So busy!!

I see that my last post was quite awhile ago, so here goes on the recap...

Oct. 22-24

Not much to report, just school. Friday was my trip to Provins, and I'm sad to say I was slightly underwhelmed. We went inside this castle, and it just was not that exciting. In all fairness though, Provins is competing against thousands of really awesome things in France in general, so something has to be less than fantastic. Plus it was my free trip, so who really cares? The thing I DID care about was the lunch... they served us this horrendous pate-thing with yellow gelatin stuff on top. It was disgusting! The main course was duck leg and potatoes au gratin, thank goodness, so that was great. Plus the dessert was some kind of chocolate mousse cake, but it was the BEST MOUSSE EVER! I almost couldn't finish it because it was so rich, and for those of you who know me know that's a big deal.


The underground tunnels in Provins were pretty cool. It's kind of disappointing to learn how extremely banal the beginnings of many underground caverns are; for example, the ones in Provins were first created to harvest chalk for dyeing tapestries. Not very exciting, really.


So I may have already mentioned this, but I really miss potatoes, especially mashed potatoes. I was bemoaning my lack thereof to my friend Megan who lives in the apartments, and she said we should eat dinner together on Friday after the exursion and have some potatoes! So then a bunch of people ended up getting invited and we made it into a sort of potluck dinner and it was delicious. There were about 10 girls there (luckily, Megan's apt is just one large room so it was fine) and we just sat around and ate our food and talked about funny experiences in Paris. I had a great time!


Saturday, Oct. 25

My friends and I went to a club tonight to see a live performance. It was very cool because the club was located underneath the Pont Alexandre III (a bridge that crosses the Seine) and so when we were inside you could see the bridge supports and everything! It was awesome.


Catherine's sister and nephew were here today. She told me they were coming over, but I was sort of unprepared for them to be here at like 10am. I hate how the bathroom is located on the main floor because I had to dash from the bottom of the staircase to the shower and then back again to avoid running into people before I was presentable. I usually lounge in my pajamas on the weekends, and by "pajamas" I mean a t-shirt and sweat pants, and it's no big deal, but I could hear lots of voices this morning and really didn't want to look like a huge slob in front of Catherine's relatives. I made it through though and was ready for lunch when it rolled around at like 2 or so. I had a lot of trouble understanding the nephew, Pierre, and Aurelie said it was because he mumbled. Apparently, he had a lot of trouble understanding me too, but hey, I do the best I can with enunciation. I don't know how old he is, but it was pretty funny because he spent the night in our living room and his mom stayed at the grandma's house, so they were just going to take separate trains back home, so at dinner Sunday night he was like, "So who's going with me to the train station?" and everyone in my family was like, "Um, no one. It's really easy to get to. We're sure you can handle it." I thought it was pretty funny that everyone looked really surprised that he would ask to be escorted... I guess he was probably 18 or so, therefore technically capable of getting to a train station by himself. In the end though, they must have been kidding because Catherine and Lionel both left with him.


Sunday, Oct. 26th

My friend from IU, Mike, is studying abroad in Rouen (a smallish town in Normandy) and he came to Paris today. Everyone in his program gets assigned a "French buddy," so she came with him. Her name is Raphaelle and she's 20 or so, and I really liked her. We all went to lunch and talked in French and English, and she's very smart and was really helpful with any French questions I had. For example, I've had a lot of trouble with the words for "here" and "there" because I don't understand when you use "here" versus "there" because of the way I've heard my host family use them. For example, my host mom will ask me, "Will you be here for dinner tonight?" as in "here at the house" but she will actually say, "Will you be THERE for dinner tonight?" but she means "here at the house." This made no sense to me until Raphaelle explained it.


Apparently, French people only use "here" when they mean in the present. In the past and in the future, they say "there" even when they mean the actual place where they are, i.e. the house. So if I am in my kitchen and I want to say that I will indeed be in the house for dinner that night, I say, "I will be there for dinner tonight" even though I mean "here, the house." But if I'm in the kitchen and I say, "Catherine, can you come in here (here = kitchen)?" I would use the word for "here." It's really baffling!


We walked around the Jardins de Luxembourg for a while, and it was really nice. It was slightly chilly, but the leaves were changing color and falling everywhere, and there was a big man-made pond in the middle of the garden where little kids were playing with motor boats. This is a picture of me and Raphaelle, then the next one is me and Mike. He was so excited to have a scarf and look very French.

Oct. 27-30 Mon-Thurs

So this is my midterms week, but for some reason I don't have my history and literature midterms until next week. I had soooo much homework to do for this week it was unreal. Don't worry, I won't bore you with the details as I am already so bored by them myself. Good news: I think my politics midterm went very well. I felt so smart! haha Marc gave us six essay questions to choose from and we had to pick four to answer. It was very cool to brainstorm my ideas in French and then write four essays in French on the fly. Bad news: My oral exam in grammar did not go very well. I thought I was ready for it because I was prepared for the vocab part, but then she started asking me all these questions about phrases that I didn't know we had to know. Oh well, the other people in my class said theirs didn't go well either.

I had to go to a play Thursday night, and I was not a happy camper. For some reason, our tickets were in the very first row so I had to strain my neck looking up at the actors the whole time. Also, there is a seat on the end of every other row that folds up, so you can unfold it and have one extra seat. Guess who got the crappy add-on seat? If you guessed me, congratulations, you're absolutely correct. It was very uncomfortable because the chair would try to fold up if I moved around or leaned forward, plus the back was very hard. Oh, and the play was like three hours. After the first half, the girl next to me offered to switch and I declined because hey, someone had to sit there and I would have felt bad making someone take my spot, but she insisted, for which I was grateful. The second half was consequently sooo much better, but I hope she wasn't too uncomfortable. At least the second half was only about 45 minutes.

