Happy 100th Post!!

Wow....100. That's a lot. If you've made it this far following my journey, thanks it really means a lot and I hope this blog isn't boring you to death. Alright so the last time I updated was Friday and a lot has happened since then.

On Saturday my friend Luke, who I went to high school and U of I with, was coming into town for the weekend so he could visit with Madame Wilds. He studies in Avignon (the south of France) so he took the train into Paris. He said that he was getting in around 1pm so I just told him to give me a call when he wanted to do something. I thought he would've called me early on in the afternoon but by 4pm I hadn't heard from him. I ended up getting all of my translation homework done while waiting for him so I don't have to worry about that this week. Anyways, so we finally get ahold of each other and he was meeting up with a friend who lives in Paris. We decided to get dinner around 7. Luke met me at my metro stop because he's not used to the metro and I didn't want to get him lost by giving him directions to the cafeteria. When we got to the student cafeteria there were about a million Italian kids in line before us. I have no idea why they all were there. It is usually not that crowded on a Saturday night. We got there at 7 and waited 30 mintues to get into the door to get our food. Of course, all the pizza was gone so I had to get the main dish. It was fish with some sort of cream sauce with mushrooms and rice. It wasn't that bad but it wasn't very hot. Oh well, at least they had the blueberry tart for dessert. Luke and I sat down and we talked about school and all that jazz. Neither of us had heard from Madame Wilds, who was supposed to be getting into Paris that morning. This guy came around and told us that if we were done eating we had to leave because they were closing soon. I hate when they do that. All I wanted to do was sit there and talk some more and it's not like we were the only people sitting there. Anyways, we left and I told Luke how to get to the closest McDonalds so he could use the WiFi to look up a place to stay because he hadn't found a hostel yet....good planning on his part.

I got back, and the apartment was a mess. All day Renee was running around cleaning stuff, hanging pictures, and being a crazy lady. I didn't realize it when I walked in the door but she had her ladder in front of it so I just pushed the door open and knocked the ladder over. Don't worry, she wasn't on it. I felt bad though. I was looking up classes to take for next semester when Madame called me around 10:30. She was like oh I hope you're not sleeping. I was like ummmm it's only 10:30, I'm not an old lady. She called me on my iPhone so I asked her if she could call me back on my French cell phone because the iPhone is too expensive. She said she would but then she never called. I had to look up her number that she sent to us on Facebook and she ended up answering. I guess she doesn't know how to use her phone or something. She told me that they had problems getting into Paris because they were on a British Airway flight and they are on some crazy strike and they got stranded in London without a plane to take to Paris. Because of that they ended up missing a whole days worth of activites. However, they did get to take a bus tour of London and got to take the Chunnel (the EuroStar that goes under the English Channel to Paris) instead of flying. I was pretty jealous. She said that tomorrow they were meeting at 8:00am to get on a tour bus to take a tour of the city. Then they were getting lunch and then heading to Versailles and then coming back to Paris for dinner. Madame said that I was welcome to join them all day but I really didn't want to get up at like 6am on a Sunday morning to meet them on the bus. Plus, we were turning our clocks ahead that night so it really would've been like 5am. And if I took the bus tour with them I would just be seeing everything that I've already seen and see on a daily basis plus, I'd feel uber American, and I try to avoid that at all times. Long story short, I told her that I'd meet them for dinner.

