Je m'en fous...

It's been awhile huh? Let's catch up...now that I have some free time. After the awkwardness of Tuesday I was glad I would be in class the majority of the day Wednesday so I wouldn't have to see Clemence and make an even bigger fool of myself. Let me just say that Wednesdays and Thursdays are going to suck so I most likely will be complainging about them for the rest of the semester. Alright, Wednesday....

I had class at 10:30am at the Foyer where I stayed the first week I was in Paris. The closest metro stop to the foyer is really far away, so I take the RER B. There is a stop (Luxembourg) that is seriously 20 steps from the Foyer which is awesome. Hopefully the RER people are never on strike (like that will never happen) because it would really suck to have to walk from the metro. It usually takes me around 25-30 minutes (depending on the day and time) to get to the Foyer. I got there a little bit early just to be safe. A bunch of kids were sitting in this little nook that's in the foyer near the classroom so I decided to join them and wait for class to start. The majority of the people who were sitting there are the group of kids that arrived a week ago from back home. They were talking about all the stuff they have been doing and all the stuff they want to do and talking/complaining about their living situations. Jordan (the guy who came with us to Paris) and I just looked and each other and gave the 'been there, done that' face. We went into class and the room is incredibly small and very hot and stuff...I can't wait until late May when it starts to get warm, that should be fun. The theatre class is taught by Benoit Resillot. He's a really cool French guy and is an actor. All of the plays that we will be reading, he has performed in. It will be cool to get an actor's point of view of the plays. He seems really nice. He seemed to talk to the the first group of IPP students (my group) more than the second group because we are obviously cooler...haha. Seriously. He said my name and for the second time that week the professor has commented on how they love my last name because it's French. That never happened once first semester. We basically went over vocab and what we were going to be doing in class this semester. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. Class ended at 12pm and I walked over to school so I coud eat lunch.

It rained that morning so I held onto my umbrella because it was wet (this may seem really stupid for me to be writing about but it will come into play later...) I enjoyed my lunch, couscous that I made yesterday, in the court yard of school. I set my umbrella on the bench. Amira (who's in my theatre class) joined me and we ended up going inside to talk because it was cold. I made sure to bring my umbrella with me. We talked for a while and then went up to the classroom to wait for the professor to open the door. Katie joined us while we were waiting, we talked about going to the movies that night. Once we got inside the classroom and the professor closed the door, I realized that I didn't have my umbrella with me. I looked in my bag, on the floor, everywhere and it wasn't there. Great. My afternoon class is a translation class. I'm assuming we will be translating from English to French and possibly from French to English. I thought it was going to be a lot of fun, but the professor seems really strick and not very fun at all. Plus, it's going to be a lot of work. On a positive note, both Amira and Katie are in class with me, as well as this GORGEOUS guy. OMG he's super cute. I think he goes to Temple University but I don't remember his name. I just remember his adorable face and awesome scruffy beard. The class may suck, but at least Katie, Amira and I have someone pretty to look at. During break I looked for my umbrella but it was gone :( We ended up getting a lot of homework for next week. We are supposed to translate this article and I've never done anything like that before so I'm basically just winging it.

After class Katie and I went over to the student cafeteria to eat dinner because we had planned on seeing Shutter Island at 7. Just our luck, the cafeteria doesn't open until 6:15 and it was only 5:30 ish. We decided to go find a Monoprix so we could go buy some candy like we usually do when we got to the movies. We couldn't find a Monop' so we had to settle with Ed (another grocery store). They didn't have much so we left and continued walking in the rain to find a Monop'...good thing I lost my umbrella a few hours before! We never found one so we walked back to Ed and just bought some candy that looked good. We had to rush through dinner because it was going to take us at least 20-25 min. to get to the theatre. After we were done eating we seriously ran out of the cafeteria, and ran to the RER. Of course we had to transfer at Chatlet so we ended up running through there because it's huge. We got to the stairs that lead to the 14 and the train was already there and people were starting to exit the train. We ran down the stairs but there were so many people on them. It's like the people knew we were trying to get to the movies on time because they all parted like the Red Sea and let us run like crazy people down the stairs. I think I jumped down the last 6 steps...thankfully, we made it on the train...out of breath, but we made it. Once we got to the stop we ran again to the movie theatre. By time we got to the doors to the room there was 6 minutes until the movie started. We had to sit all the way in the front because there were so many people there (it was opening night). I was so sweaty and breathing really hard, so was Katie. Of course we're sitting next to these 2 French guys so we must have looked so beautiful. The movie was awesome. I won't talk about it because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.

