Sixteen hours from now, I will be in America. My strategy for this one is to stay up all night packing, take advantage of the fact that Air France will serve me wine, down a demi-bouteille as I board, and sleep for the duration of my flight and any potential delays. I'm pretty excited to see how it goes.
I'm in a slightly better place than I was a few days ago, because I really can't wait to see my friends and family, but I won't pretend I don't still have my doubts about leaving this place for good. I keep telling myself that it's fine because I'll come back, but that doesn't really tell the whole story, since a lot of what I'll miss won't be here this summer, or next year, or after graduation. I won't be able to stop by museums for 40 minutes because they're free with my student card, I won't be able to text my host mother that I won't be eating dinner at home because my friends and I decided to go to the best creperie in Paris, I won't get to wander the hallways of the Sorbonne and wonder how it's possible that I go to school there, I won't bump into my friends and classmates on the Champs-Elysees, I won't have a weekly Tuesday lunch date with five French friends, I won't be able to listen to Voltage (without question the best radio station in Paris) and have them announce "Beeyonce--Eef I Wear a Boi" and receive a text seconds later because a friend of mine is listening too...none of this can be recreated when I come back as a tourist. And most of my friends are going home soon too, so even if I stayed the year, nothing would be the same, but it doesn't stop us from planning the apartment near Chatelet we are all going to rent together and the non-profit we are going to start so we have an excuse to stick around.
Also, packing sucks. I cannot believe that I have accumulated so much crap. I'm just lucky it doesn't all have to come home right now or I would be in big trouble.
Okay, back to updating my iTunes and waiting for the sun to rise so I can go get my other suitcase out of the closet next to my host parents' bedroom. Home so soon!
Well, obviously that last post was a lie, but here I am now. To go back awhile, Thanksgiving was fun. The whole family was here, complete with many pounds of potatoes, marshmallows, cranberries, and stuffing smuggled through customs in innocent-looking checked luggage. My host mother ordered us a turkey from her butcher, who also happens to be the butcher to the President of France ("presidents come and go, but the butcher remains"), and everything was delicious. We had a bunch of kids from my program over and I think everyone had a good time. It was nice to see my family, too, and I got to show Marissa that French is actually worth learning if you have people you can speak it to.
I also got to go to London to see Elyssa (and Hugh) a few weeks ago. It was great to see them, and London is a really cool city, but my French took SUCH a hit. It makes me really nervous to go home for Christmas/for good if I lost so much after three days away! Other than those respites, I have been either sick or working or both. I have an astonishing amount of work to do, and I've gotten extensions on almost all of it, which means I'll be working over Christmas too. I am not thrilled about this prospect.
I'm also really frustrated because a semester is not enough time here, and I wish I had the guts to stay a full year. Honestly, if I didn't know that my team was waiting for me, I think I would do it. Most of my non-rowing friends will be abroad this spring anyway. Half of me thinks, you can't just stay because you have responsibilities back at home, you have a roommate, you've registered for classes, the Tripod is depending on you, Model UN is depending on you, Habitat is depending on you, your team is depending on you...but then half of me thinks, those aren't real responsibilities because there is always someone else who can do those things, and when am I ever going to be in a place in my life where I have so few real responsibilities and I can just drop things? I was talking to one of my good friends here about this last night, and she's in kind of the same place I am: she plays lacrosse at Bates, and she knows that if she doesn't go back for the spring she'll never play again because there will be 40 kids trying out for the team her senior year and her coach will just cut her. I wish someone in authority would just make this decision for me. I keep talking to people studying abroad other places, and I usually hear variations on, "Yeah, I'm having fun, but I cannot wait to get out of here and go home," and that is not the case at all for me. I hate when my life doesn't go according to plan. I read somewhere that you always regret the things you don't do more than the things you do, but I can't figure out whether staying here is doing or not doing. It's a little ironic that I came so close to backing out and not coming here at all, and now I'm miserable at the thought of leaving. It's not that I don't miss Trinity, because I do, but I'm also so tired of some aspects of it, and a lot of what I miss won't be there when I get back because people have graduated and people are going abroad in the spring. I'm also afraid that the Trinity I left and the Trinity I'm coming back to won't be the same place and I won't like it as much. But I can't imagine leaving a sophomore and coming back a senior and missing out on five more months of Mather dinners that go past 8 p.m. and interminable Monday nights at Tripod and all-nighters straight through 'til morning practice during finals and AC's runs and the Red Sox on NESN and watching our squash team embarrass everyone else and the egg line and winning and everything else that makes home wonderful. So basically...I'm a mess.
Also my scale broke. Actually it just ran out of battery, but I can't figure out how to replace the battery, so it's about as useful to me as it would be if it were broken. You can just go ahead and assume that I have not gained any weight here, though, because I walk constantly. Sorry, team.
More to come later today, but in the meantime, I am in the midst of posting about 100 pictures, so you can check those out if you have a minute. I somehow screwed up the original album, so they're here.
I have a camera again, but my computer is freaking out slash I'm too lazy to figure out what's wrong, so no pictures for the moment.
