Just a little update.

The weather in France has been absolutely gorgeous as of late, just like I hear it's been doing back home (save for last night's snowfall!). My friends and I decided to take advantage of this and had a picnic in a beautiful park last week. Since I've really slowed down on my photo-taking lately, I have only one picture from the picnic, which shows just how busy it gets on nice days like that.

As all of the German assistants are done as of today, the school threw a little going-away party for us three (English, German, Spanish) assistants on Tuesday. It was quite lovely, with all of the language teachers being present. The English department, after noticing how much I read in the teachers' lounge (which is pretty much during all of my breaks), got me a lovely farewell gift of three French novels, some classic, some contemporary. I told them that they'll be going straight out to camp in the summer, where I can read them on the deck... or the more likely spot, laying on the couch in the cabin.

Future camp reading.

41 days until I return to Canada (yes, I'm counting down and have been for awhile).

End of the family trip.

Because I kind of crapped out on photo-taking near the end of the trip, this last entry will just kind of a miscellaneous amalgam of photos that didn't really fit anywhere else.

This was just a few blocks away from our apartment. Needless to say, it took awhile to drag us away from the windows.

A fancy brasserie where we stopped for tea.

Holly, me, Mom, and Auntie Sharon after a delicious steak dinner.

And, because I have lots of photos of this ilk, here are some pictures of food.

Pesto risotto.

Holly's pasta dinner (I don't recall what it was).

An absolutely scrumptious brownie, covered in both whipped and ice cream.

And, to end off these entries, Holly attacking her brownie after her fish dinner (I'm sure she'll love that I'm posting this :p).

Notre Dame Cathedral.

After our bus tour, we went to visit the Notre Dame Cathedral, right in the centre of the city. It's absolutely amazing that they were able to build something so intricate and detailed back then with the technology that they had.

Bus tour.

We took a bus tour around Paris, broken up over the course of two days. It was really enjoyable, especially the first day, as it was warm enough to sit on the open-air upper deck of the bus. It was a great way to see the city.

Les Invalides.

The Museum of Fashion, which I really would like to visit.

The Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro.

The Gardens of the Trocadéro.

The bridge covered in 'love locks'.

Arc de Triomphe.

Because I was slacking on updating the blog while my family was here (I'll blame it on fatigue), I'll post a succession of posts showing the various things that we did throughout the week.

On our second day, we went to the Arc de Triomphe and then walked down the Champs-Élysées, looking at all of the shops. Here are a couple of photos of what you could probably refer to as the upper lobby of the Arc, your last stop before getting back outside up top.

Up top, the view was amazing (as you could've probably guessed).

The Champs-Élysées.

Sacré-Coeur in the distance.

Mom and Auntie Sharon with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

The Arc from below.

More photos from the rest of the week to come...