"Home" Again

And now our first week back from vacation is over. It was both fun and stressful. Fun because, while nothing majorly exciting went down (wait, maybe that's a lie), every week I'm here is fun. We had classes as usual, and on this side of vacation all of my projects/papers look that much closer.

So Tuesday I slept in and had class, where we talked about L'étranger and it went by super fast. Then I had my Théâtre class, which is always fun. We did another tongue twister, some more relaxation meditation, a charades sort of improv game, learned french onomatopoeias and did this trust fall game where we fell from a table into the arms of the other 6 people. Which was slightly scary, but crazy fun. Then I had dinner with my host family for the first time since before London, which was nice. We had a guest who I guess stayed the night, because he was there again for breakfast. We had spaghetti for dinner, which I plan never to serve if I have guests. Even though my family is a million times more graceful and polite eating everything, including spaghetti, they still ended up with it falling out of their mouthes. You just can't eat it politely. Also, after dinner I tried this digestif called crème de cassis which was a sort of blackberry liquor that didn't have much actual alcohol in it and was super tasty.
(at the Musée Rodin)

Wednesday was class again, where we watched this comedian, Dany Boon who was also the director of Bienvenue chez les ch'tis which is a movie that I need to try to see because it's had record success here in France. In the clip of Dany Boon's stand up comedy, he made fun of his hometown in Northern France, and of Parisians. While the first part was funny, the second (about Paris) was funnier because we could relate to what he was talking about-how no one smiles on the metro, and drivers are CRAZY and stuff like that.

Then, I saw a friend from Carleton for lunch in the Latin Quarter. The Maastricht program (in the netherlands) which is a poli-sci/international relations study abroad program was visiting Paris. (They do a LOT of traveling). It was really great to hang out with someone I knew, who wasn't the 22 students I see every day. We had lunch at this greek/gyro place where I had this crazy tasty pita with lettuce, meat and french fries in it. Then we walked over to the patisserie near CUPA and got pastries and then I rode back to where their hotel was. After that I didn't feel like going home just yet, so I took the metro over to Sacré Coeur and sat in the grass and read. It was really nice. (The weather has been great since returning from Nice).

Thursday I had a meeting in the morning with a professor friend of Cathy's to talk about my research project, and then I went to try the library at the Centre Pompidou, but the line was way long so I just went home. I tried to get work done, but was failing, so I met Becky and we wandered the area near the Musée Rodin and got lunch before our museum visit with the class. The museum visit was a bit ridiculous because we looked at sculptures outside, and of course Jérôme, our professor, had to have us all standing in the hot, hot sun while he rambled on about what we were looking at. (Oh, and we really only talked about 3 sculptures in an hour and a half. Sometimes, Jérôme is ridiculous. Ok, maybe all the time).

Then we wandered over to the Eiffel Tower, got some soft serve while killing time before meeting up with our program and the Maastricht program for wine and cheese and baguettes and apples by the Eiffel Tower. It was wonderful to see a bunch of other Carleton students, and, not going to lie, refreshing to see other male Carleton students, because out of 23 students on the Paris program, 3 are male. (And two of them are a set of twins). So that was a lot of fun. I finally got to see the Eiffel Tower lit up in all its glory, because until then, I'd never been there at night. So that was great. I got home at midnight, which was kind of crazy, because the picnic started at 7. But it was worth it, even though I then stayed up writing some journal entries that were due today.
(too bad I just had my phone with me--still, I'm always surprised how good my pictures can be with it)

Today I had class in the morning, and then finished up my journal entries after class and submitted them before heading back to the library, where there wasn't a line this time. Work spaces at the tables were hard to come by though. So then I spent the next couple of hours doing research for my paper, before heading home. I had dinner alone tonight, because Xavier had work, and Lorraine ate early with Maxcence and watched the Jungle Book (in French of course) with him before he went to bed, which was not long after I got home. But they were finishing the movie and I could hear music upstairs and it took me a while to realize that the reason it was familiar was because it was the Jungle Book. And now I'm going to try to write some of my paper before going to bed. So not too exciting of a day. (I have a feeling this weekend is going to be a LOT of work).