france, france, in my pants

i wrote this a month ago

2008-08-19T15:02:00.001-07:00

disclaimer: i wrote this my first week in russia, with the intention of emailing it some1 who would be willing to post it for me in a timely fashion... given the internet situation in rural siberia (and perhaps my laziness), that never happened... but uhh here it is now!

Greetings from…siberia..!

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with my whereabouts at all times and spaces these past couple of weeks, I should inform you that I have moved on from ze la france, and now find myelf in the motherland. Russia. I don’t really know how I ended up here but the short of it is that I am teaching English with an organization called “learning enterprises”, which seeks to teach English-speak to those around our world unfortunate enough to not be born in a place where english is their native tongue. The more im abroad the more thankful I am to know English. This is ish useful. Woo hoo capitalism/imperialism/hbo! I am teaching English in a village called Soleneshnoe. "soul-en-esh-noy-a" . I only just learned how to pronounce it without sounding like a compelte idiot. now I only sound like a part of an idiot. The village is in Siberia. Yeah, yeah… get all the permafrost/gulag/Stalin jokes out of ur system… if “middle of nowhere” could be epitomized by any place in the world, it is soleneshnoe. It is 3 hours from the nearest “city” which is named Biysk and Biysk is another three hours from the nearest airport (domestic flights only… don’t try a be bookin’ those roundtrips from JFK to soleneshnoe) in Barnaul which is a bit larger of a city 4 hours by plane from Moscow. if you have a chance, google-map this place, u will prob get a kick out of it. Although, im being a bit unfair. Soleneshnoe is pretty kickin’… yesterday I went to the “town center”… there is a supermarket, a bread/lemonade factory (don’t ask… apparently they go together now?) and some clothing stores AND a stadium where if I weren’t a complete fatass I could theoretically exercise AND a discotheque which I did frequent once. We went to “adult night” where 20 women aged 60 and up came to get their boogie on in this YMCA type joint. There was a disco ball and “mambo number 5” on the jukebox (sometimes I wonder what Lou Bega would say if he knew his song was being played and danced to by Siberian babooshkas) and Russian-red hair dye… it was very “scene”. It must be said that soleneshnoe is considered a “regional center” in these parts and that is frankly quite frightening to think about. THIS is where the other middle of nowhere villages in the surrounding area come for good times. God bless them all. But despite (or because of) its remoteness, this place is probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It is in the middle of the mountains and is surrounded by lakes and forests and hills and rivers and greenery like ya wouldn’t believe. If I ever saw “lord of the rings” I would probably liken it to the scenery in that movie but I haven’t so I won’t.

The village doesn’t have many paved roads and most of the houses from the outside look pretty, well…decrepit. lets just say this aint no Princeton Manor (that was new jersey reference for those not intimately familiar with the turnpike). Anyhoo, running water is a 50/50 thing and I haven’t used this many outhouses since 1899. but it is still a pretty comfortable place to live because my family is pretty pimp in soleneshnoe terms… meaning they have TWO cars, one of which is a brand new Toyota SUV. this is probably the only time in my life where I have ridden in an SUV that actually did off-roading on mountainous roads… usually it’s the typical soccer mom on her way to Wegmans to buy her family’s dinner or drive her kids to field hockey practice. The family has running (hot!) water, a shower, a toilet, but they do have their outhouses as well. The mom is an English teacher in the school we teach at and the dad is a bee-keeper??? I still haven’t really figured out what he does but I have gathered there is a bee place up in the mountains where he goes every morning to gather honey?? Apparently honey is a lucrative business in these parts. Screw investment banking… I know my future career. There are 2 kids.. a 3 year old girl, Yulia and 11 year old boy Andrei. (Julia and Andrew for those less Russian-ly inclined). They’re a great family and I really like living here. Another volunteer from gtown and I are living together with the fam.

We started teaching yesterday. I was really nervous about it cuz 12 year olds are intimidating. Especially when they are all blond and children-of-the-corn like, but it wasn’t so bad. The kids are actually really nice and I think they get a kick out of my horrible Russian, which I am forced to speak much more often than anticipated because NO ONE here speaks English. Meaning everyone’s English is worse than my Russian which should give you a vague idea of what level English we’re dealing with here. The other volunteer is the only other person I can speak English with.

The one question I get asked pretty often is what “stars” I have seen in America. One kid asked today if I have ever met Indiana Jones. I dunno what to tell them when they ask me about celebrities because I really haven’t seen anyone noteworthy but I also don’t want to disappoint them. Today I was about to tell them how reverend Al Sharpton came and spoke at Georgetown freshman year…but I knew that would go nowhere fast. So I settled on a little white lie telling them I saw George Clooney. Which isnt totally untrue… freshman year there was a huge rally at the national mall for Darfur and george (we’re on a first name basis now) came to be like the big celebrity speaker so Americans would, u know, care about genocide… but he didn’t come on stage until like 4 hours into the rally so I left before he came. I don’t remember why I was being such a party pooper, but I’ve never been a huge ER fan. In any case ... technically I was there.. right? Whatever it didn’t matter cuz most of the kiddies didn’t know george either and then I somehow got into explaining the genocide in darfur in a mix of english and battered Russian to a bunch of 11 year olds from Siberia who don’t know English, cant understand my russian, and are only slightly aware that Africa exists and well… that was just disastrous. Moral of the story: don’t lie when it comes to george.

Besides the whole “yes, Africa does exist” conversation I had with the kids I have really enjoyed teaching. The kids are so enthusiastic (well, most of them… we’ve always got those class clowns. Class clownage is a universal truth.) Furthermore, its pretty satisfying when at the beginning of class the kids don’t know some phrase and by the end of it they can actually say something. Today we mastered (mastered in the loosest sense of the word) the art of American small-talk: “how are you?” “I am fine”. ..Baby steps, baby steps. I don’t think we will have any Thorough’s on our hands by the time we leave but I mean, the English world will know that a small girl in siberia is doing fine today.

In all, this whole experience is really really cool. The family I live with is so awesome and kind and welcoming and open. Exceptionally so. The mom is a great cook and makes 3 meals a day. I haven’t had 3 square meals a day since… well ever. and they grow all the ingrediants in their backyard so this ish the real deal. Mostly its a lot of soups, potatoes, mayonnaise DRENCHED "salads"... most of the food im at least familiar with cuz ive had it at home growing up but i can imagine that some1 a bit less accostumed to russian cuisine might take issue with it. but hey, im fat and happy so thats all that matters.

Anyways, I will write again sometime soon? I don’t know. Internet here is hard to come by and facebook AND blogspot are blocked by I’m not sure who..the Russian govt.? the town of soleneshnoe?. I don’t really know but I am writing this on my laptop and will have to email it to some1 who will be able to post it for me. Damn commies.

Things I like about Siberia: TEA! I have never in my life drunk so much tea. Anytime there is a lull in conversation some one will inevitably ask “soo…. Tea?”. And everyone says yes and throws a little tea party then and there. Its nice, even though its summer and hot. I like tea. I bought my host family tea from this fancy Parisian tea place. The tea is called “American tea” but I still haven’t given it to them. I dunno why, I just haven’t. maybe tonight.
Also, in the mountains raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and any other conceivable berry just grow anywhere and everywhere. So if you are around a native there is an 80% chance that they will stop whatever they are doing at some point to bend down, pick berries and offer them to you. And they are so tasty. Except once some kid gave me these nasty blueberry like fruits which were very sour and bitter. I did not like those. But otherwise the berry thing is great

Things I don’t like about Siberia: Bands of cows (Cryps and bloods) roam the streets of soleneshnoe. India style. Well actually ive never been to India but ive seen pictures and they gots those milky, grade-A delights all up ons da streetz. Its really scary cuz they moo quite aggressively. I never thought id be so scared of a “moo” but trust me,.. u DON’T wanna piss off these cows cuz when they get a’mooing… theres no stopping them. And then one moos and then the other responds from 100 meters away and all of a sudden you are amidst a chorus of moos that you can’t escape. They roam around the same streets that people drive and walk on and apparently they know their way home at night. I have my doubts. In paris I complained about having to dodge doggy doo on the sidewalks but that was nothing compared to having to leap over MOUNDS of cow dung every couple of meters on the unpaved roads. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the paris dog doo streets.

et alors? je serai morte

2008-02-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

theres about a million trillion things i should be doing now besides writing in this but, alas, i dont feel like it. i have a final on friday about ..well...i dont know. which is a problem. clearly. one of my classes (read: all of my classes) have absouletly no structure and the teacher just kind of goes up and babbles about something. in FRENCH of all languages.. (the NERVE!) and rarely is there even a powerpoint presentation involved. i mean cmon frenchies... get with the times. microsoft is where its at. i need the bullet-pointed outlines to make me concentrate or else i turn into a 9 year old boyw ith ADHD. im not demanding any fancy slide transition like fading or checkerboard or sound effects, not even any strategically placed word-art or dancing clip-art to spruce up the astehtic appeal of the powerpoint extravaganza... just SOMETHING so i dont leave the lecture with nothing on my paper besides the notes i passed to the person next to me and my doodles. ha, doodle. annnnywho, the class the final is for is called "les grands risques de la planète". so umm... apparently the planet is facing risks. me failing study abroad is one of them. anyways, i needed a break from reading about global warming and blah blah al gore blah blah how europe is so progressive and amerrrrica hates the planet and blah blah. just to let all u freedom-lovers know, europeans are talkin SMACK about americans behind your back. we should attack them... that'll teach them a lesson.

