I realized that I have forgotten to mention some of the "little" things that I have done over the last few weeks, so I figured that I would catch up a bit before continuing to update.

1. On one of our free days, I went to the Georges Pompidou Museum with TJ and Ellen. This is the major modern art museum in Paris, and although I am not the biggest fan of modern art I had a good time. There was an interesting special exibit on Robert Soulanges, an artist who paints almost exclusively with shades of black. The design of the building is also really cool (lots of pipes and tunnel type things) and ultimetly looks like a half finished/really modern building. I took some pictures of the museum which I will post later.

2. After our trip to Notre Dame, our program tour guide took us to Berthillon, an extremely famous ice cream shop in Paris (and apparently known world wide). I had one scoop of Raspberry Rose Water and one scoop of Vanilla Chocolate Cake The ice cream was amazing, and the location on Ile-St-Louis is extremely pretty and very French looking. However, at the end of the day I think I am a cheap ice cream person - bring on Friendly's!


Today, I had to report to the OFII office (French customs) at 8h30 for my medical exam. It was a huge production and consisted of moving from one room to another to another to another and waiting for long periods at each step. Essentially, the exam was comparable to a physical with height and weight checks, vision tests, a test for diabetes because I am at risk (which consists of pricking your finger and having a blood sugar machine read the results), a chest x-ray (for which you have to walk around topless in the x-ray room which, as a girl, is really uncomfortable), and a meeting with an actual doctor who asks many questions and checks your heart and blood pressure. Luckily, I'm healthy as a horse and finally (after about 2.5 hours) I was given the final stamp for my visa. Now, I am a legal resident of France for the next 6 months (which is just really cool), and I can freely travel in and out of France during that time period (prior to this stamp I was not allowed to legally leave, and then come back, to France).


That's all for now!