Hi.
First of all, sorry for the month long hiatus. I've been busy with class, papers, and living in France.
Secondly, it has been brought to my attention (by my parents) that there are some family members wanting to subscribe to my blog so they don't need to keep checking this page. If you have a google account, it should be as easy as clicking "follow this blog" and adjusting the settings so you get e-mails. Otherwise, if you want me to just e-mail you when I update, let me know and I'll put together an e-mail list. Now for the updates:
Paris is incredible. Aside from the fact that it doesn't smell that great (public restrooms are few and far between plus you have to pay), I have no complaints.
I feel like I've become a metro master (though evertime I ride with my friend Paul I realize I'm still a novice).
I've been trying to do little tours of the arrondissements when I get the chance. So far I've been to the 11th, 5th, 4th, 19th for thorough explorations, and shorter visits to the 12th, 13th, 6th, and 10th.
A couple weekends ago one of our professors lead an expedition to Fontainebleu, a small town and chateau outside of Paris. It's very beautiful, and there are lots of pictures on facebook under "Paris, je t'aime" (album title).
We're done with classes now so I was on vacation last week. I went with 5 friends (Paul, Yuan, Anna, Jennifer, and Lily) to the south west of France where we stayed in a gite in the small town of Guéthary. We did a few day trips and had 3 days of beach. We went to Biaritz (a small village to the north), San Sebastìan (in Spain), and hiked a bit in the Pyrénées, about 2.5 hours East of where we were. All the pictures are on facebook and should be open for all to see.
It was a fabulous time and I highly recommend taking a vacation there if you are interested in going to France.
I also had so much duck! It was absolutely delicious. I regret every time I never ate it before.
Today was my first day of work. As was to be expected, they had no idea what to give me at first. So I wrote this blog entry in my journal =D
The department is huge! And it seems easy to get lost in everything, especially the elevator system. Some elevators skip the bottom floors, then others stop at all, etc.
Also the rez de chaussé is not the main floor, the 3rd floor is. Then if you want to get to the lower floors there's a specific elevator for that.
I have my own desk, computer, and phone, but I share an office with potentially 3 other people (right now it's just two).
Everything is pretty spiffy.
I'm surprised at how casual the workplace is, I've seen multiple people wearing jeans, including my director.
Still yet to discover what exactly I'll be doing, but the project is on the redevelopment of certain economic areas in l'île-de-france. I'm going to be working from an environmental perspective, which should be right up my ally.
My supervisor and some other coworkers invited me to have a picnic with them for lunch so we ate our sandwiches in the only park at La Défense. It was cool because David (my supervisor) explained the style of urbanism that la défense was designed with and why it doesn't work. Yay learning!
Okay, this blog is getting long. I'll try to be better about updating!!!!
