A Classy Week

{Thursday, October 2}

Ack! Where did the time go? I blame my classes for having thrown us right in {some of them, at least}. Fortunately, there's not much else to write about, as they take up most of my time; you that look pale or tremble at this, fear not: I am only working hard now and not going out much in order to be doing really well in my classes later in the semester when I explore Europe {or Italy and Prague, at least}.

Thursday - more classes, then celebrating Julia {friend of Monica}'s birthday at the real Café les Deux Moulins, made famous by the film Amélie. It looks a lot different than in the movie, but the bartenders were both drunk and raucously serenading each other with the songs on the radio, as I imagine people would do with a song like "Piano Man" in American bars. Our waitress also looked remarkably like Audrey Tautou as Amélie, and I ordered the crème brûlée - mostly because I hadn't yet eaten any in France, but we also couldn't resist taking a few pictures.

The interior. Take a look at the waitress and her sweet Amélie haircut.

Crème brûlée, Amélie style. Sorry for the devilish red eyes.

Oh yeah, and we were in the red light district. Near the metro stop 'Blanche' {the French word for white}, no less.

On Friday, Monica and I went to greet her twin sister Melissa who was arriving that very day, also to study in Paris, but with a different program. I got over the twin thing fairly quickly, as Melissa has blonde hair and, though their personalities are interlocking {trust me, this is a good word for it, not me losing my command of English}. they are quite clearly different people. We also experienced the RER {the Réseau Express Régional; it's basically just a metro that goes further outside the city} for the first time. The seats are more comfortable, but the smell is worse. Shrug.

Um...Monica and I being druids at the Cité Universitaire. She found the rock rather Stonehenge-like.

Me: I don't really know what druids do...
Monica: It's okay; no one does.

It was also Cody's birthday, so we later went up to Oberkampf {metro stop} and sat with him as he ate bad Indian food {as his host family apparently forgot to feed him - sad}, then ended up in a crowd of about 10 IES kids at the Berimbar {yes, named after the instrument - sweet}. Cody didn't pay for a single drink and thus got progressively more amusing as the night went on. I had a nice conversation outside the bathroom with a twentysomething woman who said my accent is very light and unplaceable. Monica and I left to catch the metro around 1 {ours stops earlier than everyone else's, unfortunately}. On the way home, we got asked for directions twice and called "beautiful lady" by some weird guy on the street who asked me my name. Creepy.

Saturday afternoon saw Monica, Melissa, her friend Emily, Cody and I at the Conciergerie {where Marie Antoinette and other prisoners were kept until their execution}

La salle des Gardes {the Hall of the Guards}

Some rather naughty monkeys in the Salle des Gens d'armes

La cour des femmes {the women's courtyard}

...apparently the femmes were pretty short.

A really creepy mannequin of Marie Antoinette in her cell

The soldier guarding Marie. Looks like he's playing solitaire.

and the Sainte-Chapelle. The windows of the Sainte-Chapelle are absolutely breathtaking and impossible to do justice with a photo, but this will give you an idea.

We ate dinner, once again, at the fabulous Marathon restaurant and then hung out in Melissa's dorm room and took the last RER home.

Sunday was, sadly, full of homework. It's a shame, because it would be a really useful day for buying books, running errands, etc., but everything is closed. I spent hours on my BD {bande dessinée - comic book} homework {more on that later}.

Monday was my first day with my real classes, as determined by modified schedule. I will now take this opportunity to talk a bit more about them, and then leave you in order to keep this entry {relatively} short.

BD: Prof. Loret rocks my socks. Seriously. He's pretty distant with everyone, but I think he doesn't dislike me {which might be the best I can get from him}. The first reading for the class actually cited him, and he clearly knows what he's talking about. Workload-wise, I spend more time on this class than all of the others put together. We read theory and comic books, find links to information about and pictures and videos of the references in our readings and post them on our blogs with our own commentary, and we also have to present exposés {10-minute Power Point presentations; I signed up for the first one so that I could get it over with while the rest of my courses are still starting up}. In conclusion, we can call this the most fascinating literature class I've ever taken {yes, BD is, by many, considered literature here. Ask me about it in a comment if you'd like to hear more, because after four days of this class and its readings, I could produce a full-fledged diatribe on this subject}.

Phonetics: Love it. Sometimes I feel a little patronized in this class because, between my French classes and my linguistics classes, I'm already familiar with a lot of this material. But Prof. Gourévitch is wicked laid-back {and usually late to class}, and the other day we practiced the tonic accent by pretending to throw things away {including physical gestures} while standing in the middle of the room. Some of my favorite pieces of "trash" were "homework", "the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro", and "Uhhh Nicolas Cage!" {?}

Word & Image: I still like it a lot, but the pacing is a little slow for me. We've just started doing analysis as opposed to theory, though {with Cyrano de Bergerac's famous nose monologue}, so I think it'll pick up soon.

Translation: is what it is; mornings with Dominique , who alternates between going a little too quickly and taking a concept and banging us over the head with it. But I got a 14,5 out of 20 on the pre-test {translatoins without a dictionary, given before any theory was presented}, where most people got less than 10, so I'm feeling pretty good there.

Drawing: can be tiring because we're spending the entire class on our feet for the time being, but I like our tiny, bespectacled stereotypical Frenchwoman art teacher, who wears bright red lipstick and generally tells me that my work is "pas mal" {"not bad"}, or even sometimes "très bien".

That's all, folks, for the moment. Also, it's October; what?