Bonjour!

Yes, the night was absolutely hilarious and so much fun! I will talk about that later though; first, the important stuff like what I did in class today. Today was a lecture in management class by Professor Anouck Adrot. I wish I knew how to actually pronounce her name! She is French and her English is practically perfect. I have such a respect for people who can speak more than one language fluently because I know how much effort has to go in to learning a language. She taught us about crises management. It was pretty interesting and I didn't realize that, technically, an emergency, disaster, and crises are actually completely different. After our lecture, it was lunch time with obviously meant time to buy tickets for ROME!!! We are going next weekend and I am so excited to be see all the sights (and to continue our hilarious music video in Rome! Haha!) Then, in French class, we learned about numbers and she helped us with grammar. She is such a sweet teacher and I am so happy I switched classes because I understand much more in this class and can actually learn instead of wondering what in the world is going on the whole time because I would sit there wondering what everyone was saying so quickly. As soon as class finished, Erin and I dropped our stuff off at our rooms, grabbed our purses, rallied the crew, and we all headed to the Champs d'Elysees for a day of shopping, karaoke, and dancing.

However, when we got to Paris, the karaoke and shopping thing did not go quite as planned because we did not know it was a huge Gay Pride holiday until we got to Paris! Today was by far one of my favorite days so far because it was the Gay Pride festival in Paris which means that here was a HUGE parade that I had no idea was going to happen today. It was so fun and there was a ton of crazy, flamboyant costumes and awesome music and floats. They basically closed down the entire Bastille area for this huge event and there was a concert with a big stage and performers and a DJ and the entire Bastille round-a-bout was filled with people. To put it in perspective, this round-a-bout can have about fifteen cars next to eachother at once going around it so it is a gigantic street area. It was absolutely packed and it was so much fun! I can't even explain the crazy costumes and makeup that I saw, I will just have to post pictures sometime soon. There were rainbow flags eveywhere and everyone was just dancing in the street having the time of their life. I took a lot of videos so you can all see what it was like. What I liked most about it was that the majority of the music was American music. It was songs that I listen to all the time like Party Rock and it was funny because the French people were singing along to the songs but they were just kind of singing what they think the lyrics sound like since they actually don't understand English so the lyrics they were singing were funny to me since it made no sense. It was exactly how I'm sure I sound when I sing songs that have Spanish in them and just sing what I think the words sound like since I don't actually know Spanish. It was an amazing day overall!

At the gay parade, I realized how much acceptance there is of differences in America as opposed to other countries. The girl from Russia, Anastasia, was pointing at gay people and saying, "Look! A gay!" and we were all telling her not to point and she was saying that in Russia, there would never be a gay pride day or parade or anything. She said they are not accepted there and she had never seen a gay person before. It made me proud to live in a country where differences are accepted and everyone is free to be how they want.

Anyway, it was quite the day! We all went to dinner afterward at this famous creperie that had savory crepes that were basically like sandwiches. So delicious! Then, we all went dancing after finally finding a club that would let us all in. We got denied from two clubs for being American and they just didn't like us. So that made for an interesting night, but we finally found a club that was realy cool and everyone was nice and not snooty and we had a great time! The night became even more of an adventure when it took two hours to try to find a taxi when we wanted to go home.

It was amazing day though, and the Gay Pride parade definitely made it memorable because I had never been to anything like that!

Tomorrow, we are going to see the inside of the Notre Dame and shop a little so it should be another great day in Paris. J

Au Revoir,

Tori