Serait-ce possible alors?

I've been listening to Sarkozy's new wife a lot lately; I love her French stuff. Quelqu'un M'a Dit and Le Toi du Moi are super super cute:
On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose
Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses.
(My translation: Someone told me that our lives aren't worth very much; they pass in an instant like the wilting of roses)

I've been doing a lot of shopping, went to an antiquey vintage store in the Marais and got falafel, bought some flats and wedges for 25 euros (not too bad!), got tights and scarves and look a lot frencher now. Stopped by some known monuments and such: the Centre Georges Pompidou (I haven't gone in yet), the Colonne Vendome, the Bibliotheque Nationale (uy, here are pics of those). Also did some social stuff: Yale's Feb Club in Paris where I met some alumni and didn't take pictures but got an email address of a great math professor at Paris I, had coffee with an 18 year old student who wanted to meet Americans and contacted our directrice, a bar with those 30 year old women I met on Friday night and they're all fantastic and taught me how to swear in french only I don't remember it at all now, became a regular at one panini stand where i get lunch for 3.50 everyday, a panini and an Orangina and the men who work there know my classes and such.

What can I say, I've adapted I think and I'm so surprised by how easy it was to do so. I had my first probability and statistics class on Tuesday, took me many embarassing asking for directions to get to the classroom, where the professor was late and the students horrendously disrespectful, coming crazy late and talking throughout the entire class. it was like an entire class of me-students. From here on out I'll be a lot better in class; I felt so bad for the professor. Also I didn't really understand a lot because it was in French and because I joined the class two weeks late, but one kid let me copy his notes and was really nice to me after I said I was American. It's amazing generally how universal math is though, I could follow a surprising amount considering the previously listed two factors. Also translations are fun: iff is ssi (if and only if, si et seulement si), s.t. is t.q. (such that, tel que), r.r.v. are v.a.r. (random real variables, variables aleatoires reel), etc. E(X) is still E(X), and variance is variance, and gauss is gauss.

Mostly I'm just living life like anyone else, I love Paris the way I love L.A., N.Y., O.C., New Haven, Eden Prairie, or anywhere I live. I love it because it allows me to live, which is such a marvelous gift, isn't it?! Granted, the language barrier sucks, a lot, and jet lag did while it lasted, but jet lag is over and the language barrier isn't so bad. It took me about ten minutes to get the courage to say "excusez moi, avez-vous des notes pour les deux premiers classes?" (excuse me, do you have some notes for the two first classes?) to the kid next to me, but after that we started chatting and it worked out all for the best.

I can't believe how ugly the national library looked in the dark cloudy sky on the day I went. Francois Mitterand, you are a vain, vain man. I feel like I should go look at La Defense too now.
Here's a model of the library, within the library itself, sort of how my brother keeps a model of his white Scion XB in his Scion so you can remember how ugly the car is while you're in it. Speaking of my brother, I'm trying to track down the Michelin store because he loves the Michelin man and I want to get him random crap from there. We're very alike and love random crap.
Also, here's a gratuitous shot of a gorgeous sky as I was walking down some street. I was considering putting up a gratuitous shot of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, but that was too much even for me. I was actually completely lost when taking this picture. In other news, Brian finally put up his slideshow.

Update: I just bought a one way plane ticket to Madrid. I should figure that out sometime, like where I'll stay and for how long and how to get to Grenada to visit Brian.