anyways, something weird i have noticed throughout my stay in francia is that everytime i talk to a french person, one of the first things they ask me once they hear that fierce american accent is "so... have u made friends with any french people?" and when i say "some, but its kind of hard with the language barrier" (read: "no, its kind of hard cuz ur all pretty frigid and reserved") and theyre like yeah... french people are hard to get to know. this happened twice in th past 24 hours. its so annoying. its like all french people know this about themselves and they get a kick out of pointing it out to me and stomping on all my dreams of ever truly immersing myself in this place. i think my french is still pretty shitty in terms of being completely fluent, but im at a point where i can communicate with frenchies and be understood and contribute to converstation. so its not just the language barrier. its parisiens with their icy-cold demeanor and chic haircuts. especially at sciences po. although, i have noticed that once u actually break the ice with a french eprson they have always been really really nice. so ive come to the conclusion that frenchies (yes, even parisians) are actually nice, warm and interested people, you just have to make a super effort to actually get to the their warm and fuzzy core. the same went with my roomate, who i think is even more friendly than the average parisian. shes never super bubbly at first but if i initate converstaion sehs really cool. thus, my goal for next semester: pounce on french kids in my classes until they become my friends. every. last. one of. them... i. like. writing. like. this. it. is. very. dramatic. dont. u .think. ? .

anyhooooo what else what else?? nothing, i will go be responsible now and read about the dangers of nuclear energy as an alternative to carbon. snoooooooozeeefest. ill be dead before this ish really affects me anyways. maybe that's what ill write for my 3-hour essay test on global warming. "et alors? je serai morte" fin.

things i like about france: they have this store here in france called "piccard" and basically it only sells frozen food. nothing else. when u walk into the store its like walking into the frozen food section of a supermarket but u magically by-pass all the vegetables and cereal and stupid crap... cut to the chase: pizza bagels and frozen lentils. anyways, its really weird and its the only store in france ive seen where they actually BAG your groceries for you. everywhere else is so annoying... here they just hurriedly scan all ur items and push them to the side and then make u pay really quick;ly cuz theres always a huge line behind u (when is there NOT a huge line to do ANYHTING in this country... i mean its not as bad as communist russia im assuming but pretty darn close) and then you are left to bag your own shit while the next person in line is starting to be helped. and the cashregister lady jsut pushes all the new person's things with yours so ur frantically trying to bag ur stupid groceries and then the plastic gets stuck together at the openning (u know what im talkin about) and u cant freakin open it and meanwhile gallons of some1 else's milk are being shoved over your way and crushing ur bread and omg its actually the most stressful thing i have ever experienced. no compassion from the check-out lady either... even if she sees u drowning in ur own gluttony and cant bag all the ccrap u just bought she wont stop and help u out or even wait like HALF a second before letting an avalanch of the person-behind-you's stuff fall into yours. wow im feeling my blood pressure rise jsut htinking about it. why did i bring this up? o yeah... piccarddd.... coolest store ever. i bought sorbet,,, mango and raspberry. i was very happy with my purchase.

things i dont like about france: no bagging ladies at the supermarket and frigid people. see above post

o, funny thing: my roomate thought it was funny that we call the white part of the egg the "white" but the yelllow part "the yolk". instead of the "yellow". in french apparently its called the white and the yellow. that seems more logical than the english way.

ok i guess that wasnt funny like laugh out loud funny but it was amusing in an 'ah, hmm... yes, so true, anna, tell me more" kind of way. anyways... im leaving. good. bye.

banane

2008-02-04T03:09:00.000-08:00

hello my babies!

so, keeping with my tradition of writing often and profoundly, i will update this blog-shiz-nit. two very important developments to talk about first: 1) I will soon be the very proud owner of my very own brand-spankin new CARTE DE SEJOUR!. 2) I learned out how say "fanny pack" in french.

Lets start with the latter, as that has impacted my life on an intellectual and somewhat spiritual level, I was at work and this french lady came up to me... circa 40 years old. she was sitting at a table earlier in the night with a bunch of other middle aged frenchies. they already looked out of place cuz the bar i work at usually caters to the younger corwd. cuz its hip u know? i mean would I work at an unhip place? i mean does anyone remember my summer affair with ruby tuesdays on route one south?? anyways... the mature french women were obviously not parisiens, as they were asking ME questions about where to go buck wild on their night out in the city of lights. anytime french people ask me advice about paris, well, i mean. i dunno. anyways. they asked if the bar (its a canadian bar) had any live music events or dancing or "traditional" canadian entertainment. i was like... ummm laddddiessss this is a bar, it aint no moulin rouge. and moreover, i didnt know what they meant as "traditional" canadian entiertainment. i dont think anything comes out of canada. i was gonna say they could watch a hockey game or maybe i can bust out some avril levine on the speakers but instead i said i wasnt sure and that was that. a couple hours later one of the women came back in and asked if she found her "banane". i was confused and didnt understand y she would leave her banana or why she brought it into the canadian bar in the first place. then she kept making this motion with her hands outlining a thing around her lower-abdoman area and i was still confused. then i went to the back to see if anyone left anything resembling bananas and then, there it was, in all its glory, rays of heaven's light shining upin it: a black leather fannypack with four gold stars embroidered on the front. i gave her her banane and she was very happy and left. prob went to one of the peep shows at pigalle. for those readers unfamiliar with the parisian nightlife, pigalle is the shady part of town with all the sex shops, peep shows, caberets, and KFCs. i am frequent flyer of the pigalle area

okay number 2, slightly less important than the banane: tomorrow i will go get my carte de sejour, the one document i should have procured in october that makes me legal in france. ive been living without it and im not supposed to leave france (actually, EU shengan region) without having it or they might not let u back in the country... but i went london and egypt and slovakia without it and i was fine. usually u hand over that USA passport with a coy im-an-american-citizen smile and they just let u do whatever u want. im going to morocco in about 2 weeks and so i am glad to have it for that. but anywys, mardi, 5 fevrier i have my "visite medicale" which u need before they give u ur carte. from what i have heard, this entails old french ladies making u sit topless in a room while they x-ray ur body to make sure ur not a terrorist and hiding bombs or chemical weapons in ur chest cavity or something. in anycase, i am very excited becuase i think they let u keep the x-ray of ur chest and that will be a nice souvenir. the only good thing to come out of french bureacracy.

sooo.... yeah thats some of whats been going on for the past 2 months since ive written. also i went to egypt and israel to visit this girl i know from georgetown. she kinda sucks but i wanted to go to the middle east and shes my in.... anywyas both were very cool nad eye-openning and blah blah and now i have a new fascination with middle eastern culture and people and blah blah. i started a blog post about it a couple weeks ago but i havent finsihed it. maybe if i ever do ill post it and then u can read it.

also, i just returned from lyon yesterday. me and patricka nd roberto when to visit some gtown peepz studying there for 2 days. lyon is a relaly cool city. i was expecting to be disappointed, the way i was with dijon (dijon=lame-oooo) but this was actually really cool. not as cool as paris but u know, it tries. it was quaint and charming but not small and boring, as quaint and charming places tend to become after the first 2 hours of being there. its the gastronomical (i think i spelled that word wrong) capital of france. in practice, this means they eat pigs feet and baby cow heads and call it a meal. the traditional lyonnais food is served at the "bouchon" and we went to one of these and it was a very interewsting experience to say the least. lets just say, the chilled pig's feet salad doused in mayonaise was my favorite. we also went to this "minature museme" where some french guy (or maybe he was swiss... tamAYto, tomAHto) spends his life making little diarama type models of random rooms and buildings. theyre so LIFE-like though. i almost wished i could become smaller like in honey i shrank the kids and live in all his little models. o man i miss that movie.

anyways, lyon was good and i stuffed my face about every two hours and now am probably as big as a house but, u cant go to the gastronomical capital of france and NOT be a glutton. its like... against the rules.

lets seee what else is going on in my o-so-exciting like... o. i went ot the movies last ngiht. saw "charlie wilson;s war"... i think thats what it is in english. here they call it "la guerre selon Charlie Wilson". i really liked. i recommend all to see it. that and Juno. i watched that on the computer and i really like that too. the girl in it is so good i wish i could hang out with her and she could be my friend but i think she might be too cool for me.

anyways, classes ended last week. that means everything is over except for 2 finals, both of which i will not stress out about too much because... i dunno im lazy and i just need to pass so i think with enough praying to allah i will be fine. on the 14th im leacing for morocco(hellllzzzzzzyeeeee!!) for a week and then we are taking the ferry over to southern spain and then making our way over to portugal and flying back to paris 1st of mars. then CLASSES.. wait omg a pigeon just ran into the window in my housre. omg that was so scary. omg now its sitting ont he ledge looking at me. ... ok it just flew away. phew! that was close.

assssssss i was saying before rudely interrupted by frenchie pigeon... classes start teh 3rd of march. kind of funny our semesters are so weird ehre... 2nd semester starts as most americans are having their spring breaks. in general i dont mind it but it does make the first semester feel like it last FOREVER... i just want it to be done and over with so i can be in morocco and chill with the muslums.

also, new apartment (well... not so new anymore) is nice. i love having my own space its really great. i wish i got to see my roomate more but seeing as january was hell month (i actually had SCHOOLWORK TO DO??? what is this crappp... the study in the "study abroad" decided to peeps its little head into my life) and i was working a lot and i went to lyon to be a fat-ass sooo we havent crossed paths. one night though we were eatring dinner and i was trying to explain to her different accents in america and then i showed her the mike myers skit on snl with the jewish ladies and thier brroklyn accent and she got a kick out of that. she really likes hearing about american culture and stuff. i showerd her some jerry seinfeld stand upt too although he was speaking too quickly so i dont think she understood a lot of it. she knows some english but not too much. also i like her because shes not super clean and either am i so i dont feel nervous about doing th dishes right away and stuff. over the summer i lived with cleano-nazis karima and alysa and they always blamed me when i didnt follow the "cleaning schedule" they so cornily posted on the fridge that no one else followed either but somehow i was the butt of the house-cleaning jokes. here me and camille can live in our own filth and be happy as clams. just kidding it really isnt dirty at all and i make sure i keep all the common areas nice and tidy (my room is a different story) but shes laid back and u know, im chill wit dat.

ow my head hurts. i dont know why.

ok i will finish by one thing i like about france and one thing i dont like so much:

like about france: les 'soldes". in france they dont have sales throughout the year like they do in the US but instead these this 6 week period or so when all stores are mandated by law to have sales. it started in january and i think its ending very soon. the first weekend of the sales are supposed to have the best discounts but this is also when the entire french population does its shopping so its really crowded. i didt go those days but i went last week pour faire du shopping and uhh,,, i dont wanna brag but i got me some of dem bargains.

don't like about france: old buildings dont have elevators. my apartment is on the 5th floor (which in france means the 6th) and its all stairs and it sucks walking up there. it makes leaving the house such a chore cuz once u leave the house u LEAVE the house... u cant jsut come back in like half an hour if u forget something because then u have to climb the stairs. i guess u could but i mean i prefer to stay on flat land. ascending into the heavens just aint my cup o' tea.