Oct. 31, Halloween!!

So this is today, actually, and I don't have much to say. I registered for classes back home and it took me all morning. Catherine and Lionel left around 1pm for the mountains and she'll be back Monday and he'll be back in two weeks or so. They said I can go talk to Mathilde and Slimen about eating dinner/if I have any problems. Right now Aurelie is on vacation from school and is heading to Tunisia on Sunday, I think. Or maybe tomorrow, I'm not really sure, but either way I'll be pretty much alone all weekend. It's no big deal, though; now I can do my laundry without worrying about being in the way.

Some days are better than others in terms of my French speaking abilities, and today has not been going so well; I don't know why. I went downstairs to talk to Slimen, and I was not making any sense nor was I understanding him. I was trying to say that I wouldn't be home for dinner because I was going out with my friends and I was just having a lot of trouble spitting it out. Then he came upstairs to see if I'd like to go out with him and Mathilde (and maybe their friends, I don't know) to a "very, very well-known Asian restaurant." So I said, sure, that would be great. Then we had a whole "here/there" confusion issue (see above about here vs. there), but we finally ironed out the details and we're meeting here, at the house, at 7pm. He also likes to throw around the whole military-time thing, which is not my strong suit, so originally he said "nineteen hours" and I had to count on my fingers. I need to clean my room before we go out, and since it's 6:20 here, I'd better go get some stuff done. Hope I haven't forgotten anything from my 10 day absence!

Giverny = incredible

Saturday was my excursion to Giverny (Monet's house) and all I can say is it was unbelievable. It was one of the most gorgeous places I've been in France as far as nature is concerned. The pictures don't really do it justice. If you visit France, I highly recommend Giverny. Also, I really lucked out... each student can only go on two excursions with the program, but there were open spots for Provins this Friday because people had to cancel (probably other travel plans or something, who knows). Either way, I get to go on a third excusion! Provins is an old city that used to be a really major fortress in France and has extensive underground caverns. It really works out because I don't have any other plans this weekend, so I might as well go on a program excursion.

I had my politics presentation on Monday, and I don't know how well it went. I found an article on the financial crisis in Hungary in a French newspaper called Le Figaro and in the New York Times. I hope I did a good job of explaining it, but it was complicated and I had to look up a lot of new vocab words. I just hope Marc is as cool with his grading as he is with his teaching! I'm mostly just glad it's over.

The big news in my host family is about Aurelie. I feel really bad for her because she's been having problems at school with the girls in her class. She has the same people in every class because it's like they are all one group that attend different classes together, and Alex is in it with her. I guess these girls in their class are really mean and make fun of her for spending so much time with Alex or something like that. It was so bad the other week that she ran out of the classroom crying! How immature of these girls... they're 20 or so, not 14. It's completely ridiculous and out of hand... Alex told me the professor saw everything and never even asked if Aurelie was okay. She didn't even go back to class because she was so upset. Catherine and Lionel are actually looking into private schools for her to go to, and I really wish there was something I could do for her. She's so nice; she really doesn't deserve this and I only wish I could go to her school and tell these girls off.

House pictures

My street, rue Alphand. See, Mr. Taxi Cab Driver, it DOES exist!


See, doesn't this staircase kind of remind you of the spiral staircases in castles? It's really small... I should have had someone stand on it to give you more perspective. The living room... located on the top floor of the house. I was slightly surprised; I originally thought that door led to a closet.
My loft. Despite having roughly 4 different beds, Cooky likes to sleep in MINE.

View from my window.

So many topics, so little time

So there are lots of things I want to briefly talk about this week, so I'll give you a quick breakdown in number form.

1. CONGRATULATIONS!!

Sara and Adam got married!!!!! For those of you who don't know, Sara and I worked together at Halox over the summer, and she and her fiance got married October 4th, I believe. Congratulations! And hey, Halox people, I KNOW you're reading this blog, so why have I not gotten a link to the wedding pictures? I guess maybe they're not up, it's only been nearly TWO WEEKS since the wedding. I expect this egregious error to be corrected ASAP. You all have my email address.

2. More Theater and Literature Observations

We had to write a 5,000 character (2.5ish pages) paper for theater due on Monday based on our observations of the performance of Dom Juan we saw last Thursday. I didn't think mine was that good because I wrote it late Sunday night and it felt sort of all over the place on account of not really knowing what Julie wanted us to write because she didn't want our opinions, just our observations. Anyway, I sort of compared the book to the play (because they were very different on account of the modernization) and used the word "anachronistic" a lot. The play was almost Tim Burton-esque/Big Fish (the movie) because they would (randomly) switch between period costumes and modern clothes, and some characters were perpetually in the past and some were almost always modern, plus one of the dons, Dom Carlos, was played by a woman who painted a fake mustache on, but Dom Juan wiped it off, implying that he knew she was a woman, but in the book, Dom Carlos is definitely a man. It made sense to reuse the actress because she had a really small part otherwise, but it made no sense to have her play a woman pretending to be a man who really was a man in the play... so I just made some stuff up about artistic license and anachronism and I don't even remember what else.

So anyway, Julie handed our papers back, but before she did, she threw in this backhanded compliment, "Well, I've found that you all write much better than you talk..." Um, thanks?

