hello all. sorry for the slower pace of updates, my internet has been spotty the last few days…thank you foyer ethernet.

so yesterday i returned to the dreaded evil woman who yelled at me two days ago, courage in heart, and asked again for the course listings. she was by no means a bed of roses (curt and rude as always) but she gave me the papers and wished me a good day! i will absolutely take NO classes associated with her institution, but i feel that i defeated her! i celebrated with ice cream at place st. michel.

i didn’t have any classes yesterday so i ended up spending the day at educo trying to get my classes all fixed for next week. i even found some other educo students who wanted to come with me to class, which was nice.

last night was pretty low key - dinner at the foyer and an early night to bed in the room.

today was also a rather slow day - got up in the morning to go to my immigration and multiculturalism class at educo at 9. far too early for me to get up these days, i’ve found, but i did manage to grab a coke and pastry before class, which made me very glad. the class was interesting but i’m not sure if i like it enough to replace a possible french university class with it. also, educo’s shopping period ends next week, meaning we have to have chosen which educo classes we will take by then - a full week before classes for Paris 1 even START. which doesn’t make sense, since we will have to decide a full schedule before even attending half our classes…i am going to ask educo about this tomorrow.

for lunch we had sandwiches at my favorite boulangerie, PAUL, though my sandwich was a little mayonnaise-y for my tastes and i fed much of it to the pigeons near place de la bastille. then we were able to squeeze in a small nap time (yay!) before our 4:30 political and economic history of the European Union, which was by far my favorite class. i will definitely be taking it, and since i have to take the grammar course at educo anyway, i think those will be my two mandatory educo courses and i will still have to pick two french university classes to attend. we will see how that goes.

haven’t had the chance to take very many pictures the past few days as i have been doing rather mundane activities. i will try and find some pretty ones tomorrow to upload :) have to get to bed, there is a picnic at Paris 7 around noon and then an info session on internships at one, and i’d like to make both!

goodnight world! always love,

*lindsey*

it doesn’t have any sound, so don’t bother with volume. but it’s really pretty :)

sorry i wasn’t able to  put up posts as quickly the last few days! my internet is not working very well in the room…i don’t know much about ethernet but it seems silly to me that with a cord plugged into the wall that i still don’t get internet. oh well.

yesterday was perhaps the longest day of my life. i woke up after not sleeping very well (still feeling sickish) and went to meet chase at Luxembourg so we could find classes at Paris 1 together. after I had gotten coffee and people-watched for a bit, chase called me and i realized there are MULTIPLE Paris 1 campuses and that he needed to go to a different one. so i went by myself to find class information at the Pantheon-Sorbonne, which was pretty much a disaster.

first i went into the wrong building (which was right next to the correct one, mind you, with the same street address…how do french students survive here??) i spent about an hour in there trying to find a nonexistent room, going up and down flights of stairs and asking at least five people where to go. most people were very nice and some were even quite helpful, which i really appreciated since i was getting frustrated at not being able to figure out where i was. finally i was shuttled to the foreign students office, where they informed me i was in the wrong building and told me where to go, leaving me with a “Bon Courage!”. i headed to the other building, and with the help of some nice security guards at the entrance, was able to find the room i had been looking for. unfortunately this was where my luck ran out - it was 1230 and the sign on the room said the office was closed for lunch from 12 to 2. i thought i’d knock and see if there was anyone who could at least point me in the right direction of where i could find class postings. i knocked and asked simply, “are you open?” and was immediately yelled at by the women (en Francais, bien sur) there for at least seven minutes about how all students had been given the hours of the office and how they couldn’t believe i could be so rude and why hadn’t i received the hours? i told them i wasn’t yet registered and one of the woman became enraged and told me i should have been registered in March and there was nothing she could do now, it was too late, i had to get out, there was nothing for me there. i was able to muster enough dignity to at least tell her my program was going to register us in a week, to which they both scoffed and clucked, and the front woman told me that they could not deal with me now, that this is their lunchtime and i had to leave immediately and come back at 4:30, when they could possibly fit me in and deal with my incompetence. (though i’m not sure why she told me to come back at 430, since the office closed at 4…i didn’t end up returning since i had class until 5, anyway)

it was my first encounter with a very angry, very mean person since i arrived here, and at first i was taken aback as i walked down the hallway, but i couldn’t help myself from crying as i left. i think it’s just because i am sick and stressed about classes (i, along with every other person in the Educo program, have spent at least a week trying to find not just where our classes will be held, but just the HOURS and DAYS of the classes, which are posted in random buildings in each university, and since each university (Paris 1 or Paris 7, for example) has MULTIPLE campuses, it is pretty much like trying to find a needle in a haystack). so that was probably my lowpoint thus far.

