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.
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