so my first day of class started at 8:15, which means it is pitch dark when I get up. so much for my sun-filled loft. It is kind of cool running to the metro with all the commuters... I was so excited to get my one month pass but the lady wouldn't sell me one for some reason so i had to buy a regular 1 day pass. such a tourist.
it's only 4 stops on the metro closest to my apartment so it's super quick to get to school.
the school is located on boulevarde poissonaire, but i spent half an hour on rue poissonaire and was late to class. it didn't help that i decided that, since i was lost, i might as well have a coffee standing up at the lovely bars they have all over paris.
they made us take a written assessment [which i'm guessing I only got my name right] and an oral exam [which i'm pretty sure i got my name wrong]. after that we were assigned to class.
it's great though, cause from the minute you walk in the door, it's all french [just like when i took immersion spanish in guatemala] [but in spanish]... all the basics, counting stuff like that... my schedule for the first week will be monday to friday 9 till 1, and on tuesday, wednesday and thursday, a specialized workshop [such as phonetics] from 2:30 to 5:30. all of which means i won't see tons of paris, but that's ok. school is the reason i'm here.
my class has about 12 students, 2 from tokyo, 1 from korea, 1 american and a bunch of germans and italians.i'm older than all of the students and 4 years older than the teacher. sigh. so jerri blank...
the school is about three quarters girls so i'm glad at least theres a decent number of guys in my class. only one of the boys plays for my team and he's a russian adonis that all of the girls swoon over and he doesn't pay me any mind.
it's probably for the best, cause when i went to learn yoga in the berkshires and to meditate, of course they stick me in a class with the cutest guy in the ashram and all he wanted to do was talk and go for walks with me. very hard to be centered and selfless under such circumstances.
after class i decided that i needed to find scotch tape to fix my camera. i walked around the 11th for an hour and than looked in my guidebook for a big department store which i figured out would have some tape. i took the train to galleries de lafayette, which is basically macy's but bigger and like the rest of the world having huge sales. all those sweaters were marked down from $500 to $300!!! needless to say i didn't buy anything, but it's fun watching rich people shop.
i was about to give up on my tape search, after only finding more expensive stores [and buying some pretty things in lafayette maison for my new bar]
... i headed to the nearest metro and saw that one of the stops was labeled for university of paris. so i figured they must sell tape near a university! so off i went... another half an hour out of the city, never did find a store that sold school supplies but eventually found a grocery store that sold tape. so the camera is now fixed. a bad picture, but trust me, i was so happy to have found tape, i took a picture from in front of the grocery store:
paris can be so purty. even smokers shirving in the cold looks sexy. it was a looonnnng commute home, but now i can say i've been to the university of paris.
so my "dining table" only has 4 chairs, and you can't have a dinner party with just 4 guests, so i've been looking on craigslist for cheap bar stools, so i can at least have 6. while i was looking for tape, i also was looking for a ruler so I could measure my table and decide what size chairs i needed. but of course i couldn't find a ruler, so instead i bought an envelope that had it's dimensions on it, so i could figure out what i needed.
i had an appointment to see these chairs, but the envelope said they wouldn't fit:
so instead of picking them up i walked over to La Panfoulia which is a spanish restaurant/bar near where i live. A friend of a friend from new york [the lovely carrie] invited me to join her at a Paris Photographers meet up group. I've never been to a "meet up" group, and it was actually a lot of fun, mostly americans, mostly advanced amateurs, but a lot of interesting people. i'm a little jealous of there lifestyles... though i'm sure some of them are jealous of my brooklyn lifestyle...
i came home and the note to the downstairs neighbour is finally gone, so i can slink by in peace.
Comments