Le Cœur de la Ville

Many, many things have happened since my last post. In fact, that’s the reason why there hasn’t been one in a while.

On Wednesday we went to the NYU Center for the first time. It’s a house on rue de Passy, near La Tour Eiffel and tons of shops. As we were exploring the neighborhood (we got a two and a half hour lunch break…the French might use all that time to eat but we haven’t acclimated to that yet) we stumbled upon le Cimetière de Passy, turned around and all of the sudden we were facing the Eiffel Tower. This keeps happening to us, we don’t go out looking for the famous places yet wander into them. The same thing happened with the Moulin Rouge, but I’ll get to that later.

 

Later that day, we received our housing assignment. I’m living in a former artist’s workshop with two other girls from my program in the 9ème arrondissement, a few blocks south of Montmartre. The apartment is two floors and has 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and a dining hall. And did I mention I can see Sacre Cœur and the Moulin Rouge? Here are some pictures of the apartment:

Last night, we went to Les Refuges de Fondus, a fondue restaurant in Montmartre. It’s probably most famous for serving wine in baby bottles and is a tourist magnet. There are two long tables, so we met some fellow Americans sitting next to us who are only in Paris for five days. Quel dommage! We told them they needed to go to Saint Michel before they left, they didn’t seem as excited about it as we were. Their loss.

Tomorrow is our last day of orientation, so I get to figure out how to take classes at the Sorbonne! I’m really excited for that, I can’t wait to make French friends. Our language intensive class at the NYU Center begins on Tuesday, which will hopefully help me brush up on what I forgot over break. But for now, I need to go to the Franprix so I can get some food in the apartment!