20 hours of sleep and all the Evian I can handle

I had to go to the doctor the other day thanks to some sketchy moroccan food. It was a very interesting cultural experience...

I got the names, address, and hours of some doctors close to my school who spoke english ( although I had already prepared sentences crucial to a good diagnosis ). So after my class I found my way to the building and entered the door code to get in. Well the doctor's office was in an apartment bulding which seemed really strange to me, but I guess maybe it's just a city thing - more practical than renting out space somewhere else. I had kind of assumed it would be some medical building or something. Well anyway I went in to the place and found myself in a waiting room which consisted of 15 chairs, 10 grumpy french people, and 1 table with a bountiful supply of magazine. At least 50 different ones. I was too spaced out to read anything though and I figured it would go by quickly. Unfortunately there was only one doctor and all 10 frenchpeoples were seperate. I waited for 2 hours. On top of that some girl budged in front of me - there's isn't a formal queue, you just figure out who was last of all the people before you and walk as fastly as you can to meet the doctor. Anyway the doctor's office was an actual office ( huge desk, mini library etc ) with a small area in the corner that had one of those exam bed/table things and various medical supplies. The doctor was really nice. He had me speak in french as much as I could and in english if I couldn't find the words. He wrote me out a prescription for some antibiotics and gave me my reimbursement forms. I had to pay him directly, 30 euros! Apparently though I get all those euros back.
My two prescriptions only cost me 6 euro though. :) Don't worry, I get that back too.

Anyway, I'm off for the holiday weekend tonight ( they have a government holiday for halloween but not thanksgiving? i think they have their priorites wrong ) and will get back Sunday afternoon. Should be a blast!

Happy Halloween from France!
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Hotdish doesn't really work in France :(

Every morning when I wake up the first thing I do is look at the time so I know if I have time to make myself late by falling back asleep or not ( right mom? ). Well when I woke up and checked the time this morning, I discovered it wasn't morning at all - it was 3:45 in the afternoon! Or early evening? Granted, I didn't get home until 4:30 and asleep around 5:30 ... :). My friend Sophie had friends from high school who are abroad in Spain visiting this weekend and we ended up going out for dinner last night. I don't think we actually got our food until 11:30 or so so my time clock has been way off since then. And apparently - last night was daylight savings time in France? Cause when I turned on my computer this morning it was different than every other clock in the apartment. I had no idea. I really miss my channel 4 news keeping me up to date on everything!

I've been really stressed this past week trying to get myself to study for midterms and pick projects for my Sorbonne class ( which is a mess of its own ). Unfortunately even though I don't have videogames or satellite television or a car or Nala to distract me .... I have found plenty of things to waste time doing. :) At least I had lots of time these past few days to crackdown and get stuff done.

Stuff like finding Baking Soda. Which was a struggle - apparently they don't use it over here. My first attempt at Chocolate Dainties was terrible whithout it ( and combined with no way to convert measurments other than guessitmating - mind you the most involved in making of chocolate dainties I ever get is eating the dough ... ). I had to go to the Bon Marche which is this really upscale department store and grocery store that has a small section of imported goods. All the important American things like popcorn, marshmallows, peanut butter, salsa, and taco kits. Except half of the stuff is made in Canada soooo.

I'm really looking forward to my trip this weekend though. It should be a blast and the girls I'm going with are really cool. We leave Wednesday night and come back really early Sunday morning. It should be interesting because we leave Sunday at 7 a.m. which means we need to be leave for the airport at 4:30 so we are going to cancel our hostel that night and just stay out late and maybe go to the airport if we get tired. Shall be intersting! We probably should have just paid the extra money to take the late flight back but oh well - Ryan Air is sketchy anyway.

Midterms start tomorrow and I just had a 3 hour dinner ( I will notttt miss these when I leave France! ) - I gotsta study!

Presents

I put up so many pictures!

Normandy:
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2164014&l=73dd6&id=16916077

London ( 2 albums ):
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2164921&l=abe0e&id=16916077
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2165636&l=15018&id=16916077

Anyway. I'll probably make a more in depth blog about Normandy because it was really cool. But right now I need to get to sleep - today has been a long day ....

Today I went to the bakery to get a sandwich for lunch like I do most Mondays and Wednesdays. I ordered " Sandwich saucisson s'il vous plait" like normal ( pronounced so-see-son ). I ended up getting a " sandwich crudite thon " ( pronounced crew-dee-tay ton ). Tuna is not saucisson though. I was too exhausted to debate phonetics unfortunately. We'll try again tomorrow/today.

