This was my first week of classes... Ha.

Wow. That is all I have to say. I am sure now that I know why Emory requires 5 semesters of French before coming here... getting through the lectures of my 4 classes every week is going to be ridiculously hard. But I will make it, especially since hopefully my French will continue to improve as I am here longer... But it is hard because a lot of the art vocabulary that I need to know I don’t know in English– and hence know almost NONE of it in French. But I run around with my Cassell’s French and English Dictionary in my bag all the time... it must weigh 5 extra pounds but I can’t make it through the day without it. ((sidenote: I discovered a French band called "Les Blaireux." It means BADGER in French. Not the verb, though– the noun. As in, smallish furry rodent.))
Friday my roommate Jessi and I attempted to go to the French Resto-U (slang for "Restaurante Universitaire). It’s like the equivalent of their university dining halls, but since there are bits of French University all over Paris, there are also Resto-U’s all over the city. So we go today (because since we are French students we get free meals there), and realize immediately that although we are experienced DUC-diners (the Emory dining hall), here we have no idea what is going on. So we just joined the line and decided to hope for the best. Luckily we have become good at both pretending we know what is going on and also watching other people to see what they do... so we made it through without incident. At the Resto-U, a meal is 2,70 Euros if you don’t have a coupon. But if you have one, you get a plat (main course), 2 composes (sides), and pain (bread). So we had a typical-ish college dining hall meal, with this stuff called "Creme de Normandie" or something for dessert... The lid said it was made with real cheese... and it tasted like vanilla yogurt mixed with sour cream. Not the best thing I have had since arriving in this country, but I mean... I suppose it is typical French because everyone there was eating it like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Have still been going to the Hillsong church here; it takes four Metro lines for me to get there from my apartment, but it is totally worth it. And besides the fact that I like having a church here, since everything there is conducted in both French and English I feel like it helps my language skills a lot.
Saturday night was "La Nuit Blanche 2006" across Paris... It means "White Night" and I don’t completely understand the concept, but I think it is just like a new European thing to do. It was a full moon, and they opened one Metro line all night long (usually the Metro doesn’t run from 1h00 to 5h00) and pretty much everything in the city was doing something special. I discovered, in my wanderings of Paris, this amazing restaurant district just next to the Seine on the Left Bank; it’s all winding narrow alley-ish streets lined with restaurant after restaurant: Tunisian, Lebanese, Greek, Thai, Indian, Italian, Spanish, French, and... drum roll... MEXICAN. The streets are not even wide enough for a large van to go through, but it doesn’t matter because it is all Pietons streets (Pedestrian). The few blocks that comprise the area are not at all regular city blocks, the roads all curve and wrap around and fork out– Baron Haussmann definitely never made it here in his renovation of Paris. It was just like walking down the street in the opening song of Beauty and the Beast, when she walks through the crowded marketplace. So to satiate my Mexican craving, Jessi, Jossclyn (another girl from our program) and I visited the Tampico Cantina on Saturday night. To sum up the experience: the chips we ordered at the beginning of the meal came with nacho cheese dust on them... like Doritos. I think that is enough said. Crepes for dessert, and then off to Notre-Dame because, in honor of Nuit Blanche there were Mozart concerts going on all night, and the cathedral, which usually closes at dusk-ish, was open until 1h00. The concert was free and awesome, and being in Notre Dame at night was amazing... They had it lit just with candles, and it was beautiful. And the best part? Since it is a terribly French night with not a huge amount of publicity, there were NO tourists to be found. Outside the Cathedral when we emerged were people juggling flamesticks; people doing interpretive dance, breakdancing, and doing rollerblade tricks. Amazing. Only in France.
We ran into a guy in a Subway uniform on the end of the Pont des Arts on our way home (mind you, it was 11pm at least by this time) trying to hand out Subway coupons or pamphlets or something– apparently they just opened one in Paris. So he yells to us as we walk by, "COME TO SUBWAY! It’s better for you than smoking cigarettes!" Which I thought was odd for two reasons: first, none of us were smoking, and second, he yelled it in English. I realized immediately it was an American accent (here when people can speak English it is always with a British accent, not American). So in surprise, I turn back to him and without thinking about the fact that, though he was about my age, he was a complete stranger and blurted, "Are you American?" prompting the two girls I was with to burst into hysterics. He looked just as surprised as me, probably thinking he was speaking to three French girls who would never understand what he had just said, but in a Pepe LePew-esque voice he answered, "Yes, of course I am, why else would I be stuck with this ridiculous accent?" This is what it is like to live in a foreign country, though: he was from the US, so I immediately considered him an ally of sorts. I had half a mind to stop and ask where he was from, but then had to remind myself that it is not like he said he was from North Carolina, or even the South, but just the States in general. And really, the US is about the size of, oh, you know, the entire CONTINENT of Europe, so it’s not like any wonder that we happened to be from the same country. What IS wondrous is how he got a work permit... hmmmm.
At the end of October one of my favorite bands (Panic! At the Disco) is coming to Paris– I bought my ticket today at fnac– the French Ticketmaster. That was an adventure in itself, and so different from getting tickets to anything in the States. But now I am going to see them at the Elysee-Montmartre (just down the road from the Moulin Rouge...) in 3 weeks!
More soon!
L'amour, Bises!
~B