Dinner chez Sophie was fine, her daughters were not scary, and Jean-Michel made everyone listen to Duffy, which was odd. Sunday was uneventful save for the pains au chocolat (and pain au nutella!) we had for breakfast. I'm so happy that Valerie is my host mother and that she's actually interested in my existence, unlike a lot of host mommies who leave their students alone (mostly because the students are equally happy to leave them alone).

Today we went to Shakespeare & Company which is less indie and more touristy than I had thought, but still cute. I've decided that if I do a workshop there it's going to be the free one (as opposed to the 70 euros for 7 weeks thing). But I'm not sure how well that'll work out since I think in general people just bring work the day of and everyone reads it on the spot...which obviously doesn't work for me unless everyone wants to bring me large print copies. Which is doubtful.

On the bright side (not that there's really a dark side), the blind peoples club finally emailed me back and I'm signing up for poterie (pottery, duh) and modelage (which apparently is pottery without the baking part...which might just be playing with play dough. But I don't actually have a problem with that.) There are also "sorties culturelles" and "decouverte de la nature," which I don't actually understand but am going to participate in anyway, so hopefully they'll be fun. They have yoga also, but it's unfortunately already full, as well as dance, which I can't do because it coincides with my classes at Reid Hall. Sad.

And, best of all, today I met a woman whose honest-to-god given name is Marie-Antoinette. No lie, she is in the other room eating cheese as I type this. Everyone calls her Mia, which kind of makes me sad, but still. She is the petite copine de Stefan, who is the brother of Valerie. Bea(trice) is also in the other room being French etc. Eduarde and I had pizza (with GOAT CHEESE, holy crap I love my life) earlier because we actually have to wake up in the morning, unlike these crazy adults.

And now I need to go to bed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (but mercifully not bushy-haired) for my first day of classes. A bientot, mes petits choux-fleurs.

The internet has decided it wants to work again, for whatever reason.

I am such a good little French person, if I do say so myself.

Today I went for a walk on the rue Mouffetard (pedestrian walking area near ma maison) to look at the really expensive postcards/clothing/everything else. The postcards there are seriously over-priced, especially since we found a stand by the river selling them for 11 for 2 euros. I found the library again, just to make sure I actually knew where it was, then I ventured to the Franprix (the grocery store) to buy something for lunch. Then I pretended to be French with my little environmentally-friendly grocery bag. I came back here with my saucisson and cheese and ate it with the rest of last night's baguette, and it was deeelicious.

Tonight Valerie and I are eating at her sister Sophie's house. Which is scary because she has two daughters I haven't met yet and French girls are obviously terrifying, especially with their absurd teenage backward-talking slang which I do not understand.

Also, I'm trying to join the French blind people club so I can take blind yoga and blind dance classes etc., but they won't email me back. I think I might have to actually call them on Monday, which is scary because I cannot understand French people on the phone, pas du tout.

I'm going to read Harry Potter a l'Ecole des Sorcieres now, thankyouverymuch.

Internet = still bad.

Today I ate a sandwich with saucisson and butter, a huge raspberry macaroon, a pain au lait with chocolate inside, more chocolate, chicken and rice and baguette, and some kind of applesaucey French thing. I love food, and I love France for having so much good food.

Valerie gave me three coats that apparently don't fit her anymore. Eee ee ee, one of them is white ad furry on the inside like a polar bear!

I am so tired, and I don't know why, but I can't wait for classes to start on Tuesday so that I actually have a set schedule.

I'm reading the first Harry Potter book in French, and it's pretty great (not to mention a lot easier than The Golden Compass). My Skype works most of the time even when internet explorer doesn't, so check to see if I'm on and call me! Kthanksbye.

OKAY SO the internet here is crapping out on me, so if this doesn't post (or if it happens to post like 4 hunred times) you can talk to ALICED4SB2 about it, because it's her internet (which I've been stealing) that's shitting the bed. ANYWAY.

Today I went with Emily, Kristin and Leah (they're from Bowdoin, although they're obviously in the Hamilton program) to Notre Dame and the Ile Saint Louis. We walked around the bottom floor of Notre Dame (because that's the free part, and thus the only part which interests us) and confused all the other tourists by speaking good French with horrendous american accents. Then we got les sandwiches from un boulangerie on the Ile Saint Louis and went down to sit by the Seine for a picnic. After that we went to Bertillion, the famous ice cream place on the Ile, where we had probably the best and most rich ice cream ever. I had pain d'epice (gingerbread), which was kind of amazing. Then we had something like two and a half hours before we had to meet the rest of the group for our ride on the bateaux mouche (the boats that go up and down the Seine and tell you about stuff). So we spent it wandering along the river observing all the weird things people will try to sell you, all the while parler-ing Francais. It's amazing how serious most people are about the speaking-French-all-the-time rule. Which is a good thing, obviously, it just surprises me because we're a bunch of unsupervised kids running around Paris with ice cream cones, but we're still making a huge effort with the language. Which isn't to say that it always turns out well, but you know, at least we try.

