the past week in pictures

Monday, January 18, marked the beginning of our week long orientation at ESCP. Orientation itself wasn't too exciting, however, we did get to meet a bunch of other foreign exchange students which was nice! This is a picture of my school from the street. 

During one of our breaks from orientation we visited the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It is a famous, working cemetery in Paris and is very beautiful. Many people are buried here, one being Jim Morrison. I can't tell you where he is buried or who else is buried here because we failed to buy a cemetery map on our way in (boy did we underestimate the size of this baby, it is HUGE!) It is so large and packed that we got lost in it and were almost late to the second part of our orientation.

One of the nights, the boys cooked dinner while I watched a movie! I could get used to this!

Thursday, we met an ESCP student who is from Slovakia. So of course, being the friendly Texans we are, we invited him out for drinks with us and taught him the essential word Y'ALL (this is our civil duty as Texans right?!) We hit up a bar near our apartment and took advantage of some happy hour Mojitos and bar peanuts... I'm now regretting the bar peanuts. What was I thinking? Not eating nuts from a bar is pretty much an unspoken rule!

Friday night is young people's night at the Louvre Museum. Those under 26 years old get in for free from 7 - 10 pm and the museum provides little events. The roommates and I decided to take advantage of this and invited our friends from Slovakia. There were students there who study at the Louvre school presenting different pieces of art. We spent some time in the Middle Ages area and visited Napoleon's Apartments (one of the most beautiful things in Paris). I will be frequenting this place often! (Sorry the pictures are blurry and dark, you cannot use flash on your camera)

Saturday we met up with some other students and visited the Montmartre area. We climbed what seemed like millions of stairs (burning many calories) to visit Sacre Coeur.

And then, like an true Americans, we rewarded ourselves with crepes (ingesting more than the many calories we burned). 

While enjoying our crepes a marching band walked through the square and performed... It was so amazing!

This is a picture of two men playing chess in the square full of artists... I couldn't resist snapping a photo!

Our last stop in Montmartre was Moulin Rouge. (Don't worry Mom, we didn't go inside. Well not yet at least! haha)

Saturday night, we all attended a boat party on the Seine. Sadly, I forgot to take any pictures :( So you will have to rely on your imagination for this one.