She was waaay more generous with the grades than I would have thought, so it's either got to be that she thought we were so dumb that she was highly impressed that we had complete sentences and consequently gave good grades, or she's just one of those professors who is tough in class but realizes that we're trying on homework.

I think it's mostly that Julie (and Sophie) are just very French in the way they teach. French professors/teachers never tell you you're doing a good job, they only tell you when you're doing things wrong. There aren't any compliments, only criticisms, so that's why I don't take their harshness personally. Sometimes I feel like Sophie WANTS to like us, but then she remembers how very French she is and will stop smiling. It's actually kind of funny.

3. More Reasons Why Marc Is The Coolest Professor Ever

Marc, on the other hand, is not French at all when he teaches. I still have yet to see him wear anything but black (and that gray suit that one time) and the other day I saw him in the garden area of the school chomping on a baguette. I don't think he could look any more French if he tried. He rides a moped, for goodness sakes! So in class the other day we were talking about the end of World War II and the Korean War and how Western Europe and the US were trying to figure out to how stop the spread of communism, and so he brought up this French politican named Jean Monnet. Marc wrote Jean Monnet's name on the board and told us that it was Monnet with two "n's" and not Monet like the painter. Then he launched into this really funny story about how when he was "young" (this guy's only 41) he worked as a tour guide at a museum dedicated to Monnet here in Paris, and he would always get American tourists who thought they were going to see Monet's paintings at the museum. The real kicker was that Monnet's wife thought she was an excellent painter and painted lots of still lifes that are hanging all over Monnet's house/museum.

Marc also commented on the translation of "still life" which is "la nature morte" literally "dead nature." ("Americans are so optimistic, while French people are so pessismistic, young people!")

Anyway, so he told us to picture a young Marc Germanague, tour guide, trying to explain to the American tourists that no, they were not at Giverny, this was not Claude Monet, this was the famous French politican Jean Monnet, but hey as long as you're here, want to go look around? Said tourists would then see Madame Monnet's"truly hideous" (according to Marc) paintings hanging on the walls and whisper to themselves, "This tour guide doesn't know what he's talking about, look at all the paintings, it MUST be the Monet museum!"

4. So Theresa, What IS Giverny?

For those of you who don't know, Giverny was where Monet lived and did most of his paintings. It's really beautiful (think: water lilies) and I'm actually going there tomorrow on a program field trip.

5. Tonight: Operation: Find Thibaut's Concert (take two).

Remember how I said my friend Rachel and I looked for an hour trying to find her host brother's choir concert recital? Well, he's got another one tonight, and this time we'll be ready with GOOD directions, though "good directions" in Paris is almost an oxymoron.

6. Dinner @ an Italian Restaurant in Paris

Rachel and I went to dinner Wednesday night at this little pizza place near her house. It was delicious! The waiter/cook/probably-owner was a really nice guy, too. He asked us if we spoke English, and I said we did, and we spoke French too, and he said, "Oh well that's great! Me, I speak Italian too." And he complimented our French when we ordered, which is always flattering. It was a smallish restaurant, and there was this awkward point when he was standing by the kitchen and was pretty much calling across the restaurant, "Is everyone okay? You over there, you're good? And the Americans! Are you doing okay? You know you have to eat everything or I'm going to make you do the dishes!"

Thanks, pizza place owner, for announcing to an ENTIRE restaurant (albeit a small one) that HEY! THERE'S TWO AMERICANS OVER THERE, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE! LET'S ALL STARE AWKWARDLY AT THEM! No, I'm kidding, it wasn't that bad. When he came to give us the check, he's like, "No coffee? No dessert?" and we said, "No thanks," and he's like, "You don't need a handsome young man to dance with, perhaps?" We politely declined and he was like, "You're sure? I know several young men around here..." No thanks, sir.

7. The Weirdos Are Everywhere

My friend Stevie is always having the most bizarre encounters with strange men in Paris.

Bizarre Encounter #1:
She was sitting in a park, not talking, not reading an English book, basically not doing anything that would identify her as an American. Some guy walked up to her and said, "Oh, you speak English? I would really like to practice my English!"
Stevie: Sure, that's fine.
Weirdo: Well, I'm actually a foot masseuse, and I would really like to rub your feet.
Stevie: Um, no, sorry.
Weirdo: No, really, that's actually why I came over here in the first place. Please, let me rub your feet! They are so beautiful!
Stevie: No, I have to get going.
Weirdo: (attempts to grab Stevie's foot, gets ahold of a toe)
Stevie: Aaah! What are you doing?! (yanks foot from his grasp, flees the scene)

Bizarre Encounter #2:
I can't remember the back story, all I remember is that it had to do with some guy approaching Stevie like on the metro or something.

Creep: Are you American? I am Moroccan! I love America!
Stevie: That's nice. (She is trapped on the metro car, can't leave.)
Creep: What is your name? I'm ******* (I can't remember his name.)
Stevie: Uh, Stevie.
Creep: Stevie! So how long are you here for?
Stevie: I'm studying here, actually (immediately realizes this was the wrong answer).
Creep: Me too! When do you leave for the United States of America?
Stevie: December.
Creep: Me too! Can I have your phone number so I can call you?
Stevie: No, sorry, I don't have a phone (this is a lie).
Creep: But how will I contact you?
Stevie: (Metro stops, she gets off and tries to leave.)
Creep: (In pursuit) But Stevie! When we get back to the United States, we must get married! Where are you going? Stevie! Come back!
Stevie: (Beating a hasty retreat, does not reply.)

