Our weekend

Friday

Friday Michael texted me to tell me he had a surprise for me:) He took Eden and I to...

.... Chipotle:) I was so happy! For those of you who may not know, in Illinois-we eat Chipotle 3 x a month if not more...so I had googled it before our trip...and he located it and surprised us! It was good-different than home, but it hit the spot!! We have been surviving on pasta and frozen pizza, because I haven't been able to cook. First because the kitchen was so filthy...and second because all that we have in our "furnished" apartment are 2 pots, 3 glass bowls, some spatulas and a colander...I tried to buy a cookie sheet, and couldn't find one, so I bought what looks kind of like a 9 x13 pan. I have also been unable to find any kind of measuring cups or spoons. Apparently everything here is measured by weight...I think I may have my mom ship some measuring cups/spoons to me!

Saturday 

On Saturday we met up with Michael's host and her family. They have a daughter who is also an only child and is also 8!! How cool is that? Thankfully she is bilingual...so Eden made a fast friend:)  We ate at a nice restaurant and then took the girls to the aquarium...it is small -but it was nice. I have some pictures from the aquarium, but I can't figure out how to get them to transfer to the blog...Anyhow, after the aquarium, Eden got to try her first crepe with Nutella:) She loved it!  The aquarium is right by the Eiffel tower...

Sunday 

 Sunday was an interesting day...we go to the English speaking church service--which meets at night, so we have all day to explore. We decided to go to the American Library in Paris. Michael's contact for his grant suggested going there and joining it, both to check out English books and to meet other kids... It is bigger than I expected! For a fee, you can join for a year or 6 months. They also have a kids section that has quite a few books and some DVD's to check out --all in English:) (Our DVD's won't play on the DVD in the apt. because of a different international code...) Eden checked out several kids books, which is great because she has already read the books we brought about 5 times each!
As we tried to get back to the apartment, we encountered a problem...a large protest! Thousands of people and lots of police men/women. For an 8 year old raised in a small town, it was an interesting experience!  Here you can see them from across the bridge...

From another bridge

Here is a picture of  the participants marching in blue...we tried to avoid crossing them, but at one point we had to.

Here are some fun pictures from our walk home....

We were really close to the tower again today

From inside, underneath

A pretty church we found on our walk home from the library

Sunday night, we had a potluck at church, so we tried to come up with something that we could: 1. Pack into a backpack easily and 2. Didn't really require "cooking". We came up with fruit salad, (we did have to buy a container to take it in:) Doritos, Pepsi and a cake that we bought. Good news, it was all completely gone! Turns out, the fruit salad was a hit!

Here is a picture of the outside of the building:

And we will have more coming soon!!