I am in the midst of one 15-page paper and one 8-page paper, so obviously I have decided that updating this blog is the most prudent activity for me at the moment. Keep in mind that when I say "15," what I actually mean is "35," because they single-space papers over here, plus they use the A4, which is smaller than the 8.5x11, plus they use two-centimeter margins. But thinking of it as a 35-pager makes me want to die, so we'll stick with 15. Oh, and obviously all this stuff is in French.
I'm kind of frustrated right now because I really want to be out exploring and instead I am sitting here surrounded by books I don't want to read. There is so much fun stuff to do in this city and I can't do any of it. And by the time I am done with all this crap, it will be time to go home. It's times like this that I start thinking seriously about staying the whole year. I won't end up doing it, but I really feel like a semester is not enough.
I'm Sports Editor again next semester, despite my best efforts to move to a different section. I guess that's where they needed me, so it's back for round four.
I saw Kanye on Thursday! That was really cool. It was a little hilarious because the concert was kind of like a musical in that it had a plot punctuated by songs. The premise was that Kanye was in a spaceship that crashed on an uninhabited planet. For whatever reason, he was the only person in the spaceship, but fortunately, through some AI thing, the spaceship (named Jane) was able to communicate with him, so it was kind of like he had a friend. It was great because he would say stuff like, "Look at all those shooting stars!" and segue straight into "Flashing Lights," or, "I really wish I could go home and see my mother"--you got it, "Hey Mama." Then he gave a long speech at the end about how glad he was to be in Paris and how he really respects the opinions of the Parisians ("you're some of the few people whose opinions I respect" is actually what he said). I don't know how much of it the actual French people understood, but the Americans thought it was pretty funny. I guess it's not like, "Thank you Los Angeles," though...he doesn't come here very often, so it is a pretty big deal. I took a lot pictures, very few of which came out, but eventually I'll put them up.
I also went to the opera, which I know Marissa will find a lot less exciting than the previous paragraph. We saw "The Magic Flute," which I liked a lot, but apparently many of my fellow audience members did not. I did not know it was okay to boo at the opera, but I guess that's what you're supposed to do if you're underwhelmed. They didn't like the director very much, which I kind of understood, because he had it set up like the entire thing was a video game and they kept flashing stuff like "Press Start to resume play" on the stage. It was a little weird. I was happy, because it was subtitled into French and I understood like 90% of the subtitles. I have to be honest, though, if I were going to write an opera, I don't think I would do it in German. I realize that that's what language Mozart spoke, but I really think the Italians got it right.
My whole family got together this weekend without me and I'm sad. I have two baby first-cousins-once-removed (I looked that up and I'm right) and they are adorable and I want to play with them. Actually, my mom sent me pictures, so you can all see those. Meet Cole (15 months) and Lily (3 months).My mom and my dad and Marissa are coming on Wednesday for Thanksgiving! We're also inviting a bunch of the kids from my program. I think we're having a turkey, because my host mother was supposed to order one from her butcher (there's not a whole lot of demand for them right now, so you have to get them in advance), but I haven't heard anything about it in awhile, so I should really check on that tonight. Otherwise we're having a big chicken and telling everyone it's a turkey.
I have noticed another interesting cultural difference. I am usually late and always hungry, so the "grab and go" culture that the United States fosters is really perfect for my lifestyle. This does not exist here. Meals are meant to be eaten sitting down with your family and a large number of your closest friends. Even if you buy a sandwich to go, you're expected to eat it in a park or something with a bunch of people. I made myself a PB&J the other day to eat on my way to school, and realized that I was the only person eating on the Metro. You just aren't supposed to do it. I don't like to stick out, but I really like those extra 15 minutes of sleep, so I guess I'll have to continue being "that American" eating on the run.
I really should get back to "the actions of the United States in Germany between 1945 and 1969" (how's that for a paper topic?), because did I mention that it's my only grade in this class? And the professor is literally the scariest authority figure I have ever known? I'm going to go eat some chocolate to prepare me for the task at hand.
Oh! I forgot to say that it snowed here yesterday...everywhere but the eighth, where I live. We had sleet. Thanks, Paris.
46.0
Well, my American phone and camera got jacked the weekend before last, so I can't take pictures until my dad gets here with a new one. Lame.
I have had many visitors here! Anne from Trinity came from London for the weekend (when my 
camera got stolen), and then Hugh and Elyssa (also Trinity, also from London) were here last weekend with two of Elyssa's flatmates. The only thing that's tough about a host family is that I can't offer anyone housing when they come here, and staying in Paris isn't cheap, but both groups were able to find hotels and it worked out pretty well. I stole this picture of Hugh and Elyssa and me from Facebook. Hugh looks sad, but really he's ecstatic to be with Elyssa and me.
Anne had never been to Paris before, so I got to do a bunch of the touristy things I haven't really done since I got here, which was fun...although I drastically underestimated the amount of time it would take us to walk from the Marais, where we were having dinner, to the Eiffel Tower (I figured it would take 30, maybe 40 minutes), and 6K and 90 minutes later, we arrived just as it was closing and couldn't go up. But I wouldn't have had my camera with me to be stolen if she and I hadn't been doing touristy things, so we decided that we had each ruined the other's weekend and were now even.
Hugh and Elyssa were here for Halloween, which means absolutely nothing to anyone in this country, but some of my kind teammates sent me a care package containing, among other things, Double Stuf Oreos and Halloween temporary tattoos, so we all rocked those. I even got the director of my program to put a green witch on her hand.