8. Catherine and Lionel return to France.

They got back Tuesday at like 6:00 at night or so, and they said they had a really good time. Catherine loved the Grand Canyon especially. Only problem? Well, they had a TON of stuff to sort through (gifts and souvenirs and whatever) and so I was in my room FOREVER doing homework and such and waiting for someone to tell me when we were going to eat dinner. 8:00 rolls around... no dinner. 9:00... nothing. 9:30... I subtly go downstairs to use the bathroom (hint hint: dinner time?). No. Nothing.

9:45....
10:00....
10:15...
10:30... DINNER! I was absolutely starving by that point, so I was thrilled to finally be eating. However... we had soup for dinner. Just plain soup, not even stew or something. I was less than excited, but I didn't want to be rude considering that Catherine had just gotten home from vacation the same day. The thing was, I would have been happy to make my own dinner/every else's, but it's just not done like that here. You all eat together, and one person makes the meal. If you miss dinner, you don't just roll in and heat up some leftovers and eat them. It's kind of unfortunate.

9. The Americans Are Coming!

I got an email from my Halox boss, Tony, about him and his wife Robin coming to Paris in November! He'll be here for work stuff, but he'll have evenings off, so I think he and Robin and I are going to get together during the evening. I'm so excited to see familiar faces!

So in closing, I have a TON of homework due next week :-( that I don't want to do. I have a presentation in Marc's class, so I have to go out and find some newspaper articles to work with.

Dom Juan, Musée Rodin, Montmartre, Sacré-Coeur

Thursday, October 9

My theater class went to see Don Juan tonight (Dom Juan in French). The theater was in St. Denis, which is the absolute northernmost point in Paris, which meant it was nearly an hour away by metro from my house. Apparently, it is also a very run-down part of Paris. So we met up at the metro stop, and some girls had been on a history visit the same day, so they were running late. My professor asked if anyone had their numbers, and I did, so I called my friend Callie and she said they were four stops away. Ten minutes later, my professor was like, "Where are they? You said they were four stops away. We're going to be late. Can you call them again?" She was annoying me because obviously, calling them repeatedly would not make the metro move any faster and would only waste my minutes. Then we had to basically run to the theater only to wait around for about 15 minutes before it actually started. The play was a lot like the Shakespeare Theater in Chicago in that it was modern and the actors didn't wear period costumes, and they used the whole theater, not just the stage. They pulled two people out of the audience and at first I really thought these people were just random, but then you could tell they were actors too. This was clearly a low-budget production because there were very few props and scenery and only about 10 actors. There was one part where they ran offstage and "outside" and brought a camera with them like they were filming a documentary and we were watching it on a screen onstage. It was a cool idea and a good way to film the chase/fight scene, but it got really old after about 40 minutes of watching a "movie" when I came to see a play. In addition, I understood what was going on because I had read the play, but if I stopped to listen to the actual words, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what they were saying, I just knew what was happening.

Then during intermission, our professor left. She just walked away and no one knew where she was going, and we all got slightly paranoid because we were in a bad part of town and it was already 10:15 and the metro closed at midnight or so, and most of us lived on the Left Bank (we were on the top of the Right Bank) so like me, a lot of people had maybe 45 minutes to an hour travel time. Fortunately, she came back after intermission. The play was very funny for the first half, but the second was really boring me... it was just really long. And because of its low-budgeted-ness, the final act where Dom Juan descends into hell to pay for his hypocrisy and womanizing was kind of anti-climatic. A little boy (who was supposed to represent the angel of death or such) came onstage and took Dom Juan by the hand and just lead him behind the curtains, and it ended.

Friday, October 10

I went to the Musée Rodin today with my friends Stevie, Misa, and Sarah. It was really cool because it was actually a really beautiful park with Rodin's sculptures placed randomly in it. There was also an actual indoor museum too, but the outdoor part was very cool. Plus I have a "student of art history" card because of my History of France class, so I got in for free. Misa is actually an art history major back at her home college, and so she filled me in on some important art information about Rodin. For example, he was actually a huge womanizer who had affairs with lots of his students, like Camille Claudel (who had a ton of sculptures in the Musée Rodin). She was highly talented (according to Misa, more so than Rodin himself), and they worked together on lots of pieces, but he left her for another woman and she eventually went insane and died. I don't remember if Misa said she killed herself or not, but either way it was very sad. Her stuff was fantastic too, and there was lot of it.

Les trois ombres: The three shadows.... A sculpture by Rodin; it's the same guy in three different poses, I think

Clotho, one of the three sisters of Fate in Greek mythology. A sculpture by Camille Claudel.

Sarah, Stevie, and Misa at the café at the Musée Rodin

Le penseur: The thinker... Probably the most famous Rodin sculpture

After the museum we went shopping near the Champs-Elyseés, which is where Callie and Amy live, and Callie had told me there were all these 50% off sales. I didn't get anything but we had a good time just looking around at things we could actually afford as opposed to nearly everything else in Paris.

Saturday, October 11

Sarah and I had plans to go to Versailles today, but when we showed up at the RER (train station) to get tickets, the cashier informed me there were no trains to Versailles because of road work or something. Major letdown!

