The past week

I think I need to practice taking level photos.

Alright, so I'm clearly already becoming less consistent in my postings. This is where you all pretend to be shocked. I had a pretty busy weekend though, so we will blame it on that. It was my birthday on Saturday and Julia came in from Prague to celebrate. Along with a nice birthday dinner and drinks at a pub, we spent the day venturing around Paris.
We made sure to do some typical things like getting crepes and macaroons, because I clearly don't do this things otherwise. We also walked from my apartment to the Bastille and on to Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a pretty incredible church, especially when the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame is being recited by Julia as the real history of the church.
The church was very beautiful and I was surprised to find out it was celebrating its 850th birthday. Makes my 21 years seem pretty damn insignificant. The tower you can climb was closed to visitors, however, due to cold. Additionally, having attend USC for the past 3 years has caused me to say Notre Dame consistently incorrectly. It isn't a french term to me anymore, it is a rival school.

Nerdy Picture of the week: LED pars and ellipsoidals in ND.

This is the main problem I have pinpointed with my time in France so far. Sightseeing is a ton of fun, and its awesome to just walk from point to point in Paris because even the everyday architecture is beautiful, but when its cold it makes it so much more difficult. I really can't wait till its nice enough outside to wander the city until you get tired then sit down and enjoy a picnic lunch. That sounds so ideal. Because as it stands now, I wander around until I get either too numb to continue or I'm just tired and then spend an awkward amount of time in a cafe trying to re-gain feeling in my limbs. This is dually bad. First, you start to get awkward looks when you've been sitting with the same, now very cold, cafe au lait in front of you for an hour. Second, as someone who already relies too heavily on caffeine, I am now consuming insane amounts of it.
Either way! Sight seeing has been fun and I really do enjoy just walking around.

As a completely unrelated side note, it amazes me what people do while bicycling here. They have these rental bicycles all over the city, so a lot of people use them to commute. I am still shocked when I'm walking down the street though and see someone smoking a cigarette while biking, or, eating a baguette while biking. Its pretty great. These certainly aren't sorority girls sipping on their starbucks or talking on their phones (both of which I am equally guilty of on occasion).