Anyway, then we had an adventure on the RER to get to the Pont de L'Alma where we met the group (sans Mwantuali, because he's a nut, but that's another story). The bateaux mouche was nice, not least because we finally got to sit down. Going under the arched bridges is kind of like being on a ride at Disneyland, but then you remember that it's real and tout le monde is speaking francais because, holy crap, it's France.

After the bateaux mouche we had another adventure on the RER while some French people made out in the corner and we pretended like that was normal and we didn't care. And then Emily and I managed to find our way home (Emily lives really, really close to me) without getting hit by a car--always a concern here.

All in all it was a very good day, if exhausting. And to top that all off Valerie came home with her brother Stefan, his girlfriend who looks like Brigitte Bordeaux, and their kids who are now doing something very shrieky with Eduarde.

And now I have to go to bed, or I might die of sleepiness. Good night, and if I don't talk to you all soon it's because the internet isn't working...again.

I almost forgot--last night I had a bad dream that the bad baldy monsters from I Am Legend were attacking the island and my dad was outside in the parking lot of the Newport Athletic Club, and mom and I were on our way to save him because he didn't know about the monsters. But when we got there he wasn't there and everything was dark, and scary noises were coming from the entrance to the club. So, being an intelligent human being, I got out of the car and ran to find dad, which only resulted in me not finding dad and not being able to find mom, and thinking that the baldies had eaten mom and stolen the car. It pretty much sucked a lot, but then I woke up and had a nice day with gingerbread ice cream and a picnic, so it was fine. But anyway, the moral is that you shouldn't see I Am Legend because it will give you nightmares. The end.

Steak tartar is raw, fyi

First of all, my host brother was just watching Pirates of the Caribbean en francais, and it's amazing how funny it isn't when it's not actually Johnny Depp's voice. The French have been deprived of a great, great thing.

My schedule of classes is as follows:

On Tuesdays and Thursdays
- Intro to French Lit. - 9:45 - 11:00
- Grammar - 11:15 - 12:30
- Phonetics - 2:00 - 3:15

Wednesday
- Paris Theatre - 1:00 - 4:00

That means no classes Monday or Friday, which means every weekend is a long weekend. So you know if anyone wants to hop a plane to Paris for the weekend and aller au discotque (Emma Sconyers, I'm looking at you...and Mrs. Paquin) that would be fine. In a sense it's good because everything is so condensed, but it's going to be a whole lot of work between Tuesday and Thursday. But as long as I'm a good monkey and do all my theatre homework in advance and not on Tuesday night, everything should be fine. But everyone knows that won't happen, so chances are everything will not be fine, because procrastination is a lot easier when the place down the street from my house has the best chocolate mousse I have ever had in my whole life, and my new best friend Damien (whose wife is American with a Boston accent) works there. Mom was here on a trip tonight, and we met Damien while eating dinner at the place of the amazing chocolate mousse.

Mom: And I'll have the steak tartar--
Damien: You know zat zee steak tartar, eet eez raw, yes?
Mom: Yes, I know.
Damien: And you would laik to eet eet steel?
Mom: Yes.
Damien: But you are Amereecan?
Mom: Yup.
Damien: And you are sure, you know zat eet eez raw, and you would laik to eet eet?
Mom: YES.
Damien: Okay fine, but remember zat I say to you, eet eez raw. Many Amereecans, when I bring to them zee steak tartar, they say to me, "BUT ZEES EEZ RAW, EET EEZ NOT COOK!"
Mom: I...won't say that. I've had it before.
Damien: Okay, for you I bring zee steak tartar.

The cats keep scratching on the door of my room to come in, but then once they get inside and sniff around for awhile and realize that there are no pigeons to look at, they start scratching to go out again. Now Daphne is under my bed, probably clawing up my big purple duffle bag because apparently that is her new favorite activity.

Tomorrow we (Valerie and I) are going for a walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and on Thursday my group takes over the Rive Seine by way of the Bateaux Mouche.

