Paris Update

We arrived yesterday at 9:50 am local time in Paris, wandered around the airport for about an hour and realized that we don't speak a lick of french and the people who speak english here are not very good at it. They can say hello, but when you ask for directions they really can't explain how to get any where. aggggh.

so after an hour we got on a train with some italians from Rome and Rook got to brush up on his Italian while I got to brush up on my I'm new in the country and trying ti understand everything while at the same time trying to fake not looking stupid! It wasn't that hard.... I'm pretty good at faking it. So we took a train and then hoped on the subway to get to our hotel (if you can call in that) which is right down the street from the moulin rouge.

We got to our hotel at 1:00, took some pictures of the moulin rouge, took a shower and went out for the day. We got an open tour bus pass thta takes you to all of the cool things to see on a bus route. The only problem is there arent many busses and they only go till 6:00pm.... BTW it was freezing when we got into paris and it looked like it had just snowed. The tour is called L'open toure... its called that because it is a double decker bus with no roof on the top level. It was really cold and I was pressed against the window hating life.

I could not sleep on the plane, no matter how hard I tried. Rook on the other hand was able to sleep like a baby.

We went to the Louvre and walked aroundfor 4 hours. We saw tons of cool sculptures and huge paintings, I mean huge like 40' x 60' (thats feet)! Since I didn't sleep on the plane and we hadn't eaten since about 6:00 am I was literally falling asleep while walking and needless to say a little cranky. We finally got some food in the louvre and I pepped back up and got in a better mood, but about 30 mins later I was falling asleep again.

After we were done with the Louvre and had figured out the subway system out of necessity, (thanks to the crappy bustour), stoppedby the eiffel tower to snap some night fotos, we were headed back home to go to a show and we saw a juggling/ventriloquist act that was amazing and funny. But this time it was Rook falling asleep and me trying to keep him awake. We sat with two couples from greece, one guy was from israel. After the show we sat and talked with some nice girls that are studying abroad south of paris. One american, One Canadian, and one Australian.

SATURDAY

We woke up around 8:30, ate our breakfast, and headed off to the sacre coeur church up at the top of a hill. Got ambushed by a group of africans from senegal and gabon. They are just like the haitains in the D.R. Always trying to sell you stuff. They are hard to turn down and tell you its a tradition to buy their bracelets. Mine was very nice so I gave him euro and a half (he asked for 20 euros) for a little string bracelet he made. Rook's on the other hand wasn't very nice and keept asking for more money. After we were done seeing the church and the crypt, we saw rooks meanie and he asked for more money and said "don't be cheap like the chinese" we laughed and reminded him he told usit was free... I called him a liar and said he was lucky to get anything, then all of his friends laughed and high fived me and said California the best! italians the best! (for some reason they could tell we are italian)!

We are off to Notre dame, the eifell tower again, le arche de triumph and anything else we see of the way! Love you all. I'd post some picture but this computer sucks and doesn't have a slot for my memory card. TTYL.

Derek (and Rook)