Le Foot Hier!

So I decided I needed to post on the match immediately. It was awesome! First we went to a fast food place and got to see two drunk English guys get thrown out. Oh yeah...all fast food places in Paris, and a lot of other stores too, have bouncers. Anyways, that was pretty funny. Then we headed for the Stade de France, bought a France beret for me, a France scarf for Glennis and a France chicken hat for Amy. The match started at 9 PM and we had amazing seats. David Beckham played for England, and he got a standing ovation when he left the field. The teams seemed pretty evenly matched, but France got a penalty kick in the first half and won 1-0. I took a video of the kick, and hopefully I loaded it correctly.



I took lots of pictures too, but I'm not sure they'll fit in a blog with a video. Plus, I don't think they'd compare. Again, this weekend is Mt St Michel, so I should have some great pictures and stories Monday. Also, tomorrow is my first Taekwondo class, and I'm really excited for that. Ciao!

Le Foot Demain!

Tomorrow's the big match between France and England! So excited! Anyways, last week. So I started another science class on the Techniques of Molecular Biology. It's pretty good but I spent about ten hours in class just last Thursday and Friday. Otherwise I didn't do too much. I was going to go to London for the weekend, but it was insanely expensive and I have become too cheap to fully profit from being in Europe. I'll be sucking it up at the end of April, though, and going to Greece and maybe Marseilles. We also have a special trip with the program to Mt St Michel this weekend, so I should have lots of photos and stories after that. I will also take lots of photos at the match. Since I didn't go to London, I ended up visiting the Louvre again; and you can probably do that a thousand times without it getting boring. My host mom said in all seriousness that she has probably been there more than a thousand times. On this visit I spent most of my time in the Egyptian Antiquities section. Here's a mummy:

And as you might remember, the organs of mummified people were extracted from their bodies and placed in little jars. Here are some organ jars:
Today I had a check-up with a French doctor because I need a medical certificate to do Taekwondo out here. What was really surprising is how many questions about food there were. How long do you spend eating breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? How many sandwiches do you eat a week? Do you snack? And tons of others. I think it's probably because obesity is on the rise here. Also, Kyle asked me about what's really surprised me here, and after some reflection, I can think of two things: 1. So many people smoke here compared to in the states, including a good deal of kids in middle school. I read something in the news today that said that 1 in 3 17-year-olds smokes daily. It's actually down about 10% from five years ago. 2.Students are unbelievably rude here. They will talk throughout the class and the professors rarely say anything. That's it. Till next week!

Les Autres Photos

And the rest:
This was my favorite of the sculptures I saw that day. It's Italian and it's called "Psyche reanimated by the kiss of Cupid".


I don't really know how to introduce this one, so I won't try too hard.


So that's 7 photos out of the 9 photos that I took. The Louvre is so awesome! Anyways, tonight I have to do an outline for a paper on this really weird poem about vowels. This is for a required class that meets 4 times, with a huge assignment like that for every meeting, and a 6-page paper for the last meeting. I don't get any credit for it and it counts for 20% of my grade in my Arabic Literature class. The worst part is it's remedial writing; if you've taken 5 semesters of college French I would think it'd be a given that you know how to write in French. So dumb... I really like the program I chose, but that one requirement is really pissing me off. Sorry about that rant. Otherwise things are great: I start my other bio course this Thursday and next week we have the huge England-France soccer match plus a trip to Mont St Michel. I hope everyone who's on a break is enjoying it! Everyone else, enjoy what you're doing too!

Le Louvre

So this weekend I finally went to the Louvre with a camera. Therefore I have a bunch of pictures today. It'll probably take two posts to get them in. Glennis and I also hosted a "naze" dinner party, where unfortunately only one other person showed up out of three invited. Oh well. At least the chocolate cake was amazing. Then today we saw "Les Femmes de l'Ombre"-Women of the Shadows and "Soyez Sympa-Rembobinez"-Be Kind-Rewind. The second one was pretty funny, but I preferred Les Femmes de l'Ombre, which was in French and on a group of women in the French Resistance. Awesome, but largely because it was shot in a very American style. Ok, the pictures from the Louvre:

First: a modern piece depicting a scientist (see the microscope?)


This one is the picture on the front of my high school English copy of "Hamlet"


This one's a little blurry because I couldn't use the flash, but it's a monkey painting. I actually saw some other versions elsewhere in the Louvre.
This is actually in the garden, Tuileries, in front of the Louvre. Scared the crap out of me.
This is a really awesome, huge French painting, and I need to explain it a little because the story is really cool. The woman in the center is the Virgin Mary, surrounded by the Apostles. The little balls of pink fire raining down on everyone are gifts from God to give the Apostles the languages necessary to spread the word of God throughout the world.

