Au Revoir

It's been great, Paris, but now it's time to go.
I had a wonderful time walking around your streets in the rain last night, wandering down the Seine and then taking a nice little walk down rue Bonaparte, past Laudrée and the jardins de luxembourg, and then back home again.

It really is home here now, and I feel like I'm leaving my neighborhood, my apartment, and my boulangerie just as much as I did when I left Santa Monica 5 months ago (well, minus the boulangerie bit). To top it off, I catch myself thinking in French and then translating to English more often than I'd like to admit.

There are two new lovely ladies living in this apt now, and as I told them all the little "tricks of the trade," I could already tell I'm going to miss this place. I feel like I'm handing over my child to new mothers, and I just want to take her back!

But I have one last semester to finish before I can return to Paris again, I just hope she still remembers what a good time we had together.

Almost finished

As I'm almost done with the semester, I hope to get some figures up for some of you who've been asking me how much money I spent. I can tell you your best bet for right now is to look up my daily totals that I wrote at the end of each entry up until the 20th of November. This should give you a vague idea of the cost of living in Paris. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some other calculations that will give everyone a good idea of the "total cost" for a trip like the one I just had.

My best advice to all of you students is:
1. get used to eating lots of pasta!
2. don't deprive yourselves of pastries and baguettes, they are some of the most delicious and cheap things you can find
3. when traveling, make sure you take lots of trains and take advantage of your youth -- anyone under 26 usually gets a huge discount on trains. there's also no baggage limit on trains and the most you'll ever have to wait to get on one is 30 minutes (Eurostar). That's right, no train to the airport, no huge security line.
4. always show your student card everywhere!!! In london, you can get discounts at clothing stores and even the mac store - in Paris, I've gotten discounts and freebees from everywhere from the louvre to Mc Donalds. Sometimes it's just that easy.
5. Items to bring with you: chapstick, makeup, tampons (cardboard applicators seem to be normal in Paris), a towel, sharpies, long underwear/ stockings. Everything else you could probably buy here at a decent price, though bringing stuff you already own clearly saves you money.

Back in Paris!

Back in Paris with T minus 2 weeks until this semester ends. I've got 35 pages of French to write and not nearly enough coffee! Luckily I've got a trip to Dijon on Friday to look forward to. I also got some holiday love from the Greenwoods (my family in Orangeburg, NY) that's been lifting my spirits.

Today I pay my last rent installment and then I'm done with all bills! Thursday is my last day of class, too. Things are starting to finish themselves up nicely - now if only I could get my papers to finish as easily...