I wish I would've known class was cancelled before I got to school...

Well it's back to reality for me.
I spent the last week hanging out in London and Paris with mom and brian ( which I'm sure everyone already knows ).
We had a good time I think - I ended up getting to spend a lot more time with them than was originally planned. Especially since I went over to London wed night instead of thursday afternoon because of the massive transportation strikes in Paris that started last Thursday. Good thing too because the eurostar trains didn't start running again until Saturday really. Anyway we did a lot of hanging out and whatnot - trying to enjoy the cities, do some walking. I will say that our gastronomic adventures were splendid. :).
I'm disappointed to be back at school now because I'm really homesick and have started to realize there is actually a huge long list of issues I have with Paris. I still love living over here ( in Europe ) but France is starting to get me.
At least I made it through the weekend okay after getting back from London. Kate and I went out the watch the rugby game Saturday night and Sunday we went to the Chocolate Show and tested strange things like "Mayan Cinammon Hot Chocolate" and absolutly delicious things like chocolate covered pretzels. It was a little spendy for not a whole lot of samples but it was a fun way to spend the afternoon.
I think like 9 days until fall break though - there's something to look forward too. I think my friend Kate and I are going to try and plan a trip to London and Amsterdam too so there's something to look forward too. Especially since I'm not sure if I want to stay here all the way until January anymore :(.

Moliere, Aristotle and I are not friends

I had a test today in my Questions of Aesthetics class that involved comparing arguments regarding the nature and structure of plays as explained by Aristotle in his piece "Poetics" and defended in Moliere's "Critique of L'ecole des femmes". Plus, the Aristotle piece was in Enlgish and Moliere's in French. I can't remember exactly if I wrote in french or english. Probably a mix - which was probably a bad idea considering my professor is uber french. It was a very unpleasant way to beging my morning. Or well, I began my morning being sick and missing my first class ( I never skip classes sick or not - except Shakespeare last semester ... ). Anyway, it was a really really really hard test worth a lovely 10% of my grade. At least everyone else had absolutely no idea what was going on. Did I mention that this is the class that reduced in size from 20 to 5 in one day. Smart kids.

Today, I saw a Hummer on the streets of Paris. Full size. Monster. In the 9th mind you ( where the streets are mostly one ways with cars parked both sides). Now I've always wondered why a person needed a Hummer in Minneapolis/St. Paul or even the suburbs for that matter but now I know. They have one because they have a higher likelihood of off-roading than this stupid french man. At least I know this guy's serious about cars - and reputation. My highest hope for Paris living is to see this man manuvering through the congestion that is Gare du Nord ( and all intersections within one square mile of said gare ). I always carry my camera with me so ... if it happens. Picture.

American cool at the big bad French school

Today was the day to end all days and yet, here we are. The french gods must have been satisfied by the struggles I endured during my 2 hour "TD" ( discussion group basically... ) and concurrently, "Intro to the French Education System: All the glories and Maybe some failures ( in France!? Never!?! )". Let's see what kind of an account this turns into...