So instead we decided to go to Montmartre and the basilica at Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart). I'm pretty sure it's the highest point in Paris (excluding, obviously, like the Eiffel Tower and other monuments; I think it's highest in terms of sea level). Those steps are no joke! Plus, if you ever go there, watch out for the hustlers because there are SO many and they're really persistant. Just keep shoving your way through and don't make eye contact and you'll be fine. Sarah and I climbed to the top and went inside the basilica. You're not allowed to take pictures inside, but it is unbelievably gorgeous and I highly recommend it to everyone. The basilica and the view are totally worth the climb. And if you walk behind the basilica, you'll enter the artist quarter where there are tons of people just holding sketchpads or sitting by easels and you can get a picture of yourself (or whatever you want) drawn right there. That's also a prime spot to get cheap tourist stuff. Montmartre in general seemed very cheap, as Sarah and I did a fair bit of walking around browsing.

So that night I went over to Misa's house, and let me tell you... she's got it rough. First of all, it took me probably 35 minutes by metro to get to her metro stop, then I had to cross the Seine (pretty cool, actually) and walk through an expressway-type area for about 5 minutes. Then you climb a hill. Then you make a right and climb another hill. These hills are so steep that they actually have barriers to block cyclists or people on their razor-scooters (there are a LOT of them here) because you would probably die if you tried going downhill on a bike or anything. And when I say "probably" I mean, "definitely." Now, where was I? Right, the turn and the second hill. So after you raise your heart rate by probably 20 beats per minute, then you get to climb three flights of very steep stairs. You're still not there, by the way. You have to walk up a slight incline to her gated community and punch in the code (they have a little pedestrian gate in addition to the car-sized gate). Then you walk up another smallish hill and veer left, then you unlock her front gate and hooray you've made it! It's only taken you two metro changes and 35 minutes and then another 20 minutes of steep uphill walking! And don't forget... if you're a real Parisian woman in the workforce, you've doubtlessly worn heels for this entire trip after a day of work. Pictures of the Quest to Find Misa's House are forthcoming; it was dark when I was there so I didn't take any.

Oh, and on the metro ride home, it was pretty empty (it was late at night), and so when I was waiting for it to go (we were sitting there for like 10 minutes because it was the end of the line), some shady-looking guy with a knit cap and a guitar case and a hobo-ish coat got on my car. I thought he looked like he was going to sit by me (even though there were like 20 open seats), so I just scowled very fiercely, like "Don't even think about sitting by me unless you want to lose a limb! I'm unstable! I come from a country where citizens can own guns! (even though there was no way he could know that)" And I think it worked! Either way, he didn't sit by me, and I just looked REALLY angry the whole time, even more so than usual (even though I am not usually angry; I just do this to discourage weirdos from approaching me). Plus, I've found it's even easier to look aloof, unapproachable, and pissed-off when listening to your iPod. I couldn't decide if listening to my iPod would make me look like a target, but then I decided it was like, "Don't even TRY to talk to me because then I will get even ANGRIER if you make me turn my iPod off to hear you." I actually did have a lot of angst built up from Montmartre because the crowds of slow-moving tourists were unreal... I was like, MOVE! Why are you standing around for no apparent reason? It was frustrating.

I have to go buy two new books for my classes, which I hate doing. My theater professor wants us to read the first act of a new play, which I have heard through gossip from fellow students that it's like 90 pages, plus we have to write a paper about the play. Don't these professors realize that classes are getting in the way of studying abroad?

A few things I forgot...

Mom and Dad, I was very happy to hear that you had such a great time in Seattle and that you made it home safely. Mr. and Mrs. Burgess, Anna told me that you might be reading this, so thanks for taking such good care of my parents, especially my father, since he's so terribly old. Just kidding, Dad!

Update on the food front: last Thursday I had some friends over to my house and then we went out for dinner. We got falafel at a Greek place because two of the girls are Californian and apparently obsessed with it. It was my first time eating falafel (in France, no less) and it was pretty good. List of things I eat in France that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole in the United States: uncooked tomatoes, gyros, and falafel.

The other day for the end of Ramadan Slimen made these Algerian (I think) pastries with some kind of almond filling, so I had one and it was pretty good. Also, a few days ago for lunch Catherine was putting together leftovers, and while Lionel and I were eating ours, she went into the kitchen and then came out with some kind of unidentifiable piece of meat on a plate. I looked at it and she said, "Do you want me to eat this in the kitchen?" and I said, "No, you're fine. What is it?" and she said, "Rabbit head."

EEEWWWWWWWW!!!!!! It was seriously the head of a rabbit, and she proceeded to dig out all the meat with her knife and fork and all I could think was, "Is that the brain? The eyeballs?" It was really, really gross and I can assure you I will NEVER eat a rabbit head. Sick! Once I ate a rabbit leg, but that was a totally different story.

Why are directions in Paris so difficult?

Saturday night my friend Rachel and I tried to go to her host brother's choir concert. He told her the metro stop and address, but Parisian streets are horribly complicated and we didn't really know where we were going, so we never made it there. We walked around the same area for about an hour, consulting various metro/bus stop maps, alas, to no avail. I was pretty disappointed to miss the concert, actually.


We're reading Don Juan in my theater class, and the other day some kid (who just transferred into my class) asked the professor if it was based off the Italian opera Don Giovanni, which I happen to have seen my freshman year at IU. The professor was like, "Well, sort of... the characters are different, and different things happen... well, actually, no they're not at all similar." I completely disagreed... the main characters are both dons who are libertines that mock heaven and religion and are consequently dragged into the depths of hell by a statue animated by God. Yes, the differences are obvious, no?


