The FIRST night back!!

All my residents are back! Yesterday and today have been full of exciting screams and noisy unpacking. It's great to have everyone back in the dorms after a 5 week break...but guess who is on duty in the building and who gets to tell them all to be quiet? ME!!! exciting, twice a night for three nights I get to walk all around th e( floored building and make sure policies are not violated. Oh the life of an RA...but I got really excited to see a couple of my freshman floormates! until the next exciting thing in my life...actually I was in DC for three days when I came back from France, just visiting a friend in the same program as me from last spring at American University and I went to the Museum of Natural History and saw some interesting things....

Paris, France 12/28/08 - 1/13/09

For my final winter break of my college career I decided not to climb a mountain in Tibet, or visit Bali's native tribes, or canoe in the amazon river in Brazil, I just went to France for two weeks. It was great because I got a chance to see serious beauty in our world. It is easy to stay on campus and in your own little world where your bed, work, friends, and classes are all within a 100 yard radius. So I stayed with my good friend Noemie who was my roommate when we studied in the Washington Semester Program together last spring in DC. She is so great...she is finishing her Masters in Business Administration with an emphasis in marketing and just has one seven month internship left to do in Paris then she is FREE to work the rest of her life! haha no but Noemie is 23 and the most adorable Jewish girl I know! So I am going to show you some pictures and kinda list what I did...

Here is some amazing food we ate, wow I can't tell you how much weight I should have gained but then again we walked just about five hours a day so it all worked out...

Couscous- her mom makes amazing sauce with veggies over rice type stuff- apparently it is a Moroccan dish which is where her mom is from.
chouchouka- I have no clue what this is I totally don't remember...
dafina- hmmm, cheese?
brique a l'oeuf (egg)- this her mom made and its a light pancake / crepe like thing with an egg sunnyside up
Raclette- this is a type of really smelly cheese (Noemie says the smellier the better)that you melt on kinda a grilled cheese maker then put on potatoes and they have different flavors of the cheese, like pepper and mustard. we ate this with her friend Emily I think her name was...very good
Galette de rois- OMG the best flaky cake with almond paste inside and they sell crowns with the cake because the person that finds the surprise inside by eating it gets to wear the crown!

Some fun places we saw in Paris:
Galleries Lafayette- a big department store like Bloomingdales


Forum des Halles- a huge galleries with shops and a movie theater...we saw Australia
Monoprix
Musee Pompidou- the Museum of Modern Art, here is a view from the top


The MUST-SEES of Paris:
Notre Dame- Islands / St. Louis

Opera
Louvre- gardens

Jardin des Tuileries
Pt. Neuf
Vaux Le Vicomte- a sweet castle in the south of paris



Palais Royal
Rue Mouffetard
Montmartre

Madeleine

Place de Concorde- Jewelry
Champs Elysees
Arc de Triomph
Shakespear and Co Bookstore

Pantheon


The Seine River

Latin Quarter
President's House
Hotel de Ville- Ice skating
Mare- famous street and falafel

Artists I love!
Emille Galle- a big art nouveou designer
Dechamps


NEW YEARS!!!
Here I am with Cecily and Noemie

Deborah and her fiance Max are with me. They are Noemie's good friends from preschool.

Cecily is my best friend from SF who was studying in Cairo, Egypt who met me in Paris for a week and we got to spend New Years Together.

This is Juliette, the girl who I studied with in DC, who had the New Year's party.

A picture of me in DC

Hello, I know I know, I have not written in a while....

HAPPY NEW YEAR BY THE WAY!!!

I am about to write all about my winter break from school...in Paris...but first talk a look at this picture of me on the left side with my Croatian friend Iva in the Hart building on the hill.

http://www.usfca.edu/mccarthycenter/programs/DC.html

Love,
Devon