Dan meets the wide world of blogging

Welcome family, friends, facebook friends (which is distinguish since we may be more like acquaintances) and all those who have managed to find themselves reading this, my very first blog post. As you know, or have deduced from the title of this blog, I find myself it Paris, The Eternal City of Lights, and will be here for the next four months, where my friends from college and I will proceed to bum around Europe for a few weeks, bank accounts willing. For this period, I hope this blog will inform all those who care to know about my goings on without me having to send out mass emails, which I would enevitably leave people out of.

So I have been in Paris for just over a week. This means that I have been eating, sightseeing, and yes mother, ingesting large amounts of wine for nearly as long. So far through my own volition, and the help of my study abroad agency ISA, I have managed to do much of the touristy stuff one has to do in this great city. In a week I have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, into the catacombs, seen the Sorbonne (where I will be taking classes) and the histoic Latin Quater, been to the Tour de Montparnasse (the office building that marres the Parisian skyline but offers an unparralled view of the city), The Palace at Versailles, and the Louvre...twice.

"But how can you manage all of this in so little time?" you ask. Well the answer is that ISA has the experiance to know that people new to Paris will simply disregard things they have to do in order to experiance this new city. So, instead of trying to change the nature of 2 dozen 20-somethings, they took the more prudent road and had us arrive almost 2 weeks before classes start. So the past week or so has consisted of nothing but sightseeing, eating, drinking, some light orientation and a pesky little proficency test to place us in the appropriate grammar level.

This test concerned me at first. However, upon arriving here and finding that my french is actually quite good, my confidence has been restored and I feel that I will be placed in such a way that allows me to take the classes I want to take (and need to in order to graduate from Rochester on time) and be at a level that I'm am comfortable.

Now I find myself sitting in my quaint little french apartment in Montparnasse with my homestay family which constists a retired woman in her mid 50's and her former film producer ex-husband. Yes its strange, but I'm in Europe, what do you expect?

Now I'm sure I'm leaving things out, so if you have any questions or suggestions for things I should mention shoot me an email and I'll be sure to get back to you. Also, I will probably set up a photobucket account so I can share my photos with you.

In the mean time,
A Tout A L'heure et Bon Soiree