i managed to rally myself back up and head over to Paris 7 Diderot campus, where i had a class from 2-5. i met up with another Duke in France person, Kaitlin, and we grabbed lunch with some French friends she had just made in her Physics class. she was just as stressed as I was about finding classes and times, and she had already missed two Physics classes since we were never informed that some - a LOT, really - classes didn’t start this week but the week BEFORE, or the week before that. but we both felt better after a lovely baked sandwich from the University Cafe and a coke.

i headed up to my Institutions Politique et Droit Constitutionnel class and was very pleased when a pleasant older man introduced himself as our teacher. he was very nice, but spoke rather fast and mumbled a bit, so it was difficult for me to understand him, but i think i got the gist. there were other international students in my class as well (from England) so it was nice to know i’m not the only one. i hope i can stay in the class - it seemed really interesting, and not as intense as some others that i’ve heard of - but it conflicts with a mandatory grammar class at Educo that I have to take, so I’m going to try and figure it out.

after class, i ended up talking with the prof and telling him i hoped i could work things out with the grammar class, and we talked all the way down the building, with another French girl, Olivia, who is actually studying English at Charles V, where Educo classes happen to be housed. so i took the train back with her, and we spoke in English-peppered French, both of us excited to have found a friend who speaks the other’s native language. she also told me how to watch House online which i am SO excited to do now my internet is working.

that evening, i headed over to my psych section (psychoanalysis and narcissim), which i was almost POSITIVE wouldn’t be in session since the class doesn’t start until Thursday, but it turned out I was wrong - class was definitely being held. i was a bit late since i took the wrong train, but it worked out okay - alas, i will not be staying in the class as it was far too advanced for my psychoanalytic skill set (read: nothing). i did meet a VERY nice Greek girl, Virginie, where i had my first conversation with someone in a language that was not native to either of us. it was interesting, since of course we don’t both speak French perfectly, but it was kindof fun. Virginie then invited me to have dinner with her and her Greek friends at the Cite Universitaire restaurant, which was also really fun, and i was glad to have made a new friend.

whoa! long blog post. i have got to head to Educo and back to Paris 1 (dun dun dun) so wish me luck! will put up more pictures soon. love you all!

*lindsey*

hello world!

sorry about the lack of post last night…nothing of import occurred anyway. we spent the day heading over to Paris 1 and 7 to find information about classes but of course they were closed, so we just ended up eating lunch at a little cafe near the schools and heading home early.

today we had a bit more luck - we went in a big group to Paris 7 at Diderot first and found all the information about our classes and even figured out where our rooms are located! which is very nice. we also went to Paris 1 (which is scary and I am glad I don’t have classes there) and the OTHER Paris 7 campus, where I spent literally over 45 minutes trying to find a room with my class postings. after asking six different people, going on four different floors and countless rooms, i FINALLY figured out my class there and so I will be able to shadow Political Sociology next week! i unfortunately missed the first class while i was searching for its information…go figure.

after our tours of Paris 1 and both Paris 7’s, we grabbed lunch and I headed back to the foyer to grab my passport to bring to EDUCO as they needed an additional copy of it. i ended up staying for a while there and trying to get my classes in order and found another student (from Cornell) who is also majoring in Political Science and Psych! so hopefully we will be able to shadow some classes together.

around 6, i headed over to Paris 7 for an international student ‘buffet’ dinner, which ended up being not enough food for the 100+ students that showed up, so we grabbed ice cream at St. Michel afterwards. we met up with some friends at Notre Dame and I tried to save a tiny animal that I thought was trapped in a plastic bag - turns out it was only UNDER the plastic bag and was fine, though I was not so lucky - i slashed my foot trying to free the imaginarily trapped creature. but all’s well that ends well - allie, ever-prepared, had not one but TWO types of band-aids and a moist towelette so i was ready to go!

we made it over to the Eiffel Tower after Notre Dame JUST in time to see it sparkling on the hour - Dorothy, Chase and I literally sprinted from the RER station to see it in time, and it was completely worth it! i will try and put up a video, i’m not sure how effective it will be to put up here, but I will certainly attempt it!

as for the title of my post, i am definitely getting sick and have been popping Advil Cold and Sinus like candy. so wish me luck! here’s to REALLY hoping I don’t get sick my first week of classes!

i am off to sleep and will post pictures tomorrow as i have two classes tomorrow that i’ve got to get rest for!

goodnight world!

*lindsey*