After Hugh and Elyssa left for a week in Italy (they are on break; I am jealous), I went to see the new James Bond movie with some CUPA friends. I had never seen a James Bond movie before, but fortunately I was sitting with a connoisseur who was able to give me a little exposition before it started, and it was awesome. It was like "24" in movie form, which is a high compliment. It is my understanding that it is not out in the US yet (or at least it wasn't on Sunday), but go see it ASAP.
We also went to a chocolate fair on Sunday, and it was one of the most wonderful things I have ever experienced. It was at the massive French expo center just barely within Paris city limits and there were literally a thousand vendors selling everything from Lindt truffles to chocolate and onion sauce (meant to be eaten with foie gras, bien sur). Almost everyone offered free samples and I ate a ton and was just generally in heaven.
Tuesday night was, obviously, the election. Unfortunately, California is really far away from here, so we all napped during the day in preparation for the all-night festivities. We wanted to go to a party organized by the Young Democrats of Paris or something (the main selling point was that it cost 5 euros, they had big-screen TVs, and they started serving Barack Obagels at 3:00 a.m.), but there were like 4,000 people there and they only had room for 1,200. I made some phone calls (I'm pretty well-connected, but you knew that already) and got us into the American University of Paris viewing party. I'm going to take all credit for that since the other 11 people I was with had no suggestions whatsoever and I'm pretty sure I saved the night. I'm just saying. Anyway, they have a little on-campus pub thing, and not surprisingly, it was packed, but it was a great atmosphere. They served pancakes all night long and everyone in the room screamed the 10-second countdown every time another poll closed and fought about whether or not the Phillies deserved to win the World Series and heckled people from states that voted for McCain (it was a largely blue-state crowd) and it was generally the most wonderful display of Americanness I have seen in 10 weeks. The only thing missing was the Barack Obagels. They gave us a free champagne toast when CNN projected Obama as the winner and people broke out into a spontaneous rendition of the National Anthem and I was sick as a dog (as usual) and loved it all anyway. The metro re-opened at 5:30 in the morning, just in time for me to go home and catch Obama's speech with my host father, who was leaving for work. I slept until 4 p.m. yesterday. The French are ecstatic, by the way. Sarkozy is completely obsessed with Obama, but the people here in general pay a lot of attention to our politics. We have been getting congratulations from pretty much anyone who figures out that we are American.
Then yesterday I went to "Le Mariage de Figaro" at the Comedie Francaise, which I probably would have enjoyed more if a) I could have seen any of the action at all, b) I could have breathed, or c) the chairs were less comfortable and I was less inclined to fall asleep. I picked up on maybe 6% of what was going on. Oh well, at least I understood all of the French subtitles during "Quantum of Solace."
Hugh and Elyssa are coming back on Sunday on their way home to London and my father is coming...next weekend, I believe. So that will be nice.
46.6
Now you know why I refused to talk to anyone at the end of last week: I was afraid I would spill the secret! For anyone who was not at the Head of the Charles this weekend, you missed out, because I was. My dad had some frequent flier miles that were set to expire at the end of the month and I had a visa questions to sort out, so I figured, what better time to come home than the weekend that the entire rowing world was in Boston (and the Red Sox were playing...but I don't want to talk about that)?
My mom and sister didn't even know I was coming home; my dad knew because he helped set it up and I only told Ellie, Elyssa, and a couple of people here, so we managed to keep it pretty under wraps. 
My mother's reaction when I walked in the door was priceless, and Mina's shriek when I jumped out from behind the wall at her was a close second. So I definitely got the reception I had hoped for.
It was really great to be home, although it was kind of a tease. When I'm here, I decide about once a day that I am going to blow off America entirely and stay here, but by the time I boarded the plane for Boston, I was pretty sure I was just going to stay home and re-enroll in Trinity mid-semester. I have a lot of things to look forward to both here and in Hartford, which is really exciting. Anyway, the highlight of the weekend (other than the Trinity women's hard-earned third-place finish) was the amount of American food I consumed. I have literally never tasted better clam chowder than what they serve during Charles, so obviously I tied last year's record with three bowls. And with Halloween fast approaching, my father was happy to pick up bags of fun-sized Hershey bars and Reese's for me to bring back over here.
I arrived in Boston Friday afternoon and left Monday evening (I got back here just in time for my morning classes), and with jet-lag and racecourse-walking and general travel fatigue, I slept for 14 hours last night, which I needed badly. Oh! And after a little mishap with some hydrogen peroxide and my eyes (Marissa uses it to clean her contacts before putting them in solution; I was a little bleary-eyed and misunderstood the label and used it AS solution), I have finally ditched the glasses and I am back to contacts. What a relief, especially since it's been raining here.
