I had a good 3 days in Paris with the CIEE Group Site visit! The center in Paris is not real large but housed in a wonderful neighborhood and a great old Parisian building. The director gave us several good tours of the neighborhood as well as those where students are housed in dormitories and in house stays with families. We toured one of the home stay family residences and they shared wine with us.
We also learned how to be a Parisian lol. No talking or smiling on the Metro and such. We learned quite a bit about the CIEE study abroad program as well as the faculty led custom side. And of course we ate and ate as the French do! Such good food. We had no real time for sightseeing on our own which was fine since I have been to Paris before. I did enjoy our dinner cruise on the Seine.
Today we returned to London on the same train on which I had traveller to Paris on my own. Easy trip but an early morning. We arrived to a cold hard rain. We checked into the same hotel I had stayed in prior to heading to Paris and then spent all afternoon at the CIEE London center. Wow...it is housed in a Georgian Era building owned by the Duke of Bedford and has a great classical/Contemporary decor that I am sure students love. The whole neighborhood is quite nice.
As we sat in our presentation we were interrupted with news of the attack in London near Parliament which is not near us. The director had to go deal with sending out the CIEE notification to students studying in London and check on all of their status. We all then sent notices to our loved ones. We are all safe and other effected in the least except for possibly our walking tour in the West minster section of city tomorrow. We are not scared or deterred at being here and it was at a location that I visited just last week.
