School begins

Happy birthday, Anna! I know this post is late, but I already wished you a happy birthday so it's okay.

The week of Monday, Sept. 22-Saturday, Sept. 27

So this week has been all about school, school, school. My classes seem like they're going to be pretty tough, especially my literature class. I'm taking 5 classes altogether: History of France, Literature of the 20th century, Advanced Grammar, Politics of France in a European Context, and Theater in Paris. I really like my politics professor so far; he seems really nice and understanding. His name is Marc Germanangue, and he told us to just call him Marc because his last name is too hard to pronounce, and in French there are two forms of "you," and one is familiar and the other is formal/plural, and usually with professors you would use the formal, but he said we can use the familiar because he wants us to be comfortable and not worry all the time about messing up and using the wrong form.

The first day of class he had us talk about ourselves, and one of the questions was "Why Paris?" and "What are your plans for the future?" and after we finished, he introduced himself and said, "Why Paris? Because I am a snob. Plans for the future? Remain a snob." It was really funny... he also wanted us to talk about our hobbies/interests because, according to him, Paris will become gray and dismal in the winter, and Parisians are uptight snobs who only wear black, so we need to remember what we like to do for fun and what makes us happy so we don't get caught up in Parisian snobbery and aloofness. Which is really funny because he actually does wear all black, presumably every day (but I can't be sure since I've only seen him twice this week for class). He has several layers of black clothes, such as black pants, black socks, black shoes, a black undershirt, a black button-down, and a black coat. My other Parisian professor (history) also wears either all black, although I did notice he was actually wearing a dark, dark green button down instead of a black shirt on Thursday. Must have been casual Thursday or something, who knows. He seems all right though; he was telling us there's a spot in Paris where you can see the ancient Roman bathhouses, and his directions included, "Across the street from McDonald's..." which I thought was amusing, having a McDonald's right across the street from Roman ruins.

I had to go buy a bunch of books for my various classes, and I was exhausted after fighting the afternoon metro crowds and then trying to ask the bookstore people where my books were. I couldn't find all of them and I'm not looking forward to going back.

Thursday night some friends and I went to a cafe, and it was very cool because we went late at night, and since it was pretty chilly the cafe had heat lamps in the outdoor seating area so you could sit outside and still be warm. Most cafes are just the restaurant with little tables outside that you can sit at; there's no real door to go through to get to the restaurant for a lot of them.

On Friday my friends Shelly and Rachel (who live together in a homestay) invited me to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg to play cards with them and their host brother, Thibaut. Shelly taught us how to play hearts, and we had a really good time just hanging out. Shelly and Rachel told me their host family is a family of geniuses; there are 5 kids, but only two still live at home, Thibaut and his sister. Thibaut is getting his master's in physics and the oldest daughter just got her doctorate or something in physics. Apparently, Thibaut knows everything about everything, according to Rachel and Shelly, which could be kind of handy for homework. Speaking of homework, I helped Aurelie with her English homework the other day. She had to read an article about banning smoking in France (in English) and then rewrite it in English with her own words. It was kind of hard to avoid reusing the words that were in the article. I read over her essay and corrected some stuff, and it was hard to explain why some things were the way they were... I eventually just told her, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain it but that's just not good English."

A friend of mine from IU, Mike, is studying abroad right now in Rouen, a smallish town about an hour away from Paris, and he came to the city today, so I went to the Jardin des Tuileries to meet him and his friend. We walked up the Champs-Elysees and then took the metro towards Pere Lachaise, a cemetary. We ate lunch and then walked around Pere Lachaise for a while, looking at various graves such as Jim Morrison, Proust, Oscar Wilde, and Edith Piaf. Then we went to see the Moulin Rouge, and afterwards I left to go back home. They were going to take the train back to Rouen at 10pm so they were planning on going to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up at night. I was going to meet them, but right now I'm really tired so I'll have to catch it some other time.