I think that my theater and literature professors just suffer from a deeply rooted desire to say no. No one can answer a question correctly in literature. My friend Dale tried to answer a question on Monday, and he said, "I like the part where they talk about their lives when they were young and how they change verb tenses," and Sophie (lit professor) looked at him like he was a dog who just peed on the carpet and said, "I didn't ask what you LIKED." Ouch!


I feel like I didn't accomplish much last weekend, so I'm going to try and make up for this this weekend. I have plans to go to the musee Rodin on Friday and then Versailles on Saturday. I still need to go to Montmartre and Les invalides, but since I've already been there, it's not incredibly urgent, but definitely something I want to do.


I'm also trying to plan a trip for my break, which is November 7-11. I'm either going to go to Barcelona to visit my friend who's studying abroad there, or to Ireland to see my relatives. There's just so many places to go and not enough time! I just booked tickets to Rome, actually. I'm going Nov. 27-30 and am sooo excited.


While Catherine and Lionel are gone on vacation, Aurélie has been taking very good care of me. She's so great! I was having a terrible day yesterday, just one of those days where nothing is going right. I knew that it was coming eventually, but I went to Rachel's house after school and then got home later than I expected, and I was supposed to go out to eat with Mathilde and Slimen, but I got home about 5 minutes too late and they had already left. Aurélie gave me directions to the bus stop and said to get on that bus and Mathilde was waiting for me at the stop. Well, I walked around for about 20 minutes and was totally unsuccessful at finding the bus stop. There's a Marriott very close to where I live, so I stopped by it and asked a security guard where to find the 62 bus stop, next to the post office and across the street from some store called Atac. I even showed him the little diagram Aurélie had drawn for me, and he had no idea. I asked about five people and none of them knew. I thought that was a bit ridiculous because they couldn't even point me in the right direction! One old man even blew me off completely because I think he thought I was trying to sell him something because I was holding Aurélie's map in my hand. So I called Mathilde and said to just go on without me, and she said that was fine and we'd do it some other time.


So I was walking home, terribly frustrated, it was dark and cold and rainy and I had a lot of homework to do, so I just started crying. I tried to sneak up to my room, but Aurélie heard me and came into my room. She told me Mathilde called and said I couldn't find the bus stop, and that she would get me some dinner. I told her I wasn't hungry, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She said there was a very funny French movie on tv that she and Alex were going to watch, and I should watch it with them, so she put my dinner on a tray and brought it upstairs to the tv room. We watched the movie and it was pretty good. Afterwards she followed me into my room and asked if I was feeling better, and if I got upset again, I should come find her because she didn't like it when I was sad. Then she gave me a hug and said good night. I really don't know what I would have done without her! I'm really lucky to have such a caring host family; I know lots of people who barely even talk to theirs.


I found out yesterday what excursions I'm going on. On Saturday the 18th I'll be going to Giverny, which is where Monet did most of his paintings, and then on Friday Nov. 14th I'll be going Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainbleu, which are just chateaux, but Catherine and Mathilde said they were gorgeous and definitely worth a visit. My weekends are filling up so fast! I think I'll plan trips within France for the weekends that I have my excursions because I don't want to go out of the country for only two days.


Although I know I complain about my theater and literature professors a lot, I do have to move on to raving about my politics professor, Marc. He is so awesome! His never-ending array of black clothes continues to amuse me, and he's just so nice! He still remembers where I sit in class and said "Au revoir, Theresa!" today when I passed him in the hallway. Sophie's only got 10 students and she's never actually referred to any of us by name. He's also so smart, but he never gets mad when we don't know stuff (which is a lot). He also always refers to us as "young people," as in "Young people, any thoughts on this presentation?" "Young people, I am SURE you know the answer to this." "Young people, get more sleep so you do not sleep in my class!" He never actually raises his voice, though. And he also realizes that it's hard for us to understand when he uses English words with a French accent, so he'll write it on the board or something. For example, today he was talking about the Iron Curtain, and we all looked completely blank, but once he wrote "Iron Curtain = Rideau de fer" on the board, we understood. It's like Mariah Carey; French people say something like, "Mair-e-AH Cahr-EE" and then are like, "How do you not know who that is?" Plus, the word "rideau" means "curtain/drape," and the "Drape of Iron" did not make much sense. Marc's always chastising us for not speaking up when we don't understand, though. "Young people, you must tell me when you do not understand!"


On Tuesday I was totally blown away when my history professor, Professor Ferré, was wearing an orange blazer over a striped orange/brown button down. I was so distracted by his non-black clothes that I could barely focus in class! Not really, but it was very un-Parisian. We were supposed to have a museum visit tomorrow instead of class, but he said that he had to change the time because of people having class conflicts, and the museum people wouldn't cooperate, so now we get to go to class instead. Thanks a bunch, museum people... really, I owe you one. Now instead of seeing cool historical exhibits I get to sit in my stuffy classroom and listen to lectures. It's way too hot in there; even Professor Ferré commented on it, and when a French person says it's hot, you KNOW it's hot. I'm talking like 80 degrees.


I'm going to the theater tomorrow to see Don Juan with my class. I'm so glad it's a Thursday night and the night before I have class. I hope it's not boring... the play is allegedly a comedy, but maybe Professor de Faramond (theater professor) just makes it boring. I'm willing to bet it's just her and that the performance will be better, kind of like when you read Shakespeare and don't realize that it's actually laugh out loud funny until you go see it performed.


