Days 23, 24, 25, and 26 (Last days in Paris)

Final days in Paris :(

July 23- Last day of community service, which was actually really sad since I really enjoyed my service a lot. We had a speaker come in who was a politician of the "banlieues" of ParisI can honestly say that I have no idea what happened on the 23rd. Whatever it was though, I'm sure it was wonderful. I miss Paris a ton!

July 24- Last day the whole group was together :(

Basically we had our last classes, which was really sad. For French we had our last class in a cafe in the St. Michel area. For art we went to the Musee du Quai Branly. And in that slot of time where I usually would have gone to my community service, i decided to go to Pompidou one more time (because it was definitely my favorite museums out of all of the ones I went to). If you'd like to see more of the pics I took at Pompidou, I'm considering making a flickr account. Will give link once I make it.

We got handed out our certificate thingies to make official the fact that we all graduated the program. Then we all headed out for a fancy dinner in the St. Germain des-Pres area. I had celery remboulade (I think, I don't remember exactly the name of the dish) as an entree, followed by lamb and rice as a main plate, and a chocolate genoise for dessert. Very tasty indeed.

July 25- Went to Angelina (a really swanky chocolate place in Paris, right across from the Tuileries Garden) in the morning. We had hot chocolate, macaroons, and omelettes. It was very tasty! Then after that, a friend and I went window shopping along the Champs Elysees. Went flea market shopping after that.

The group took a trip to Vaux le Vicomte, a mini version of Versailles (basically) about an hour and a half outside of Paris. I liked it a lot better than Versailles just for the sheer fact that it wasn't so absurdly huge and grandiose- it was a lot easier to handle. The garden was very beautiful also. We stayed there until about 11:30PM and then took a charter bus back home. It was the last time we were all together as a group :(


























July 26- This is the day that everyone else left Paris (I left the next day). It was sad to see everyone go, but at least I got to see them all off. In the morning I woke up really early to see off the first batch of kids, then I ran to the Eiffel Tower and back, returned to say bye to the next group, went with my friend and bought croissants and fruits and picnicked at the Eiffel Tower, said by to more kids, went to lunch with a friend, did some flea market shopping, went to the Luxembourg Gardens to read, came back home and ate dinner, packed up, and then went to bed. It was a bittersweet day because I had to say bye to everyone and was left by myself overnight until I had to leave for my flight the next morning, but at the same time I also got one extra day in Paris that the other kids didn't get.

Departure- left the foyer at 9AM and took the RER to CDG airport. Arrived back to SF at 8PM local time (which is 5AM Paris time!). Now I'm back home :)