Traveling to Paris

Traveling is...hard. Very hard actually. I learned this over the past 2(?) days of organized traveling with my Architecture classmates. For those of you who don't know why I'm over here in Paris, I am doing a study abroad program through my grad school (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee). The entire process of getting to Paris had its ups and downs, although I feel like I was a champ throughout the crazy process. I started off by flying to Chicago on September 4th to catch a group flight there and to meet up with my classmates and professor. The goodbyes were a little hard seeing as I've never been this far away from my family nor for this long of a time period. The flight to Chicago went well and thankfully fast. Although I do regret using the airplane bathroom's hand soap as hand sanitizer and having to wipe it on my pants in front of everyone on the plane. Oops. At least my luggage wasn't lost! From here I managed to find my way to where I was supposed to check in my luggage again. I guess since I was more than 4 hours early for the flight, you get to just wait there until someone shows up to help you. Lesson learned. Getting through security in Chicago was easy and since I had so much time I thought I would just get settled and find a nice restaurant and exchange my money. Well, unlike Minneapolis airport, once you get through security in O'hare international terminal you don't get either. There's some nice kiosks with food. But no currency exchange counters or restaurants. Oh well, lesson learned again. The flight to Amsterdam was 6 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad when you can watch 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' and 'Snow White and the Huntsman' on your personal TV. We arrived in Amsterdam at 6 am their time, our time it was still 11pm. Three hours later with some delicious Danish Mini Pancakes eaten, we were off to Paris! Meanwhile still not having slept more than 15 minutes, I was eager to catch some shut-eye on the plane...which only lasted an hour. This was when things got tricky. Luggage arrived in Pairs (YES!) Traveled as a group to get our train RER ticket. Okay doing fine here. Waited for the train for no more than about five minutes. Still good. Sat on a train for about 15 minutes or so traveling from Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Pairs to the city center. Still doing okay here...while listening to a man with a portable microphone and speaker sing random French songs (but also performed La Bamba better than the woman who sang it on our booze cruise in Mexico I must say). Got off the RER train, meanwhile still maneuvering my 45lb suitcase and backpack the whole time. This is where it gets weird. We were now in the underground subway system of Paris known as the Metro. Trying to get 20+ students with luggage up and down countless flights of stairs to our line was difficult to say the least, and tiring! After a few wrong turns and having to retrace our steps we were on the Metro and only had 2 stops before we got off...to walk further to our University 'headquarters.' Once we were there, we were introduced with some of the staff and given our Metro Passes so we could use the Metro and RER at anytime. Now that we got our passes (which I have to say could have been mailed to our actual APARTMENT building or given to us at a later time) we have to go BACK through the Metro and RER train to our actual assigned apartment. After going back exactly the way we came, up and down stairs with all of our stuff, we finally got to our apartments! Yay!The only surprise here was that everyone gets his or her own room...which I'm fine with but would have liked to room with my friends! Oh well, we will definitely be rooming together after we leave Paris in 21 or so days. So for now I'm just getting used to the food, the bathrooms, and definitely the language. Which I'm sure will all seem much better once I get more sleep...only slept about 7 hours last night. I think my body still thinks its 8:45 am instead of 3:45 pm. Tonight is dinner at the Grand Colbert (as featured in the movie 'Something's Gotta Give') at 8. Tomorrow real class starts as we visit Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle. Aur Revoir!