Wednesday, April 23

We had a late morning after the late night at the Eiffel tower.  After breakfast, we met in the lobby with all of our suitcases and put them into the baggage room.  Putting on our rain gear, we walked through a steady rain for 10 minutes to the Catacombes.  They cannot allow many people down at once, so they had our group split into two groups.  We descended into the tunnels and walked until we came across the doorway inviting us into the "Empire of death." After that, it was walls and walls of bones from all of the cemeteries that they emptied out in the 1780s.  My group paused for history and French lessons as we read the quotes that they had put on plaques on the walls, and Mrs. Amtmann's group had earth science and anatomy lessons.  

The rain was stopping as we left the Catacombes and we went to the nearby pedestrian street, rue Daguerre, for some free time and lunch.  French cafés, Chinese food, gelato, meringues, fresh berries, pastries...  The sun came out in full force and we all enjoyed this break! 

We went back to the hostel to fetch our bags and to head out on our journey to Normandy.  We lugged our suitcases to the metro stop, down the stairs, onto the first train, off the first train, through the metro tunnels, onto a second and much more crowded train, to the train station, up to the train platforms while we waited for the train to be announced.  As we are a big school group, they let us go to the train before it was announced and load our 24 suitcases onto the train.  We filled the baggage area and still had 10 more suitcases so we piled those in the entryway and Mrs. Amtmann and I sat on the fold down seats next to them during the ride. Everyone else found seats in the train and chatted, slept, read, and even did schoolwork for their classes at home!  The train ride was around 1.5 hours.  We had 2 minutes to get all of us and our suitcases off of the train and we had a great system for this!  

We were greeted by the families at the station.  Lots of hugs and bisous as everyone was reunited with their exchange student and met the rest of the family!  We all said goodbye until tomorrow morning's welcome breakfast at school.  We are receiving some photos from the group and I will share what we have so far.