Un mois.

Martine reminded me today that I have now been here for a month. A MONTH. I have lived in Paris for a month. Crazy pants. I feel like I've barely done anything! Well, except for get very acquainted with the Louvre (where I've seen paintings I've waited for years to view in person, sculptures that changed the world (the Code of Hammurabi...I'm not just being artsy by saying that), and works of art with no one in front of them that WAY surpass the Mona Lisa in terms of awesome-ness, which is the main attraction it seems), strolled along the Seine countless times, eaten my weight several times over in crepes and baguettes, learned to parler avec les francais un peu, wandered down les petites rues et les grandes boulevards, etc etc etc...So much, and yet so little. Every day I find more things I want to do here. If only I could stay forever, I might have enough time.

I've had plenty of "Paris Moments" just as I've had plenty of "New York Moments"
The one that sticks out in my mind (even though it was so cliche...I don't care), and is perhaps on the level with that one time I moved to New York City as a young girl of just 18, and dragged all of my possessions in my suitcase through the Columbia gates while "New York State of Mind" played in the background (not in my imagination either, it was actually being played on campus as part of the move-in festivities):
I was walking along the Seine, at sunset, on the last warm day since then in Paris, and after thinking I could never possibly be in a more beautiful place (I started by the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees, and saw houseboats, the Eiffel Tower with its hourly lights, Beaux Arts style buildings and bridges galore, statues of French rulers and petite decorations, then the Louvre and the book sellers on the river, etc...) I came to Pont Neuf. Off one side, I could see the Eiffel Tower, the other had a view of towers of Notre Dame, and both sides had locks left by couples on the fencing, as part of the tradition of leaving that sign of l'amour on the oldest bridge in Paris), and a musician started to play a saxophone version of "La Vie en Rose" right as the sun dipped under the horizon and the Eiffel Tower started glittering. It was absurdly cliche, but was a Paris moment that I will never forget.