2007-12-14T00:31:00.000-08:00

hello all. as promised i am doing good on my goal to write more frequently. but dont flatter yourselves, this blog post aint because i love you, but rather it is strictly the consequence of french work ethic... /lack thereof. this morning we were supposed to have a "repartage" for my "les grandes risques de la planet " class... basically my teacher decided not to show up one day 2 weeks ago (without warning us mind you... meaning everyone showed up at ten am on a friday morning and waited an hour before we realized the teach aint not gonn come. this is happened to me at least 6 times this semester, literally. and as i explained last entry... ten am classes are really taxing on the soul... especially a soul that is particularly nocternal and doesnt get its beauty rest the night before). anyhoooo the class was reshceduled for today... friday... at EIGHT AM. in the morniong. 8. in the mornong. meaning urs truly was up beefore the sun. i havent been up this early since... highschool?? i dont eve know but its an ungodly hour. and i showed up relativcely on time for the class and i peeped my little head (just kidding.. my giant head. i have a really big head relaticve to my body. and big feet. people dont realize this at first but its true.) i walked in the room and there was some english speaking woman talking in front of the class. i stood confused.. then i left to check it was the right room. it was. i went back to the room, assuming there was a "guest speaker" (.. dont ask why, that was the only logical ex^planation i could think of at 8:15) and sat down. looked around, realized i didnt recognize a single person. realizeed my teacher wasnt there. realized im an idiot. asked random frenchie what class it was. didnt understand the response but it sure wasnt the fucking grand risks of the stupid planet. had to get up and leave as french people snickekered behind me. usually i would have felt more stupid for doing this but when ur a foreigner, being oblivious and confused kinda comes with the territory. its more socially acceptable. or something. except this was an english speaking class so technically i had the upper hand. but shhh... lets just pretend. anyways, i left the class and ran into my techer in the hall who told me only 2 other kids actually showed up to the "repartage". so he cancled it. so i went through all this for nothing and now have 2 hours to kill before my next class.

its small moments liek these when i make my most astute observations about french society. as much as i hate to admit it i am a complete product of a captialist consumer american culture: when people dont show up to things they are supposed to, i get annoyed. really annoyed. not because i think they are morrally obliged to keep their word cuz frankly i dont care. more because i woke up before the sun and i could have easily slept in too but i knew i had to be somewhere so i went. this logic doesnt fly here. people flaking on things happens on a daily basis and its starting to rub off. earlier this week i was tired and didnt go to another class. france is making me lmazy and irresponsible. french mentality towards following rules can be likened to the way they cross the street. here; when u have to cross a road to get from point a to point b... u just go. u dont have to wait til u reach a cross walk or wait until the little man lights up on the thing and tell u to go. u just look both ways and if theres no cars u cross wherever. even if there are cars people usually just cross anyways and kinda sprint to the otherside before they die, thinking they are beating the 50km speed of the car when really they are just making it slow down for them anyways. french people just kinda do what they want when they want no matter who/what they are inconveniencing. this sounds like a really bitter analysis of french society but i kind of mean it in an endearing way. when we were in vienna the thing that struck me was how people, no matter if there wasnt a car in sight at like 3am, would NOT cross the street unless they were at a cross walk and the little man was lit up telling them to go. they just stood on an empty corner. for like 50 seconds. just waiting. for nothing. they were so addament about it. if thats not social conditioning then i dunno what is. thats the difference between austrians and french people. and since being in france i find myself sprinting across the street more often then waiting for little man to light up. wow that was such a profound metaphor. im so deep. i feel like that should be a line in a kelly clarkson song

anyways i have a presentation today for my french class that i didnt practice too much for. o well. its about that french ngo that kidnapped small africans to evacuate them to the land of civilised people and be adopted by french families, even though almost all the kids already had parents. its situations like this that make me ashamed to be part of the "monde occidental" as they say en frenchais. can white people chill with the white man's burden mentality for like half a second. o man ok i gotta go. gots class. not that it matters. no one else will show up anyway, but u know, i still got some of that austrian in me so im gonna go.

slip and go! what can be better?!

2007-12-12T16:44:00.000-08:00

its been so long since i have written in this here bitty. actually, that is a lie. ive written about 3 times since my last official post but i always start and never finish an entry and i dont wanna give y'all an unfinished post so i leave them to finish later. later soon becomes never. this may be the fate of this here post.. considering im starting to write it at 2am the ngiht before my 10am class. 10am doesnt seem so early to u ungrateful peeps who live on a college campus and have the luxury of waking up 9 minutes before class... brushing teeth and having enough time to arrive only like 3 minutes late. well thats what i did all last year anywways... i had it down to a science, really. here u gotta commute like woah. gotta leave 40 minutes minimum to get to class (that does not include the tooth-brushing time)... adn the wearing pjs to class dont fly here... something baout paris being the fashion capital of the world... but looking at me u probably wouldnt think it, as i am still wearing the hideous imitation converse sneakers i bought on sale at dsw last thanksgiving break on a (badly judged) impulse. but these sneakers dont have shoe laces so i can just slip them on and go! slip and go!.. .i mean cmon.. what can be better!? anyays... i have decided that from now on i will try and write more frequent but shorter posts so that i can actually finish them and then the phenomon of not wanting to write bc i have so much to catch y'all up on will fade away in the abyss of old-habits. i am hoping hideous-sneaker ]-wearing will also fade away into this forementioned abyss but i remain cynical on the liklihood of that point
.

ok soo.... where to behin...

(this is about the point where i usually stop writing and go to bed but im gonna push through and endure. push push! i feel like giving birth. and yes, i know what that feels like. dont judge me... u dont even KNOW meee f*ck y'all! f*ck y'all! [that was meant to be read in the voice of the 14 year old pre-pubescent girls that Maury has on his emmy-deserving daytime talkshow.. u know what im talkin bouttt, the laquisha who wants a baby and has slept with like 45 guys and the slightly/obesely over-weight badly made-up mama who is crying to maury in the corner cuz she dont know what went wrong. father figures people.. father figures!]) ummm... well... ive been a'travelin'! london, ireland, slovakia, austria, and soon to come EGYPT and israel for xmas break. ya know, gotta make my rounds and make a shout out to my peeps. which peeps u ask? all of them, as we are all brothers and issters in the global community. im taking this "le monde arabe contemporain" class and its my first real middle east class besides this islam one i took freshman year but everything that happened to me freshman year is a blur so that doesnt really count. wow that sounds like i was some boozin' raging alcoholic with a serious chance of ending up as the rape victim on an episode of law and order SVU (such a great show.. watched it dubbed in french the other week but it just wasnt the same) but thats not what i meant. i dont know what i meant. its 2am leave me alone. but anyways.... after taking this class im a lot more interesed in midddle east ish and so the egypt trip is gonna be pretty dope. ya heard??

i need to write a separate entry about slovakia bc it was so cool and u know, a real rekindling wiht my former soviet bros and hos. also, a rekindling with my innards as i vomitted up everything that has ever been through my intestinal track in the past 6 months due to self-diagnosed food poisoning. i dont know what was up with me but my usual stomach of steel decided to peace out and go on strike (the french-ness is rubbing off on him... more greves starting tomorrow by the by...AHH!!!! i hate them. i hate democracy.) the one week i went to bratislava and ate more meat and potatoes than are available in most small third world countries. i will tell about this laterr. and i iwll put up pictures. later. later later later...

at this point.. i will copy-paste a message i sent to this indian girl i know, summarizing my life in about 4 sentences because i really should be hittin the hay. and y aknow... i think itll do the job: aight here it is
1) i got a new apartment!! woo hoo with this awesome little french girl names camille who is SOOO nice and french! im moving in after new years, but i still have to telll my host mom for sure that im moving out.. i told her it was a possibility and then she offered to lower the rent to make me stay. but i dont wanna sooo this will end in a very awkward discussion that i should have had with her 2 days ago but alas im a chicken shit and have been avoiding it.

2) im leaving ofr CAIRO in one week from today... one week from this very moment actually. ill be there for about two weeks visiting alysa and karima has family in cairo so she will be there too. and we goin to jerusulem for xmas so we wont be stuck in land of muslims for jesus' bday

3) ive just been going to class, work (at the cnadaian bar... dunno if i told u about that but i got a job about a month ago so i could better integrate and try and speak some more french cuz i was finding i never spoke french... a lot of english speaking at the bar but a lot of the custumers are french so thats good). but yeahhh and just generally chillin. u know the drill...

aight my ninkumpoops... thats my life so far. in a shell. a nutshell, if u will. just kidding, its a turtle shell. wiggedy wiggedy. okkkkk peace. in the middle east. no wait... this time im serious about that because im going there and i would really like for there to be peace so as to not die.

o speaking of dying.... there was a bomb that went off in paris (yikes!) and it went off littereally ONE block from my house in the 8th. its like the chiquest hood this side of the seine sooo u can imagine peeps astonisment. but anyways... the important thing to note is that i didnt have a panic attack when i found out. thos who know me even slightly.. know that i have an irrational fear of being hit by terrorists (good thing im going to mid east right?) but seriously... its an issue. usually im jsut irrationally scared while on public transportation.. metro,bus, planes, not velib though. clearly. but yeah, to the point if i have an inexplicable "gut feeling" something is about to go down.. like some loud noise or a particilar shakey metro ride will usually spur it, i get off the metro and walk the rest of the way. but yeah so the bomb was acutally a good thing (not good but u know... good in a everythign has a silver lining kind of way) bc my lack of panic-attack shows that maybe im getting over my terrorist paranoia??? or maybe i was in a daze when the police guy told me not to step any closer bc there was a bomb that when off 10 yards away. yikes. good thing im moving into that new appartment in the 19th (just so u know... the 19th arrondissement is ghetto. like.. i know im a pretty much as ghetto superstar as one comes but this place is shady. at least theres no bombs. muggings yes, but no bomb-diggities.) anyways.. the bomb was targetted at some lawyer's office so maybe thats why it didnt scare me.. bc i dont envision myself ever being a lawyer and thus not receiving strange bomb-filled xmas packages. but i do envision myself being a civilian so the whole bombs in trains things scares me. my logic=gold

also, right now paris is pretty with christmas lights all over. really brings out the consumer in me.. err.. i mean the christian. the christian in me. jk.. no christianity herrrrrrre! just paganism. always paganism.

ok...its 2:32... bed bed bed! bon nuit

(o also.. i did already tell host mama france im moving out for sure... the message i sent to indian girl is a day old.. but needless to say she hates me now and alas i am on yet another person's death list. hers and the "terrorstis"...jfskdjfnsd). but ill talk more about that later. and bout slovakia. ok good. bye. fo. realz. this. time.