So I suppose I should've gotten a feel for things by the way my adventure at the Sorbonne started - the frantic emails and website scouring should've been a sign of the confusion and unpreparedness that was to follow. But no, I just showed up 45 min. early give or take 15 min. ( but put your money on giving ) in order to find the building, closest metro, classroom, general layout. Apparently showing up that early for TD's, while maybe not so much for the lecture classes, is absolutely insane. At least that's what I could gather from the frighten french girl I tried to talk to waiting for the class before us to get done. Apparently the only reason she was there so early was to talk to the professor beforehand. Or maybe it was just my strange french that was making her scared...Not as scared as me though. Especially after I tried to sit down in the empty classroom and was promptly shooed out of the room by a woman who needed to satisfy her baguette and cafe fix. Actually that was my professor ( for now ). So with still an hour to kill I walked around the floor - which took me all of 2 min. When I returned though, lo and behold, I heard english being spoken. I was toren though - the whole point of taking an outside class was to improve my french, learn about the education system, and make real french friends. Going instantly to the group of Americans probably wasn't the way to do any of those things. I was scared of the class though and so I went - and thank god I did.
I'm pretty much going to need all the help in that class I can get. Not necessarily because of assignments or anything ( we aren't required to do anything - it's basically going to be independent study ) but instead for just understanding what's going on. I've been surprised at how easily you can tune out here. I mean - I've gotten good at switching into "thinking in french" mode but that just drains me even quicker. And one can definitely still daydream in french - even if it's in broken sentences and strange grammer. Anyway, not helping the fact is the professor I ended up with ( classroom changes sent me the american girls and so I stuck with their plan ) is considerably random and never writes anything on the boards. At least she talks slowly. It's just honestly, realllllly daunting. At least when I tune out at IES there is constantly somebody asking the prof. to repeat the main point. Here they actually turn their phones off in class, take notes ( consistently ), and never leave the prof waiting for an answer.
While I get to skip out on the work that the real students have to do I still have to do something although...I have no idea what that something is yet. I think that we american students are just a big burden and waist of space because I have to figure out some sort of project/paper to do for a grade. Apparently this involves direct contact with my lecture professor. Lecture professors in France, to learn you a little bit about the system I suppose, don't have offices. Or office hours. Or apparently, a plan.
Hopefully my friends at IES can clear this all up for me. I'm too scared to wander up to what's bound to be a scary, blundery, eccentric, french man that will be teaching my Iconographie class and tell him that " I'm american, I'm taking your course, I'm probably too lazy and too undereducated to do an "exposee" on the facade of the Cathedral in Amiens, will you please give me something to do so I can increase the stress in my life. " Apparently it's supposed to be something along the lines of a 5-7 page paper on some sort of topic....in french. Eeek!

Well Dominique is in Germany until Thursday so I spent the rest of my day drowning myself in mindless french television. Said mindless television is of course none other than reprocessed versions of classics like "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grade?", "1 vs. 100", "SupperNanny" ( which was actually....awesome ), and "Idol" ( Well it's called "Popstars" and it's basically "Idol" ). More importantly ( Mom this is for you ) - I watched the french version of the BBC wondershow.... "How Clean is your House?".

Mmmm. I should probably get going on the homework for my other school where I have no idea what's going on. :)

Ah, la france.



Oh and hey - If anyone is looking for a perfect account of true French cultue ... I just finished reading it : A Year in the Merde by Stpehen Clarke.


"Bonne Nuit" from Paris!
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Blame it on the Euro

Exchange rates have gotten pretty ridiculous in my opinion so I haven't been up to anything very interesting. I've been doing an icredible amount of walking - this past weekend for instant I walked to the Louvre, 2 floors in the Denon wing, walked around the ritzy area that surrounds it, and then walked home ( I was gone for 8 hours). Not to mention that the next day I walked to the Musee D'Orsay and then all the way to Porte d'Orleans ( Basically entire length of Paris north to south ). I was gone pretty much all day. Really though this past weekend was absolutely beautiful! While I did choose to spend hours inside of museums - I definitely took advantage of the great weather too. It's fun to walk around Paris - it's the best way to get a true feel for the city.

All that walking did allow me to a realize a couple things about the city. For one, It's not that big! Well I mean it's immense but before I just had no really concept of how close or far monuments/roads/areas were to each other. Secondly, Paris is really really cool. Part of the time I absolutely hate Paris because of dealing with commuting, the expense of living, rude people ... but really the french are cool people. I blend in more and I think that allows me increased interaction with them. Even I'm starting to get annoyed by tourists. I have however been finding myself helping tourists quite often. I feel bad watching a french-english direction struggle and end up stepping in almost every time. I even helped an Irish couple the other day to the point where I modified my travel plans to give them a metro tutorial and show them which metro passes they needed. But they were grateful and I wasn't in a hurry. All of these tourists I help seem to end the conversation in a strange way as well - telling me, "And thank you for speaking english!" Now I really speak english just as often as I speak French around here between talking on Skype and hanging out with my friends so I can't be forgetting words or reverting to english with a french accent. I don't think I am that native either with my ipod and bright clothes. I guess I do wear scarves, walk fast, and try not to smile which are all very french....I'll take it though. Blending in is the point.

So anyway. Lots of class, tv watching on the internet, reading, exploring, and loving city life. Not to mention looking forward to going out for Thursday night dinners ( our new tradition - I love having dinner in Paris .... it's always so tasty ). I also booked a trip for fall break but I'll tell you all when that time rolls around :). Lets just say, I'm pretty excited!

I got pictures up so here are the links:

around paris
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2160694&l=e774f&id=16916077

tours and giverny
http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2160694&l=e774f&id=16916077

enjoy!
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