This post is entirely too long.

Bonjour!

Now listen, people. I have gotten all sorts of complaints about not updating, but if you note the date you will see this entry is only four days after my last. Thursday to Monday. I am flattered at the clamoring for my online attention, but sheesh. There's plenty of me to go around, and at the rate I'm eating crêpes there will be even more of me as the semester progresses.

That being said, I have indeed been neglectful of my blog. Therefore this will be the mother of all posts, containing more pictures, thoughts, stories, comments, observations and trivia than you can probably handle. Feel free to skim or read in installments. I hereby deny all responsibility for any injury you may incur reading this post in its entirety -- you have been warned.

I left off at the end of my first day here. The next day (Monday), I moved in to my host family's apartment. I have already said a little about them, but as I now have one more week of knowledge I can tell you more about life with the Montsaberts. My French is rapidly improving because they all make it a point to converse with me, and they all correct my grammatical errors. I am really glad they do, because it's nice to know when I'm making a mistake, but sometimes I laugh when I realize that I'm being corrected by a 13 year old. C'est la vie, non?

The differences between daily life here and life in the US are both smaller than you'd think and greater than you'd think. That is, the differences are not big ones, but sometimes it feels like a big adjustment. For example, a popular misconception in the US is that French people don't shower as often as we do, but that's not completely true. Some shower every other day, some every day, and I think some people I smell on the subway shower about once a month. The girls shower (haha, at first I typed "showever") every night, but their showers are much shorter and probably much colder than the typical US shower. This adjustment to shorter, colder showers is one I am frankly struggling with, but I am valiantly trying to cope. After my first shower here, I immediately thought "So THIS is why they don't shower every day!", but it's improved since then and now I'm only in there for about 6 minutes. I am interested in a detached, anthropological sort of way, and also terrified in a personal, dreading sort of way, to see what happens during the winter when I have to shower in a bathroom with the windows thrown wide open.

So the shower situation is a big adjustment for me, but some adjustments are much smaller and others are even improvements. I did a load of laundry this weekend and I wasn't even out of underwear yet, so I consider that an improvement. We hang the laundry to dry because my host family, like many French families, doesn't have a dryer. The drying rack is suspended over the bathtub with a pulley system, so we lower it to hang the clothes and then raise it again for the clothes to dry. Again, probably going to be interesting in the winter to see if my jeans dry at all or just freeze. I guess that's another adjustment -- all the windows are open all the time. I think part of the reason is that my host mother smokes out the window, but it also keeps a healthy breeze blowing through the apartment. At night, this means sweaters and thick socks in the apartment, but it's also nice to have the fresh air and not to be completely dependent on a heating/cooling system. I'm pretty sure there's a heating system for when it gets colder, but I guess I'll find out soon enough!

My room is actually a lot bigger than I thought it would be, although it's not huge. It also has great storage capacity -- even with the amount of stuff I brought, I still have extra space. I guess I'll just have to fill the space with French souvenirs. Here are a few photos I've taken of my room:

The view from the door. I keep most of my clothes in the pull-out drawers under the bed. The white lump you see on the floor at the end of the bed is my laundry bag (now empty!)

To the right of the door. As you can see, I even have a fireplace, but it's blocked off and I use it as a dresser. Also, you can see fresh flowers peeking out over the top of the computer -- I thought that was just something sweet to welcome me when I arrived, but this weekend Madame changed them! I wonder if I'll have fresh flowers every week.

Pictures of my family on the side of my mirror.

It's quite fun to live in a household with the two younger girls. They're very lively and always greet me enthusiastically when we see each other, even if it's the fourth time that day. They lent me their twin stuffed cats to take care of indefinitely, who now sit on my "dresser", a.k.a. blocked-off fireplace mantel:

Their names are Moser and Rex. Every time Maude enters my room, which is about once a day, she takes the cats and demands in a squeaky voice that I feed them sunflower seeds ("mais, Marie, nous avons faim!") Both the girls seem quite taken with the sunflower seeds and also the popcorn that I gave them as part of a host gift to the family. We haven't popped the popcorn yet, but I'm sure that will also be an adventure. Maude hijacked my camera last week and gave me this delightful image, among others:

She's really much cuter than the photo, but it will be difficult to prove. When I tried to take a picture of both girls, this is what I got:

They pretended to be asleep. Ah, well. Maybe one day I will miraculously capture a good picture of both of them without their knowledge.