The next creation: a robo-chicken

2007-11-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

i apologize in advance for the randomness of this post, as well as the fact that it does not in the least of leasts pertain to my life in france...

i was just reading the nytimes (cuz im hip, cool and informed), and i just came across this article:

Cockroaches Respond to Peer Pressure, Study Suggests

"Many a mother has said, with a sigh, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

The answer, for cockroaches at least, may well be yes. Researchers using robotic roaches were able to convince real cockroaches to do things that their instincts told them were not the best idea.

...Dr. Halloy then replaced four of the cockroaches with four robots equipped with sensors to measure light and the proximity of other robots. When the robots emulated the real roaches, the group continued to seek the dark and crowded place."

at first i was skeptical but i gave the researchers the benefit of the doubt. like ok... maybe this has an productive end... u know, start studying cocky-roach behavior and ultimately use it to find some life-saving technology. then i read this:

"The scientists plan to extend their research to higher animals. The next creation: a robo-chicken, which will look a little like a ball on tank treads with loudspeakers"

... ok still skeptical (robo-chicken?? like.. cmon) but still trusting that science exists for things beyond the amusement of those studying it. then i read further:

"The current research did not test whether the robots could lead the cockroaches to something they really disliked, like broad daylight or insecticide. The results also apply only to cockroaches, Dr. Halloy said. “We are not interested in people,” he said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/science/15cnd-roach.html?ref=science

like... THIS is what researchers and scientists are doing?? playing cruel tricks on poor cocky-roaches?? isnt there... i dunno... cancers to cure, AIDS to treat, or entire ecosystems dying out and in need of saving due to our wasteful lifestyles?? meanwhile, researchers are playing mouse trap (the boardgame) with innocent roaches. im offended. im calling PETA. [(o, side note,,, after i mentioned PETA i went to their website just to check it out because i was momentarily impassioned about animal rights and felt like being a person for the ethical treatment of animals... and who do i see on the webpage?? pamela anderson. so random. actually now that i think of it i feel like i remmeber seeing her with dogs on her episode of MTV cribs... she must be a person for the ethical protection of animals.) (another side note: at work the other day the song "teenage wasteleand" was playing and this frenc guy was drunkenly singing along to it and then he asked what song it was.. i told him. and then he said awww..non non, c'est BAYWATCH!!... this is what french people know about america... baywatch. now that i think of it i remmeber hearing that baywatch is the single most popularly sindicated show in the entire world. i didnt believe it at the time.. i thought it would be friends or seinfeld or possibly teletubbies. now i know: its definitely baywatch)]. i feel like these scientists are the kind of guys who in high school made their dog smoke out of a bong to see what happens and then laugh at it when it stumbles around high. well not exactly like that and i dont know why that image popped into my head but it seemed appropriate at the time. not so much anymore. anyways, paris is cool and awesome and blah blah. ill write again soon

jesus' prostitute companion has some ish buried here. please, refrain from using flash photography

2007-10-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

dear all

this will be short becayse frankly im way too busy and glamerous to be dealing with all u little people. but a wise man once told me to be nice to the little people that u stepped on to get to where you are today ... so i here i am

anyways, im writing now bc i am leaving for a week (we have a reading week called "la semaine pedologique--> im about 89% sure i spelled ghat wrong, but u probably dont know french and wont know the difference. mwahahaha) and i wanna ya know, drop in and say hellow so u dont think i fell off the face of the earth when you dont hear from me for a week.

im going toooo LONDON! hellzzz yee! and dublin!! me and karima will be wed-saturday in london, staying with seth, then off to dublin saturday afternoon-tuesday where we will be staying with 10 strangers in a mixed female-male hostel. mad sexcapades. our flight from london to dublin was only a whoppin 5 pounds. but with the dollar-pound exchange rate that translates to roughly..uh... 700 dollars. well not quite but it aint far. and from what i understand this week is going to be the worst dollar-pound ratio in the past 6 years or something becuase the us is lowiering its interests rates to deal with the falling husing market??? jigga whhaaaa... i dont remember i-finance or i-trade so all those words i just uttered sounded vaguely familiar to me but were void of any real meaning. all i know is im screwwwed. i cant believe americans go to study there. i can hardly believe im studing in europe. 1.4 exchange rate? yikes.

ok i need to stop showing the world how cheap i can be, i can be really cheap and its not very becoming. o well. i dont think of it as cheap as much as an appreciation for the less expensive things in life. anyhoo, back to london... i better run into scary spice. and if not scary at least sporty. sporty spice sucked... whenever we did spice girl dances in elementary and middle school (..freshman year of college) no1 ever wanted to be sprty. ginger was popular.. baby too. sporty no so much. o man im siked.

speaking of travels...

this past weekend i went to burgandy.. the land of cows and mustard. its a province in the east of france with mad history. im not sure exactly what went down there... dukes and princes and having to save the princess from bowzer's castle and mario and luigi.. blah blah... furthermore, AP euro has escaped my memory... but it was beautiful. so old. we went to a tiny town called vezalay which still had buildings and architecture from before 1400. like.. thats so old. and like... im so profound. no but fo realz it was very strange to be standing and looking at things that people int he frakin 15th century stood on and looked at. the oldest thing in my town is the Acme supermarket. well thats not true. acme is not in my town but the town over so i really cant take ownership of its 1970s retro decor. im sure theres old stuff in plainsboro but im equally sure no1 reading this cares so ill just move on.. in vezalay we had a tour of the church where mary magdalen's relics were burried. that was the most indepth tour i have ever been on... our tour guide left not a signle thing to the imagination. a little less tour0guide action definitely wouldn;t have killed anyone. in fact im sure it would have salvaged a small part of my soul which died during the exruciatingly detailed tour. all she needed to do was walk us to the place and point to the relics and summed up with an all emcompassing comment like: "jesus' prostitute companion has some ish buried here. please, refrain from using flash photography"i think that woudl have sufficed. but after the tour we got to see a really nice view of the surrounding countryside from the highest point in the town, so i guess refraining from suicide attempts throughout the tour was not done completely in vain.

we also went to chamblis which is where they make the famous french white wine named chamblis. we did a "degustation" --> ca veut dire "wine tasting". crunk at 11am?? hellz yee. the town was tiny and i dont think more than 50 people could possibly want to live there. i kept noticing that every building had a satelite tv dish on the roof. and lots of cars and car dealerships. i put two and two together and realized that anyone living there tries to distract themselves from the boredem by watching mad prison break on satelite tv or driving far far away to another livlier town. but it was really charming and beautiful nonetheless. (prison break wasnt a random reference... french people love that ish. ive never seen it but i have been asked on more than one occuassion by a frenchie if i watch prison break in the us. i usually reply "no, i have more sophisticated things to watch, like my super sweet sixteen". then i scoff, roll my eyes, give 'em the old "talk to the hand" motion and then walk away)

those two towns were visited on saturday... sat night and sunday day we were in dijon. it was a nice place with even nicer food. although, everytime i go to other cites besides paris i always find myself underwhelmed. i love paris. paris, je t'aime. sorry its cliche but its trye. it really is the most amazing city. i prefer it to new yoork... new york is too big for me. too aggressive and in-yo-face. paris is a bit more managable. smaller, more quaint, more subtle but retains teh big city cosmopolitan feel. and theres mad immigrants here and i like to be in places that are not homogeneous and have a mix of lots of different ethnicities and cultures and blah blah. but anyways,,, back to dijon... it was a very quiet city. the whole time i was there i kept hinking how i was SO close to studying there for a year. they have a sciences-po campus there which specializeds in eastern european studies. if i had gone there i would have been able to continute taking russian intensively instead of the measily 2 hours i take at sciences po paris. but luckily my mom talked me out of dijon... thank goodness. im very happy with my decision.

last stop on last weekend's excursion was fontenay abbey... basically this little isolated private grounds place where monks chilled in like 1200 ad. it is one of those UNESCO world heritage sites. it was in the middle of burgandy countryside and it was really beautiful. i took mad pics of this past trip and one day u can look at them on facebook but for now ur gona have to hold ur horses bc im too lazy to post them.

so yeahhhh im out. peace. in the middle east.