Last night I went to a Caravan Palace concert after class. You've never heard of them. They're French and a friend of mine saw them play in Bruges and said they were the most fun band she'd ever
seen live, so we traipsed over to the Bastille to see them. They lived up to the billing. It's kind of funny, because I don't think I would ever listen to their CD in my room (they play kind of a mix of circus music and techno), but they were amazing live. It probably had something to do with the fact that they were rocking out on stage like they were at latenight and projecting cartoons and old Charlie Chaplin movies and a ton of other random things on the wall behind them, and every person there was just so into it. Plus the lighting was terrific. I tried to take little videos with my digital camera and they're up on Picasa (Mom, do you think you can find the URL by yourself this time?), but they really don't capture how much fun it was. Also, KANYE is coming to Paris November 20 and obviously I already have my ticket. I don't think I have to explain how excited I am.
Well, it's been the weekend over here for like 32 hours already, so I guess I don't have to go to bed, but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea since I have grand plans for tomorrow: I am going to register to use the library. If this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, you probably have no idea how impossible the French bureaucracy (and let's be honest, the French language) is.
46.4
So...it's been awhile. What can I say, I'm too busy having a ball to write about it. I will try to do a better job of recording my exploits in the future.
Last week was fun; nothing especially important happened, but I am loving these four-and-a-half-day weekends. I decide on something I want to buy/do that is in a really remote place in Paris, look up how to get there, and then spend a few hours exploring that area. I have now ridden metro lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 14--leaving 3 bis, 5, 7 bis, 8, and 11. I plan to have this completed by the end of next week.
I spent Saturday in Chantilly with my program--it's a town with a pretty castle and not much else, so the seven hours we spent there were more than sufficient. When we got there at 10 a.m., the fog was so thick that we couldn't even find the castle, but it cleared while we were on our seemingly endless tour, which would probably have been more interesting if a) it had been in English, and b) we hadn't seen 12 versions of the same room with the furniture rearranged. The gardens were worth the trip, though (pictures are up).
Sunday I explored the Marche aux Puces in Clignancourt: it's just barely outside Paris city limits and the entire town turns into a massive flea market system every week from Saturday morning until Monday night. Highlights included T-shirts that said "I Heart My Ghetto" (I saw this shirt and several variations more than once), multi-colored knock-off Yankee hats with the logo in cursive (although I can't imagine they're making much money off those at this point), and classic Jaguars just hanging out in the street waiting for someone to buy them. I didn't take pictures because I was afraid of the ramifications of photographing something without buying it, but I plan to go back with a wingman who can pose in front of things.
Then tonight I went to Catholic mass. I'm not Catholic and I'm not French, so I had no idea what was going on, but I went with a French (Catholic) friend, so I followed her lead. Interesting things I learned: Catholics take Communion every day (I thought it was just every Sunday), the French tu-toi (use the informal "you" when speaking to) God, but vous-voi (the formal "you) Mary, and a Catholic church is an "eglise" (translated into English as church), but a Protestant church is a "temple" (translate into English as just what it looks like). Anyway, I guess this is the official church of the Sorbonne, because they had kind of a youth group-esque meeting (sort of like the Newman Club at Trinity, I guess) for all Sorbonne students afterward. I actually had a terrific time struggling through explanations as to what I was doing there.
Also, it is SO hot here. It was 80 degrees yesterday! Unfortunately, I spent two hours of this lovely day in a classroom built for 30 people but containing 40, with all the windows closed because people were making noise outside. You can guess how long it took me to stop paying attention.
Now, on for some important cultural differences that I think need to be addressed:
Personal space
It should come as a shock to no one who has ever met me that I like to have a certain amount of air between me and anyone near me. The French have no interest whatsoever in respecting this barrier. Without fail, I meet someone and stick my hand out to shake and am awkwardly met by the person leaning in for the cheek kiss-kiss. I understand that this is how people greet each other here, but seriously, if I don't even know you, keep your face away from my face. This extends to pretty much all aspects of life: the seats on the metro are built such that anyone with legs cannot sit in them without awkwardly entangling his legs with those of the person across from him. I am not a large person, but even I cannot sit in a metro seat without being all up in everyone else's grill. Also, in the event that a lot of people want to take the same metro at the same time, there seems to be no problem with packing people in there until they literally fall out when the doors open. The upside to this is that there is no way you will be pickpocketed during the trip as no one can move.
Water
Just to provide an example, my host family goes through two carafes of water every night at dinner: one for me, and one for the three of them. I drink at least a bottle of water, usually two, during my classes. I have a water bottle in my bag at all times and refill it multiple times throughout the day. I am the only person (besides every other American in my program) for whom this is the case. Maybe I spend too much time around athletes who need to be properly hydrated, but I just cannot figure out how the French subsist on the 12 ounces of water they seem to imbibe per day. I mentioned this to my host family at dinner the other night and my host mother told me that a study recently came out by a French nutritionist that advised the French to drink water during the day but not at meals because that would help them keep weight off. If this is true, it would explain a lot. Nonetheless, I continue to drain a small ocean every day to keep myself hydrated.
Peanut Butter
They hate it here. My host mother bought me some as a gift from a store that sells only foreign food, but not before referring to it as a "cochonnerie" (which derives from the word for pig and is generally pretty derogatory). My host father literally runs from the kitchen when he sees me ruining his jelly by adding peanut butter to it for a sandwich. When I mentioned it to my French friend, she said she did not understand Americans and asked if it was true that we had cheese in a can (which I do not think is fair, because yes it is true, but I do not feel that these two snack foods are on the same level). I have been devouring it.
47.8
This has been such a good weekend.
