Sara’s abroad in Paris, France, until Dec. 13.

So, after being here for almost two weeks it seems like I’m finally getting in the swing of things. In a lot of ways, studying abroad is kind of like this miracle of getting to experience freshman year again. Especially on the Sciences-Po program that I’m doing (which is primarily Northwestern students), it started out with huge groups of kids traveling around together trying to find a place to eat for cheap (this turns out to not exist) or famous Parisian attractions all the while probably attracting pick-pockets with our ridiculously loud English (that stereotype is definitely true) and mass of about 20 students. But, like freshmen year, we’ve started to settle into groups of newly found friends and new routines.

And so naturally, it seemed right to start out the weekend in the Latin Quarter –- an area of Paris famous for cheap bars littered with poor students. Right up the alley of NU students transported to a country where the dollar is worth surprisingly little, right? My roommate Casey and I had decided that we wouldn’t need the sweaters that we had lugged around all day but of course, the beautiful fall day turned cold and rainy as soon as we exited the metro.

A great thing about Paris is that in general, things just tend to work out for the best. So while we really didn’t know where we were going despite the guidance of Helene, one of the friend-students in our class, we eventually happened upon a little bar with great happy hour specials, that looked pretty empty (Even though I said before that groups of friends were starting to materialize so I don’t find myself constantly in a group of 20+ Americans, there are genuinely a lot of people on this program that get along really well so it’s hard to get away from traveling with less than 10. Needless to say, we tend to need a lot of space wherever we go).

And it was sitting in this bar that I felt an overwhelming sense of acclimation. There we were, sitting in the middle of Paris, sharing 4-euro drinks with no real schedule or sense or urgency. It’s the feeling you get when you start feeling like you’re living somewhere and not just existing as a tourist. What made it even better was this bar was literally Paris’s version of the Keg — and Northwestern students know there is nothing like finding the perfect dive-y place when you don’t want to deal with the high maintenance of legit clubs and bars. Like most things in Europe, it was smaller, but from the wood tables to the neon signs, it pretty much screamed everyone’s favorite Monday night pastime. I’m so mad that I forgot my camera, which is usually glued to me these days.

Something NU kids miss out on is the idea of bar crawling. It’s definitely not a tradition in Paris either, but this street was packed with great little places that we couldn’t help but stop at a few more as the night went on.

Here’s some hints: The Piano Vache? Translates as The Piano Cow. It doesn’t sound like somewhere you’d want to go and you’re right. It’s definitely not. It looked like it would be a good idea because a lot of other students from Sciences-Po (the school I’m at) were there and they were offering drink specials all night. But it turned out to be filled with pretentious French students who seemed desperate to pretend they were straight out of Greenwich Village.

After singing loudly to “Come On Eileen” and clearly identifying ourselves as Americans, we booked it to another bar that will be affectionately be known as the “sand bar”. Because they covered the floor in sand. I never did end up figuring out why… but with the dark and dingy atmosphere it was definitely not part of a tropical theme. Another girl on the program and I headed inside because the sand was a better alternative to the cold wind outside, where we came upon another thing out of the ordinary: card-carrying socialists who were very anxious to show us all their socialist credentials. That’s something you wont get at the Keg or Hundo on just any given Thursday. Other frenchies joined in the conversation in broken English to ask where we’re from (even though I feel like everything about us screams American). When I answered Chicago, they only had one question: McCain or Obama? There really is no escaping politics here.

While Paris has the most amazing public transportation system I’ve ever experienced, they close it down at 1 a.m. for some reason that I have yet to figure out. So at about 12:15, after the last drinks were downed, I headed to the metro with the other girls that live in FIAP (the hostel we’re staying in). I’m pretty sure I’m going to become a regular around there… but hopefully the other pubs stick to more traditional flooring. I woke up with sand in my bed this morning, and that’s never a good thing.

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