Paris

So, Christy and I have been in Paris for ten days now and we've mostly adjusted to this extremely foreign (to us) place. Her parents and sister have been here with us and they will be here till Sunday.

We've hit all the major tourist spots: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Pantheon, the Siene, the roadside creperies, etc.

We've been to four museums, Walked thousands of miles, We've eaten baguettes every day, we've eaten stinky cheese and we have even eaten snails. We have taken a taxi, a bus, a train, and we rode bikes. They have a public bicycle sharing program here called Velib (www.velib.Paris.fr) You pay for a membership and they have 24,000 bikes in service around the city with a station every couple blocks. You check out a bike with your bike pass from a station and you return it at a station near your destination. It's pretty cool.

The sun doesn't set here till after 9:30, which is weird. Doesn't get dark until about 10:15. Paris is a lot more touristy than I thought it would be. Paris is called the "City of Light"... I haven't been outside after dark yet. I got another five weeks here though, I think I'll manage to get out.

Le premier jour

After over 29 hours of travel clark and I arrived in Paris. Yippee. I spoke French with the cabbie and the doorman. Driving in Paris is so nuts. Anyway it has been really fun so far. The hardest part is knowing what to do in certain circumstances. For example, I didn't think it would be so hard to figure out how to eat breakfast. Clark and I woke up too early this morning and nothing really opened until about 7:30 or 8. We found a cafe to eat in but we weren't sure whether to sit down or go to the bar. Everyone seemed to be at the bar. After I asked, we sat down and ordered le petit dejeuner, it comes with une boisson chaud (a hot drink) but I mentioned how Clark isn't to big on coffee so I asked for just a water (I forgot that tea is also a hot drink), so the waiter said, only a water? And I said yes, but then as he was walking away I realized that he meant ONLY a water (and not the rest of the meal) so I made sure to correct that. It would have been really funny if my yummy croissant and cafe au lait came out and Clark only got a glass of water. After le pd (petit dejeuner) we wandered around in search of an apple store which was near the louvre somewhere, it took a while to find, apparently it was IN the Louvre. The louvre had wifi near the apple store and for some reason Clark's iPad wifi finally started working. We got in trouble for sitting on the ground, then we left and got baguettes with camembert after having walked for 3.5 hours. Later we are going to buy dinner from some of the markets and see where the apartment is located where we will be staying in a couple of weeks.
Our hotel has French tv, awesome, last night we watched "enquete la violence souterainne", it was like french cops, but less dramatic, they try to catch thieves or harassers or whatever in the metros.
The Notre Dame is gorgeous and the Seine is amazing. The sky is clear and the weather is fresh.
Whoa, long post about random stuff, but we are so excited!! Clark doesn't understand a thing, but people said I spoke good French :)

T-Minus 2 Days 8 Hours and Some Minutes

My wife Christy and I will be on a plane headed to Paris early Wednesday morning taking almost a whole day to get there.

In December she graduated from the University of Hawaii with a degree in French language and literature but she has never been to France. She now has the opportunity to go and I get to tag along. I speak very little French so I'm going to have to put my life in her hands.

We will be gone for three months and I am going to attempt to document as much of it as I can on this blog. The next post I will make will probably be from France. Hopefully I will be able to convince Christy to write up a post or two while we are there.