I made a friend at school (my host family and all the kids in my program are shocked, although I would like to think that has more to do with how fast it happened than with their opinions of my personality). She is in three out of my four classes, and I went out with her and some of her friends on Friday night. We were supposed to go to some club that I guess is a big deal here, but we had forgotten that it is Fashion Week and thus everything is invite-only, so we ended up just strolling along the Seine and sitting at a cafe. I am definitely learning a lot about the culture here from my host family, but it was really interesting to talk to kids my own age. They were shocked when I declined a cigarette and wanted to know why people didn't smoke in the U.S. I tried to explain that a) I spend a fair portion of my time around athletes who can't smoke for obvious reasons and b) we have some pretty aggressive ad campaigns. They certainly have better Surgeon General's warnings (they range from "smoking kills" to "smoking is dangerous to you and everyone around you"), though, so I guess that one is a toss-up. Then they wanted to know why our drinking age is 21 (it's 16 here for wine and beer and 18 for hard liquor) and I couldn't explain that either. They were also really interested in our university system, which has almost nothing in common with the one here. Also they told me I didn't have an American accent, which is the best compliment I have received since Natalie told me I was tall.
(Side note: French phone plans seem to charge by the character in "textos," as they're called here, 
so people have compensated by totally eliminating most vowels and also abbreviating almost all words. In addition, just as a fun game, they also sometimes use abbreviations you have to sound out--so "elle" would become "l," etc. So that's always an adventure.)
Saturday night was Nuit Blanche, which is an annual event in Paris where all the museums stay open all night and the major metro stations turn into performance spaces. They also open all the grassy areas that you can't usually sit on, so it's a blast. Another highlight was that I finally figured out the night setting on my camera. Of course, the metro stations don't stay open (typical French bureaucratic inability to communicate among departments), so the night was sadly cut short.
Today I woke up late and decided that I felt like going to the Louvre. So I did. What a terrific city, that I can just pop over to the most popular museum in the world on a whim. Sometimes I walk around here and have to remind myself that I live here now. It's incredible to be in awe all the time.
Additionally, I discovered a raspberry yogurt in drink form that is by no means delicious, but certainly palatable. Between this and the vegetables my host mother makes my host father and me eat (he doesn't like them either), I may become a healthy eater!
46.6
The worst thing about this country is that not one single person cares that the Red Sox are in the playoffs. So I am still awake watching the Brewers-Phillies game in my Papelbon shirt to make up for the general baseball apathy around here. It is a very good thing I don't have class tomorrow.
46.8
Things are pretty good right now. I had my first classes today (I was supposed to have a class yesterday, but due to a complete inability to understand time in this country, I missed it...it's one of my back-ups and it's on Monday morning, so I think I'm going to drop it anyway). If all goes as planned, I will be taking Rome and the World (Tuesday 9-10, 11-1), A Cultural History of the Middle Ages (Tuesday 10-11, Wednesday 2-4), Germany from 1945 to 1990 (Wednesday 4-5, Tuesday 2-4), and Louis XIV's France (Wednesday 6-7, Monday 2-4). This isn't set in stone because the first time is a CM (basically a lecture) and the second time is a TD (basically a discussion section), but you have two or three choices of TD and you request them at the first CM and they assign you. You may have noticed that if I get my first choices, I have one class on Mondays, four classes on Tuesdays, and three classes on Wednesdays...and nothing Thursdays or Fridays. And I only start class before noon on Tuesday. I am going to have a tough time getting back to five days of class a week at Trinity.
The first Rome class was good; the original professor seems to have decided on September 19 that he wanted to go on sabbatical in the US, so the new professor is a little bitter about that, but at least she articulates her bitterness slowly and clearly enough for me to understand. The Middle Ages class was pretty good, although the professor is kind of old and he swallows his words. But I met a few kids (I pretty much guess which people are going to be the nicest and start asking them questions because I don't ever have any idea what is going on) and at the moment I am enough of a novelty to be amusing to them. So far, so good.
My father was here again last night (he finally left the country yesterday--just kidding, Dad!) and we had a last dinner at a pretty funky restaurant that made a lot of flavor-infused foam. Among other things, I ate some bok choy, which I'm told is a vegetable...clearly I am growing as a person. It was all delicious and the waiter told me that if his English were as good as my French, he would be happy. No one has ever said that to me before because EVERYONE'S English is better than my French, so it was overall a pretty good night.
I went to Brittany and Normandy with my program this weekend, which was great because the weather was amazing. There were people swimming in the English Channel in St-Malo, the first town we went to. It was warm enough that we walked along the beach barefoot, which was a nice change from cold, rainy Paris. Sunday, we stopped at Mont St-Michel on the way home. I was there...six years ago, I guess, with my high school, but all I remember about it is that I was sick and miserable and the stone walls absorbed all the heat and it was March so there wasn't any heat anyway. As it turns out, it's a pretty cool town, so I'm glad I went back. The tide changes are huge, and it was low tide when we were there, so even from the top of this mountain, we couldn't even the see the water, but apparently it comes in at a rate of one meter per second. That's about a fifth as fast as our varsity eight is supposed to go, to put it in perspective.