Merci de m'avoir prévenue que vous aviez changé de conférence de russe

2007-10-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

bonsoir a tous!

translation: good evening to all. im not sure who that "all" is referring to... the weird thing about blogs is that you never know who is reading them. i could be talking to 2 people or a hundred right now... im betting on the former. i know my sister reads this as does beth anne but umm i think thats it. theyre the only people who love me in this cold, unmerciful world. god this world is so hard, especially living in paris in the 8ieme arrondissement... for those who dont know this is a pretty classy neighborhood. you can always tell the classiness by the way the children are dressed. my apertment (or rather, host-mama france's appartment... didnt mean to get so presumptious as to call her place my place even though im paying mad dough to have a small piece of her placE) is in a really residential area and on my 10 minute walk to the metro i pass literarlly about 8 schools - high schools, pre-schools, blah blah - but the point is there are mad babies running around like they own this joint. sometimes i have to put my foot down and give 'em a poke and say: "hey, baby! u dont own this joint". thats only when they get really out of hand.. like today when annoying 5 year old jerk ran into me with his razor scooter. i wanted to tell him that razor scooters are sooooo 5 years ago and that if he tried to pull that razor scooter shit in the states he would probably be pummeled lynched and killed for his un-coolness. but i decided ide just shove him into the road instead where he preceded to be run over by a velib. then i ran away. but nayways... the point of this story is that the babies here are so classy... theyre the kind of babies who wear those christopher robin shoes and little pea-coats and stolkings (the boys) and have british nannies that walk them to nursary school and speak to them in english so that they grow up bi-lingual knowing french and english (pretty much covering all the oppressive imperialist language bases) so that one day they can grow up to simultaniously own microsft and be president of the eu while sending their small children named pierre and camille to french nurssary school in the 8th arrondisement where they will grow up to run anna over with their uncool wheels. moral of the story... the kids here are better dressed and better poised than i will ever be and they are a fraction of my age. clearly i fit in pretty well at my hood.

anyways, this week has been pretty low-key because it seems like my streak of no work at sciences-po is coming to an end... this past month or so since classes started i have done litereally no work. well thats a lie. i had an expose a couple weeks ago but that was easy breezy (beautiful covergirl). since then ive been chillin. but thats because one of my classes hadn't met once until today because the teacher mysteriously came down with some communicable disease so we had to wait for them to get a replacement or else we would have all breathed in the airbourne cooties and died. The class is mad intersting though, its the discussion section for my "le monde arabe contemporaine" class (translation: arabes!! hellz yee) and both my professor for the lecture and the discusson section man are arab and know arabic, and the whole nine yards. i love learning from people who have some innate authoirty on a subject besides the fact they they have some weird fascination with it and got a ph d in it but dont really live it. my african history class at georgetown was taught by a 30 year old blond woman who went to penn state and drank diet coke from a can every class. i actually love her though and she lived in namibia for mad long and knows the language and is a genius but still.. its nice being taught by the arabs.

also, update on russian class: more sass from the language department. actually, no tis was worse... i was sassed via email by my professor of the incredibly hard class IN FRENCH. like i litterally got a one liner SARCASTIC email from her. zing! i was definiately zing-ed. here is the email, fecetiously entitled "courtesy"

Merci de m'avoir prévenue que vous aviez changé de conférence de russe. J'espère que vous avez au moins prévenu vos camarades-tandems d'exposé!

translation: thank you stupid bitch for telling me u changed classes. i hope u at least told your partner for the expose.

HA. thats it, no greeting, no salutation, no farewell, no good luck, no bon fucking voyage.. nada. i dont know why shes so offended. i guess shes losing a real asset to the class... the other kids wont look so steller without the bumbling bafoon in the corner to be comapred to. but i like her sarcasm, this lady got spunk.

also, i am officially a french pimp. i signed up for a langauge exchange partner to practice speaking with a french perosn who simultaneously wants to practice his or her english with me. i did the same thing at georgetown... my partner was from khazakstan and we had many a' conversation about Borat and globalization at Hoya court next to Subway... anyways, back to my pimpness.. i put my name up ont he list less than 24 hours ago and already i have received responses from literally SIX different french ladieeeees! ooo la laaaa. i havent responded yet.. i like to keep them on their toes for a while. if i was an american guy looking for a frenchie to smooch i would so hop on that language exchange thing cuz it seems like only french girls sign up. go figure.

this weekend i am going to bourgoune to do some serious wine tasting and see some medieval towns and then see dijon (mustard!). i used to hate mustard but ever since ive been here its really grown on me. go figure.

ok i have to go i have class at 10,, booo. its my global warming class (actually its called "le grandes risques de la planete" but tomAYtoe, tomAHtoe) and im pretty sure my teacher is having an affair with one of the french girls in the class. actually im positive of it. well not 100% but like 98%. ive got my suspicions.. ill keep my eye on the situation and report back to you later. french people are so scandalous.

o i forgot to talk about the greves... ok ill give you a quick little blurb about it. "greve" is french for strikes... "manifestation" is french for protest. basically the metro drivers were "greve-ing" and "manifest-ing" against sarko's plan to raise the retirement age. right now, for this sector of the work force you have to work 50 years before you can retire, but sarkozy is all about the american protestant work ethic and so he wants to raise the age. the frenchie metro drivers said "no way jose" (they speak spanish) and cut service to a lot of the buses, metros, and bigger trains all over france. from waht i udnerstand though, the retire after 50 year thing is kind of antiquated becayse it was decided on back when metro drivers had to work in pretty shitty conditions - i dont know the extent of the shittiness but im imaging men in overalls underground digging coal with shovels and shackles around their ankles - and so they needed to retire earlier cuz i guess they died earlier or something. but now the metro drivers are coasting (pun intended).. they just sit in climate control little booth in the front of the car and press a button that says "go" or "stop" so their job is a bit less taxing than it was in the olden days. so sarko thinks they can work a couple more years. personally... i dont think it would kill the french to work a little more. its probably the most frustrating thing when offices are randomly closed on weekdays during normal business hours... or when "lunch breaks" last 2 and a half hours in the middle of the day, or when txis drive around 3am at night ocmpletely empty and dont pick people up just because they dont "feel" like it... but the whole greve thing has me torn because i really like the tradition of revolution! solidarity of the lower classes! rising up against the man!, espeically when the man is a neo-liberal conservative with his nose up president bush's arse... butttt like, cmon. a little good ol' work ethic on the french side would make my life much easier. alhtough to be honest i was hardly affected by the strike because even though buses were running less frequently i just walked or velibed to school and the weather was pleasant so no biggie. but i talked to people who live on the outskirts of paris and had to walk like 2 and a hlaf hours... up hill both ways.. through 6 feet of snow... i wouldnt have been so happy if i was them. suckers

ok i will leave u all with one thing i like about france and one thing i dont like sos much

like about france: people actually CARE about the environment (gasp!) it keeps amazing me how involved french people are with this whole global warming business. like its literally all ANYONE talks about... i watch the french news pretty much every night and i havent even heard ANY updates on what Paris is doing or if britney is out of jail or if mary kate is still on coke/anorexic/married/single/blah blah... where are french peoples' priorities??? goddddd. no but fo realz its so refreshing because in the us i rarely heard about it but here EVERY commercial, every news story - everything is about 'le rechauffement climatique". its wonderful. like for example.. the escalatoers (actually this was in brusselles but lets pretend it was in france cuz it fits my story better) the escalators didnt run constantly - they were motion-activated so as to not waste energy between transporting people. but actually, now that i think about it... i think bursselles is the only city in the world that could do that because the city is freakin abandoned all the time [see previous entry] and has no one to go on the escalators so it needs to shut off. new york has so many people it wouldnt need the motion-activator ish to sasve energy cuz people are always on it. ok that was a bad story.) no but for real, global warming is something they think about and maybe its because im taking a developemnt class here that deals wtih global warming so ive been particularly inundated with it.. but here.. i feel like people take it into consideration when they make daily decisions. my host mom will go out of her way to take really short showers or not use her car even if its an inconvenience or buy green-friendly appliances which are mad expensive, bring cloth bags to the supermarket, all for the sake of the environemnt. in the US people are never so deliberately environmentally concious. i mean sure, there is the occassional prius-owner or the liberal who gives an "amen!" to thomas friedman when he rants about how green the rest of the world is compared to america, but people dont really take it to heart. for every prius there is probably 1,000 soccer moms driving unecessarily large SUVs to bring their 7 year old daughters to ballet class. i guess generalizations are dangerous and usualyl innaccurate but i just made one so get over it. but, anyways, global warming aside, would it kill the french people to shorten just ONE of the global warming news stories by like 10 seconds to give a brief update on how briteny is doing.. nothng huge, no Entertainment tonight type coverage..just a little taste... so i know she's okay. i mean, i worry..

don;t like so much: this may be nerdy of me but ive noticed that in class french people always have full length dicussions while the teacher is talking. not like a small whispered "hey,, lettme borrow a pencil" but like full-fledged chatter-fests. even in really small classes. and these gab sessions occur at a volume that doesnt even pretend to be a whisper. and its really distracting. there, i said it. its distracting, and in an environment where i already dont know what the professor is saying in french, the last thing i need is this background noise of more french that i dont understand. can't it wait til after classss?? mon dieu!

ok, au revoir

new zealand!

2007-10-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

hello! hello!

that was such a pleasant greeting wasnt it? two hellos, two single exclamation points...i didnt plan it to come out so pleasantly but pop! there it was. ive decided that the exclamation point, when used wisely, is mankind;'s best invention. better than the wheel, sliced bread and that pennasillun ish...COMBINED. the exclamation point is usually over-used but when placed somewhere unexpected (like in front of the two hellos) it really is magic. usually i find conventional grammar and punctuation stifling to my free-spirit-like ways and insufficient for expressing my complicated train of thought, but that exclamation point - its a goodie

anywaysss, still in france. still alive. its about midnight here... about dinnertime for all youz representin the homefront . i havent written in a while, pretty much because im too cool and awesome and my life is so exciting and busy that i couldnt bother to sit and write in the blog. but i know u all are sooo curious about my whereabouts in the past week so i guess i can take a small respite from my awesome life to fill u in on the awesomeness... i guess

just kidding, nothing too incredibly awesome has been happening to me and i probably could have found time time to write but sometimes (always) i find myself too lazy to do so..that is, until i get that inspirational kick in the bum from above.. aka until its time to procrastinate something i probably should have started days ago and now the task is so large and daunting and overwhelming that i find it more appealing to just do osmething else rather than start the said something i should have started days ago..and so herrrrrrrrrrreee i am!

since last time i made efforts at communication, i have been to belgian and back. phew! now THAT was a gruesome trip. saw a lot of things that have been burned into my memory forever - i seen things i wouldn't wish my worst enemie's children to see - i seen things you couldn't possibly imagine.

