Done with the intensive month!

Hello all! I am in an excellent mood this evening, as I'm now done with my "intensive month" of classes! I took my finals today and I believe they went quite well. Now I have five days of relaxing ahead of me, which sounds just lovely. Unfortunately the weather here has taken a bit of a dip, so I don't know if I'll get to spend as much time at the park as I had previously hoped, but I'll find plenty to keep me busy.

So this will mainly just be a miscellaneous post! First of all, I got the opportunity to go to "El Hormiguero" again (the TV show that I saw taped previously)... and this time the guests were Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds!!!!! It was awesome. ISA had 10 spaces for people to go and I was lucky enough to get one! Seeing them in person was so cool. Just hearing Denzel speak live was incredible; he is such a mega-star! They were hilarious together, and many of us American students found ourselves laughing early, because they would speak in English and make a joke, but it would take the translator a moment to get that message out to the Spanish-speaking audience. The show was just as random as last time, but it was totally worth it to get to see those guys!! I'm having a hard time finding video of the episode online, but I'll keep working on it! But the moral of the story is that I was on television again, in the same episode as super-stars. No big deal.

 Anyway, to continue with the random-ness... One of the biggest differences between my life here and my life at home is that I am essentially living life without a cell phone. At home I'm constantly texting, making phone calls all willy-nilly, texting, etc., but here that is not the case. I have a cell phone that works here, and I have decent calling rates, but texting is very expensive. I think I make an average of 2 phone calls per week, and they do not usually last more than 2 minutes. I only text using "what's app", which is used with wireless internet, not my texting plan. And I only have 2 "what's app" contacts, so you can imagine that that is hardly used either. To be honest, it's kind of nice. No one is very dependent on their phones. When we need to make plans we do it the old fashioned way: we talk in person and decide to meet somewhere at a certain time. I know. Pretty crazy. there is no texting a half hour before just to make sure everyone is still on the same page, we just assume people will be there! We use facebook chat as well, when we are at our homestays, but when we're mobile it's pretty much every man for himself! A lot of the time I don't even turn on my phone!


While that particular difference is definitely not an inconvenience, I have discovered one that is. There are apparently no clothes dryers in Spain. And no fabric softener either. It's very strange. The bummer is that none of my jeans fit the way they should. You know what I mean, girls? The first time you put on a pair of jeans out of the dryer, it should be a struggle. It should involve some jumping, wriggling, and possibly distress noises. Then after a certain number of wears, depending on the pair of jeans, they will have baggy-butt syndrome and will need to be washed again. Here it's like I'm already 3 wears in when I put them on for the first time. Kind of a bummer. And on top of that, all my clothes are super starchy and rough. It's taking some getting used to, but if my biggest complaint about living in Spain is not having tight jeans, I think I can learn to deal with it. 

So I figured I'd put up a few more Paris pics! And I thought of something else I forgot to tell you guys: my flight to Paris was my first one on a plane that wasn't some kind of huge airline jumbo-jet. Instead, we walked out of the airport and took a little shuttle to the runway where the plane was waiting and we climbed the stairs! Maybe this isn't a big deal, but it was a first for me... but obviously it won't be the last time this is required, once I have a private jet that kind of thing will just be standard operating procedure. Ok, enough of my dream world, here are some pictures! 

Our uber-luxurious hostel room... reminded me of Taylor Tower!

Pretty standard on this trip... me looking at the map.

We found a bridge over the Seine that had hundreds of locks with things written on them, mostly couples initials/names it seemed. Sinead happened to have a lock with her and I had a sharpie-like pen, so we added our own lock!

Caught on film... me taking pictures in the middle of the street.

Tiny door leading to the bell tower at Notre Dame!

Not too far from home! Who knew there was a cafe called "Columbus" in Paris??

Gotta love old friends! Me and Stephen in front of the Louvre at night.

Here is proof that we were staying on Goblins Street! Neha and Sinead have their crepes in this picture... Nikki and I had devoured ours already!

Well there you have it. I don't think I have much more to say tonight... so I'll say hasta luego, amigos! 


P.S. I almost forgot! In exciting shopping news, I haggled for the first time this week! It resulted in me getting an awesome cross-body purse that I have been admiring for weeks in the window... for only 8 euro! Yay for being thrifty!