Welp, I'm on the other side.

I picked up my visa four hours before my plane left.

We landed this morning and have pretty much done nothing but nap and eat since. I say we because my parents flew over with me to "help me settle in" aka bum around Paris for four days. They're weird, though, so we had to fly over in two separate planes ("So Marissa won't be an orphan if the plane goes down...although, on the other hand, we've just doubled her chances of losing a parent." Seriously.) My mom flew separately and, in a move that should surprise no one, my father got himself bumped up to business class while I enjoyed some exciting shenanigans in coach. The woman I was initially seated next to, who seemed to have decided that the best way around the no-smoking rule was to smoke a full pack just before boarding the plane, announced as soon as I arrived that she had a back problem and needed two seats to herself so that she could lie down, so could I please sit with the man in front of us, who had an empty seat next to him? You're all by now familiar with my non-confrontational demeanor, so I did as I was told and spent the next half-hour helping the man import his Windows Media files into iTunes. The seat next to my father remained empty for the duration of the flight.

Things improved dramatically once we got off the plane--we're staying in an apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower until I move in with my host family (pictures to come when I figure out the technology here) and they've rigged it so that it glows blue at night and blinks white every hour (the Eiffel Tower, not the apartment) and obviously I am eating well. Unfortunately, this whole city is absolutely frigid, so the six pairs of shorts I packed are looking like a pretty bad call right now.

I am much more jet-lagged than I thought I'd be, but I'm staying up to watch the first few innings of the Yankees-Devil Rays game online. We'll see how long this lasts.