The End Has Only Begun

Hi...it's been awhile, practically a month a guess. But what a month! I'll pick up from the second when I got my internship. The next day my advisor Louis arrived for the week. I was excited to tell him I finally had an internship. We had french track family dinner at a lovely restaurant (thanks Darla). The next week was our second week of vacation. I wish I could say I went somewhere exciting and exotic but hey, I already live in Paris...where else is better. I had a wonderfully lazy week of sleeping in.

One of the days we went to Reims (say the word rinse with a snotty french accent), the capital of Champagne for a little visit. We had such beautiful weather. It was the cutest little town. The cathedral was beautiful. Twenty-six French kings were coronated in that cathedral! How awesome is it to be in the same place where 26 kings were!?!? We also took a tour of Madame Pommery's 'cave,' one of the oldest and well-known champagne makers. The cave has different art exhibits each year which made the tour quite exciting (and the photographs really funny).

On Sunday of the break, I did a little walking tour of Montmarte based on an article I found (well technically Jenna found it) of Amelie film sites. It was a gorgeous (but hot) day and Paris is starting to fill up with tourists. Nevertheless, I saw some pretty little streets and it was good to be out of the house and get some exercise.



After vacation, I had three days of class left and then we had to take the TEF (test of evaluation of french). After finishing the test, we picnicked in Luxembourg gardens. It was the perfect ending to a not so perfect semester. On Friday, some of us did a daytrip to Normandy!! We visited Caen (um, con with a snotty french accent) and drove up to the coast and saw Omaha Beach. It was a fantastic road trip...we heard crazy music on the radio...video killed the radio star, wonderwall, just crazy stuff! The beach was cold with the breeze coming off the English Channel. But it was nice to be out on the coast...we took a little walk on the beach. It was an amazing place.

This past week was a change of pace. Some of the awesome Global Trackers came to visit us the first half of the week, but we still had seminars and business visits. Monday, we visited a L'Oreal factory. Nerdy, but it was awesome. We saw different assembly lines. The robotics and machines were incredible, especially for hair dye kits where three different things go in a box with a set of instructions...it's so cool how the process is lined up with 3 empty bottles that get filled up, labeled, capped, and shoved in a box together. Tuesday evening, we hung out at the Trocadero with the Global Trackers. It's doing stuff like that that makes me love living here in Paris. On Friday, we visited the Paris Chamber of Commerce. We were all expecting boredome like on our visit in Brussels, but this building was beautiful! We were given a tour of the mansion and a little bit of the history. In the afternoon, we visited Ariane Space...the French NASA. We got to see how rockets were made and actually saw some in different stages of production. It's amazing that building something that can go into space is possible.

So now I'm just chilling till my internship starts on Thursday. I'm excited and nervous. There will definitely be an update at the end of the week. Till then enjoy my millions of photos:

champagne:
http://scarolina.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123535&l=f5214&id=12600427

montmartre:
http://scarolina.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2124014&l=abb2a&id=12600427

spring photos:
http://scarolina.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2122186&l=504cd&id=12600427

roadtrip to normandy part 1:
http://scarolina.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125672&l=bce4f&id=12600427

roadtrip part 2:
http://scarolina.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125674&l=5f5cc&id=12600427