French rites of passage

This evening I went to a fashion show--the real kind. It was in a modern art museum, peopled with twelve-mile-tall girls (one of whom was either pretending to be Asian or a giant), women in garments entirely constructed of violet feathers, and men who obviously have miniscule dogs in Dior sweatervests which they carry around in Louis Vuitton murses. It was just like I always thought a real fashion show would be, in that they played absurdly epic techno with little bleepy robot noises thrown in every now and then for good measure, and also in that you had to have an invitation on artfully crinkled paper of an irridescent taupe color. Although to be honest I don't think the invite counted for too much since Emily was the only one of us who had one and we still managed to get 4 seats. The gowns alternated between light pinks and blues, white, and intense-banana-yellow, and they were all generously rhinestoned. Not necessarily anything I would wear, no matter how fancy the occasion, but it was still really impressive to see them strutting down the runway on the skinniest women I have ever seen in my life.

All this balanced out the fact that I had probably the worst headache I have ever had today--I thought my sinuses might explode, but luckily they didn't. Would've been fairly embarrassing in front of all those fashion people.

Started Grammar and Paris Multiculturelle today. Grammar was the same as always, and Paris Multiculturelle was passable. It's really my only choice, so I'll end up keeping it no matter what, probably. Unfortunately we're supposed to find and read a book for the class by Thursday, but when I asked for it at Gilbert Joseph, the big bookstore around here, the salespeople laughed and asked "Are you in the class too?" Apparently they only had two copies to begin with, and some of our classmates managed to snag them basically minutes before we got there. Which is cool, because I obviously have time to go on an epic Parisian book-hunt.

After a minor catastrophe (which seemed like a major catastrophe when it happened), I'm now not taking American Modernism at l'Institut du Monde Anglophone. I found out late last night that the professor is sick and won't be able to teach for awhile--apparently not something anyone found it necessary to inform the students of--so I had to switch courses.

Also, I forgot to mention my other marvelous French milestone! Okay, so we have cards called NaviGo's which allow us to use the metro, RER and buses in Paris and Ile de France. Every time you go through the turn styles or get on the bus we (that is, the green American students) have to rummage around to dig them out of our bags, pockets or wherever else they've been stuffed. However, all the Parisians do this cool thing where they simply swipe their handbag (or murse) over the little scanner and somehow, probably because they're French, it works. I remember trying to do this in my first days in Paris and, because I am not French, I ended up with bruised hips from running into the still-locked bar. BUT! Last Thursday night as we were sortir-ing for Hannah's birthday and Maggie's last night in Paris, I gave it another try. And, hallelujah, IT ACTUALLY WORKED. It is beside the point that on the return trip it totally failed and I got nicely re-bruised. For one metro ride at least, I was a Parisian in my heart, because of my crafty bag-swiping abilities.