Oh, I almost forgot! On Saturday I went to a rugby game with two other girls, Sarah and Amy. We bought the 5 euro tickets and didn't realize until we got in that the 5 euro ticket is only good for standing along the fence. You have to buy the 15 euro tickets if you want a seat! It was pretty entertaining regardless, though. The Parisian team was pink and blue and had pink goalposts! Can you imagine an NFL team with pink as their color? I can't. The other team was black with this atrocious toxic green color. Those men were huge guys, but man could they run! Some of them had thighs that looked to be about a foot thick of muscle, but they ran like Olympic sprinters. It was a pretty ferocious game, but not as bad as hockey. They also did this very cool thing where they'd lift a guy into the air to block someone throwing the ball in-bounds (or at least I think that's why they were doing it).


Look at the guy on the right! His legs are out of control!Me and Sarah at the rugby game, looking very American with our sunglasses. This is Sarah's "Miss USA" smile.

If you look to the left and right of this guy in the yellow who got in my picture, you can see the Paris team doing their lifts! It's sort of male cheerleader-ish, really.

Homework takes over my life

Catherine and Lionel left today for their trip to the West Coast of the US, but it's cool, I've got my homework to keep me company. It was actually really cute how excited they were to go... Catherine told me this is their first vacation in four years, and the last one was just a weekend with the girls, I think. I worked all day yesterday from about 4:30 to midnight on my homework because one of my notebooks got all screwed up and the pages don't turn anymore, so I bought a new notebook and had to recopy all my notes. Then I tried to figure out what I have to do for next week, and my literature and history professors are really piling it on. I've got 100 pages of a novel (a relatively boring one, mind you) plus questions to answer for literature, and then I've got to track down those stinking history books and then read 50 pages of one and I don't know how much of the others (since, obviously, I don't have them). But I finished recopying everything and started in on the novel, so that's good. I don't have any class on Fridays so I'm planning to get some more done, since I'm planning a trip to Rome (not until November though) with several other girls, so I want to be ahead in general in case I want to do any kind of traveling over the weekends.

I'm sorry to say I don't really have any updates... school keeps me very busy Monday-Thursday. However, tomorrow is "la nuit blanche," which means "white night." I think it's only once a year, and it's basically one whole day and night in Paris where everything is open: museums, buildings, city hall, etc. and it's all free! The obvious downside is that there will be HUGE crowds since this is only once a year. I want to try and go out and see whatever I can see, though. Also, my friends Rachel and Shelly have a host brother who is in a choir or something here and he invited them to come to his concert (tomorrow, I think), and Shelly is in Munich so Rachel asked if I wanted to come instead, so hopefully we'll do that.

How does everyone in Paris already know how everything works in Paris?

Yesterday my friends Shelly and Rachel and I tried to eat at one of these student cafeterias that are allegedly very cheap. We finally managed to find one, then we couldn't make it work. We got in line and grabbed a tray, glass, and silverware. It was set up buffet-style, and we couldn't figure out where you paid or how much the food cost. Turns out you had to go buy a little student card, which we did (2 euro), then you stuck the card in a little machine to pay in advance for your food, which could only equal 6 points. So we put our cards in the machine (after getting back at the end of the line) only to have them say "zero euros." Apparently, you had to buy the card first then "charge" it at the little machine, but here's a tip for all you travelers: American bank cards DO NOT work in your average automatic machine. They'll work if you want to pay for things in stores or most anywhere there is a cashier, but at they won't be recognized at automatic machines. I should have remembered this from when I tried to use it to retrieve my Internet train ticket to Chartres and it wouldn't work then. Anyway, we couldn't get them to accept any money, so we got out of line (again) and asked the man we bought the cards from what to do, and he said we could just pay with cash this one time. Then, while in line, only some of the food was labeled with points, which was stupid because then you didn't know if you spent 6 or not. We eventually got food, but unfortunately along with it, a headache. I just don't understand how EVERYONE in Paris already knows how everything works: cafeterias, metros, crosswalks...

Which brings me to another point. Important: pedestrians absolutely DO NOT have the right of way. NEVER cross if you don't have the little green man because someone will either hit you or honk obnoxiously and then hit you. This happens all the time (okay, people don't actually get hit by cars, but it's close), and there are also no jaywalkers. Oh, and bikers have to obey the rules of the road, so they need to be treated as cars because they, too, might hit you. They have little dingy bells to warn pedestrians with.

So today is October 1st, which meant today is the day to renew my monthly pass Navigo (metro card). However, it also meant that today is the day for every single person living in Paris who has a monthly pass to renew it, so the metro was mass chaos when I got there this morning. Fortunately, I live close enough to school so I just walked. I was really moving, but I was still a few minutes late for my theater class. No real loss, as theater is very boring. My professor is very specific, and I don't think I've answered any questions correctly unless they involve a single word, such as today, when she asked what character in the play Don Juan is comedic in any situation, and I said the guy's name. But whenever she asks me questions that require long answers, I'll say something, and she'll be like, what you're saying is correct, but I don't think you really understood the question... Yeah, probably because no one does. I had a quiz in my lit class today for the sole purpose of seeing if we understood the book we are reading or if we are just lying to her and saying we get it.

This lit professor of mine thinks we are very dumb. She gives us pages to read and then hard questions to answer as homework (before we actually discuss the reading), but then in class we talk about easy things. She always asks us if we have any questions, and it's like, no, I know what's happening, but I don't know what she wants us to know. It's not too hard to read and understand a story, but it's hard to know what sort of literary insights I'm supposed to be getting. And she always looks suspicious when no one has questions, so she warned us there'd be a quiz today to make sure we were reading the material. My theater and literature classes used to have roughly 25 people each, and there's probably 17 in theater and I counted today in literature: there are now 10. Quite a difference...

