sick

I'm sick :( That's what I get for being lax in my germ-freakishness and not carrying hand sanitizer for when I take public transportation (which is every day). Oops.

What's happened since I updated last? Well, le cirque invisible, for one.

My theatre class went to see Le Cirque Invisible at Theatre du Ront Point on Sunday, but it wasn't really a circus, and it also was definitely not invisible. Basically it was a man and a woman who took turns doing weird things for two hours. They did magic tricks, rode bicycles, fit themselves into really small places, did duck calls, and had the fattest white rabbits I have ever seen in my life. I think really it was meant for younger kids, but there was surprisingly little information about it online, so my theatre teacher wasn't sure what to expect. After the circus Kara, Leah and I took the metro home. I'm normally fine with the metro as long as I'm with someone, but on Sunday I learned that you should NEVER attempt to metro it during rush hour (between 6-7 in the evening). If you do, you will be unpleasantly squished up against the unknown parts of unknown people, and you will not like it. Luckily I was crushed between Leah and Kara, so not as bad as it could've been, especially since we kept each other from falling over and into the laps of sketchy people.

On Monday Leah, Kristin, Hannah and Sky (actually a boy, in case you were wondering), came over to my apartment to make cookies. One thing the French just don't get is soft cookies. Here you can get bazillions of amazing pastries, but nothing remotely close to a gooey, chewy chocolate chip cookie. Sad. After assembling the ingredients Leah had bought, we decided that, even though the brown sugar was definitely not like brown sugar in the US, and even though the thing we were pretty sure was baking soda might not actually have been baking soda (we were going by the chemical makeup listed on the back, which doesn't really help when you're a bunch of French, Creative Writing, History, and Art History majors), we would wing it. Since chocolate ships don't exist in France we ended up buying chocolate bars and hacking them to bits (which is the reason that my kitchen was temporarily covered in a fine coating of chocolate dust). Also, the vanilla extract was more like some mysterious kind of vanilla syrup that wasn't nearly as strong. Which sucked, because it was really expensive and we had to use a ton.

But after all that the cookies turned out really well--different, but good. Hannah made a thing with zukini which was delicious, and we had a baguette, cheese, pate, saucisson and apple picnic in the dining room, which was delicious.

After Kristin and Hannah had to leave, we made hot chocolate and watched Happy Feet in French, which was ridiculous because all the songs were still in English, meaning that the movie made even less sense than it normally does.

That night our literature class was going to the La Comedie Francaise (the most famous theatre here) to see Fantasio, some weird play that our teacher told us we had to read. The only thing was that she told us this on Thursday, and gave us one book to share among ten people. Basically, no one read the play, but we did read an article saying that Christian Lacroix, a famous French fashion designer, had done all the costumes for the production. The theatre was gorgeous (once Kristin and I found it after getting soaked in the rain and slightly lost) and the play was alright. I was expecting insane costumes since I'd heard that Christian Lacroix was very couture-y, but they weren't too out-there. They were well made and there was a really beautiful wedding dress, but other than that nothing spectacular. I wasn't a fan of the actress in the lead female role, and the lead male role was actually also played by a woman, which was odd. They had a really cool set piece that turned, kind of like they do for Les Miserables, but smaller and weirder. It was interesting.

Yesterday I lived through Lit and Grammar before deciding that I was too sick to handle phonetique with Jean-Thierry and his crazy "gymnastics" which involve screaming and flailing. So I came home and went to sleep until my momma called to say that she was coming over. She brought me lots of things from home because I am a spoiled panda. But now I am a spoiled panda with my uggs and winter coat, and I'm also a nice-smelling panda because I have new deoderant. They don't have natural deoderant here, and since I don't want alzheimers I have to make mom bring me Tom's from home.

We had dinner with my Aunt Susan and Uncle John and their friends, which was fun. We saw the Eiffel Tower sparkling for approximately .3 seconds, and then I spent the night with mom in her hotel and came back on the bus this morning.

And now I'm in the process of deciding whether or not to go to theatre today. Do I really want to hack my brains out and snot all over the place for three hours while my teacher attempts to make us learn something from the invisible circus? I don't think I'm going to be worth anything in the improvising/acting game department, or even the note-taking department. Or, for that matter, the not-passing-out-while-the-teacher-is-talking department. BUT now I have medicine and Emergen-C and Echinacea, so I'm hoping that if I take enough of that I'll be a little better by tomorrow.