April 6, 23:27 - Love, Eat, Love, Paint, Love, Love, Love

           I had no idea how accurate my blog title would be.  I am eating yummy and simple French food while I'm out and delicious, healthy, vegetarian food with Heather and her family.  I'm drinking great coffee.  I'm painting and drawing whenever I feel inspired, which is almost all the time!  And I feel like I'm falling in love even more every day.  I am having the quintessential European experience.  During the day I wander around under blooming trees in 27 C temperatures (the weather today was incredible), I browse museums all the while sketching pieces that inspire me, I lounge on giant manicured lawns with Europeans eating sandwiches, I sit at cafés drinking coffee and drawing anything in sight, and I fall more and more deeply in love with Paris.
          I don't know how I'm going to leave.  I might never go home.  I'll skype in my Senior Project presentation and just live in Paris forever.  There are certain ways the trip could be more perfect, but those are very few.
         Two days ago I spent about 7 hours at the Louvre with Joji, Heather's son, and we marveled awestruck at the sculptures.  I actually got rather depressed at the Louvre, because those sculptors have some God-given power that I can't comprehend.  They can chisel exquisite beauty out of stone and make marble look like veins pulsing under skin or like the wrinkles under one's toes. Joji and I got beauty overload...
         Then yesterday I waited in horrendous lines for the Musée d'Orsay and was again awestruck by the beauty there.  And somehow Tate found me in the gigantic museum!  I was leaning up against a railing scouring the crowd for him and all of a sudden there he was next to me.  Yay!  I spent the afternoon with him and Kim (who is pretty much Tate in older female form) and we walked around adorable little streets, had crepes avec nutella and felt very touristy while we visited the Notre Dame and took pictures.
         Today I went to the Petit Palais, which was much calmer than the Louvre and Orsay and was beautiful, but didn't blow me away quite as much.  I had an amazing lunch lounging on the meadow in front of Hôtel des Invalides with Razvan.  Then I sat on a little bench at this lovely little park next to the Grand Palais called Le Jardin de la Vallée Suisse and drew and wrote and thought for a couple of hours, first in the blazing son and then in the delicious shade.  God, it was really hot today.
        I know I keep saying it, but I LOVE Paris!  There's no way I'm not coming back in the very near future.  Or just not leaving.  Either way.  Preferably the latter... Ahhhh how am I so lucky?