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!
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