Living in the city

I have been in Paris for about a week now. It feels like I've been here for a month. It's sort of daunting to realize how much time I have left here. Of course, I say that now, at the beginning. I'm sure these next four months will fly.

So, I must re-cap this past week, devoted to Orientation activites, as promised. I never imagined that I would be subjected to another week of Orientation. At least this time we weren't encouraged to kill each other because we lived in different dorms, or given awful orange shirts. Instead, we attended "mandatory" information sessions; the one on safety in the studio was especially helpful. I learned that "reading labels on chemicals is important" and "machines can be dangerous."

Parsons Paris had organized little outtings around the city, presumably to familiarize us with the Metro and to show us interesting parts of Paris. One night we went to a dinner at a restaurant over by where the Bastille used to stand. We also embarked upon the aforementioned touristy boat tour of the Seine.

Two nights ago they had us "meeting for a drink" at a bar. At the beginning of Orientation, they gave us a sheet of paper with all the organized activites for the week, complete with the appropriate Metro stops, time, a picture, etc. On the sheet of paper, the name of the bar was written as "La Perle" with a picture of bar with "La Perle" written on the maroon awning. However, the street address listed on the paper was for a bar named "La Perla." It turns out they actually meant "La Perla" but someone had typed the name in incorrectly and included an image of the wrong bar. Two of my friends and I ended up walking around le Marais to find both.

Other than that, I've been wandering around, mostly with the same few people. We've mostly stayed on the Left Bank, leaving the Right largely unexplored for now.

Today I have to figure out how to wash my clothes at the local laundromat, something I've been putting off for the past few days. Tomorrow, a few of us plan to explore the infamous Parisian catacombs. We're also planning on taking off to Barcelona for a weekend sometime in the near future.