Also, I made what may turn out to be the most important discovery I will make in France. They have an amazing chain of stores here called Picard, which sell only frozen food. Gross, right? No! It's amazing. They have every possible food item, frozen. It's divided into sections like a regular grocery store, so you can buy your fruits, vegetables, meat, "flying things" (I like that translation better than "fowl"), fish, shellfish, pasta, potato items, soups, desserts, quiches, snacks, and obviously ice cream...everything. I had fettucine carbonara for lunch, and I've been told that the chocolate cake is incredible, which is rare praise for something frozen in a country that eats everything fresh. That will have to wait for another day, though.
47.0
I think this is the most impressive-looking private home I took a picture of, although the other ones are pretty good too; you can judge for yourself at the same place (I'm not re-posting that URL--find it yourselves). I guess it's kind of weird that I'm posting a picture of some guy's house on the internet, but seriously, look at it.
Even though it's been a week since the last update, there hasn't been too much activity on this front because I have spent from Monday night until this morning in my bed wishing I were dead. I think my partner for the 10-minute presentation I had to give today on Nicolas Sarkozy (the only reason I was not in my bed today, as well) passed along the cold she had last week and it really knocked me out. Fortunately, the host sister who lives in London and whose room I now occupy seems to be a big John Grisham fan, so The Broker and half of The Runaway Jury, as well of both of Mina's CDs on repeat, got me out of the woods. However, I promptly lost all the weight I had gained, so I guess we're starting from scratch again. Sorry, team. Fortunately, my host mother seems determined to do her part, what with the four-course dinners we have every night (appetizer, main course, cheese course, dessert, bien sur!).
Last weekend was great because my friend Emily came from Florence, where she is studying with NYU, with a friend of hers! And my dad was here, so he took us all out to dinner. Quite lovely to spend time with people whose French is worse than mine, for a change (no offense). I also took a tour of the Marais, the oldest neighborhood in Paris, with my program. It's kind of fun to go on tours with them because one of our teachers gives them, and he speaks the slowest, most understandable French I have come into contact with, so not only do I understand him, but everyone around us thinks that we are little French kids and hops on the back of the tour! Obviously, as soon as one of us asks a question in broken French, the moochers figure out what's up. But we look good when we keep our mouths shut.
In other news, I have also recently become an avid supporter of the fleece vest. What a great layering item! Purdie, I feel like you should have my back on this one.
45.0
I don't mean to keep harping on this authorized/unauthorized grass thing, but I have procured further evidence of this madness.
Anyway, it has been a very good week. At one point (I don't remember what day), a bunch of the kids in my program and I went to the Jardin de Luxembourg and had a picnic on the authorized grass. Pretty soon after we arrived, a couple showed up and sat down next to us. They spread out their blanket and sat down for what we assumed to be a romantic picnic. As it turned out, the man's hair was a little too long for the woman to focus on her food, so they pulled out a towel and a pair of scissors and she gave him a quick haircut before they returned to their regularly-scheduled programming. Half an hour later, at 7:12 on the dot, the police started blowing their whistles and screaming at everyone because the park was closed. Good thing they were there to enforce the traditional 7:12 park-closing time.
There has also been a major breakthrough in the language department: I can now tell jokes in French. They are not always well-received (which I'm sure is a shock for anyone familiar with my unparalleled sense of humor in English), since I often lose something in translation, but it is a start. And my host parents are also starting to make jokes with me, which is great. Even when I have no idea what they are saying, they start to smile before the joke is over and I realize that I am supposed to laugh. So if nothing else, I am getting to be great at reading faces.
My host parents also took me to a huge antique show on Wednesday night. I grabbed my wallet, thinking that I would buy my dad a decanter if I saw a nice (and fairly cheap) one for Christmas. Well, as it turns out, they were selling Picassos there. Needless to say, my dad will have to settle for a card or an Eiffel Tower keychain or something.
Tonight I met up with some kids in my program by Notre Dame and we walked around the Latin Quarter. We meant for it to be a girls' night, but some of the boys showed up, so I guess we didn't communicate that too well. I got a crepe Nutella at the beginning of the night, and after we walked around for a few hours, I got another one just before we got on the Metro. But everyone else was having French fries and that meat-sicle stuff you get at falafel places, and I really wanted that too, so I got one and double-fisted dinner and dessert. It was almost 1:30 by this point, and the Metro closes around 1:45, which would have been fine except that I had to change trains and I ended up missing the last train at the connection point. So I wandered all over Creation (actually back and forth on the same block since I didn't know the neighboorhood and I was afraid to walk away from the lights by the Metro) until I saw someone getting out of a cab, and I deftly swooped in. The cabdriver thought I was Spanish (so I guess Amory and I are descended from the same stock), but other than that, the ride home was uneventful and way more comfortable than the Metro would have been.
Tomorrow we are going to the Marais, which is the Jewish Quarter. It doesn't make much sense to me that we are going there tomorrow, when everything will be closed, rather than Sunday, when everything will be open, but maybe they don't want us shopping on their time. Also my daddy is coming to see me!
Pictures of the haircut and more are at http://picasaweb.google.com/stephanie.apstein/Paris2008.
