free to roam

i've already started to go back and read old blogs occasionally. and i am amazed every time i read that i was amazed how much time had already passed. 2 days! woah! 2 weeks.. what?! time flies here, its ridiculous. but i guess i will just keep realizing in blog after blog how long i have been here. as well as repeatedly mentioning how much i love it here. i'm kind of amazed at how quickly a foreign country can feel like home - even when i wish i spoke the language a lot better.. though i have improved since arriving..

it's been almost 2 months now and i still can't get enough of this place. i see friends around me start to get a little (or more than a little) homesick and it makes me a kind of sad because i couldn't imagine going home anytime soon. but i guess that just shows how much i have always wanted to study abroad - and i am glad that, at least so far, the experience has been far from a let down. i mean sure i have moments where i kind of miss my friends. or certain things from home... like splotch. but for the most part. i couldn't be happier here :)

highlights recently?
today i got my carte de sejour! in case you don't know what that means, it means i can officially leave the country and come back without being told i need to be on the next plane home. which is great since we have a week off at the end of october and i'll be spending most of it in germany!
to get this carte de sejour we had to have a doctors appointment. which was kind of interesting since they would get an xray, then send you back to the waiting room, then come and get you again to ask you questions, then send you back to the waiting room, then come get you again to run another test, then send you back to the waiting room where you waited a little bit longer before finally receiving your carte de sejour! anddd we got to keep our xrays.. which is cool i guess? i think i can even see what my minor scoliosis looks like! .. and i mean that's cool right? sure.

other highlights:
i finally saw the inside of hotel de ville! which my host dad described as a small version of versaille. he was in some meeting there about the city's budget or something, so he told me that i could bring a friend if i wanted and meet him outside a little bit before and he would take us inside to look around! he was right. this place is beautiful.

in the courtyard

and how cool is it that my host dad was actually in the cool room in a meeting?!

sad this picture is blurry :(

my host dad was sitting at the desk at the far right of this picture that isn't entirely shown

after sheila and i saw hotel de ville, we decided a pain au chocolat sounded like an amazing idea. and then we saw the maxi pain au chocolat.. and how could we resist?!

 oh and i'm still obsessed with le parc de la tete d'or. except i finally got to go back! and this time i dragged two friends who hadn't been yet :) and we saw all of the animals again. including the elephants who were rather amusing since they were begging for food since some people (who evidently don't know how to read) decided it would be fun to feed them.

how cute :) and earlier.. a different one was doing a little dance!

oh. and the little baby in the family picture (my host parent's grandson)? he loves me. he's here on tuesday nights and wednesdays. and last night he just had the biggest smile on his face whenever he looked at me. and i kept making him laugh. and to think he was afraid of me when he first got here! :)