Day 1

Neil and I went to Kellers for breakfast before he took me to the airport. It's sad that that's one thing I'm really going to miss. We drove up to O'Hare, decided that we didnt want to go all the way into the city to take 90/94 or take the toll road, so we settled on a parallel highway. It turned out to be not much of a highway at all but the main road of every suburb we passed, complete with range-rovers and suburbans at every stoplight.
We got the airport though, checked my bag (50.5lbs because I am amazing) and I got through security in about ten minutes. Neil left. Five minutes until boarding they tell us we are going to be an hour late, which means that certain people won't make their connecting flights. Of course, I am one of those people. I get in line to talk to them, and behind me is a girl I recognize as the ref from waterpolo. We start talking and she's pretty cool, so I decided to hang out with her for the day. US Airways put us on a direct flight with American, which meant we had to go to baggage claim and get our stuff, take the train to the other terminal, and then go through security all over again. We went to check our bags with AA, but the woman started getting really mad. My new friend Kathleen is allergic to nuts and was trying to ask if there would be nuts in the food. The lady kept saying "we can't guarantee anything, you should have told us 24 hours in advance." We tried to explain that we were just moved from another airline, which had been notified in advance, but it didn't help, she kept saying that Kathleen might not be allowed on the plane. Eventually we got that worked out and headed over to security, where we got "randomly" selected and patted down. Awesome. The flight was fine, except that there was no storage above the middle aisle, so i accidentally opened the cabinet for the oxygen tanks thinking it was overhead storage.
We got to CDG, and were somehow able to navigate our way to the RER trains, buy the tickets, and make it to the Cité Universitaire without any major problems. Mainly small obstacles and triumphs every step of the way. On the train we met Jonathon from New York. His wife produces fashion shows for Chloe. Next week is fashion week in Paris so he was here to spend a romantic weekend with her before she gets too swamped. He seemed legit, so we talked to him for a while.
We got settled in, I took a nap and discovered that my alarm clock doesn't work, and then spent a ton of euros on train passes. Olivia, Andrew, Kathleen, and I went up the river and walked around the tourist areas for a long time, taking as many pictures as possible until my camera died. Liv got them all though... We picked a little café for dinner and happened to pick the one playing country music and serving cheeseburgers. Overall it was a pretty good day. I like Paris enough to have a great time for ten weeks, although I'm not sure how I would handle living here longer.