ma vie est changée (anecdotes)

February blues over, time for la vie en rose again! While Brian's adjusting to la vida espanola, I'm still enjoying the la vie de la touriste/resident: I get to do mundane things like shop for groceries, while touristy stuff like go to museums etc.

Last Thursday my host brother (he lives in London but visited for a week) held a dinner party here with about 13 of his closest friends + me. Started cooking and drinking wine at 8, delicious dinner at 10-midnight, stayed up sipping wine and smoking cigarettes until about 3 a.m. Did I mention he's a sommelier (professional wine expert)? Six hours of French conversation with actual French kids=awesome.

Musee Rodin=awesome. Webcam + mic = awesome. Finishing up fellowship apps for summer = awesome. I enjoy sitting around the gigantic gardens here with my lunches or a book or postcards. Beautiful.

Most delicious falafel ever = L'as du Fallafel in the Marais (Jewish quarter). Imagine the best falafel you've ever had, add deliciousness * 10 and wrap it in a pita with lots of veggies, hummus, and sauce. I live near La Grande Epicerie, the biggest and best gourmet food supermarket type place in Paris, so I like to go there to get lunch sometimes. The other day Deanna and I went there and bought pastries (finally) and wow deliciousness never tasted so good.

Went and watched "Paris" the movie the other night and ran into some of my new neighbor (Billie)'s kids- Billie is the grad assistant for another study abroad program. After the first hour or so, you don't even realize it's in French anymore. Amazing!

Tonight I joined my friend Lou from translation class and a bunch of her friends at a tiny hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere (or as near as you can get in Paris) to watch one of their friends perform. It was amazing! The venue was about as big as a room in WLH or one of the new science rooms at Troy (too bad if you didn't go to a school with me). Very intimate, she sang in English, French and some African language; I took the last train home at 12.30 and ate a delicious dinner that my host mom left on the stove for me.

Basically, I'm back to my normal yenthusiasm where everything is amazing! Hey, I'm going to Madrid, then Grenada, then Barcelona in two days! Hey, I have a math test in twelve hours. Amazing!

Today in my Ethics class (btw class is getting better; the Sorbonne ones are tough because not only does everyone speak French very quickly for French speakers but there's a lot of technical terms that aren't in my dictionary) our professor was using some example of marriage and infidelity to talk about morality, and even when I'm not at Yale, I managed to find a section asshole (actual Yale phrase)! Raging feminist begins a ten minute debate in the middle of lecture with our professor on why you can treat women as possessions etc. Fantastic.

General note: my study abroad program, in contrast to Brian's where they get to take trips (jealousy) and have people, has 11 students and we have about four organized activities for the entire semester. Super laissez faire, but hey, c'est la vie!