Madame called me around 6 and said that they were back from Versailles and were hanging around the Pompidou (the 4th) before dinner. I left right away because she said dinner was at 7 and it takes me around 40 min. to get to where they were. I sat by the giant crazy looking fountains and called Madame to let her know where I was. She said that she would come and find me. She didn't see me but I saw her so I started running after her and shouted MADAME!!! she turned around and was like OMG and gave me this giant hug. It was so sweet. I haven't seen her in 3 years...well really 4 because I didn't see her much senior year. We walked into this resturant where her students were and I saw this girl named Kimmy who was a freshmen on the dance team when I was a senior. We both looked at each other and she was like what are you doing here!?!?!?!? it was pretty funny. So I gave her a big hug and then sat across from Madame. She was like, you can call me Becky, but that's just weird because she's Madame, not Becky. We talked all throughout dinner. It was so nice to see her again. She wanted to know how school was, how I liked it here, what I've been up to, where I've travelled, the usual. We talked about our trip to France when I was a junior and we laughed about how Madame Collins (my other French teacher freshmen and senior year) had a broken arm and how it rained the entire time. We had crepes for dinner and they really weren't that great. I've had better. It was the first time the kids in her class had a crepe from France so they all were excited and thought it was the best meal ever. They also really liked the Orangina (a French soft drink that tastes like carbonated watered down orange juice). Dinner ended and Madame said not to worry about paying for the meal that she would take care of it, which was super nice of her. She invited me to go on the bateau mouche with them (a boat company that takes you on a tour down the Seine) but it was starting to rain, I've been on one before, and I had a test the next day that I hadn't started studying for, so I passed. We hugged goodbye and promised to keep in touch. Madame is one of my favorite teachers ever, she's so sweet and caring. I heart her.

I studied for an hour when I got back but really didn't know what was actually going to be on the test. Monday morning I tried studying so more and hoped I was studying the right things. Renee came home early and started lunch and said something about how she forgot she had an appointment with her dermatologist....I think. She ate super fast and then left, and I took my time and then went back to studying. The test was pretty bad. First off our professor didn't even show up. I thought that was incredibly rude of her. If you aren't going to show up for class to give the exam and be there to answer questions if any should arise than class should be cancelled and the test should be rescheduled. I wasn't very happy. So this woman walks in and tells us to put all our notes away so she had read us the prompt. She read it super fast, didn't write it on the board, and then said we had 3 hours to finish, leave the test on the desk when we were done and then left. I had to look off of Katie's paper to get the subject. I really didn't even understand the prompt. It was something about talk about the different compartments the French were under from 1940-1944 under the occupation. What a broad subject. I really had no idea what to write about. I made a crazy looking outline on a piece of scratch paper and hoped that I had the right answer. About 40 minutes into the test (I hadn't even started to write yet, I was still thinking) this girl stands up, (everyone looked at her) and she put her paper on the desk and left. I started applauding because I have no idea how she finished that fast. There's no way she could have planned, wrote, and revised in 40 minutes.

It took me 2 hours to write my paper. I basically rambeled on about how France was divided into 2 parts (the occupied in the north and the free in the south under the government of the Vichy) and then I talked about this guy named Petain who I really didn't know much about. The only thing I really knew was that he was the leader of the Vichy, he was 84 and wanted to have all the power he could. I talked a lot about the resistance and how that changed the war. I don't even know if the things I talked about were correct. I guess I'll find out.

Today I woke up at the ungodly hour of 8:15 on my day off to go to Balzac's house. I met up with this girl named Jacqueline and this other girl named Collie and we walked there together. The house is in Passy which at the time (late 1800s) was considered the country side. Paris (the city) was very small. It is a really pretty area. Balzac's house was 5 storys and he lived there in the 1840s and it was really cool. There was this pretty garden outside and everything. Passy is sort of on a hill so it over looked the city. You could see the Eiffel Tower from the gardens. However, when Balzac lived there it wasn't built yet. There were 2 big group tours going on at the time (it was free to get in :) ) so we just wandered around the house while they took up all the space. His library was pretty cool, all his old books where there (behind glass) and they all are leather bound. It smelled really awesome in there, all old and stuff. My favorite part was the garden. It must have been so cool to live there at the time. We walked back to the metro and Jacqueline and Collie went shopping by school and I walked back to the apartment from Montparnasse since it wasn't raining. I have to write a paper about what I saw at the museum for Dr. Costello's class but I most likely won't do that for a while.

I have a lot of reading to do today and I'd really like to take a nap because I'm pretty tired, but that most likely won't happen. I'm reading L'assommoir by Emile Zola for Dr. Costello's class. It's super long and is pretty good so far. We don't have to read all of it (Dr. Costello has certain parts of certain chaperts picked out) but he also wants us to read 4 complete chapters and all those chapters happen to be really long....thanks Costello. I also should probably start reading my book for my presentation for theatre class....it's next Friday and I haven't even opened the book.

until next time.....

Bisous mes amis!