the Adventures of *AND*

Bonjour! (Ok, we just came back from Paris yesterday night, but I'll pretend we're still there) S'il vous plais, merci beacoup, pardon, execuse moi, au revoir, metro, reseraunt, musee! Yep, that's about all the French that we learned here - man, it's so hard to be in a country and not speak its language! But it's all good! Paris is bee-yooo-ti-ful! Today, we took the EuroStar train at 5:30 AM that passes under English channel to Paris, France. From there, we took a taxi to our hotel. However, what they don't tell you in Paris tour books is that Paris has its ghetto parts as well. And unfortunately, we are staying in the ghetto part of Paris. But oh well, as they say in French, c'est la vie. Our hotel room wasn't ready so we took the Metro to the Musee du' Louvre - The Louvre Museum. Omg! It was awesome!! We saw Venus di Milo, the Mona Lisa, ancient greek vases, medieval castle peices and so much more. From there, we walked down the Champs Elysee towards the Arc de Triomphe. But we didn't make it to Napoleon's great sculpture because having kids on a vacation through Europe is not really a vacation at all; it's a huge baby sitting job - and the kids got us tired. So we stopped for lunch. That was fun. I must say, everything in Europe is sooooo expensive. 1 euro is aboutt $1.50. Our lunch of two tuna sandwiches and a quiche was like $40.00!

Many people told us that the French are really snobby and never want to help you out, but for us, that wasn't so, alhamdulillah. All of the people we met were so freindly and helpful. They did not seem to be bothered by us at all.

Well, that's the update from day 1 in Paris. You'll hear more about days 2 and 3 soon, inshaAllah. Au revoir!

P.S. Thanks for the comments, everyone. It was great hearing from you and continue to write to us! We miss you TONS. Everyday we think about California and how much we miss it... the weather (we really took it for granted!), the freinds, our house, and of course, MCA.