a week in review

This past week was a hurricane. I had a lot of downtime but also - a lot of shaky internet connectivity.

Classes started and I suppose that's where most of my time went. Everything turned out to be good choices except that my Questions of Esthetique class scares me to death. My professor speaks really fast and kind of mumbles ( not to mention around 15 people dropped it after the first day ). But....he writes film and book reviews for french newspaper and so I think it will be a good choice to stick with it. It's all really hard to deal with right now because by the end of my third class I can barely think anymore ( I've been getting used to thinking in french ). Monday night, Dominique and I went to have dinner at her friends house. Her friend is American although she has lived all over the world and has lived in France for awhile now. She was really a fun lady and dinner was a nice break.

Tuesday I just had one class- my french class - and I spent the rest of the day lounging around and doing some exploring. In the evening Kate came over and we continued to watch episodes of the office. Dominique invited her to stay for dinner and we ended up have an intense discussion about politics. It was nice to have somebody else there for a change. Plus, we got to speak in English. Yay!

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty boring. Kate and I made dinner at her and watched the Office apartment Wednesday night. On Thursday I went to a movie after class and walked from the Opera back to my apartment so I could see more of the street I live on. Thursday night we finished the office and ordered pizza. Same old, same old.

So Friday I had my first excursion with school to Giverny ( the town where Monet lived ). It was really a beautiful area and the gardens were awesome. Unfortunately it was really cold and rainy - not the best weather to be walking around outside in. I still enjoyed it though. Friday night we went out but didn't end up doing a whole lot of anything. Lots of walking and lots of money spent on kebabs.

Saturday I slept in really late and woke up to find out we were having lunch with Bastien, his girlfriend, and Domonique's brother. It turned out to be really fun ( except for the foie gras which I had mega issues eating without complaint - I hate foie gras ). I was however 2 hours late to a shopping excursion with the girls. We walked around for awhile but everyone was really depressed and homesick so we decided not to go out for dinner like we had planned. I still wanted to so I convinved Kate to go for food later. We found some random resturaunt that, while very overpriced, had possibly the best onion soup ever.

Today I met Kate to show her Montmartre and Sacre Coeur and to have lunch. We walked around a little bit and enjoyed the nice weather. I think now that October is rolling around everyone is starting to feel torn between Paris and home though. So this weekend was pretty low key and this past week was really stressfull with all the school stuff going on. This week should be interesting though because I start my class at the Sorbonne ( yeahhh....i know.... ) and I'm already scared out of my mind!


I'm working on putting up pictures from Tours from last weekend and Giverny as well. If the internet would ever work for more than 5 min. at a time it would be good. I'll post the link asap :).


love from rainy and cold paris!
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