and the days go by...

Yesterday i wandered aimlessely for awhile around the quartier closest to Middlebury's school- I found the Opera Garnier, which of course was very impressive, Then found the Gallerie Lafayette- a huge store which sells mostly clothing and accessories, but in the most intimidating fashion possible. The shoe level, for example, is split up into different clusters based on the shoe designer and there's an attendant at each- this means even just browsing must be done at a rapid pace in order to avoid the inevitable question of "can i help you?". It is also a tourist sight so the main level was swarming with a bus load of tourists who seemes to cluster near the winter hats which slightly ressembled berets - Happy to be out of the rain i decided to wander up the escalator where upon i ran into 5 men dressed in rugby uniforms, fakely grunged up with their leader barking things in French. This was apparently some sort of store promotion. And I believe the men were models, not rugby players. But nonetheless this reminded me of the fact that i hadn't mentioned that the rugby world cup is being hosted in Paris this year. Rugby therefore tends to invade most of my days here- even though i don't have a television and have therefore never actually seen a match. Last weekend was a big Irish match so the metro was full of english speaking types with strong accents. I'm not sure how, but i usually ended up talking to these people on the train so i've been wished good luck with my studies by many an Irishmen.

After my meanderings in this over-chic arrondissment I caught the metro in an attempt to go to Saint-Denis where supposidely there's a rowing club. I took the metro to the stop suggested on their website - only to find myself clearly in one of the less appealing suburbs of Paris. It was fascinating to finally be somewhere where tourists weren't and would clearly not desire to go to. My major failing in this endeavor was not having searched for better directions. I knew the address of the place and i knew it was supposed to be a ten minute walk from the metro- but my map of paris did not include the suburbs and i had only a vague sense of what direction it might be in. After searching in two complete different directions for over an Hour and finding nothing that resembled the correct street name, nor the Seine on which the shells of said club were supposed to row, and noticing that i grew hungrier with each Boulangerie I passed- nearly drooling at the sites of large baguettes pearched in the windows- I returned to the metro.

And on a completely seperate subject - I've finally finished my "preliminary courses" which means next week real classes begin. It also meant a serious of exams that were taken this week- my favorite of which was our two hour "commentaire compose" In which we had to make a detailed plan of how to write an analysis of a selected text as though we were in a literature course. But of course we hadn't had an actual literature course, but rather had just spent two weeks learning how the french write papers for literature courses - so we got to really just make up whatever we wanted to say about the text.