yo, but fo realz, belgium was pretty tight. we went to two cities - bruges (chocolate capital of the world), and brusselles (just regular capital of the world. sike! captial of the EU, not the world. but europeans tend to be kind of euro-centric so they prob consider brusselles the center of the world. they love the eu. like they want to marry it and have its babies. i tell them thats ok, as long as it's for love and both partners get tested for hiv first. honesty is the best policy). both cities were really beautiful, but in bruges i got that weird feeling i had when i was in venice lasst summer... sour stomach.

eww just kiddingggg.. no but i did get a weird feeling: its so quaint but everything there is aimed at tourists and it all feels very contrived (even though i know mad history went down there and its not fake. it only feels fake because ive been pumped full of images and movies of other towns that try to recreate the ambiance and feel of these types of cities which are, in fact, real.) But in venice for example, i remmebr we couldnt find any real-people stores, like supermarkets or regular clothing stores or i dunno, tv repair places. things that real people who lead normal lives need to get by. Everything is souvenir shops, hotels, restaurants, museums, canal rides, etc. Bruges is known as the "venice of the north" becuase it too has many canals and they make mad lace there and its got a similar vibe. simalar in the non-realness. the tour guide told us that less than 20,000 people actually live in the city center - most just commute in for work. All the people who worked in the chocolate shops were wearing those stupid tall white chef's hats that are incredibly uneccesary and there were accordian players on every corner and i didnt see much public transportation or any schools or anything that shows signs of actual life. I felt like i was walking around an amusement park or some village that has been artificially preserved and forbidden to progress. especially when the horse and buggies almost ran me over every three minutes. although if you really want to get philosophical about it, what is progress anyways?? just because the city didnt fit the paradigm of what i consider a modern cosmopolitn city today doesnt mean the place is backwards. but like... horse and buggies? c'mon... So, all in all being a tourist in Bruges made me feel slightly depressed because i was participating in the perpetuation of this weird vibe i got when i was there.. even though the tourist industry is probably the reason every family in a 70km radious of the city has food on the table each night. but i did like Bruges overall and it was really beautiful and the french fries were bangin' and actually.. i take back everything negative i said before.

Brusselles was very scenic as well, but much more cosmopolitan. i get less of the amusement park feeling there but still weird vibes persist. for example, we were there on a saturday night, in the city center, and ther were bars and clubs and restaurants all over the place and they were all really nice, lots of variety, etc... but for some reason every bar and restaurant was deserted - they were all literally half to three-quarters empty. it was very bizarre. it was all likeeee "where the peepz be at???", ya know? strange. but really pretty nonetheless, and the next morning we went to mini-europe and i got interviewed by this swedish radio station and i probably couldnt have sounded more dumb and american if i tried buuutt i mean, its all gravy baby. i took mad pics and if u wanna see them then too bad im not showing u, you creepy stalker you. just kidding. they on facebook. look there if u want.

belgium was my first intra-continental voyage - the first of more to come. i spent a lot of this week planning trips for the rest of the semester. traveling is my favorite thing to so, fo sho. ill give ya the lowdown real quick on where ill be going:
oct 27-28: dijon/bourgogne -->france
oct 31-nov 6: LONDON AND DUBLIN!!!
nov 29-dec 2: BRATISLAVA AND VIENNA (maddddddddd siked to go to eastern europe and bond with my fellow slavs)
annnd the biggie:
dec 19-jan 1: CAIROOOOOO hellllllzzzzzzzzzz yeeeee third world here i come!!! soooo excitededededed for this. so excited. ok ills top telling you how excited i am.
february: morocco/spain??? more to come on this i dunno yet

lets see, what else have i been up to??? hmm... i went to the movies last night. i saw "This is england". and.. all i can say is that i really hope that that isn't england becuase if it is we got some serious xenophobia on our hands. It was about a boy in the 1980s who gets mixed up with the group of nationalist english skinheads. it was good, not what i expected though. first of all their accents were really bizarre (not american-friendly like Hugh Grant at all..) and i actually had to reference the french subtitles at some parts to understand what the little buggers were saying in english. but aside from that i liked it and i would recommend it to anyone who wants to see it - although its not playing in the states as far as i know so sorry guys.. no skinheads for you

ok i really wanted to talk about the "greves" and "manifestation" (bad-ass hippie liberal metro drivers revolting against the man) aka the strikes that have taken over france these past couiple days.. but im sleepy and i have class tomorrow at 10 soooo i will write about it later. until then, i leave you with one thing i like about france and one thing i dont like so much

like about france: new zealand. before i came to france the only things i knew about new zealand were: 1)flight of the conchords, and 2)australia. but, ever since i came here i have added 2 new nuggets of knowledge: 3)rugby --> they play it. thats pretty much the extent of what i know about that. the world rugby cup just wrapped up and from what i gather, new zealand is pretty good - although not as good as france is on a night when france is playing uncharacteristically well. moving on..4) the kindest ex-pats on the face of this earth. allow me to elaborate... during my time in france i have had some serious clashes with bureacracy, but none so frustrating as the language department at sciences-po. to make a long story short (too late) i was placed in a russian class that far exceeds my russian speaking abilities. The class im in is called "culture and engagement" and its pretty much a forum for native speakers/pushkin/dostayevsky to come together for 2 hours a week and debate russian literature, poetry, politics, current events, hirstoy using the largest vocabulary they can possibly think of. its actually really really interesting - one of the most interesting classes i have here - and even though i can understand for the most part what was going on, when it came time for anna to speak her mind in front of the politburo about where power really comes from in the russian political system and the future of the presidency after (if) Putin steps down at the end of his term, in russian... well lets just say it wasnt pretty. So, back to new zealand... i went to the "bureau de langues" a couple of weeks ago to inform them that there has been a horrible mistake and that if i dont switch out i will surely die. the lady told me no. just, no. non. non. no explanation aside from the fact that "no, theres no switching." i told her my placement test results werent accurate because i may or may not have taken it with the help of my father, who may or may not be a native speaker. then she told me that i had to suffer the consequences of cheating and that i had to leave the office because she wasnt going to spend 30 more minutes reiterating the same thing: "non"... ok, fine, i mean yeah i cheated bc the test was so hard aand had i not asked for some help i would have left it all literally blank.. but, regardless, bitchy-mc-bitch-bitch at the language department isnt there to teach me life lessons on how to behave honestly ... shes there to switch my class when i ask nicely. plus she gave me so much sass. i tried to sass her back but my french really isnt at a level yet where i can sass some one effectively... even in english when i think im sassing some one usually im just being slightly less polite than normal, but by no means perceivably sassy. anywyas... back to new zealand. after feeling very frustrated with the middlemen i went straight to the director of languages and by-passed the crazy bitch at "bureau de langues". The director's name is Jesus. Richard Collins for short. its kind of like his pen name. he's from new zealand and he looks like santa claus. only he's better than santa becuase basically i told him my woes and he changed my class on the spot - no explanatio necessary, nothing. AND there was no sass eminating from his pores, AND he was so nice AND kind AND gentle and amazing and this is why i like new zealand.

dont like about france: lined paper doesnt exist. they write on, what we call back in the states, "graph paper". it really weird. like why do you need the verticle lines unless ur drawing graphs?? so incredibly unecessary.. when i went school supply shopping i spent nearly a third of an hour searching for regular college ruled paper only to come to the realization that they dont do that in france. im telling you man, i knew the culture shock would be bad but i defintely wasnt ready for this curve-ball. so, ive converted for now to the graph paper ways of the french, so as not to offend, but my heart will always lie with college ruled.

anna rides a bike!

2007-10-11T11:16:00.001-07:00

bonjour tout le monde. anna here. still in france. still alive. sort of. yesterday i bought a one day pass for the "velibs" and well... im still questioning why i have a pulse. basically, for those uncultured swines who dont already know, a "velib" is paris' answer to the question "how can we really piss off all the taxi and bus drivers in the city while systematically murdering innocent environmentally conscious civilians trying to get to work on time?". velib = velo+liberte=> in anglais==> bike+freedom==> ca veut dire: public transoportation on bikes. There are "velib stations" all over paris where u can go, swipe ur card, pick up a bike and ride it around for free for 30 minutes, at which time if u dont want to pay u just stop at the next velib station (which are literally on every other block)and switch bikes and get a new one. its actually a really cool idea... or so i thought until i actually tried one.

after class yesterday roberto said, o hey why dont we ride bikes, and i, anna, said "hellz yee". then we walked to the velib station.. all bikes were gone. walked to the enxt one... all bikes were taken out. walked back to the original and luckily there were two empty ones with our names on it. first problem.. the last person who rode mine was probably the world's tallest man because the seat was set to about 67 feet high in the air and then i lowered the seat but couldnt lock it soooo it was rotating the whole time i was on the bike... not very comfortable on the fanny and a serious safety hazard. but im thug so i sucked it up... but anyways, it also happened to be rush hour and like rats fleeing from a sinking ship every parisian in the entire city was scurrying to get home to their baguettes and red wine dinners and small french children named camille et thierry. anyways, to get to my house you have to cross this square called "la place de la concorde". sounds pretty oui? NON! pas jolie. its this giant black hole where there are no lanes drawn, no speed limits, cars coming from the right, the left, behind, up top, going every direction, buses cutting in front of bikes who are cutting off pedestrians who are jay-walking to begin with, giant flying taractal dinasaurs swooping in from above to pick up their prey (anna on velib), the flames of hell rising ominously from the ground... seriosuly though. dont let the ferris wheel fool u... this place is scary. particularly on a velib at rush hour. in fact i died. im not alive. im writing to u from heaven. o wait no i dont believe in that hell-heaven mumbo jumbo. im writing to u from some research laboratory in switzerland where the ambulance took my body after they found me lying prostate in the middle of la place de la concorde, flattened under the weight of bus number 24 heading towards Gare St Lazare, and my last dying words were "donate my body to science". then i died. and my corpse lead scientists to find the cure for cancer. all types of cancer: brain, breast, skin, etc. then i won the nobel peace prize. they took it away from al gore and gave it to me for being so generous with my remains.

