Ma nouvelle famille...

Yesterday I moved in with my host family. I will catch you up on my first week of orientation in Paris and then I will tell you about my host family. I left off with a visit to the Louvre. After the Louvre visit the next day there was a big language placement exam at the Sorbonne to double check that I am qualified to be taking courses here etc. Thursday there was a lecture in the morning and I went to the George Pompidou Center. It is a really funky modern art museum built by George Pompidou who was the last President before Jacques Chirac. I went through the new permanent exhibit on classic modern art and also the Yves Klein exhibit. He was a big modern painter in the 60s who was known for monochromes and inventing colors like “International Klein Blue”. He was an interesting guy who lived a short and intense life producing some great work. Yesterday there was another lecture and then a visit to the La Musée d’Orsay. It holds many of the classic French and other European impressionist pieces. There are a lot of famous pieces by Monet, Van Gough, and others. It was a beautiful museum, but my favorite so far has been the Pompidou center. Today I went to Reimes which is in the Champagne region. There is a really beautiful Cathedral were all the French Kings were corinated. After looking around the Cathedral I went to a Champagne vineyard. I had no idea Champagne is so involved to make! It takes almost four years and two fermentation process to make..no wonder its so expensive!
Ok, enough about the French and their alcohol. Now that I have caught you up on the cultural activities over the past few days it is time to fill you in on my host family. They live right outside the city and get this…they have seven kids! Yes, SEVEN. Since I come from a smaller immediate family this will definitely be an adjustment. The youngest is around four and the kids are very active in fencing and piano (typical French right?!). The family has been hosting students for almost five years now I think and they are very nice. When I first got to the house the four year old "helped" me bring my luggage in and we had lunch after I unpacked. OK, I need to go into the city so I need to end here, but I will post again soon!

Ohhh, also thanks for those of you who have written me. Your e-mails have helped curve some of my homesickness so thank you for the kind words and I will be replying soon since time to reply has been very limited lately. One other thing for those of you who asked me, if you want to post a comment on the blog, click commentaire and then you should be able to just post from there comments.

Jess