Only 5 Days!!!

It is now only 5 days until we leave for Paris! We leave bright and early Wednesday morning and are taking a bus instead of flying. It is about a 10 hour drive. We will be in Paris for 5 days. Normally Saint Francis Study Abroad students are in Paris for 20 days, but they had to cut our time back to 5 days. Therefore, we have a full schedule while we are there. From what I hear, we are seeing the most popular spots of Paris. I am really excited to see the Eiffel Tower. My friends and I are planning on going to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, which I hear is an amazing view.

We are in Paris until March 16, when our Spring Break finally begins! We fly out of Paris at 6:35 AM on the 16th and will be headed for Athens, Greece. There is a group of 5 of us spending Spring break together. We are in Greece from the 16th to the 22nd of March. For the rest of our spring break, we are then flying to Rome, Italy, where we will be until the 26th. The best part about this part of the trip is that MY PARENTS ARE COMING!!! Their flight lands in Rome the same day as mine! I am so excited to see them and I am very glad that they decided to come!

We fly from Rome to Toulouse on the 26th of March. We do not have to be back to Ambialet until the 28th, so we are going to spend some time in Toulouse and Albi before catching a bus back to Ambialet on the 28th. I will say goodbye to my parents in Toulouse on the 27th. From there they are going to see Carcassonne and Barcelona. I helped them plan their trip! It will be sad to say goodbye to them after seeing them, but after spring break, I will only have a month longer in France. Time seems to be going by really quickly. It will be good to go home and get some of the things that I miss most. The #1 thing that I miss is milk. I have a feeling I will be drinking a lot of milk when I get home. The milk they have here plain and simply, is not milk. I am also looking forward to home cooked meals!

I'm sorry it has been a while since I wrote a blog. After we got back from Barcelona, I had so much work to get caught up on before leaving once again for Paris. Since Barcelona, I think I have written 5 papers, taken at least 3 exams, and done a lot of homework. Now you see why I haven't had anything exciting to blog about. I have been studying 24/7 it seems like. This morning I had a 3-hour French exam. It was SO long! It is the longest test I have ever taken other than the SAT/ACT. I thought some parts of the exam were easy, and some parts of it were hard, so we will just have to wait and see how I did. We should have our grades on Monday, which will be our last French class before Paris.

Last Saturday we had our second anatomy exam. All our exams are online, except this one because we had to label the circulatory pathways, which couldn't be done online. There were supposed to be arrows on the exam that showed us the direction of the flow chart. We did not know there were supposed to be arrows, and when the exams were printed, the arrows did not show up. When we got the exam, I was so confused. It was the hardest exam of my life without the arrows. I felt so stupid not knowing what to do. Finally, I asked the class if anyone else was as lost as I was on the exam. Everyone said yes, they just hadn't said anything. We Skyped Dr. Langer, our online anatomy professor, and she told us that there should be arrows on the exam to guide us and she showed us where they should have been. It made the exam so much easier! Thankfully I said something, or I think myself, and the rest of the class, would have done very poorly on the exam. I think I did pretty well on the exam. Since it was a written test, we have to wait until they are shipped to Saint Francis University for Dr. Langer to grade. Therefore, it will be a while until I have that grade back.

I am going to go relax with friends for the rest of the evening. I have a lot of laundry and packing to do this weekend in preparation for Paris and spring break. I am limited to a 40 lb checked bag for my flights over spring break, so I will have to limit what I take to Paris with me.

I hope everyone has a good weekend! Stay posted for stories from my time in Paris, Greece, and Italy!

P.S....I have had some people asking me if they "Spring Ahead" in France, like we do in the U.S. They do change their clocks here the same time as we do, so I will still be 6 hours ahead of everyone back home. Just wanted to let you know in case you were wondering!