The Really Big Paris Post... at last!

Helllloooo to all in the USA, time has literally flown past us, and it seems almost impossible to go back to reality so soon! We need more time and I’m freaking out because we only have one more day! I am at this very moment sitting in the TGV, a train that is going about 120mph with the paysage (countryside) rushing by us. Audrey, Alex, Jon, Steph, Jake B, and Jen are around me, it’s raining outside and we’re all on our way back to Geneva to spend one last night with our ABSOLUTELY AMAZING SWISS PENPALS!!!!! I am told that tonight we’ll go out to dinner at an authentic Swiss restaurant where we’ll all feast on the delicious fondue! I’m so excited to see everyone again in the land of the Swiss! Many things stick out in my mind about the entire Paris experience so I’ll try and list a few of them! The Bateau Mouche—Which did you know that mouche means fly? I relearned that on the boat and was quite entertained by it! With Leah (it was like we were flying across the water!!!), late nights playing Truth and laughing SO HARD at times about the stupidest answers to the intense questions, and of course, the pictures- which is what I find so fascinating that if you just look through my memory card you will see loads of smiling faces, amazing views some of them with friends randomly posing and being idiots, and lasty the pictures that I have just recently been taking the most of- the exhausted and sleepy faces, some missing home and some with such a lack of sleep- we all wonder how they can stand! I should wrap this up, but the thing I’ve learned the most on this trip is my amazing need to come back!
I can’t wait, but I’ll see you all soon!
Love you all
Au Revoir
Casey

So… this is Andrea and Christina. We’re on our way back on the TGV after having an amazing time in Paris… we have had some amazing experiences and we will now have lots of awesome stories to add to our life collections. One of our adventures was getting stuck on the second isle de la cite… which we weren’t aware existed, but we did know that rue de barres WAS indeed in Paris. The next day included Christina being offered to go and live with one of the few overweight Asians in existence, then a mere few hours later Andrea was informed that she was cute by a security guard at the Louvre. Today after much searching and many disappointments (the tea place being closed and not being allowed to purchase a pi yahmahkuh) the APs (Christina, Andrea and Jake) managed to score the perfect present for their fearless AP Calculus leader. Over this whole experience there are certain lessons that we have realized the importance of… Green means go, Red means run, Mopeds and busses mean stop, and watch out for bikes. Oh, and we are both proud to report that we would pass pre-school with flying colors.

Jake Lane and Jake Bourne were two under achieving, care free hunks; but they about to find out the hard way what it means to wear the badge, after a cruel twist of fate left them in charge of a police force… in the Jake Squad

The Vending Machine
The metro system in Paris, while intimidating at first, quickly becomes a simple series of colors and numbers which can lead you to a beautiful place like the Sacre Coeur, or to a sad bus station on the end of the brown line. While most of the places we went as a group were targeted towards tourists, there were some stops that were the epitome of “sleazy,” complete with baguettes on the ground to people calling the girls ‘very beautiful women.’ But the yellow Concorde switching to pink and getting off at Felix will get you the most rewarding experience of your life.
Past a little hostel named “The Three Ducks,” you get more into the real part of Paris. Away from the noise and crowd of tourists, there is a street with essentially everything on it that you need to live. Complete with a gyro restaurant, an Asian food store and a Laundromat, traversing the long road is quite an experience. However, that night we walked rapidly down the road in search of a Giant Vending Machine.
The reward for finding this machine is merely its contents. From about 20 different drinks, to food (actual microwavable meals) to candy even condoms and cigarette lighters, this machine could sustain someone for quite a while by its self. Spanning a height of about10 feet and a width almost twice that, it was by far the largest machine of this nature any of us have seen.
For half of the travelers on the dark streets, this` was something new; for the other half, an old friend. With chocolate covered waffles, energy drinks, a cynical British man, and the enigmatic Paris metro System, the evening was made complete.
-Audrey

During our Paris excursion, we visited the muse a d’orsye (a musium of fine art). While there, our class viewed some of Van Gogh’s best work. A day later we visited the Louvre where we ogled at the Mona Lisa. We also visited two of the most famous cathedrals in the world, Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur. There were so many stairs to travel up to Sacre Coeur, it was amazing!
-Jake B.

“how many times do I have to tell you pooh bears, No farting in the Louvre!”
-Jake L.

Hello, we are in a foreign country and it is a good experience for many of us, maybe even greater because we were given this opportunity to go. This trip is a lot of fun and has created some good times and new friendly bonds. We have gone through a lot, like busy subway lines, long museum lines, waiting for people to meet or come down from their rooms with another lame excuse (Jon). Trying to find sleds so we can go down a “skiing resort”, go crazy to find cheese? We’re heading back soon and I don’t want to leave and of course it seems like we’ve only been here for a few days not 2 weeks (Mr. Carr and Jen feels like it’s been a month). I have a great friend Aurele and bunch of others I just met and I don’t want to leave because basically they know how to have fun. I want to come back sometime soon, it’s so much fun here in Switzerland.

-Jon

The Strippers.

Although Monet and Van Gough were among the most impressive painters in the Musee d’Orsay, my personal favorite painting was by a guy named Gustave Cor-something, of a bunch of strippers. Floor stippers, that is. While wandering around alone, I noticed this painting on a wall of it’s own, and something about the three guys hard at work stripping the floor with the balcony door open to waft in the Parisian air and an open bottle or red wine at their side, made me want to stop and look at it longer. I’m not really an art person… Mr. Carr just wanted someone to write about a painting or sculpture they say in one of the museums we visited. But a painting must be quite good to halt a person who is not interested in art. I would rather stare at that all day than the Mona Lisa. I wonder how many parents, when reading the title of this, gasped at the thought of their child going to a strip club. Haha.
-steph