One class done

So I took my first French science exam yesterday. Scary as hell. And also 100% of my grade. It went pretty well I think, but it was still scary. The worst part was it was pretty messy since I kept having to cross out words to get good subject agreement. I also remember writing "plus forte expression" instead of "expression plus forte" at least three times. (stronger expression) This test was in the mouse development course by the way. The good thing is it was one of those tests where most everything is just elaborating on the same question, and I had the right conclusions from the start. If you've taken one of those tests, you're probably familiar with the "Oh, shit" moment where you realize in part 3 that you were completely wrong in part 1. Anyways, I think it went well enough, but I have no idea when I'll get the grade. My next science class starts at the same time next Thursday. After the test Glennis and I went to the Louvre and got passes to go there whenever. And it was free! I think I'll probably have some photos in a few days.

Musée de Quai Branly

So I didn't do too much last week: most people in my program had vacations and were traveling, but I got to stick around because of my bio class. I was also sick, again. Mostly I explored, got lost and studied for the exam which is this Friday. Then I took a practice exam Thursday, and it really wasn't that bad. It was more on interpreting scientific results than having all the stages of development memorized. Anyways, now I have this false sense of security and am having a really hard time making myself read more of the textbook. My program also finally found me a tutor, so I'll probably get one session in before taking the exam. I also signed up for another bio class called "From the gene to the protein: methodological approaches". I'm pretty excited for it and it only has like 23 people in it, which is tiny for this school. I visited another museum filled with collections of "primitive art". I managed to see most of the American and African sections in 3 hours, but I'll be back. Here's a photo of a sweet African sculpture that's basically a "do not enter" sign. Here's a random picture I took of the Eiffel Tower from a window in my building. When I saw it, the jet trail looked like it was coming out of the tower, which was awesome. I ran to get my camera, but the plane didn't wait for me. It still looks kind of cool. Lastly, this weekend I made perhaps one of my most important purchases here: "Aliens" in French. Most of you won't understand why I bothered to mention that, but Dan will...

La Pomme de Terre en folie!

Ok: pictures from last week. First, here's a pretty cool bookstore in the Latin Quarter. In all honesty, I sort of didn't like it because all the books were in English, and everyone in the place was speaking in English, and I've developed this slight distaste for English. The really cool thing is that the second floor is loaded with books that you can't buy, but you're encouraged to read them at your leisure. I even saw a guy who had been in the middle of reading a book asleep in a bed up there.



Here's a picture of me in my chef's hat at the special cooking/tasting class.


I celebrated the New Year of the Potato with my New England friends, so I had to take a picture of this when I saw it at the entrance to one of the agriculture halls.
Quick translation:

Hall 7/1
Stand U3

Potato craziness!

Young and old, participate in animations, performances and games!
Starting at 9 PM

Potato peeling competition
3 divisions: men, women, mixed

Artistic performances: potato sculptures by Frédéric Jounault, specialist in vegetable sculptures

Sculpture competition for adults and children under the expert eye of Frédéric Jounault (www.crea'saveur.com)

That's all for now. Hope everyone's doing well!

The french language

So I had a small revelation this week.  I was freaking out about my embryology class, because I'm not always understanding the French, and the final exam, 100% of my grade, is in two weeks.  I talked to the section prof, who always insists on speaking to me in English with a perfect British accent.  She was extremely nice and said I could have an extra month to study, and/or take the exam in English.  The truth is, I really want to take it in French.  I also really want to take it at the normal time.  So I'm going to try to read the entire 250 pg textbook before the exam.  Around the same time I realized my French is not where I want it to be, so I've started looking for ways to speed up the learning process.  I've stopped reading the one English book I was reading, I bought a radio adapter for my iPod so I can listen to the news, and I'm going to try to write maybe a page in French everyday.  The key is getting to be able to think in the language.  Anyways, in another week I'll probably have given up on half of those projects, but I really do want to come out of this fluent.  Anyways, news: I went to the Salon de l'Agriculture Friday, which is an incredibly big thing here.  Producers from around the country come to Paris to showcase their products.  We saw horses, ponies, pigs, cats, and lots and lots of wine.  There are a lot of free tastings, but it wasn't really enough.  We left kind of wishing we had been a little less cheap: there were so many things we wanted to try but didn't.  There were two really awesome things, though.  First, there were these little cooking class things that you could watch and then eat a little bit of what the chef made.  We got to see and taste this really good turkey dish.  The best part was actually a T-shirt.  Last weekend, Sarkozy came to the Salon and of course he was videotaped the whole time.  At one point he tried to shake this guy's hand whose response was something like "Don't touch me-you're dirty".  So Sarkozy slams him with a really awful insult that I won't translate.  It's on Google Video if you want to see it, and Sarkozy isn't even close to discreet.  In any case, one stand was selling t-shirts with the Sarkozy quote and a little picture of a cow.  It was only 5 euros, so Glennis and I both got one.  I'm not sure when I'll wear it, but it would probably be best to wait until I get back.  Speaking of getting back, I now know that I'll be working at Mudd over the summer, probably starting the first week of June.  Hopefully I'll see some of you then!  I haven't put the photos from the Salon on my computer yet, but I'll post them soon.