May 29-30

Good Morning,
Here it is 10 in the morning and today we have plans to go on a bike tour that was founded by a fellow aggie! WHOOP! Nothing much has happened today so the topics will be Thursday and Friday and since the talk about the host family is interesting some I will write more about the Frenchies.
Thursday- Tuesday and Thursday are our favorite days by far. This time around we visiting Roman and Medieval Paris, a continuation of what we did the following class day with Notre Dame. Today it was Arenes de Lutece an open air Roman arena on the Left bank not far from the Sorbonne. It is a well-hidden structure that if you are not local you most likely won’t stop by. Now the local schools as a playground and a yard for recess mainly use it. Most of our class time was spent at the Musee de Cluny, now called Musee du Moyen Age. Kali and I both really loved visiting there. The most famous pieces that are held there are the 6 tapestries that makes the Lady and the Unicorn set. Each tapestry was expertly made to depict the 5 senses and the 6th tapestries meaning being ambiguous to scholars even till now. We were in the room that housed them for I think an hour just looking and discussing what about them makes the so beautiful and how the small differences to the characters positions can mean a new lesson to the on looker. So if you have not guessed it, I fell in love with these tapestries they are truly magnificent. For lunch on this day we were so down about getting ripped off we were very weary about trying another restaurant, but we thought we would try again. I spotted a 10-euro set menu with some choices on it, thinking it was too good to be true we decided to give it a try anyway. The waitress was very nice from the start, good sign, and we ordered water in a carafe. When they handed us a carafe of water and not a bottle we knew we were in a good spot. We both had 3 courses and espresso to finish off the meal. With full bellies we walked in and out of libraries for a long while and then decided we would go to the movies. Sex and the City had just came out here and looking for a VO film of it was our mission. We found one with out any real snags (we aren’t getting lost near as much anymore) and watched our American film in English, with French subtitles. It was a long an glorious day.
Friday- Kali in her post mixed up the days. The day we had our placement test was Monday and Tuesday was the first art and arch class. We aren’t writing about Wednesday because it was our first day in French class and we are trying to forget that day ourselves. Both of us were not expecting what we had in French, which was a very hard professor that had us all speaking more French than I was comfortable with speaking on the first day of my beginner level class. Friday was the second day of class though and went much more smoothly even thought the whole time we were expected to speak one by one in French, we knew what we were going to. We are constantly repeating words over and over again until she gives us the ok to stop, she will write sentences on the board but reading them is not helpful since we can’t figure out why it sound something completely different than it looks. The people in our class are mostly nice but there are a few exceptions. There are two that are highly scrutinized by both Kali and I, one is a smarty pants girl that has taken 3 years of French but is still in beginner somehow and the other is similar but with out any smarty pants she is actually the dumbest person in the world, no really. I was paired with the first girl (smarty pants) the first day to practice what we had been saying in the large group meeting for class. She was correcting me every minute with what I was saying, now I know my mom is thinking right now “good I’m sure she was just being helpful”, but NO she wasn’t. She would correct me on a sentence by just repeating what I said. And miss I took French before but don’t know anything about anything girl, we just don’t like her because she seems like she smokes out everyday and is now brainless. Every time we sit in the circle and go around answering and asking questions we always let her go last so she can hear all responses possible and all she has to do is copy someone else but that task is too hard for her to handle so she sits with her mouth open waiting for something to come out magically. I think our professor must not like her either because she doesn’t offer much help to her when she forgets (every time she talks) what to say. Well that is French class in a nutshell.
Our home stay is good but still interesting. Netty has still not moved out, the date changes daily I think. Marie seems to be trying to be nicer to her and is continuously nice to us. The other night they had a cooking lesson that we had the opportunity to go to but didn’t because it is too expensive and I am doubting if she really is a good cook at all at this point. The class was here in the apt and cost 25 euro, which was way too much for us to afford, especially since they have to feed us anyways so we would be paying 25 euro to watch them cook. The Italian husband actually did the cooking and made pasta that was to die for, it was the first good homemade meal we ate in my opinion. The couple nights before we played music for Netty off my computer to show her what we listen to and the night after that Marie gave us a show with her own music tastes. I really think Marie is trying to be nice to Netty but Netty is adamant that Marie is not a nice person blah blah blah. Well now Kali and I are staying out of it more often, it is not as interesting to us. Well I really have to get ready for the day this blog has taken too long already. Don’t worry more too come soon since we finally have internet at home!