Hello There

Hey friends. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Anyway, I survived Amsterdam. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I didn't have much fun and the city is a little creepy. But I had plenty of good beer and even tried some pretty good dutch food. I'll post some pictures in a few days, but I don't have time right now. Last weekend we went to Versailles. It's pretty neat, but (and I feel horrible saying this), it's just another insanely large French palace. I know that sounds funny, but it's kind of true. After a while you start to feel like, okay, this was built by Louis XIV in the 1600's and there's a lot of guilding, and mirrors, and nice gardens, show me something I haven't seen. Anyway, rather than taking it for granted, I just take it as a reminder that I'm in Paris and I'm loving it. While it doesn't sound like Versailles was much fun, I did enjoy it and I will share some pictures from there as well. I met a French girl the other evening. I was walking to the Metro after class and I walked by the Pantheon and thought "hey Pantheon, what's up?" (because again, I see it everyday and it's pretty commonplace at this point) and when I looked back down to see where I was walking, there was an extremely cute French girl standing there. I thought to myself "now that's nice". Then she came up to me and asked me for directions to the Metro. At first, I wasn't sure that this was actually happening, I thought maybe Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out of the alley or something, so I said excuse me and asked her to repeat her question. She asked me again "Where is the nearest Metro?" So, I whipped out my map, and showed here where we were, and where the two nearest Metro stops were. Then it hit me, "I'm walking to the Metro right now". So I told her to follow me. We started walking and neither of us was saying anything. So I asked her her name and she told me it was Emily. We continued talking and I learned that she is 21, she's from Normandy, she is studying agronomy (which I later discovered is the science of agriculture), etc. The entire time I couldn't really believe that this was happening, but I figured I'd just go with it. So we get to the Metro stop and I start walking down the stairs to the train that goes my direction and I just assumed she would do the same, because why wouldn't she. She stopped me and said that she had to go the opposite direction and then she looked at me for a few seconds like "what happens now?" So, being the suave guy that I am, I said "okay, well I'll see you later" and she goes "Oh, okay, well thank you, goodbye". In retrospect, that was the worst possible way that I could have handled the situation. But at least I got some practice speaking French as our entire conversation was in French. So anyway, my new goal is to find Emily, and my second goal, if the first doesn't work out, is to find a cute French girl because in the words of one of my professors "at least if a French girls says something stupid, it sounds pretty".

Anyway, I am also trying to find new things to do in Paris or to see things that I haven't yet seen. I have an entire list of places already, but if you have any good suggestions, let me know. Talk to you later.