so yeah, velib was scary but it didnt stop me from using it again this morning. i enjoy the near death experiences.. it makes me feel more alive. although later oon in the afternoon, i was crossing a street by sciences po and i saw a guy who had fallen off his bike (probably a velib.. those death traps) and there was blood gushing from his forehead and leaking all over the curb and there was a huge crowd of french people standing around him just watching his misery. i hate when people do that. maybe a couple people can stand around for good measure - those who are actually helping - but everyone else who just gawks and murmurs to their neighbors needs to go. granted, i stood there watching for a while too, but i was in the back of the crowd so dying concussion man couldnt see me, so its ok, right?

anyways, i cant wait to get my year long velib contract... i have to wait til my bank account is made first... yeah ive been waiting about 5 weeks now. im starting to think i will never have a bank account, which i would be fine with, but i cant subscribe to the death on wheels without one so alas, i wait.

other than that... had no class today. The teacher decided to be sick. he didnt show up last week either. people do that in france and it just flies. i think hes sick but i actually dont know.. i didnt understand that part of the email that well but i DID understand the part about having to MAKE UP the classes at a later date. boo.

so, without class i decided id catch up on some work i have due monday, since i wont be here this weekend to do it (belguimmmm heeelllzzz yeeee!! note to all waffles, french fries, chocolate and beer: be prepared to be consumed by yours truely). i really hope while im in brussels war will finally break out between the flemish and the frenchies. Since belgians are too pacifist for guns and tanks they would just throw waffles and shoot waterguns filled with beer and then french fries would fall from the sky like raindrops on roses and then everyone would ocme out into the streets and dance in all the waffle/beer/french fry ecstacy. but, i digress. belgium is this saturday and if i come back out of the treacherous war zone alive i will recount the trip to all those interested in hearing about my insuing glutany.

but, back to today: i had no class so i worked on my russian paper.. that class is so hard. too hard. i dont wanna talk about it but what i will say is that i will not pass my year in france because of my RUSSIAN class, of all ironies. whatevs, im over it. well, not really but maybe if i dont think about the class itll cease to exist.

after that i went to the seine to read this french book called "kiffe kiffe demain" which i bought today at fnac for 5 euros... what a bargain right? well, 5 x 1.4 exchange rate=not so much a bargain as i initially thought. but anyways, it was very parisienne of me and the book is really funny. like laugh out loud funny. def some rofl action. well not literally rolling on the floor cuz that would be kind of gross to do by the seine. although picturesque, the place is a little dirty. not in any conspicious sort of way.. theres no used condums/crack pipes/heroin syringes lying around... but dirty in the kind of way that when the breeze blows you get a nice healthy whiff of urine-smell. i dont mind the urine smell though cuz i like to think it keeps me grounded. it brings me back down to reality from my spoiled-american-girl- in-paris cloud that i have been sitting upon for the past 5 weeks. (wow i cant believe its been 5 weeks already.. o wait no, going on six weeks. YIKES my life is passing me by). I mean honestlyy, who do i think i am, free reading (yes, alysa, free read is a real term and all my new jersey peeps will appreciate its use) along the seine on a thursday afternoon with not a care in the world?? i deserve all the whiffs of pee-pee that come my way.

ok i have to go becayse its late and i am leaving for belgium in umm... 5 hours. (!!) but i will leave you all with one thing i like about france and one thing i dont like so much

like about france: mayonaise! they put it on everything and its so fucking good, o my goodness gracious its the best condiment in the world and if u dont think so then ur just plain wrong

dont like so much about france: no helmets. now, im not trying to be a nerdy nancy but i think that concussion man who lost 5 pints of blood from the forehead this afternoon would have seriously benefited from some helmet action. and secretly (uh oh secrets out!) i wish i had one to wear on the velibs because ive already falled off once ... thats another story for another day... and i caught myself before my skull smashed into the concrete but next time i may not be so lucky. french people should stop trying to be so cool and join the helmet crusade.

recycling is for lovers

2007-10-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

warning: i wrote this sept 14th but i wanted to start a blog so i figured this email i sent the first couple weeks would be appropriate seeing it is the only record my my life here until today, oct 7... sorry that was a little alarmist. i guess that wasnt a warning as much as a disclaimer.

Bonjour mes petits oiseaux!(this means “hello my little birds… my hostmom called me and her son ‘petits oiseaux’ and it makes me feel nice inside so I thought I would share the love.. but wait don’t get the wrong idea qbout the host mama… she is normally not so affectionate which is precisely why the term of endearment reqlly resonated with me… this is a much longer aside than I anticipated. I apologize). Anywhoooo im in France as you probably know, and if u did not know and u are receiving this email from me then we should reevaluate our friendship. In any case, it is Firday afternoon here and my French class is over and now im back in the apartment just chillin in the living room writing this email that I probably should have sent about 10 days ago. But alas… I have a good reason for being so mysterious regarding my whereabouts this past week and a half… I don’t have internet in my house. Ok that’s a lie. I have internet… please, this is France not some lowly third world country along the nile that shall remain nameless… but the thing is there is only internet in my host mom’s bedroom and she kind of freaks out when I go in there. I guess she doesn’t like the idea of random foreigner rummaging through her bedroom… At first I would go in while she was at work to u know, check email, read the news..(....facebook) thinking that what she doesn’t know wont hurt her. Then once she came home and I was eating a sandwich at her computer in her bedroom (ok the sandwich was bad judgment) and she was not a very happy camper. She then informed me that I need to pay for my own wireless… and so I did but the wireless doesn’t work on this stupid laptop and thus I can now only use the computer lab at the university which one, has stupid frnehc keyboards, two, is always crowded, and three, has a line of foreigners shooting daggers at u trying to hurry u up so they can use it… and under so much pressure I cant just relax and recount my many adventures. So there’s my excuse… take it or leave baby

Anywyassss, Paris is amazing. This is such a cool city… everything is so beautiful, all the buildings, the little streets, the little dogs (people here don’t use leaches to walk their dogs which is very bizarre to me, but the dogs are always so well behaved and I never see anyone running after a loose dog.. I think its symbolic of something americans are doing wrong with their dogs but I don’t feel like psycho analyzing it all at the moment). I wont go into much more detail about the city because I mean anything I say about Paris is bound to be trite and cliché so I will just sum it up in one, all encompassing phrase that they like say here in france: paris est le bomb diggity

Now, back to my host family. Well its not really a full fledged family… its an older woman by the name of Dominique who is the vice principal of a high school. The apartment is on the fifth floor of the highschool and im pretty sure the school pays for her to live there. And her commute in the morning is all of ummm… 4 seconds. Literally. Pretty pimp. She has 3 sons, 2 of which are older and one who is 20 and lives in the house with us until he goes off the school in Germany for his year aborad (he normally studies in Bordeaux.) his name is Guillaume and hes cool. He has long hair (so anti establishment) and I usually never know what hes saying cuz he speaks so quickly but nonetheless he seems pretty chill. (I usually don’t know what anyone is saying unless they are speaking at an insultingly slow pace. Then when they realize I don’t understand they start speaking English and I get insulted and say “non non je parle francais”… then they parle francais and I just nod, smile, walk away from the conversation baffled.) I hung out with him, his gf and their other friend in the apartment one night and it was so bizarre being the foreigner. They had to stop every once and a while to explain what they were talking about and they all speak so damn fast so a lot of the time I just observed awkwardly in the corner (not too different from amerrrrica!). but alas by the end of the night I could comprehend more of what they were saying which isn’t bad, But anyways, back to the Dominique… she lives alone and I don’t know where the hubby is (im assuming divorced… def noooot asking her anytime soon… at least not until I mend the rift that tore us apart after the sandwich-in-the-bedroom fiasco). Shes such a strong independent woman, I think her and beyonce would get along very nicely. Basically the first day she said something along the lines of “I lhave a lot of friends and I go out a lot so don’t expect me to be ur mom”. Which is a good arrangement seeing as I already have a mom and two moms seems a little redundant. But shes super liberal and an environment freak… and just when I thought we were over the sandwich in the bedroom incident she freaked out at me about recycling. Basically, I threw a plastic sandwich container thing in the “food” garbage can (I did not know this was strictly a food garbage) and she took it out, raised it in the air and bellowed “WHO DID THIS???!” then her head started spinning. I meakly said … ehh c’etait moi…. And she told me that plastic things go in the other garbage can not this one and then asked if we recycle in america and if I knoew what it was. I told her yes, we recycle in America. The next day I put my plastic yogurt cup in the recycling garbage and later on in the day she took it out, held it up in the air and bellowed “WHO DID THIS??” then her head started spinning. I meekly told her that I learned from yesterday that I must forget all my wasteful American ways and startrecycling. I thought she would be proud. Then she told me that dirty containers don’t go in the recycling bin and its only for paper plastic. Then she threw it away in the food garbage, even though it wasn’t food. I wasn’t about to argue with Al Gore junior but in my mind I really felt the yogurt cup should have been in the recycling garbage and not the food garbage. O well. C’est la vie! That’s French for, don’t argue with the woman whos feeding you.

Im exaggerating a bit but she is very liberal which I enjoy… shes just a little particular about the way things are done. She nice though and im happy here. It’s a 30 minute commute to school on metro and walking which is different from last year’s rolling out of bed ten minutes before my 8:50 in icc and getting there on time. O and they play simpsons here twenty four seven.. not unlike the US. But its funny cuz all the voices are dubbed and they sound diff from the originals… and they pronounce Milhouse like “MilhOOSE”. Mad funny. I think my French is improving from all the simpsons watching.

