The Arrival in Paris- Or, Cheating the [French] System

Bonjour ladies and gents! 
 We have arrived in the city of love and the adventures have begun. 

To give you the full background of our first two days, I'm going to start from our arrival at the airport. First off, our planning to find each other there was quite terrible. Rachel arrived at 11 a.m. and I arrived at 5:30 in the evening. We sort of talked about her waiting for me at the baggage claim and then take a shuttle to the infamous Agil Hotel (which we will discuss later.) Well, I was never quite sure if she was going to wait for me or not, so the whole time in the plane I was praying  that somehow I would find her. Not only that but there were various Agil Hotels and I wasn't sure which one she had made the reservation for! 

So I arrive, and I see no trace of those precious golden locks of hers. Not to mention there are multiple baggage claims, so all hopes of finding her there were lost. I had no phone or internet, and of course I start getting worried...so naturally I start singing. I figured if I sang "Rachel" over and over she would come to me--sort of like a bird call. It didn't work. Luckily I found a tourist information desk and they called a shuttle for me. As it was pulling in to pick me up guess who I saw inside?? RACHEL! Such a lucky coincidence that we called the shuttle almost at the same time AND that I called the right Agil, which was Agil Hotel #7. 

This is the great hotel. First class trash, but great for the adventures.

There was not much to do, but it was fortunate that we had a grocery store right across the street. 

Here is our first meal in Paris.

Olives-N-Chocolate. Good for the taste-buds... separately.

Alright so after our outing, we were jet-lagged so we went and explored the kitchen of the hotel at 2 am while everyone was asleep. The lady at the front desk told us that they served breakfast for 9 euros and we were curious about it. All we saw was jam and old baguettes, so we weren't very impressed. Unfortunately it was a Sunday and everything was closed in the morning, so we ended up having to take their breakfast. We nourished ourselves with some Nutella, plain yogurt, cheese, apricots, and chocolate cereal. Their milk was warm and gross, so we decided to use the yogurt as a thick milk supplement. Yuuummmm....

 

After our luxurious breakfast,  it was time for the ride to the Cité Universitaire. 

There was this nice man from Chile that I bonded with at the hotel, so he offered to drop us off at the metro instead of having to take the bus. Well it was quite nice, but once we got to the metro the carrying of our luggage and violins was quite troublesome. Rachel was carrying like 70 lbs and as you can see, she was struggling much more than I was since I had to time to take this picture. 

Kills me every time.

Finally we arrive at our destination and our housing plan of going the cheaper route and cheating the system kind of backfired a little bit. It turns out the security in this place is quite intense, and they don't let people in the building if they don't have keys. Since Rachel and I decided to just get one room and split the cost, only she has a key. Which means only she can get in through the front desk. Which means we have to figure out how to sneak me into the building, but we have not yet figured out an efficient way to do so. We'll keep experimenting, but I might have to sleep in a bush for the rest of the month. Or hostels... exciting! We'll keep you updated. In the meanwhile, here's the view from our window!

So far the program has been fun. The people are very friendly and it seems like it might be quite the party. Today we had our placement tests and we begin classes tomorrow. Our first master class is on Saturday and our trios have to perform a movement of our pieces, so it's time to quit the playin' around and get to hustlin'. 

See ya later and have a nice life.