Today consisted of a petit rendez-vous pour les grands quiches a Reid Hall (seriously, the quiche was as big as my head). Mme. Stevens and Prof. Mwantuali talked about things, everyone asked a lot of questions, and we spoke whole craploads of French. Apparently we Hamilton students are the snobs of Reid Hall because we actually speak French all the time, unlike the students in other programs (we share a building with Smith, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury, and I think somewhere else that I forgot about) who parler beaucoup d'anglais dans le jardin. But we have signs that say "Ici c'est Hamilton, et nous parlons francais tout le temps!" So obviously we parlons francais tout le temps. Or quelque chose comme ca. I can't do accents on this, I don't think :(

Also, Kit bought potato chips with ham on them, and I do not even want to discuss how much this disturbs me. The end.

So last night, for the second night in a row, I went to bed at 1:00am and the French people in the other room stayed up for quite a bit longer. I couldn't help it, I was so exhausted. We had dinner with Valerie's sister, Sophie, and her husband Jean-Michel, who loves American and English indie music, comme le Coldplay and les Libertines and le Babyshambles. And le Feist. Oh yes. Topics of discussion included the difference between "Tsunami" and "Really Big Wave of Destruction" (there's a word for that in French, I don't get it), the English R sound and how it makes no sense, how Newport, RI and Newport Beach are definitely not the same thing (my host brother thought they were), and the etymology of the word fuck. Indeed.

Also, for anyone who wants to send me things:

Molly Faerber
Chez Valerie Boe
76 Rue Claude Bernard
Paris, France 75005

Also, in case anyone didn't know, my Skype address is mollyfaerber. Because I'm creative like that.

j'aime les choux-fleurs

Et donc, je suis en france.

To begin with, I now live in an apartment in the 5eme arrondissement of Paris--which is to say the Latin Quarter, la rive gauche, the best part of Paris (not only because it is twenty minutes walking distance from here to my school, but because all the crazy artsy folk are here). I have my own room which isn't any smaller than my room at home (and a lot bigger than my room at Hamilton), and I have a window just like any window you'd see on a French postcard, with a curly, wrought-iron thingum where the two cats (Daphne and Bart Simpson) like to sit and salivate over the pigeons. They do this for hours, and when they're not doing this they try to sleep in my bed. Actually, Daphne is trying to push me out of my computer chair as I type because she is a fat and lazy little beast.

Anyway, I live here with my host mother Valerie, who is a chain smoking ex-director of plays who now mostly directs commercials etc.. She's incredibly kind, and she even slows down her billion-mile-a-minute French so that I can actually understand what she's talking about. Her fifteen year old son Eduarde is also here, and he has three guitars in his room (I wanted to ask if he had named them, but then he would certainly know how insane I am, so I decided against it), along with all the seasons of The Simpsons (hence the cat's name) on DVD en francais. The apartment's front three rooms (mine, Eduarde's, and the dining/living room) are pretty big, although the kitchen and toilette are really small. Our building has a lovely geen door, and is very safe--you enter the secret code outside, then use your magical little detector thing to open the next set of doors, and then you use your apartment keys. The elevator is basically the size of my suitcase, but luckily I only have to go up one flight of (spindly spiral) stairs to get to the apartment.

There is a pedestrian shopping area close by where I bought an impermeable (a raincoat) and some ridiculous postcards. The whole area is full of fruit stands, boulangeries, clothing shops, and sometimes an organ grinder man. It's pretty great as long as you stay away from the fish market, which actually smells a lot like Newport.

Last night Valerie had a dinner party thing with mom and I (mom left this morning), Mme. Stevens (the director of my program here) and her husband, and some friends of hers. I thought my brain would explode from the excessive amounts of la langue francaise, but it didn't. Valerie made really super rare meat, which was amazing. Hopefully it wasn't pleine de (full of) mad cow disease, but it was so good that I probably wouldn't be bothered anyway.

Language-wise it's been...interesting. The short version is that I can speak French well when I think about it long enough, it's just when people talk back to me that I have issues. Parisians speak like speed demons, and they don't sound a thing like Mme. Paquin, or even Mme. Krueger, really. Hopefully I won't have a nervous breakdown next time someone answers a question I ask.

In other news, Valerie is listening to music in the other room, and right now it's a Christmas song, and I'm not sure whether or not she's aware of that because she doesn't speak English. Uh, yeah.

Tomorrow we're going to do something for which Valerie had a very long explaination which I did not understand, so that should be fun...whatever it is.

I'm going to go get the cat out of my pillow case now, since I have a feeling that won't be great for my allergies later tonight.