My host family's apartment is decorated with interesting photos from their travels as well as paintings by one of Madame's sisters/the girls' aunt. Here is a painting she did of one of the girls (I'm not sure which one):

I think it's a really cool painting. Madame takes all the photographs, which are primarily of girls and women from different South Asian countries in their native dress and environment. Juliette and Maude were adopted from Vietnam, so I suspect that has a lot to do with the family's vacation choices and the photography subject material. They went to Bali this past summer, and apparently they've been to Thailand and other amazing places. One of the girls' many aunts -- I'm not sure if she's the same one who did the painting -- is currently in Thailand for two weeks. There are constantly aunts in the house; Madame has 7 siblings (apparently most of them are sisters, as I've never seen a brother) and they all live nearby. It's an aunt infestation! (groan ...)

Right now Juliette keeps interrupting me -- she's trying to send me text messages on my new French cell phone and for some reason it's not working. I gave her the number earlier today and now I am wondering if that was a mistake. Her mother thinks she is in bed, but instead she keeps talking to me through the wall. Lord only knows what will happen when she gets the text messages to work. I may have to remind her I only have a certain number of texts per month!

This weekend we had the girls' cousin Thibault (pronounced "tee-bo") over. He's only two years old, so his French is about the same level as mine -- it would have been great to chat with someone who wouldn't correct my grammar if he hadn't been insanely afraid of me. Seriously, every time he saw me he started to cry. Maybe I should try a different hairstyle?

After I moved in last week, I started orientation classes. I have two weeks of orientation -- one of them is now over and I'm starting the second -- and then classes start next Monday. In the meantime, we're taking orientation classes. One is a grammar review (tedious, but necessary) and one is a cultural class that consists of a very nice French lady telling us why France is better than any other country. My study abroad program is called EDUCO, which stands for Emory, Duke and Cornell. Students from all three schools attend the orientation, take classes and do activities together, so it's been fun to get to know the Duke and Cornell students. We have a small group this year, only about 35 students. Apparently EDUCO normally has 45 or so, but I'm glad we have a smaller group because we can all get to know each other better and more of us can participate in the weekly activities. The weekly activities are things like museum visits, cooking classes and excursions to other places within France that EDUCO plans and pays for -- this weekend the whole group is going to Normandy, and I think it's going to be awesome. Our other orientation activities have included a bateau mouche tour (one of those open sightseeing boats on the Seine), which I unfortunately missed due to schedule confusion, and several museum visits.

The missed bateau mouche tour on Friday afternoon allowed me to instead wander along the Seine and indulge in a little tourism. I visited the Institut de France, a breathtaking and imposing building:

The dome is gilded on the edges -- it doesn't show up very well in this photo, but it's spectacular.

After that, I wandered to the Pont Neuf, ironically enough the oldest and most historic bridge in Paris ("neuf" means "new"). I got a pretty good shot of the Pont Neuf :

Scenic, non? I then walked across the bridge and explored the western edge of the 1st arrondissment of Paris. This includes the tip of the Louvre (I have photos, but I won't subject you to them) and also Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, this beautiful cathedral. Incidentally, Eva Longoria got married there earlier this summer. I think she made a good choice:

On Saturday, EDUCO took us to a gorgeous museum called the Musée Jacquemart-André, which was the private residence of an extremely wealthy couple who loved art. The mansion was built in the 19th century by the architect who came in second place to design the Paris Opera House, and he went all out on this project to spite the judges who didn't choose him. It's a beautiful building:
Yes, that's me on the steps. This is actually the back of the building -- the front is partially obscured by trees. I have photos of the front and also of the courtyard surrounding the back, but I'm not going to load them. Suffice to say it's beautiful, and the inside is sumptuously decorated and hung with paintings by artists like Rembrandt, Botticelli, Fragonard, Boucher, David, etc. It was incredible.

I have now been composing this post for two hours. I am sure you have been reading for 20 minutes or more, and if you've read the whole thing I applaud you. Frankly, I need to go recuperate, so I guess the description of my sporty Friday/Saturday nights, mega-touristy Saturday and lazy Sunday will have to wait. I may be wordy but I am also merciful.

Catch you cats on the flip side.

MK