Lets see what else…. Ive been having French class everyday for 3 hours. Small problem: I may or may not have cheated on the online placement test and they placed me in the highest level French class. Initially that sounds ok because being around people better than me will force me to improve. No. no no no. Im in class with fucking Voltaire and the creators of the French language. Everyone there is pretty much fluent. And then theres me… but don’t worry, my suckiness did not go unnoticed for my teacher (who by the way is the sweetest most awesome little French lady in the world… she wears the same outfit everyday.. literally, everyday, and that’s kind of weird but I mean im over it) came up to me on Monday and told me that I would be more comfortable in the level below. I think she thought I would be offended and upset by this demotion but I received the news with much enthusiasm and I think that confused her a bit. Nonetheless… now I am where I should be.
Switching topics… the people here are all really nice so far. There’s Australians, Koreans, Spanish, madddddd germans (shaun u would be very happy here) and a poopload of fellow Americans. (OO kavita… there is someone here from Botswana that goes to penn. I asked her if she knew u but she said no. You should probably work on that reputation of yours a little bit more this semester. ) Probably 50% of the time kids try and speak in French to eachother but a lot of times people default to English, even people who English is not their native tongue (that sentence was so awkwardly worded sometimes I wonder if I am who English is not my native tongue). I thought that was weird at first but I guess most people’s English is so strong these days that its easier to communicate that way than butchering French. It makes me feel bad for being a part of the Anglophone imperialism but I mean, whatevs. But nonetheless people definitely click off into groups of their respective motherland…. Germans with germans, Spanish with Spanish… but I think that’s just for now and soon itll be less so. Or maybe not.

Hmm but yeah each day, particularly the very first week, has been filled with a lot of administrative craps… getting bank account, cell phone, carte de sejour, etc… and everything in France takes a million years to do, million hours of waiting in lines, etc etc so its been pretty hectic. There have been some activities organized by the school to do like sight seeing things around Paris. So far I went to the Louvre (where tom hanks starred in the Davinci Code), Musee d’Orsay (my favorite art museum I’ve ever been to.. except that one in Rome that starts with a B I cant remember though what its called), Assemblee Nationale (capitol hill for French people), Bateau Mouche (night boat along the Seine to see Paris all lit up… prob the most touristy thing u can do here but really really pretty) and some other stuff I cant think of at the moment. Its all been cool and I am enjoying myself a lot so far. I havent gone out too much but what I have seen of the bar scene is… well… expensive. It’s a nice change from standing in line for Busch lite at a keg but I think the novelty will wear off soon and my cheapness will overcome. The rugby cup is happening here too so every night there are people from whichever country is playing running around drunk out of their minds… yesterday it was Scotland vs France so there were literally millions of people running around in kilts. Literally, millions, Seeing the kilts blow in the wind made me nostalgic for my field hockey days. Well not so much the people that were running around but I DID see some that were sitting on the bench… those people were a little more relevant to my former field hocky career.

I love being a foreigner by the by. In a weird way I like not knowing the language and being confused everywhere I go.. its very humbling. Now I know what my forefathers felt like when they came to America for the first time… aka my mom and dad. Ive met some Russians here and I hear them in the street everywhere I go. I guess a lot of them come here for vacation. Regardless, my peeps need to chill with the following me around. O, I have been eating a lot of baguette and cheeses of all kinds… the host fam loves them some cheese and wine. So yummmmmy…. Although I just realized that by the time the year is over I will most definitely be a rolly polly.. more rolly than I already am. Prob will need to buy another airplane ticket so I can fit in the seats on the way home. I onder if AirIndia does that. So yeah… that’s my life so far. Its really nothing too grand but its exciting being in a new place. I miss y’all very much and I hope some can come visit at some point in this year. I can show u the sights and ish. Not that I know the sights very well but maybe we can discover them together .O and a side note to mag and ba: I met about 5 people who know people who transferred to barnard. U guys aren’t original.O and Maggie: I met some1 from Hopkins. I didn’t ask her too much about it. But she DOES know jon chui. She didn’t know u though. Same advice I gave to kavita applies to you. Ha ok BYE(that’s English for: Au revoir!)

PS: I have some pics I can put up but I wont clog ur email boxes cuz lord knows ive been at 97% full for the past 3 months and one gigantic file will clog up my account forever. Im thinking of starting a blog instead of the email thing. Ill keep u posted. No pun intended.

u don't make friends with figs

2007-10-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

bonjour tout le monde. j'ai finalement cree une blog, mais le website etait en francais, donc, toutes les demandes sur la formulaire pour creer le blog eksjfjfsdfs

french is hard. english easy! i will do this in english. hello all! i finally made a blog, but the website is in french (side note: one of the most annoying things in france is that google.com automatically goes to google.fr so all the searches are in french and well, i mean cmon, wheres the america speak when u want it?? along these same lines... celcius needs to get out of my grill. same goes for the metric system) so all the questions/instructions for setting it up were in french so i hope to goodness gracious i didnt fuck this up. if u r reading this, i dont think i did. if i did fuck itup well then, i guess you wouldnt be reading this and no one would ever know. kind of like if a tree falls in a forest and no is there to hear it does it make a sound?? if anna makes a blog and no1 reads it, was the blog ever made?? umm.. yes. it was. clearly anna is just lacking in the friend department.

anyhoooo i am in the france. its a good itme so far. tonight i had diner with my host mama and her middle son (not the oldest, not the youngest, the middlest) and his new girlfriend (oo lala!). whenever i have dinner here with just me and mama france she throws some noodles in a pot and calls it day. butt with the new girlfriend in town... we pulled out all the stops. we had "aperitifs" (which is just a fancy word for pre-gaming dinner) with white wine from the loire valley. she also served Bugles during the "aperitif"which was surprisingly less than classy. maybe in france bugles are a sophisticated international delicacy but where I'M from, we put dem bugles on our finger tips and claw at our neighbors. perhaps thats just a new jersey thing... needless to say i had to execute some serious restraint while eating the Bugles. but anyways, back to the feast made for kings: there was chicken! and salad! and potatoes! and fancy bakery cakes from, according to my host mother, "le meuillere pattisserie a paris". pshh i never got treatment like that on my first meeting of dominique. my first night here she made me a fig tart. FIG. yeah, when u serve fig u are clearly not trying to impress. (lisa, u dont make friends with salad!) dont get me wrong, i ate that fig tarte like a champ and i liked it. but in comparison to the the best bakery in all of paris, well, the figs def dont take the cake (pun intended). nevertheless, the dinner was nice. and by nice, i mean it reaffirmed just how pathetic my french is. i could follow the conversation for the most part but then they start making the "blagues" (jokes) and mumbling and speaking at a rate that rivals the speed of sound... when french people start doing that i find it pretty easy to zone out. i guess i should stop doing that but it hurts my brain trying to decode their cryptic language all the time.

after dinner everyone stayed in the living room and drank some more wine and kept being french but i had to go work on my very first EXPOSE of the semester. for those less learned in the sciences po jargin, "expose" is a ten minute orale presentation which must be organized in the most dry, formulaic manner and if you diverge even slightly from this format french professors will poke you with sticks. my topic is "la construction de l'Europe"... for my asia and the EUclass. i dont know y i signed up for that class... o yeah. cuz my password didnt work during registration and i could only start registering like 30 minutes after registration started, when EVERY other class was filled.. o yeah now i remember. i mean i was actually interested in the class and i still am but the teacher has a pretty intense korean accent (and dont get me wrong, i love kim jong-il as much as the next girl) but i really cant understand a damn thing shes EVER saying. in english i appreciate and genuinely prefer a foreign accent to an american one but it was only once i reached france that i realized that foreign language fetishes are a luxury reserved for native speakers.

anyways, back to expose: luckily we get to work with partners and signed up with this guy who had, what i thought, a french name. I wanted to work with a real french person instead of one of the millions of americans/australians/canadians/british peeps in my class.. turns out the guy was german. which is ok becuase his french is impeccable and i soon learned that he freaking worked at the EU this summer and is next in line to be the preseident of the European commission, so basically he is very knowledgable about the topic. i guess any european would be more knowlwedgable in the topic than me. europeans are obsessed with the EU. i mean, i guess its kind of a cool/successful endeavor but like, get over it already. collective security is soo overrated. hegomany is where its at! woo hooo USA! USA! anyways, while i was ecstatic with my partner, i think he was experiencing a little bit of the "o fuck y did i get stuck with this girl" blues. I kept asking him all these stupid questions in horrible french. BUT i think i made up for it by making my powerpoint slides very astheticallly pleasing. word art anyoneee??? helllzzz yeee

aside from being the weekend of expose, this weekend was also "la nuit blanche" which is a pretty new tradition here in paris that i very much approve of. one day in the year the whole city stays open into the wee hours of the night. the metro runs all night, there are all these lights/art exhibits around paris, people stay out frollicking and everyone is generally in jovial spirits. my spirits were in a pretty jovial state, but since i was not inebriated i think they were less jovial than the other spirits i watched stumble around during la nuit blanche. but, alas, my sobriety helped me enjoy it more... or something.

anyways, i took some pictures and i will post them as soon as i figure out how to do so. problem is my flash memory card thing from my new camera doesnt fit in the hole its supposed to in my computer. i have a feeling my pictures will never make it out of my camera... im keeping them prisoner forever!! mwwahahaha.

ew im eating prune yogurt. its gross but for some reason i cant stop. eating it that is. it was part of an 8 multi-flavor yogurt pack thing at my local "episserie" and well, i cant turn down a bargain when i see one! so i bought it... even though 2 out of the 4 flavors i knew i wouldnt love: the peach and the prune. peach turned out good... strawberyy, cherry... cant go wrong. prune? yeah.. mistake. BIG mistake. HUGE GIANT ENOURMOUS mistake. i might as well just kill myself now. o well. thats what i get for being a concientious shopper.

ok i will end this post with one thing i like about france and one thing i dont really like about France:

Like: PARKS. i love PARKS. theyre so nice. french people know how to make themselves a good park. theyre always so well manicureed and awesome. theres a nice one by my house that i like to run in when im not being too fat and lazy. america needs more parks

dont like: parks in france: the grass is always so green and beautiful and cut and lush and healthy so my natural inclination is to run and lie and roll in it. but no, french people dont sit in grass... theyre too civilized. they sit on benches on the sidewalks NEXT to the grass but the grassy knowls (spelling?) are usually fenced off by a fence no more than a foot high. technically u could walk over the fence but i dont wanna be the uncivilized baboon marching all over the the french people's grass. so for now, i sit on the bench and appreciate the grass from afar.. such a waste.