Paris Day 3

Today we met at the parking lot to take the coach bus to Versailles.  Once again the students came in the morning with stories of the previous nights with their french families.  Jared and Devin's family joined Ian and Kristian - the families have kids the same age.  The boys played video games with the french family guys .... Jared said that he started calling the younger brother random vocab words like : you are a bird... and the 10 year old would say that he was a cow .....and it went on and on for a while.  Needless to say - they were getting along great!

Audrey and Nica's family took them back into Paris to see the city by night - something for me to try and figure out for the next time.  It is the city of lights - but every night we are not in the city.  Kayla and Elyssa's family played some board games.  Thomas and Will's family fed them a million crepes - the guys didn't want to offend the family by saying they were full so they just kept on eating!  (I told them it was ok to say they were full).  .....I know I am missing some of the family reports - but in general the students come back in the mornings and they are happy to see their Ardsley friends and share about their french families.

SO - we took the bus to Versailles.  We had a tour guide who instead of showing us the part that is open to the public - she took us to the private King's apartments that are NOT open to the public.  The rooms are smaller than the public apartment but they were more ornate .. everything was white and gold as you will see from the pictures.  Then they took us to this opera theater that was built in Versailles by Louis the 15th for the marriage of Marie Antoinette to Louis 16th.   It was built in 21 months - so it looks like marble but is in fact all wood.  After that we walked through the public part of Versailles....saw the hall of mirrors.  I video taped the students at Versailles - they have messages for home and Nica shared with me a great story about the hall of mirrors that I recorded ....I just have to load it onto the site .... so hopefully in addition to photos tonight I will also have the videos too.

After Versailles - the students ate their packed lunches on the bus - trading snacks with each other .. we headed to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur area of Paris.  We walked up to the church and then the students had free time to eat some more - and get some souvenirs.  We took the train back home to their families and that was it!

It was cold again today - but not nearly as bad as yesterday- at least the sun was out today.

Dan and I went out with our tour guide Fabien and with M and Mme Petit - they are the couple that arranges the host families here.  And once again they went on and on about how good our group was :)

Tomorrow is the Louvre, Saint Chapelle, Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.

I did pass along message to Julia about the phone .... hopefully she got that to work tonight.

Day 3 Pictures