To start where I left off, I have to go back to last Thursday. That was the day of our final excursion for the week. We had to wake up at 5:00 am, as I mentioned earlier, to go to Halles de Rungis. Halles de Rungis is the world's largest food market in the entire world. That is, for EVERY kind of food. There are larger ones for a specific type of food, i.e. the fish market of Tokyo. But this market is the largest general market in the world. It is where all of the restaurants of Paris buy their food in bulk, and even other countries get there food from there. That being said, you can imagine the size of it. It's basically the size of a small village and even has bars, laundromats, and restaurants within.But to back up, waking up to go on this adventure was VERY difficult. We'd all gotten maybe 5 hours of sleep. We piled into the bus that was provided to get there (luckily! the metro wouldn't be possible and there would've been a LOT of walking involved since we took the bus from place to place within Les Halles). We promptly fell asleep again, but I managed to take a picture of the french sunrise. The sun sets so late yet rises just as early here, it's bizarre.
When we got there we met up with our tour guide who luckily for me, spoke english. I probably could have gotten by, but that early in the morning none of us wanted to think about translating everything. We were also informed that we had to wear these white suits and hairnets which were oh-so-flattering. Our first stop was the meat-packing district. Firstly, I've spared you all pictures of that building for two reasons. One, I know that several of my vegetarian readers wouldn't find it appealing at all (I didn't even find it appealing, just kind of gross). And two, it was FRIGID in there. If I'd tried to move my arms away from my body to take a picture, my teeth would've started chattering. They had to keep the entire building about 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit, and we of course were all wearing shorts and tank-tops since it has been so hot recently. I even tried to wear my new hat, thinking that it was a cute open-air market, but I was quite wrong and couldn't wear it after all. The entire operation was very industrial and clean in all of the departments that we visited.
For our second stop, we headed to the cheese building. One thing to think about, is the SMELL. When you get that much cheese put together, you get some very fragrant odors. But it was pretty incredible since we saw wheels of cheese about the size of a table. In this picture you can see how flattering the outfit was :). 
The second picture I thought was just very cute (may or may not have made me think about Brandon :) ). The one thing that I found to be a bit disappointing about Les Halles was that we didn't get to sample any of the food during the tour. Apparently in order to buy anything, you have to buy a whole box such as the heart-cheese-picture. Which is a LOT of cheese, even for 15 people. We got to eat brunch after wards but it would have been nice to taste some of it on-site.
The third place we visited was the produce section which was thankfully not temperature-controlled like the previous two. We were able to take our time a bit instead of trying to figure out the fast way of leaving without frost-bite. We saw probably every type of fruit and vegetable I've ever seen in my whole life in one spot. I particularly enjoyed the fruit of course since I LOVE fruit. 
We also mountains of produce from other areas such as this picture of a garlic bin! That's a LOT of garlic haha. And in the mushroom department, yes, there was an entire area devoted to mushrooms, one of the grocers brought out a truffle for us to look at which was very exciting. As you can see in the picture, it was in its own specially-padded container to protect it from all harm. You'd think they were made of pure gold, but really, they practically are with how expensive they are. Truffles are very fragrant I must say. You could smell it from about 3 feet away, and it smelled very good too. 
For our final stop, we headed to the cut-flowers warehouse. This was probably my favorite of the areas, even if the grocers were not as nice as in the others. The tour guide said that he had no idea why they are so stand-off-ish but that's just the way things are. However, I still enjoyed seeing the thousands upon thousands of flowers. They were just so beautiful. The sunflowers of course, reminded me of one Trudy-Lee :DTo give you an idea of how many flowers you could find in this place:
And I thought that these were SO beautiful. I've never seen roses that were two different colors before :)
Lunch after the tour was okay, but we couldn't tell if it was breakfast or lunch. They gave us orange juice, but with a plate of meat followed by a plate of cheese and then dessert which was kind of like a creamy cream-cheese with a bit of raspberry sauce. I added some sugar to it which made it quite good. The meal as a whole wasn't phenomenal but I've seen many french people eating such a thing so it was probably very authentic.On Friday, we had class for the first time since our midterm which worked pretty much in the same manner as it did before our midterm. I learned that I got an A for the first part of the program which was super exciting! We are getting 9 credit hours for this program and I know that 3 of those are already As :D
After class, I got bored by sitting around at the MIJE and went for a walk in the general direction of Shakespeare and Company. Unfortunately however, they had closed early for some reason and I couldn't go inside. But on my walk I got some interesting pictures of Paris. There's a spot in Paris which I just love since it's a popular place for random people to gather and you never know what you're going to see. One day I saw a bad of men who were all at least 60 playing Louis Armstrong music, the next I saw a one-man circus act, and Friday, I saw a man who had made a 'water-garden' out of random material. He's made fountains out of up-side-down umbrellas which I though was pretty neat.
I also got several pictures of the beautiful sunset and of what is known as the 'Lock Bridge.' The Lock-Bridge is a bridge in Paris where people put their locks and leave them there. Sometimes it has a sentimental message or a lovers' promise, or sometimes nothing at all. I thought it was very sweet and interesting at the same time.On Saturday, I had a very interesting day. To start off I went shopping for a bit. There was a store down the street that had a dress that mom and I saw and she wanted me to get it for myself. Unfortunately it wasn't there anymore, they must have sold them all :( But I will keep my eye out for another dress to take home with me. One of the other girls in the program went with me and we eventually went to a crepe place around the corner from the MIJE for lunch. We were eating and these two girls sat at the table next to us. They clearly didn't speak ANY french whatsoever so eventually we helped them get their order in and we struck up a conversation. They were from Indiana and Minnesota and had just graduated from grad school and were backpacking across Europe. They were staying at the MIJE as well which was a nice surprise. They had graduated in public health, which was awesome since that's what I'm looking into doing :)
They were only around for a few more hours before they had to leave to go to Spain and wanted to know what else they should see in Paris. I offered to show them some places that may not be as common such as the Latin Quarter and the area around there. We walked around for a good bit and it was very nice to meet some new people outside of the program, even if it didn't improve my french much. They even told me about some interesting places that they'd seen because of their guide book that I hadn't heard about. The whole afternoon was very nice and a good change from the set routine. I like showing new people around Paris since it reminds me how magical the city is even if by now I've gotten used to seeing it. Here's a picture of the three of us, I hope that maybe I'll get to see them again someday:
After the two of them left I didn't do anything too crazy. Just had some dinner and skyped with Brandon, which was very nice since we hadn't had the opportunity to in a while. I miss everyone at home still, but it's getting easier since the end is so close. Don't know yet what I'm doing for the day, but I have some homework to tackle. Next week we have class the first three days then an excursion on Thursday. I can't believe we only have two weeks left, it's kind of amazing. I hope that everyone is having a good weekend, and I will hopefully post again VERY soon :DLove to all,
Austin
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