Thursday morning when I woke up I was so sore from all the running the day before as well as Tuesday. I was walking like an old lady. I had class at 11:00am at the Foyer so I had to get up kind of early. Dr. Costello is the professor for the class which is called 'Les Espaces Parisien.' I guess it's a literature class. I really don't like Dr. Costello's French accent. He is fluent, but he pauses a lot and I just get so lost. There is a lot of reading to do in his class as well. The class was pretty boring, but the best part (besides the break we got) was when Dr. Costello said 'fuck' like a million times. We were talking about the different levels of French speaking and writing. He wants us to turn in essays that does not include language you'd use with your friends...so classy French. As an example he said, "Do not write 'je m'en fous' in your essay." At first I didn't believe that that's what he said because it basically means 'I don't give a fuck.' However, it can also mean 'I don't care'...it just depends on how you intrepret it. He said it a bunch of times and it was pretty funny. When class finally ended I had to book it over to school because my 2nd class of the day started at 2. Some of the girls from the second group (I like to call them 'The Others' like on LOST) were walking behind me. They didn't talk to me at all. They kept asking each other all these questions that I knew the answers to but I didn't want to butt into their conversation. Maybe they are intimidated by me or something because I've been here much longer than they have...I really don't know. Once we got closer to school this one girl started talking to me. She goes to U of I too, but I've never seen her before.

My second class that day was literature with Madame Berthon, who I had last semester. I think she was really happy to see all of us in her class again and she was always asking us questions. She's such a sweet old lady. When I walked in there were so many people in the classroom. I sat next to Lizzie and the rest of the group. I think I only recognized 3 or 4 of The Others. We had to get more tables and chairs because there were so many people in the room. We passed around this sheet to sign up for exposes on an author. I chose Jean Cocteau. When the paper came around again I noticed that everyone in the classroom, expect one girl, who was in the class last semester, are in IPP and we all go to U of I. When I walked into the room I looked at Lizzie and Antonia and was like, it's U of I central in here!!! It's crazy. Class was pretty good. I think I'll like it a lot more than I liked it first semester. The books that we are going to read seem really good too.

On Friday I had theatre again at the Foyer from 12:00-1:30pm. I like that the class is split up into 2 days because it's so much easier to pay attention when the class is an hour and a half as compared to when it is 3 hours long. Class went by pretty fast. Afterwards, I grabbed a sandwich from this little shop that I go to a lot and rode with Alex (an Other, and who I was in a few French classes with at U of I) to Chatlet. She went shopping and I got on the 1 to meet Sammy Deligio at the Louvre. We went to high school together and he is studying abroad this year in Germany. I told him that I was waiting at the Venus de Milo and he said he would meet me. All of a sudden this guy came up to me and he goes, 'are you Sammy's friend?' I was like umm yeah? ...random, but he turned out to be traveling with Sammy. Sammy ended up getting lost trying to find me. Sammy, Lucas, and April (the other 2 people who he goes to school with), and I hung out around the Louvre for a while. They had never been there before. It was a lot of fun. They invited me out with them that night to get a drink or dinner but I couldn't because I had so much homework to get done. I felt really bad because they had been here since Wednesday but I was so busy with school, I really couldn't meet them until that day. We said good bye and I went back to the apartment and did homework seriously all night.

Saturday I woke up pretty early, ate a quick breakfast and then headed to the bookstore to pick up the rest of my books for class. I finally have them all. I think in total I'll be reading 14 books this semester. I will pretty much know everything there is to know about 18th and 19th century French literature by the end of the semester. When I got back Renee was done installing my new closet system...I totally forgot about that. When Jean-Francois and that old guy came to the apartment last week that's what they were bringing in. They are these giant book case looking things that fit in the closet. They have more shelves and have little drawers on them. It'll keep all my stuff more organized which is nice. All of my clothes were still on my bed so I had to put them all back in the closet when I got back. I guess Renee isn't done installing it or something and said she'd do the rest of it this week...or something like that. I texted Sammy and asked if they wanted to grab and early dinner or drink but I didn't hear back from him. I asked Maya if she wanted to get dinner but she was out being a tourist so she couldn't. Sammy ended up texting me back, acutally it was Lucas who did, and we all met at 7 at Luxembourg and went to dinner.

We ended up going to this creperie and it was so good. I got a smoked salmon crepe with creme fresh and spinach. It was delish! They were all so funny trying to say their dishes in French. The waiter was speaking in English with them and I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Seriously, it would have been easier if he just said it in French and I told the them what he was saying. But, he didn't. After dinner we decided to get a drink at this Irish pub. The boys got Guinness, which they had been craving, and April and I got this beer called 'Mad Beer' which they brew themselves. It was happy hour, so the pint was only 4 euro. It was very good. I was quite surprised. It was a lot better than the beer at had last weekend. After chatting for a while we all left the bar and they headed back to their hostel because they were leaving in the morning. When I got back Renee was in bed...go figure. I talked to Tracey for a while (I miss her!!) which was nice.

Today I did laundry, like every Sunday, and I've been working on homework on and off all day. I have everything done for tomorrow and I don't have class on Tuesday so I'll do some more then. I'm going to make a pizza for dinner and watch another episode of Dexter. Sorry this post was so long. Hopefully this week won't be so crazy. If you've made it this far, thanks!! xoxo

A bientot

ps...GO TEAM USA!!!