My Impressions of Paris so far

Hey all,

I've spent a good month here now and feel pretty settled in to my daily routine. Whether that's a good thing or not I don't know. Sometimes I feel the need to be a bit more spontaneous and get out and see things. Of what I have seen though, there are some things I really appreciate and some things I prefer from home.

First off, the food here is pretty great. It is a bunch of sandwiches, pastries, and breads. They really like their ham and cheese as well. One of my favorite things though is how fresh everything is here. Very few times do I ever see anything that is packaged or pre-prepared, the French really love to take their time making something worth eating. I will be much fatter when you all see me next.

The party scene so far has been a bit underwhelming. Last weekend me and my friends got turned away from a bar because we were Americans. Plus the metro stops running at around 1, so if you wanna make it back home at a decent hour you pretty much have to call it quits at 12:30. Also, the drinks are way too expensive. It's cool to go to some hole in the war European bar once or twice, but mostly we have just been getting wine and having our own house parties with the other students.

Once you stay here for a while, the tourist attractions start to loose their novelty and you feel a bit more like a citizen of the city would feel. So many Americans come here expecting it to be radically different than America in one way or another but really life here is only different in small ways. I think the most interesting thing really is getting to see the way another culture functions. They are, contrary to what you've heard, not unfriendly at all. They are just much more private than Americans are and honestly I prefer it that way.

One last thing, I went to Shakespeare and Company this weekend and lit-nerded pretty hard. For those of you who don't aren't familiar with it, Shakespeare and Co is a famous bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach in the 1920's where writers such as Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Hemingway and others would frequent during the so called "Lost Generation" period of literature. I'm a big Hemingway fan and standing in this place (which inside honestly looks more like some wizard's apothecary than a bookstore) was a really memorable occasion for me.

Anyway, tomorrow I head off to Amsterdam so next time I write I will have a whole new city to talk about.

Au revior