Wow, my head is spinning!

Paris. Wow, where can I begin? I’m still in a bit of sensory overload from the first day or so. The flight was good – uneventful – and thanks to an eye mask and a nice blanket, I managed to get a few hours’ sleep even though I slept through the breakfast service to do it. Ah well.

As soon as we landed in Charles de Gaulle airport, we hit the ground running. Grabbed our bags (mine was last for some reason) and met Dr. Marquardt who had our ‘Carte Orange’ so we can ride the public transport system all month. “DON’T lose this – it’s irreplaceable!!”, she tells us emphatically! So after getting our Carte Oranges set up with our photo, name and signature it’s off to the Metro for us! We got lucky (says Dr. Marquardt) because we had an accordion player on board with us to serenade us. How neat was that!

So…the Metro done, we hike across the street to the Cité Universitaire de Paris where we’ll be staying for the duration of our trip. We’re each assigned dorm rooms according to what they had available so we’re all over the place – one girl in the basement, a few on the first floor (second to us), most of us on the second floor (third to us), and one way up on the third floor (4th).

The rooms are fairly nice single rooms. They have what’s called a ‘wet room’ for the bathroom. This means that the bathroom IS the shower – no division – just turn on the water and get it ALL wet! Kind of neat, I think. Many of us are surprised that there isn’t any air conditioning. It seems that we’ve been fortunate enough to come during one of Paris’ rare heat waves. Oh joy. Ah well…at least we’re ALL sweating like pigs. But this too shall pass – at least that’s what the weather report says.

I've uploaded pics from the first day to Webshots. Here's the link:
http://community.webshots.com/myphotos?action=viewAllPhotos&albumID=551922043&security=DtPWVl

I hope that will tide you all over till I have a chance to upload more. I promise I will!!

Au Revoir!