this one was a bit late due to internet availability issues... but i wrote this several days ago

Currently I am riding on my first high speed train journey.  We are on the way to Brussels in order to connect to our program in Maastricht.  Yesterday we spent the day in the great city of Paris.  I thouroughly enjoyed walking around the city and experiencing the justle and bustle.  We saw a lot of sights in only a couple hours so we were pretty exhausted last night.  In the afternoon before we checked into our hostel which was very near to the large church on the major hill to the north of the city.  The name of this cathedral escapes me but it had one of the most amazing views of the downtown and of course was packed with tourists (and the ever accompanying pickpockets).  Later after naps and showers we went down to the Champs de Elysees to see the Catdedral de Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe.  So absolutely amazing!!  There were thousands of people surrounding Notre Dame and there also was a bread festival outside.  We bought some crepes on our way to the Louvre.  The Louvre was so much larger than what I imagined, it seemed to go on forever.  We got pretty hungry so we decided to have our first pretty nice meal because the food in Paris smelled and looked amazing.  We ended up at a small place right off the Champs de Elysees.  I had pate with carmalized onions, duck, and a french beer.  It was one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time.  The duck was absolutely perfectly cooked!  Later we split into two groups to do a bit of shopping, and ended up meeting at the end of the night at the Arc.  We went on top for only 5 euro and saw the entire city from the very center.  Very cool view!  We decided it would be prudent to head to bed early v=because we had to be on the train by 825 today.  We are just now arriving in Brusseles and later we make our way to Maastricht.  More to come in a couple days.