Morning is my favorite time of day...

I think that morning is my favorite time of the day. It's just past 10:00 AM in Paris and I'm sitting out on my balcony wrapped up in a blanket on a beautiful February morning. The sun is shining for the first time in at least a week and it's making the beginning of today so much better.

I'm finally starting to get into the swing of things here. Life seems so much more normal now that I've been here for just over three weeks. I finished my intensive language course last week and start my real class schedule today, so I have a lot more free time during the week to explore Paris. I love to wander and get myself lost only to discover that Paris really isn't that big after all. There are so many different neighborhoods and places to see and little things to find, but it's all so very Paris. I'm so happy to be here and to explore everything that France and Europe have to offer.

My roommate has a French boyfriend and we taught all of his friends how to play beer pong and king's cup the other night. None of them speak English so that was quite the interesting ride, especially when you think about how many of the rules in those games appeared to just be made up so we would win, hahaha. But, as my father so insightfully pointed out, if you can teach somebody how to do stuff like that in French, you can probably do anything :) On Saturday of this week my best friend Valerie and I went to an AWESOME concert in the Netherlands (with over 60,000 people in attendance) and it's having the chance to do stuff like that that makes living in Europe so amazing.

King's Cup rules...French style


I'm going to Normandy in two weeks with my program, then Belgium with some friends, London the weekend after that to visit another friend, and before I know it March will be over! I have two weeks off in April for Spring Break so I'm planning on visiting Amsterdam and then going to Spain and Portugal. I also need to fit in Italy after that and maybe Prague or Istanbul, oh and I'm probably going back to Barcelona in the end of May for a music festival called Primavera Sound.

These next four months are going to go by so fast, it's amazing. I miss home more than I expected, which is understandable because I left a lot of people who I love and care about there, but I'm also so lucky to be here and I can't wait for how many more adventures this semester will bring.

What we can see of Paris from our balcony this morning