La Belle Hortense

Whew, long day. Met Anne in the morning at the Sciences Po to try to figure out what time our stupid class was. It STILL wasn't posted on the silly bulletin board (why are the French so low-tech?) so we went to the info desk. They sent us to the Secretariat, who was basically the BITCHIEST woman alive. She kept bitching at us about how we aren't Sciences Po students, we're not allowed to know that information, enrollment for Sciences Po is finished, blah blah, that it was impossible, that she had never done this before (done what?? Looked up class hours for a student??). We kept trying to explain to her that we aren't ACTUALLY signing up as Sciences Po students, no, we aren't going to go to recitation,  only to lecture, we only need to know the time and the room, etc. She finally gave it to us--Thursday at 10:15am. Not bad, because then I'm done Thursday at 12:15 and have basically a 4 day weekend!!

Then I came back home, tried to pay my rent, but apparently banks are closed on Mondays. Hm. I just watched Mad Men instead, haha. Went to class, which was not bad. Only an hour and a half, which feels so short compared to the 4 hour class I was dealing with last week! It was Advanced Convo, and a bunch of my friends are in it, so that was good.

After class I went to yoga, and had an amazing teacher. She was American, but the class was in French, and so whenever she would correct me she would just say the aside in English to me, haha. She totally called me out on things that no one had ever said before, and was so nice and totally understood where I was at. Yay for Shelly.

But the highlight of my day was definitely meeting Ali for drinks after yoga. She took me to La Belle Hortense, a wine bar in the Marais. But it was also a bookstore! So cute and French. It had such a wide range of people, like old regulars and young hipsters and 30-something professionals. And it was pretty cheap. The Marais is fantastic because it's the gay neighborhood of Paris, but it's super classy and almost like a French West Village? But way better. And there's great vintage shopping, and of course the Jewish neighborhood is partly there too!

Pics to come later when I steal them from Ali, but here's one I found on Google haha.

We got gelato next door, and I had this amazing flavor that Ali described as Teddy Grahams. And it basically was.