It was my first time stepping foot into another country. My friend (Julia) and I almost missed our plane on the way there. We hadn't planned much of anything except for buying our tickets there and back. The rest of our destinations were just ideas of places we had dreamt of visiting, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, the list goes on. All we had were round trip tickets, stomaches full of IPA, and a number to call when we got there. We had no idea what the next 14 days had in store for us but we couldn't wait to find out.

My first day in Paris was rainy. We got there (Charles De Gaulle Airport) at 6am New York time so we were pretty tired. We met up with Julia's best friend from home, Sylvia. She was studying abroad at La Sorbonne. After we checked into the hostel she was living in, Julia and I took a nap to beat the jet lag. We woke up around 8:00 pm and met Sylvia at the bar/restaurant she worked at on Rue Monge. The owner of the place made us an amazing pasta dish and brought out cheese plates. Along with our drinks, the food was on the house.

After work we met up with Sylvia's friend at The Long Hop. It wasn't bad, but also not what I expected out of an European bar. On the way over to it we caught a glimpse of Notre Dame and also stopped by the St-Michel Fountain. It was pretty cool to look down a random side street and see the Notre Dame Cathedral.

We had a 1:00 curfew at the hostel (on the Boulevard St-Michel) so we went back early. Sylvia went to sleep in her room because she had to take a train to Switzerland the next morning for a funeral. Julia and I smoked and wandered the halls of the student hostel. The first floor of the building was made up of a bunch of classrooms and a small lecture center. Compared to any university I've seen in the U.S., it was ancient (and creepy). We knew we shouldn't have been wandering and we didn't want to wear out our welcome. We also didn't want to be down there when someone discovered we had written "USA #1" on the blackboard. So, we journeyed back up a few floors and found an old bookcase in one of the hallways. It happened to be unlocked so we pulled out some of the books and laid in the hallway trying to read them. We promised the bookcase we'd be back and left to hang out on our balcony overlooking the courtyard. It was awesome.