However, on Mondays and Wednesdays in addition to theater and literature I have my politics class with Marc, my "snobbish" Parisian professor. Marc is awesome. He is also super stylish with his all-black Parisian ensembles. Monday he changed it up a bit with a black polo underneath a gray suit. This was the first non-black color I have ever seen him wear. I think he rides a moped because I've seen his (all black) helmet in the corner of the room. He also wears a black trench coat. I think it would be quite hilarious to see his closet... it literally must be 95% black clothes. He is also awesome because he doesn't give us any homework and in class when we give the wrong answer, he doesn't look pained or exasperated (see theater and lit professors). He just kind of is... "Er... no." Then smiles and gives the right answer. He also has known everyone's name since the first day of class and actually remembers that I sit in the same desk each time. There are twin girls in my class and he even knows which one is which one (they are semi-identical... their faces are almost the same, but their hair is different). He also gives all dates in English, as opposed to my history professor, who likes to rattle off French years ("and the Roman empire fell in 476" aka "quatre cent soixante-seize") and then just keep going on.

I need at least 20 seconds to sort out the words... "Okay, quatre means 4, and cent means 100, and then soixante is 60, but seize means 16, so 60 + 16 is actually 76." After you hit 60, French for 70 is literally "sixty-ten," so 78 is "sixty-eighteen." This also goes for 80, "four-twenty," which is 4 x 20 = 80, so 84 is "four-twenty-four." Then 90 is "four-twenty-ten," so 4 x 20 + 10 = 90, so 93 is "four-twenty-thirteen." No, this is not easy, especially when the professor is lecturing about all these dates and you're trying to take notes.

My history professor seems pretty cool, but he asks questions that no one has any answers to on account of the fact that no one in the entire class has all 3 books he asked us to get. Some have one, some have two, but all bookstores in Paris are out. I have some humongous book that he seems to think I'm going to have read 90 pages of by tomorrow. No, this is not going to happen because I like eating and sleeping, plus I have other classes. But anyway, he'll ask things that I legitimately think he thinks we should know, such as the exact date of the fall of the Roman empire, which I can now tell you is 476. Regardless, he thinks we are "too passive" and I think he said we're going to have a quiz tomorrow. I wished I could say it's easy to be passive when I have NO IDEA what the answer is because I DON'T HAVE THE BOOKS.

My grammar professor, Jeanne, is the also the academic dean on staff. She's a good professor, but her tests are hard. We just took a vocabulary test on Monday, and the whole front was just a whole bunch of sentences with blanks, but the problem was I didn't know what she wanted us to put in. Plus she left the classroom once she handed out the tests. The vocab was over film and pictures, and here's an example of what I remember. "I go every year to Cannes for the ___________. (film festival?) There are several films there 'in competition,' a _______, ________, ________. " What? Did she want types of films (i.e. adventure, horror, documentary), or did she want categories of competition (i.e. best actor, director)? I thought perhaps types of films, but there was already a section of blanks I had filled in with types ("I like adventure films, but I also enjoy ________, ___________, and ________."). But the problem was our vocab didn't include "best actress," "best soundtrack," etc. I could have made something up because I know those words already, but she couldn't possibly have been asking us to fill in the blanks with words that weren't even part of our vocab list. Very bizarre, indeed.

Oh, and we had to watch a movie for grammar class and then record ourselves discussing the film using our new vocabulary. I talked to the program librarian about borrowing a microphone because my computer doesn't have one, and she's like, you need to buy a cassette tape and do it here. So today I trekked out in between classes and went to the FNAC, which is like a cross between Best Buy and Borders and bought a 5 euro tape! I was angry at the ridiculousness, plus I had to find a FNAC to begin with. Then I talked to this guy, Dale, who's in my lit class who is also in my grammar class and he told me he bought headphones with a mic for 9 euro, and that any Windows computer can record voice things, so he was just going to record it at home and email it to Jeanne. I thought this seemed like a better idea than trying to do it at the center, so Dale showed me the store and the headphones he got, so I bought them and I'm going to return my cassette tape. I just think the whole thing is so frustrating. But at least I have my own headphones/mic because we're going to be doing these all semester.

There are often random people (men, usually) who hop on the metro and play the guitar or do some kind of panhandling thing and then go around asking for money because you're stuck on the metro until it stops. Last night I was on the metro coming home from my friend's house at like 10:30 and right as the doors were closing a dirty, smelly man jumped on my car with his guitar. He started playing and singing, but he smelled awful! I could hardly stand to be like 10 feet away from him, and then he started getting closer to me. I was really uncomfortable, and then I remembered what Jeanne told our class. She said that in Paris, if you're on the metro and there is someone gross next to you, you are not obliged to stay there. You can just get up for absolutely no reason and move. So that's what I did. I stood up and marched to the other end of the car and sat down again. The smelly man sort of hollered after me, and even though there were a lot of other people on the metro with me, I decided to get off at the next stop and wait for the next metro. So that's what I did, but as I got off I checked to make sure he wasn't going to follow me, and he didn't, but then I had to wait about 10 minutes for another metro. I was very angry at that stupid, disgusting man who made so late getting home. It's things like that that make me dislike cities in general.

Don't worry though, Mom and Dad especially... this was my first semi-shady metro encounter and I'm fine. I was slightly worried that my sinuses weren't going to recover, but I'm good to go today. I'm so glad tomorrow is Thursday!