Pairs. Cest Bon!!

Ahh. Paris. Its a lovely city. Really it reminds me of San Francisco, I think that is why I like it so much.

Today I walked the length of the city stopping to see le Louvre, Effile Tower, Notre Dame and many small streets, Le Seine and so on. The people aren't nearly as terrible as people make them out to be. I have found them very helpful and polite. Parisians are VERY polite people. If you want directions, you have to go through a whole mess of greetings to get anything from them. Its giving me a chance to brush up on my French at the very least!

I am hoping that being in France the next few weeks will give me a chance to improve my language skills. I have been staying with a Brazilian guy who studies in French so he is very helpful in my French exercises. The other guest here is a Columbian fellow who also speaks French. I am sure they are both very tired of me asking them what things say and how to pronounce a hundred different words. But in the few hours I have been here my vocabulary has grown exponentially.

Tomorrow, I will call Thomas and hopefully he will want to show me a side of the city I wouldn't otherwise see. I have also contacted the Shakespeare and Company bookstore about staying there in exchange for work. I really want the opportunity to work in a library in Paris! Even if that doesn't work out I will have another place to stay after Tuesday so I may just stay for a week or so.

No one told me that the French take their day of rest very seriously, but they do. Almost everything that wasn't run by tourism was closed for the day. The touristy parts of Paris are like a hell on earth but its as simple as walking one or two streets over and you can find beautiful lanes almost deserted. I would never want to be here in the summer, especially if its this bad in February!

I took pleanty of pictures but as usual you will have to wait. It is late here and I don't think I can take much more of the day. Bonsoir!