46.8
It has been kind of a tough weekend over here. I hope this does not become a recurring theme, since I am trying to stay positive, but I really do not speak any French whatsoever. I think the biggest thing I have learned so far is that good grades in French classes do not correlate in the slightest with an ability to speak this language. I can write papers, read books, order dinner, whatever, but I cannot carry on a conversation or watch TV.
Friday was fine: it was the birthday of one of the kids in my program, so we went to his (French) friend's apartment to celebrate. The Harvard lightweight rower and Yale coxswain who are also in my program and I talked about rowing for over an hour and then we all bumbled along in half English, half French with the kids there. The metro closes at around 1:30 here on the weekends, so it was an adventure trying to make it home (the last train leaves at 1:30, so even if you leave wherever you are at 1:00, if you have to change trains a few times, you can end up out of luck). I made it home fine, fortunately.
Last night was more difficult because my host parents had friends over. They invited me to eat with them, which I thought was strange at the time, but I accepted and found out that my conversational skills are poor at best. Over the course of the three-hour evening, I understood maybe a third of the conversation in the first hour, and 5 or 10% thereafter. It is so exhausting to try to understand French spoken by people who have had a few glasses of wine and are speaking rapid-fire that by the end of it, I just sat quietly and stared into space.
Then, tonight, I accidentally took a nap (I was reading and then all of a sudden I wasn't) and woke up about half an hour before we usually had dinner. I wandered into the living room and watched the news with my host dad for a little while until finally he asked what I was doing about dinner. I immediately came up with a story about meeting a friend at 9:00 and said I was just watching TV until I left. As it turns out, our host families only have to provide us with dinner five nights a week, so
I guess I am on my own for weekends. Of course, there was no friend to meet, so I wandered around the Latin Quarter and Notre Dame and had a crepe until I thought I had been gone long enough.
There have absolutely been highlights: we had a field trip Saturday morning to L'Institut du Monde Arabe, whose principal highlight is its roof, which overlooks the Seine and Notre Dame. Absolutely gorgeous. We also went to a boulangerie this morning and had a pastry tasting, which I obviously enjoyed. And my host dad and I were watching TV the other day (they are really big on American cop shows dubbed in French, but unfortunately I have been unable to find Law & Order as of yet) and I found that he loves rugby. I know nothing about rugby in English, so his attempts to explain the rules to me in French were somewhat over my head, but I was able to establish when things were going poorly because this older, immaculately dressed man whom I've never seen take off his shoes or his sport jacket would throw his hands in the air and scream, "MERDE!" Never a dull moment.
Anyway, we start to pick our classes tomorrow, so things can only improve, I hope. Plus my dad is coming on Saturday, as is one of my friends from New York. A few familiar faces will be welcomed.
46.6
Well, if nothing else, I am certainly getting some exercise here. I literally get lost at least once on my way to anywhere, so I finally bought a map yesterday and that has really cut down on the wandering. At one point, I got so lost after getting off the metro that I had to get back on it at another stop and go back and try again! I honestly don't even remember what I did yesterday, other than end up in an entirely different arrondissement than the one I was looking for. I guess I went to school and then came home and had dinner. Oh, and I tried to watch a movie with my host family and only made it through about a half hour (with approximately zero comprehension) before the effort was too much and I had to go to bed.
Today I built some time into my day for walking aimlessly, though: I didn't have class until 3:00 (this schedule ROCKS) and there is an incredible park down the street from my school, so I arrived an hour early so I could eat ice 
cream and explore. Every path in the Jardin de Luxembourg is lined with trees, so as pretty as it is now, it's going to be out of this world when the leaves change. The grass is also lush and green and perfect, in large part because it is illegal to stand or walk on it. There are police officers whose sole job is to blow their whistles at and then start walking menacingly toward offenders until they return to the designated pathways. There is one stretch of lawn that is not "interdit" (forbidden), but I'm pretty sure it's meant for kids and you need to be able to produce a child to sit on it. Today was warm and breezy and gorgeous, for only the second time in over a week, so the park--and especially that area--was packed. I also got to see the original model of the Statue of Liberty, which is on display there! You can totally tell who the Americans are because they all take pictures of themselves in front of it.
Then I went to my class, which is ostensibly French Language, and we talked about Marcel Proust's "Questionnaire," just like I have in every other French class ever. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a survey that Proust used to hand out with questions that range from "What is your favorite color?" to "Who are your favorite authors?" to "What character flaw can you most tolerate?" It's also something that every American student of French has studied and no actual French student has studied, according to my host family, who laughed when I told them about it. A bunch of us walked around the Quartier Latin after class looking for some tea shop one of them had heard of. I really hope I end up taking my real classes at the Sorbonne, which is in that area, because it is so cool--it's like a college town in the middle of a big city. Really great location.
I finished tonight with a lovely stroll down the the Champs-Elysees with a new friend, Clare, who plays water polo at Princeton and understands what it is like to be in withdrawal from a team. We tried another milkshake, with similarly poor results. I will just have to keep trying. Or buy a blender and do it myself.
Also, I managed to put pictures up.
47.4
I think I figured out the picture thing, which is good because this place really defies description. On the right is my street (my building is the one in the middle, before the red awnings).
