Departure and Paris!

Hi everybody! Sorry it has taken me so long to update! It's been difficult getting to the computer in Paris. I'm actually in Madrid now, but I'll tell y'all of our trip so far. Oh, and this computer is a little difficult to type on, so if there are mistakes, bear with me.

So on Thursday, Stephanie and I were really nervous about leaving - not bad nerves, just "oh my gosh, I can't believe we're leaving for a month and living out of a backpack nerves." I'm sure y'all know what I'm talking about ;) Anywho, Stephanie follows me to the airport and we meet Emily up there. My friend from UT (Emily) is studying abroad in France for several weeks this summer and so we booked the same flight so that we could all hang out in Paris together for a while. All was going well until Stephanie and I go to check in our bags. Stephanie is trying to discretely navigate through her money belt (a difficult task, I might add) and realizes when she made copies of them for safety reasons, she left both her debit and credit card in her printer! Neither of could even be upset, we were just SO grateful that she noticed before we left, because we didn't even need our cards throughout the check-in process. This was sign number 1 that God was watching out for us. Her dad ran home real quick and grabbed them for her and got back in pleantly of time.Me, Emily, and Stephanie spelling out DFW

Once on the plane we were quite excited because these young French kids were sitting behind us. We thought it was cool to listen to them talk and thought perhaps they could be our friends for the trip over. Things did not go as planned. For some reason, these kids never sat still! I didn't get a wink of sleep because they kept kicking my chair. Arg. There was one point where you're in that stage where if you're not waken up you'll fall into your ever so pleasant slumber, and right before I was about to dive into the realm of this beautiful thing we call sleep I feel a BANG on the back of my chair. The French were not getting on my good side! Emily and I were both up the whole time. They played two movies, and for Ilona I will tell you which ones - Yes Man and Horton Hears a Who. But despite the lack of sleep, the plane ride was fine - nothing too exciting, and something I think I've already gone into too much detail about.

Once arriving in Paris, the excitement kicked in! All of our planning was starting to play out. We found our way through the airport, bought some metro tickets and proceeded to follow the directions to the hostel we were staying at.Our depature stop on the RER from the airport

Stephanie on the MetroStephanie and me waiting in line to buy our metro ticket at the airport. Backpacks in tow!

Luckily, Emily had great directions from her teacher about where the hostel was, so it didn't take us long. But, as I feared, when we got there, they had no record of me making a reservation. Luckily thought they had a room open for one night so we got that. It was really nice and the lady at the desk was so helpful. We loved it. We were told to check the next day to see if anyone would cancel their reservation so that we could stay the next night as well, but unfortunately, no one did. The place was called the Mije (pronounced me-juh..kind of)


These pictures are being difficult, but the top two are the inside of our room (with Emily and Stephanie passed out on their beds from a long day)

The bottom two are the Mije from across the street and the French street, and then that's me obviously cheesin' in front of the sign. I don't look like a tourist at all! (sense the sarcasm via internet please)


We got into Paris in the morning so we had the whole day to go explore, which I will get to in another post. I desperately need to go to bed, it's nearly 4am and I started this like an hour and a half ago. Sorry I couldn't go into more detail yet! I'll get there eventually, even if it takes until November to finish.

Thanks for all your prayers! I hope to update again very soon!