I have two whole days to update you on.  You better be excited.

12/31/09:
My flight was pretty uneventful and definitely not bad.  I got a window seat, and although the man next to me insisted on taking up more than his fair share of space on the arm rest and elbowing me in the ribs, I was pretty comfortable.  I, per usual, did not sleep very well, but that's ok.  They served dinner AND breakfast... the dinner was pretty good (and filling), but the breakfast was lacking.  I knew the yogurt was going to be bad (read: unflavored) when the whole cup only had 50 calories.  The best part was each seat had its own touchscreen TV where you could watch any movie or TV show you wanted, or play games, or listen to music (radio or CDs)... FO FREE.  So I watched The Hangover, listened to Messiaen, and played Mah-Jong.  Sweet.

Once we landed, getting through customs was pretty easy, and here's the best part: when we got to baggage claim, not only were there very FEW people there, OUR BAGS WERE RIGHT THERE WAITING FOR US.  I know you might not believe me, but I promise it's true.  We got a sweet shuttle to take us to the hostel, and as a Christmas present, the driver took us around Paris... so I saw pretty much every recognizable monument in Paris within the first hour I was here.  When we finally got to the hostel, we found out we couldn't get into our rooms until 4 pm.  This was at... 7:30 am in the morning?  Needless to say, we were not a happy bunch, but we made the best of it and wandered around our area of the Latin Quarter for a while.  We found this amazing street with a bunch of open air stores and vendors... definitely going to blow some money there in the future.  The food looked and smelled amazing, and I had crepes.  AH.  Delicious.  We eventually headed back to our instructor's hotel, and I napped in an armchair until it was time to go check in to the hostel.

So maybe I'm an idiot for not expecting this because I haven't been out of the country ever... but our hostel is TINY.  I'm talking the size of a single in a UMD highrise, but with four people instead of one.  It's insane.  We're making it work, but it gets really frustrating really quickly.  And the lock-out hours are really obnoxious, especially since they didn't really clean anything today.  That's fine.

Anyway, we ate at this super swanky restraurant last night (the one I linked to in my first blog).  I had champagne, wine (that I actually didn't hate... that's impressive for me), a lobster... thing, braised doe, and this amazing dessert that kind of resembled tiramisu, but not really.  It was so good, but I was stuffed when I left.  We then walked to the Eiffel Tower, which took about 2 hours, but we saw Notre Dame, the Louvre, and some pretty sweet bridges.  We got REALLY close to the Eiffel Tower and I took some pictures, I'll post them later.  That was awesome, but a little anticlimactic.  I was expecting massive fireworks or something, but there wasn't even a countdown.  Ah well.

AND THEN.  Oh my goodness.  It took us 3 hours to get back to the hostel.  There were SO MANY PEOPLE, and by people, I mean extraordinarily intoxicated people.  They had police blocking off metro stations because there were just too many people, and I counted no fewer than 5 puddles of vomit while walking down one street.  Everyone was screaming and yelling "Bonne année", which was fine, but some sketchy guys got a little out of hand.  We tried to get on a few different metro stops but it just wasn't happening, so we walked a decent portion of the way until we found one that would first, let us in, and second, get us back in a timely fashion.  It got a little scary at times, and it was absolutely freezing, but we all got back safe and sound and promptly crashed in our squeaky bunk beds.

Good times to be had by all!  I'll write about today later... this entry ended up being longer than I expected and I'm ready to procrastinate some more.  I hope everyone had a great New Year!!