French People? Where???

I must say that Paris is not what I expected and exactly what I expected all at the same time. I had heard all kinds of things about it before I got here. Some people said it was dirty...now maybe my perspective is a little skewed on this one, but I think it's amazingly clean. Some people have said that French people are rude and hate Americans but in my 2 weeks here I have yet to have this experience.

That's probably because I haven't interacted with many French people. I know, it sounds strange, but really. I've met/seen people from all over Africa. I've even spoken quite a bit of Arabic. I love that there are so many Internationals here. I love that people all over are wearing traditional tribal clothes. And it really warms my heart when I see mamas on the metro with their babies tied on their backs.

My friend's little girl goes to a French school and there are very few French kids in her class. Her friends have names like Babakir. I can't pronounce any of them. So they had class pictures the other day and I got to watch. The photographer told them to say something on the count of three and, it never failed, on the count of three the white kids would say it and the African kids, just the Africans, would lift their hands and give peace signs or thumbs ups or some type of gang sign. He took quite a few pictures before he just gave up.

I found it absolutely hilarious. In Sudan the little boys were always putting up some kind of sign for the camera...turns out it's an all of Africa thing. If you click on the post title at the top you can see some of my favorite kids in Sudan throwing some gang signs.
Earlier this week I went to a small palace. Above is the driveway.

And this house was at the end of the driveway. As you can see there was nothing small about this palace but I guess it is small compared to some of the others. It's the only palace I've been to in France and I was pretty impressed. It was like living in a Jane Austen movie...if only there weren't a million other people mulling around and taking pictures.
This was the medicine fountain. I guess back in the day they believed that the water had healing powers. Now it's just a beautiful, peaceful place to sit and reflect.