Blog-ness

Sorry this has been a few days in coming; it may get a little long and bogged down. Feel free to skim through, read a sentence or two, and then comment as if you read the whole thing. I won’t feel bad, I might not even know.

So Thursday was probably one of the funnest (Microsoft Word tells me funnest is not a word…ha, I’ll show them) days I’ve had since I’ve been here. I didn’t have my first two classes so I slept in till 9:25, then got to school at ten and we all found out our Biology teacher was gone. That meant I had four hours till my next class. So my friends and I went to my friend Guillaume’s house, listened to music, played some foosball, and watched some MTV (which was quite entertaining for me). It was extremely fun to just hang out with them. My 3 hours of math after that were not as fun, but I made it through, and then that night I went and had dinner with Rene’s sister Callie, who was in Paris on business, and who I had never met before. She was extremely nice, and I loved the conversation we had. It was great to have someone I actually had some connection with (Camp Elim etc) and that I could have a legitimate conversation with. It also helped that this conversation was over an amazing dinner at an amazing restaurant amazingly paid for by Callie’s company. Thank you expense accounts. This means we both got entrées (we still don’t know what I got), a bottle of wine, some good meat, crème brulée, and coffee. Basically amazing.

Friday, I walked around the Latin Quarter (which, unlike Rick Steve, I enjoy thoroughly), took some mediocre pictures, and had a pint (hey, it was happy hour, can’t pass that up) while reading the Message. Pretty successful night…until I find out that my host mom had talked to my head teacher and I guess she was somewhat unhappy with my performance at school. A large difference between the French and Americans (besides the French being extremely more rigid) is that a French person that you don’t really know (aka a teacher) will never talk to you directly and tell you what you are doing wrong or what you need to change. So, I really would have liked to have simply known from my teacher what her expectations of me were, as I was confused because I am not taking their large test at the end of the year etc. Regardless, I was lazy, so that is going to change on Monday.

Saturday. I had Sport this morning at 8, shot putted around for about 2 hours, came home, napped, ate, and then went and hung out with Victor, my friend Guillaume, and his girlfriend Marine. Guillaume is one of my best French friends and is extremely funny, and his girlfriend is very nice (I believe I say extremely a lot) so it was fun to hang out with them. This weekend is the big “Fête de la Science” (Science Festival) in Paris, so there are a lot of expositions at schools and all the science museums are free, so we went to one at the Palais de la Decouverte. We couldn’t really find it at first, which turned into a fun game of Victor and I asking random people where it was. It was a game because sometimes Victor and I would speak English to French people and pretend like we didn’t understand (you have to remember Victor speaks fluent English), or I would speak English very poorly to English speaking people (as if I didn’t speak any English) and Victor would pretend he knew a little more English than I, or I would speak French to English speaking people and pretend I didn’t speak any English. Sorry if that was kind of confusing, but it was really funny to go up to random people and jack around with them. The museum was interesting, but my friends all kind of went home pretty early so that kind of sucked. It was my host dad’s birthday today (of which I had no knowledge) and I had told my host mom I wouldn’t be home for dinner (as I didn’t know it was his birthday), so I just ended up having dessert and wine with them and their guests, which was good. I had some 1978 wine…I’m telling myself I could taste a difference but I may just be lying.

Oh, one more thing, last night I basically saw the funniest thing ever on the metro. I walk on to the train and hear this ridiculous techno music, see these speakers with a walkman hooked up, and then look around to see this ridiculous (I really don’t know how else to describe it) kid with bleached, short hair with the little shaved designs in it, getting his groove on really close to all the people on the metro while holding out a cup for money. He actually seemingly made a lot, so maybe as a celebration he decided as his grand finale to stand right in front of me (not facing me, but directly in front) and unbutton most of his shirt and dance. I couldn’t help but laugh. It also made me decide that that is one of my goals before I leave, to try to garner some cash on the metro by doing something ridiculous. This will most likely come in June, right before I leave.

I tried to post this yesterday but I guess it didn’t work. Well, I guess I’ll update you on today. Slept 12 hours, ate, walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, came home.

You are all beautiful people

Brent