So Long, Vacation!

Tomorrow is my first day of French university life! Aieee! I'm actually not nervous. Yet. I think I'll probably be nervous when I'm trying to find the classroom and hoping that I read the schedule correctly and don't end up sitting through three hours of the wrong class or get kicked out for being foreign ("no class for you!") or something. Eek! I also only own one notebook and a couple pens, and that's it. Super prepared. I'm having a bit of a money issue, actually... I opened a French bank account, but I had to give a lot of cash to the bank as a deposit for opening the account, and in return they gave me my French debit card. But - you can't use a debit card without a pin! And I'm still waiting (still, still, still waiting) for the code to arrive in the mail. So I have money in a bank account that I have no way of accessing, and I spent almost all the rest of my cash on my books for classes, so I'm economizing (no pastries, Rachel. No. Pastries.) until the code arrives, which should hopefully be soon (especially since it's still the sales in the stores, but only for a couple more days, I would very much like to partake!).

I would just like to interrupt myself for a moment to share with y'all what I saw upon exiting the métro on the way to buy my schoolbooks on Friday (forgot to put it in the last post):

You and your ridiculous monuments are killin' me, Paris.

I mean, really, try harder. Anyway...

So, Friday night was that building party, which basically consisted of Brigitte introducing me to various women who, upon learning that I was American, got really excited and wanted me to meet all their various sons and grandsons. One woman in particular was quite insistent and when she found out I was only here until June, immediately went over to my host mom to try and coordinate how I could meet her son. Brigitte also went up to one of our neighbors, who's a grad student, and asked him quite bluntly to give me his phone number and email and that he should start taking me to grad student parties with him. I mean, alright, twist my arm.

On Saturday, I went with my host mom to her friend's house in the suburbs of Paris because she was throwing a birthday party. We went to help make all sorts of cute little appetizer snacks (all vegetarian too, nom) and mini desserts. Apparently, her friend lives in a communist, uh, commune. It looked like any other Parisian suburb to me, just with very modern architecture (think lots of harsh angles and weird little triangle balconies everywhere) and lots of big gardens. Although I definitely prefer Paris to its suburbs, which while seemingly safe enough, did not exactly appear very inviting. Good thing I live in such a wonderful area :)

Today, I went again to the marché underneath one of the line 8 subway stations (merci Danny!!!) to buy some flowers for my host-grandparents as a thank you for treating me to the hot air balloon ride:

The market goes on and on and on! Food! Food!!! Everywhere!

I dropped the flowers off at the apartment, and went to meet Marie (French host buddy) in Chinatown in the 13ème to watch the parade/celebration of the Chinese New Year! It was a bit of a failure because the parade was horribly delayed for unknown reasons, and it was so very cold out, but I survived and did not stop breathing (success! Take that, hives!) and I had a nice time meeting Marie's friends, one of whom did the inverse of my program, and studied at Middlebury for a year. Eventually the parade showed up, although there were so many people around that it was really hard to see and I had to rely on my camera to show me what was going on!

Check out the police officers with their cute little boat hats!

I was only able to see a bit of the parade because it was delayed, and then I had to run to meet my host grandparents, host mom, and host auntie for champagne and cookies and host puppy snuggling (Toby, my replacement-Freddie for the semester)! I also met my host cousin (?? Brigitte's nephew, I mean), who is studying philosophy and was very nice and super talkative (take notes Charlie!). He and his family actually lived in Michigan for two years, but he wouldn't practice his English with me because he felt I spoke French better than he spoke English so it wouldn't be a fair match (obviously intimidated by me, I am ferocious). Well, that's about it for this weekend, pretty calm, but that's fine as I try to mentally prepare myself for getting back into school mode. Wish me luck tomorrow!!

x R.

PS: I just edited this post three times for grammar/spelling errors. Guess you can't have it all.