant, so we talked about it and then used the word the whole time we were together! It was pretty all kinds of awesome.
So, with our little lne confusion, we didn't find my classmates, but we still made it into the gardens in time to see all of the fountains on and running, though we did hurry a little bit as it got closer to 5. We then arrived at the biggest fountain in the place and discovered that there would be a little show to music that we could watch at 530, so I saved us spots while the girls sought out a bathroom. They came back not having succeeded because they knew time was running out and they ended up taking a wrong jaunt out of the gardens so they had to show their tickets again. Regardless, we all got to see the fountains and decided it was the best ending to the fantastic gardens.
On the way back, we decided to go to Emily's favorite crêperie in France, Crêperie Beaubourg
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