I was sweating like a pig all day today, and I felt so gross. It was like 75 degrees but super humid because it kept almost raining (it only sprinkled a few times) and just blahhhh.
Wednesday I had class from 2:30 to 4 and then from 6:30 to 8:30. In between, I finally saw Anne's house! Yay! She lives in a gorgeous homestay, and her landlady runs like a minidaycare. I don't think I could deal with that, but it is gorgeous because it's in the nicest neighborhood of Paris.
My class that went until 8:30 is my Tutorat for the Sciences Po class I'm taking. Basically there's only 4 of us and the professor, and he integrates all the subjects that we're doing (all some sort of social science because thats what the Sciences Po does) and we do work based on that, even though we're going to 3 diff classes between the 4 of us. So basically I just show up at the lecture at the Sciences Po and listen, but I don't have to do work based on it. The class is just a bunch of oral presentations about politics and the economy in France and stuff. Should be fine. It just sucks that it's so late, and I don't think I'll actually be able to get Econ credit for it because I'm not actually doing a lot of Econ. But it's still cool that I get to take a class at the Sciences Po.
So this morning Anne and I went to our first class at the Sciences Po. We thought it was in the biggest lecture room, because we'd heard that's where it would most likely be, and we thought that's where the lady pointed, but no. After 10 minutes of sitting there, we realize it's a class about Administrative Law...not Globalisation, The State, and Financial Markets. But at that point it's too late to walk out. So we sit through it, writing notes to each other and playing MASH. Luckily it was only an hour long class. We find out that our class is actually on the 2nd floor of that building, which is why the lady pointed int hat direction. We walk in on the last half hour, listen for a few minutes, and decide to go back next week. Whatever, it's not like it actually matters for anything. Thank god.
Then I went to do my laundry, because I had the rest of the day off. So fucking expensive. It cost me 9 euros. That's more than 10 dollars. ABSURD. And then I paid my rent (successfully, yay), and got my detaxe form for my shopping purchases at Galaries Lafayette. And then went to yoga. Now I'm gonna go out, and tomorrow we have a day trip to a medieval town, Provins. :)
Bottled water everywhere
It's true! The NYT has an article this morning talking about how the city of Paris is trying to get people to stop drinking so much bottled water, and all I can say is yay! They're trying to put in sparkling water fountains here, haha. But seriously, I've been trying to buy a replacement Nalgene (I didn't bring mine) since I got here, and literally no one sells any reusable water bottles. It's pretty absurd.
More Marais
This morning I went to try to go pay my rent, but that was a fail, obviously. I realize that this isn't the WORST problem to have with my apartment, but still. I'm so sick of dealing with this shit. The lady said something about I was trying to deposit too much cash and so I needed a "juscatif" whatever that means, to prove where I got all this cash from.
Then I went to my atelier for my advanced convo class, which is where we'll be meeting with French students throughout the semester and working on a bilingual movie with them. Could be cool, although as most people know I am like the least creative person ever. Hopefully I get paired with some fun French people though.
Anne and Lindsay and I went to get crepes and a salad for lunch (yay for splitting food!) and went to check out a fantastic consignment shop. Everything there was in SUCH amazing condition, and it was all Chanel and Gucci and Dior...so obviously it was still 200 euros plus. Sigh.
I had my Problems in Contemporary French Society class from 4-7pm. I think a lot of people were confused by it, but I kind of loved it. Three hours doesn't seem that bad at all, and the topics are right up my alley. Plus my prof said he taught Econ and Sociology (my two majors) and I died. Plus he's hot. I went and talked to him after class, like a total teacher's pet, but I kind of love him and the class already.
Anne and I met at La Muette to meet her boy, Baptiste, and his friend for dinner. Turns out they wanted to take us to the Marais, which is where I was last night. Their favorite Japanese restaurant was there, but it closed, so they took us to another one, which ended up being across the street from the bar I was at last night. Love that neighborhood. Japanese food is done SO differently here though. They started by bringing us free orange juice (WTF) and rice cakes. Then on the menu there was very little varieties of sushi, but they had these weird things called brochettes that were skewers of random ass meats and cheese. After our food (I had udon), they brought us these mochi sesame cakes and smalls shots of sake. And then little hard candies with our receipt. So much free stuff! Haha.
It's getting really hard for me to type this all out correctly--I keep using the French spelling of things, like Japonais, or "variation" instead of the American way. I think my brain is just tired.
Then I went to my atelier for my advanced convo class, which is where we'll be meeting with French students throughout the semester and working on a bilingual movie with them. Could be cool, although as most people know I am like the least creative person ever. Hopefully I get paired with some fun French people though.
Anne and Lindsay and I went to get crepes and a salad for lunch (yay for splitting food!) and went to check out a fantastic consignment shop. Everything there was in SUCH amazing condition, and it was all Chanel and Gucci and Dior...so obviously it was still 200 euros plus. Sigh.
I had my Problems in Contemporary French Society class from 4-7pm. I think a lot of people were confused by it, but I kind of loved it. Three hours doesn't seem that bad at all, and the topics are right up my alley. Plus my prof said he taught Econ and Sociology (my two majors) and I died. Plus he's hot. I went and talked to him after class, like a total teacher's pet, but I kind of love him and the class already.
