Snow Covered Paris

Being born and raised in Houston, Texas I never actually got to experience what I'd call a real winter. Sure we received the occasional snow every 8 years or so, but it never actually stuck to the ground. So imagine my excitement when I actually got to live in Paris for a winter. However, while it's always cold here and quite freezing most of the time and does snow about every other day, much to my disappointment the snow just wasn't sticking to the ground. But alas, wednesday morning I was awoken by a phone call and was about to go back to bed when I thought I saw something out on my balcony. I pulled the curtains aside and much to my surprise my balcony along with all the rooftops were covered in snow! So naturally I get up, make nick get up, get ready as quickly as possible and drag nick out to go play in the snow. We hop on the metro and decided to go to the Tuileries and the Louvre. Sadly when we arrived we found out that for some odd reason the French had closed all the parks which meant we weren't playing in the Tuileries. But we did manage to get some good pics and throw a few snowballs. We then started walking home by passing through the Louvre then crossing the river to Ile de la cite and Notre Dame then strolled through Ile Sully Morland then back over the river and back to the apartment. It was amazing to see Paris covered in snow and I was so happy to finally be having what I'd call my first winter. (I don't want to hear anything from any Northerners, my roommates have already laughed at me enough). So anyway, here is a pic to prove that all that has been spoken is true.

She works hard for the money, so hard for the money

Hard to believe that just last night I was complaining about not having an internship. Why you ask? Well I wake up this morning to my phone vibrating, and being too tired to actually answer for fear that I might have to speak french, I let it ring. I finally drag myself out of bed hearing that I have a message to which I listen to, to find out it's the guy from gofluent.com. For those of you who don't know, I interviewed with him about 3 weeks ago, but never really heard back (well he said he'd call back but never did) so I figured I was getting a blow off. Well as it turns out he's been in the phillipines for 2 weeks and germany for a week before that. So I return his call to which he asks me to come in and meet with his colleague today. I show up, meet with her, and well now I have my internship! It's not exactly the kind of work I want to do, but it's experience and they're paying me enough to cover my rent and my bills, which is great for France b/c they usually don't pay interns much here. I'm very excited to have that stress alleviated from my life and hopefully this means I can get my residence permit soon so I can actually be working/staying in this country legally. I don't actually start till monday, so I have time to try and get some things settled before then, like getting the paperwork and what not done (which is always a process here), so I'll have to let everyone know exactly what I'm doing and how it is next week.

In other news, I received an invitation to hear Congressman Ben Chandler (from Kentucky) speak on "foreign policy" and "how to mend U.S.-French relations". I put these two subjects in quotes because as it turned out, it was more of a "how can we better the democratic party's stance" meeting. Being a republican from Texas I found much of this quite entertaining, but was still a little annoyed at the lack of foreign policy talk that went on. Not to mention the republican bashing as well as a little texas bashing that took place, which is odd seeing as how I got invited through the University of Texas alumni association. But it was interesting and at the very least I got to mingle with a few americans. So all in all I actually had a good day all around, and I believe I owe it all to the Dr.Pepper (and Nick; he's the one that got me my first interview with gofluent), for eventhough I laughed when it claimed that it could solve all of my problems, I drank it anyway and now it seems that it actually is working. Perhaps this week I shall return to the american grocery store in search of another Dr.Pepper.

Baby Steps

As you all know I've finally decided to create my own website and with that my own blog as well. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing with the website seeing as how I'm pretty retarded when it comes to stuff like that. So far though with the help of Sanjiv I've managed to take my first few steps by purchasing my own domain name and paying for a hosting service. Now comes the difficult part where I actually try to design my webpage. For this I'm yet again recruting Sanjiv's help and this time I'm also asking for Rogge's help. Hopefully it'll be a good website, it should be seeing as how I have plenty of time on my hands these days. Well not exactly, I'm still unemployed and should still be looking for my internship, but I can only stand to do that for so many hours a day. But it is this pathetic life of an unemployed student that has driven me to create not only this blog but the website as well, so at least something good is coming out of it.

So here is where it all begins, from this point forward I will use this space to post my various stories/ancedotes/ramblings/ventings/and whatever else comes to mind that I have a desire to share with the world. As always I will do my best to make it amusing as well as informing. With that said, I bid you good night.