So the first week was a little crazy. I did way too much and a few days ago I blew some muscle in my calf. I walk so much here: it's at least 4 kilometers a day. It's also pretty wierd to only eat three meals a day. I can already tell that I'm going to get a little skinnier while I'm here. I got spoiled with food the first week because the program paid for all our lunches, but now it's out of my pocket and I'm getting the cheapest paninis I can find. I've already done a lot of touristy things: I visited the Palais Royal on Thursday. On Friday I went to the Louvre, the coolest museum I've ever seen. They have a great deal where entrance is free for students in the early evening. Saturday I visited the forest and castle of Fontainebleau. Sunday I went up the Eiffel Tower and saw Sacré-Coeur. Glennis and I also checked out the 18th arrondissement, which has to be the sketchiest part of Paris and houses the Moulin Rouge. By the way the French actually have a word for sketchy: "louche". As far as I know they don't have a word for awkward, which is a little annoying. We always speak in French, but every once in a while an English word slips in, like "awesome" or "what?". In any case, the French is improving, but I'm sort of impatient. I've had two courses so far: grammar and medieval art in Paris. I think the medieval art course will be great, but the grammar is a little remedial. I've signed up for p-chem, pathophysiology and embryonic development of the mouse at Paris VI. The science classes take a lot of time. For example, development is all day on Thursdays. I'll probably drop one science class and pick up a French literature class at Paris III. Anyways, those classes will start next week. I also took a course at the College of France, which is this awesome free university where the best professors in the world teach courses on everything. I went to a lecture on experimental medicine, and the French wasn't too hard to understand. Unfortunately it was two hours long and I started to drift off after the first. It was still pretty cool and there's another one on molecular immunology that I want to go to tomorrow. I know, I'm a nerd. I think that's everything. Here are a couple of photos I took.
Here's a very zoomed-in view of the Louvre from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The glass pyramid is right in the center.
Here's a photo of Sacré-Coeur.
Walking near Sacré-Coeur, Glennis and I saw a kid riding a unicycle, and decided we had to have a photo of it. We literally chased this kid down the street trying to get a good picture, but it didn't really turn out that well. Hopefully we didn't scar him for life.
This place reminded me of someone.
That's all for this week. I'll post again about the other courses, the Rodin and Orsay museums and other stuff.