Anne and I met at La Muette to meet her boy, Baptiste, and his friend for dinner. Turns out they wanted to take us to the Marais, which is where I was last night. Their favorite Japanese restaurant was there, but it closed, so they took us to another one, which ended up being across the street from the bar I was at last night. Love that neighborhood. Japanese food is done SO differently here though. They started by bringing us free orange juice (WTF) and rice cakes. Then on the menu there was very little varieties of sushi, but they had these weird things called brochettes that were skewers of random ass meats and cheese. After our food (I had udon), they brought us these mochi sesame cakes and smalls shots of sake. And then little hard candies with our receipt. So much free stuff! Haha.
It's getting really hard for me to type this all out correctly--I keep using the French spelling of things, like Japonais, or "variation" instead of the American way. I think my brain is just tired.
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.
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.
Remember when I didn't eat grains??
For dinner I made some delish pasta with eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and mushrooms.
Also, there's a scarf that was left here, grey and printed, if anyone wants to claim it.
Okay, it doesn't look that appetizing in the photo, but food rarely does.
Called my French cousin today, Olivier. He invited me for dinner on Friday, to a BBQ on Sunday, AND asked me if I wanted to come to dinner before Friday, haha. He told me "There's some Shaya's visiting this weekend". I asked if I knew them--he said no. Always more cousins. Ridiculous. (The Shaya fam is one of the big last names in my family.) It's nice though, literally everywhere in the world I go, I have cousins to go have dinner with. Very comforting. They live near here too--at Place de Clichy! So like a 15 or 20 min walk. So Friday will be fun.
I keep thinking about how many random people showed up last night. Like this French girl who NYU brought over to give us a tour of the Sciences Po, the university here. She doesn't even go to NYU, but somehow she was here last night!! I don't know who invited her, but thing like that make me so happy. Maybe that's why phone got stolen. Hah.
Also, there's a scarf that was left here, grey and printed, if anyone wants to claim it.
You know it's a good party when your phone gets stolen (??)
In all seriousness, it was a good party. As I said to Anne on Thursday night, "When I throw a party, I throw a fucking party."
But my Blackberry got stolen, which I'm super bummed about. I just got it 2 weeks before I came to Paris! No more BBMing for now, or Google Maps...
Liz, Maria and I bought about 12 bottles of wine/champagne between the three of us to start things off:
[Some of these photos are from Maria]
On Facebook we said the party started at 9, and a shitload of people showed up at 9:45. It started getting a little crazy...
SHOTS
I had to cut myself off around 11:30 because I started to do some major stumbling.
Some people were pissing me off, but they apologized and it was whatever. Maria had my back though, such a good roommate. Although she was slightly drunk. :)
Anne and I had a fun photoshoot with random flowers from our crazy landlady as well:
There were a lot of people at our apartment, I'd say around 50 people at least showed up.
And there were a lot of people on our balcony:
Our neighbors came by, and I thought it was because we were being way too loud. Turns out they just wanted to join us. I welcomed them in, and then they left really rudely and really quickly. I think they might have taken my phone and my roommate's iPhone...Sketch as fuck.
Someone also ate all my gum?? Like 2 packs of it. WTF. And Maria's honeycomb. And finished her ciggs. And someone took a roll of condoms and stuck it in Anne's purse, which was hidden in my room. People are weird.
There was definitely some people throwing up too, and certain people did certain things in my living room once the party died down. Ha. Maria encouraged it though, she threw towels in the living room and told them to have fun! But she was so drunk she forgot they were in there and walked in on them.
Apparently there's some stuff I don't remember too--nothing serious, but wow, I was drunk. Good times.
Some more pics:
Final count was 32 bottles of wine/champagne, a couple bottles of hard a, and a bunch of beer.
This morning, Liz, Anne and I went out to eat and nurse our hangovers. Yay for carbs.
The waiter told me I spoke French well. And so did a French girl at the party last night. That's another two people. It always makes me so happy, because I was so worried I'd forgotten everything before I came here.
Going to yoga in a bit, and then classes start tomorrow! Finally. Weird. Good thing I don't have homework today.
Typical Saturday
I'm starting to feel like myself here. Finally more settled.
I didn't go out last night in the end because I was so fucking tired. I got dressed and everything and was waiting for Ali when I basically started falling asleep in my chair...woops. I think it was better that I slept, because I didn't want to be tired today.
I woke up and went to yoga. I thought the class was at 11, but I misread the schedule and it was actually at 12. So I chilled at a cafe for 45 min with some tea, which was actually kind of nice. Then I had an awesome class, and didn't drink any water at all! So proud of myself. It's only the second time I've done that. One day I'll have the discipline to do it more regularly, although knowing my water addiction it might not be soon.
Then I showered, made myself a quick salad, and met Anne for some shopping. I did some major damage. Bought a bra, a jacket, and a pair of heels at Galaries Lafayette.
I didn't go out last night in the end because I was so fucking tired. I got dressed and everything and was waiting for Ali when I basically started falling asleep in my chair...woops. I think it was better that I slept, because I didn't want to be tired today.
I woke up and went to yoga. I thought the class was at 11, but I misread the schedule and it was actually at 12. So I chilled at a cafe for 45 min with some tea, which was actually kind of nice. Then I had an awesome class, and didn't drink any water at all! So proud of myself. It's only the second time I've done that. One day I'll have the discipline to do it more regularly, although knowing my water addiction it might not be soon.
Then I showered, made myself a quick salad, and met Anne for some shopping. I did some major damage. Bought a bra, a jacket, and a pair of heels at Galaries Lafayette.
Then Anne and I got some overpriced coffee, and now I'm at home. Gotta rest up and prepare for the party tonight.
Yes, I realize I'm a horrible Jew. Oh well. I haven't observed Yom Kippur at all since I went to college...and I don't miss it. Guess I don't have that much Jewish guilt
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