I am definitely having a good time here, but I may have underestimated the culture shock element. It's not stuff like 9:30 dinnertime and the catacomb of a metro and not having a shower curtain or door or anything to protect the rest of the bathroom that gets to me; it's more the fact that I am truly immersed in a language that I do not speak as well as I thought I did. We showed up at orientation today at 2:00 and were immediately bombarded with crucial information--all in French, of course. Then, just as we started to absorb what was going on, they passed out the placement test that determines how we spend the next three weeks and possibly the rest of the semester. After an hour of that, we were allowed to mingle--with the stipulation that we speak only French. Maybe I'm naive, but I had figured that CUPA could be kind of a refuge from the nonstop French, at least for the first few days as we get acclimated. Nope. By the time I left at 5:00, I was actually thinking in French, which certainly limited the thoughts I had. I also got lost four times on the way home and had to get back on the metro at one point because I had wandered so far from my house.
BUT I found the best store ever: Monoprix. It's like the French Target, but with a grocery store in the back. Seriously, I exited through the "boulangerie" (pastry shop). This is a great country.
Oh, and of the 27 people in this program, at least three of us are/were on our colleges' crew teams. How weird is that (and how weird is that I know the word for "rowing" in French so we could figure that out)?
47.4
I now officially live in Paris. I dropped my stuff off with my family this morning, went for a farewell tour around the city with Mom and Dad, and am now sitting in my room stealing wireless internet from a neighbor because I don't know the Dourdins' wireless key yet.
They're great and the house is great: my parents met them and they get along well and they have a 23-year-old daughter who is much cooler than I am but is still nice to me. She just finished working on a fashion show: they asked her to model, but that was too boring, so she ended up in some executive role as well. University in Paris is five years long and most people commute, so this is her last year here before she moves to New York with her boyfriend for six months. As I sad, way cooler than I am. I am trying to put up pictures of the house, but this Picasa thing is taking years to download and I may have to go to bed first.
I start orientation tomorrow at 2:00 p.m., which seems to me like a very civilized time for school to begin. I hope that keeps up. Obviously I Facebook stalked all the people on the email list for my program, and they seem interesting from their pictures, but I guess it's tough to express yourself in one square inch.
I would say that the worst thing about Paris is their total lack of understanding about what a frappe (or milkshake, as I guess everyone not from Boston calls it) is. I tried to order one today and despite the waiter's assurances that it would be creamy (if there's a direct translation for "thick," I don't know it), I received an expensive glass of very cold chocolate milk. Not quite what I was going for.
I was really excited to write this, but now that I look back on it, I really don't have too much to say. I promise my life will seem more interesting when I can accompany it with pictures.
46.8
I picked up my visa four hours before my plane left. We landed this morning and have pretty much done nothing but nap and eat since. I say we because my parents flew over with me to "help me settle in" aka bum around Paris for four days. They're weird, though, so we had to fly over in two separate planes ("So Marissa won't be an orphan if the plane goes down...although, on the other hand, we've just doubled her chances of losing a parent." Seriously.) My mom flew separately and, in a move that should surprise no one, my father got himself bumped up to business class while I enjoyed some exciting shenanigans in coach. The woman I was initially seated next to, who seemed to have decided that the best way around the no-smoking rule was to smoke a full pack just before boarding the plane, announced as soon as I arrived that she had a back problem and needed two seats to herself so that she could lie down, so could I please sit with the man in front of us, who had an empty seat next to him? You're all by now familiar with my non-confrontational demeanor, so I did as I was told and spent the next half-hour helping the man import his Windows Media files into iTunes. The seat next to my father remained empty for the duration of the flight.
Things improved dramatically once we got off the plane--we're staying in an apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower until I move in with my host family (pictures to come when I figure out the technology here) and they've rigged it so that it glows blue at night and blinks white every hour (the Eiffel Tower, not the apartment) and obviously I am eating well. Unfortunately, this whole city is absolutely frigid, so the six pairs of shorts I packed are looking like a pretty bad call right now.
I am much more jet-lagged than I thought I'd be, but I'm staying up to watch the first few innings of the Yankees-Devil Rays game online. We'll see how long this lasts.
I actually got an astonishing number of requests to do this, which kind of goes against my personal opinion that my life is not especially interesting. However, I will not be sending out mass emails with the address of this blog just in case I am right and it ends up being lame. I'm not promising anything.
The only real thing going on in my life right now is my introduction to French bureaucracy. As many of you know, getting my visa has been a nightmare, and the latest installment in that adventure is that all the computers are down at the French consulate in Boston and they are unable to process anything. So I may or may not be able to get my visa tomorrow on the way to the airport. If not...we'll see how good my French really is when I have to explain to the University of Paris why they should break the law and allow me to study there without a visa.
Other than that, not too much going on here: pretty excited for what will hopefully be my last dinner in the US (Legal Sea Food), getting ready to watch the Red Sox...really, nothing that should surprise anyone who knows me at all.
Oh, I should add that I really hate the tagline of this thing, but I promised at least four different people that I would use it, so for now...it stands. And Purdie wanted credit for suggesting it initially, but I refuse to give it to her.
46.8
Sixteen hours from now, I will be in America. My strategy for this one is to stay up all night packing, take advantage of the fact that Air France will serve me wine, down a demi-bouteille as I board, and sleep for the duration of my flight and any potential delays. I'm pretty excited to see how it goes. 
