What it's like

During one of my "France is stupid, everything is dumb here" episodes earlier on, someone told me something our director told their class. He said that if we were to go to India or Africa, we would expect the culture to be completely different; however, coming here, we expect it to much like America so we get frustrated when it's not. Remembering that helps me not to be too frustrated that the light switches are upside down, or upset that the shower and toilet and sink are in different rooms.

That said, let's go through a typical day for me, which isn't frustrating, but hey, why not?

I wake up, whereupon I eat breakfast, which in France is bread and hot cocoa. That's all. Bread in French is "pain," pronounced "pan," like a stove pan, and I hated only having that at first but I'm used to it now. I get ready to go, and then I either walk down 4 flights of stairs or take the smallest elevator ever (not kidding - it's maximum capacity it says is 3 people, but it's very uncomfortable with 2). Then I walk the 15 minute walk to the RER (the metro line that goes from the suburbs into Paris) stop, called the "gare," and then take the 30 minute RER ride into town. (By the way, the French go on strike all the time and on the RER what that means is it goes very slow, so last week the RER ride was over an hour long.) I go to class in the institute, which is also the church building, and which is next door to a gay bar and in the center of the homosexual area of the city. It's pretty funny - the gay bar is called "curieux," which means "curious" and is pretty funny to see that next door to the missionaries.

Depending on what day it is, I might go in to town early and walk around/eat lunch/go see sites/use the internet, or I might go around after class. Either way, I rarely just go in for only school.

I then take the RER home, and walk home, but the walk home takes 25 minutes since they close a gate at 7 pm and I have to walk around the entire complex (sometimes I just jump the wall next to the gate, though). On M, T, and W I have dinner with Madame, (and two of the last 3 meals have been fish. Sigh. Once it was raw salmon.)
or I'll eat it on the walk home from the RER after I had bought it in the city.

I then stay up and do homework/play around with pictures on my laptop, watch the exciting movies my mom mailed me (thanks Mom!) or play computer games or read books, since my mom mailed me one, I bought one, and I borrowed one from my friend. I am going through withdrawel not having books here, by the way. And then I go to sleep. I only have classes on M, T, W, so on the long weekends I'll spend a lot of time in Paris or explore other cities (ex, yesterday I went to see where Louis XIV was born in the next village up, and it turns out I can see that chateau in the distance from my apartment window) and it's great fun!