Beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup !

Hey there. It's been a while, so I have a bit of a book for you. If you're intimidated by large blocks of text, perhaps you can pace yourself over a few days.

I've reached the end of my first week in Paris, a notion that is à la fois exciting, depressing, and unbelievable. When last we spoke, I was preparing myself for my first day of classes and, of course, the dinner cruise.

'Twas a typical first day of class. Lots of business-ey stuff. Honestly I don't remember it very well. Except for the fact that my prof refuses to accept my name. She tried to call me Etienne, which is the French equivalent of Steven, but I kinda gave her a wtf look. So she said she'd call me Stefan instead, which is many times worse. I signed an email I sent her as "Steven (ou Etienne si vous voulez)" and she's been calling me Steven ever since. Again, go figure.

My days are kinda blurring together, so I'm not really sure what I did until the cruise. Based on my pictures, I think I went chez moi, tried to do some homework, and ended up napping. Peu importe. The cruise was awesome. I'm not gonna describe the boat, because there are/will be pictures to do that, but we left from near the Eiffel Tower, traveling down the Seine and back. They served us salad avec du pain et du vin blanc, salmon covered in some type of sauce with a stuffed tomato, with vin rouge, and for dessert, strawberries with ice cream. There was a photographer who took a picture of each of us, and of various groups of us. I thought at first that it was for a the website or something, but later he came back with super high-quality, 8x10 prints, and gave them to us. Then he told us they were 15 euros. As far as I know, he sold one of the 50 or so he took. That should cover the printing cost.

Conversations with my host mother continue to be fun. One of my assignments this week was to interview her about her perception of the cultural identity of France, and some other hot issues like the 35 hour workweek, and the prohibition of Muslim headgear at schools. This gave me a chance to see where she lies politically. Immigration is beginning to become an issue in France, and one hears the same debates going on here as in the US. My host is a big fan of immigrants though. She believes they're necessary for the country and that they should be paid as native citizens are. She's against the 35 hour workweek, because its "un nonsens", and supports the complete secularization of schools. It's illegal in France to wear burkas as well, and she supports that law, saying that its disrespectful to talk to someone if that person can't see your face.

But more fun comes from the other random topics we discuss. We were watching some music show on tv the other night, and Eminem was the guest. They were listing his hits, which include "Lose Yourself" and "Just Lose It". So she asked me what "lose" means. Easy enough question, but I wanted to explain the idea of "losing it", and that was a little more difficult. I had to figure out that "it" is one's sanity. On top of this, she was confused by the pronunciation of "lose" since, generally speaking, it should have two o's. Watching Eminem, I saw that there's no censorship of English on French TV, so I asked her if there is at all, thinking that they probably only censor les gros mots en francais. But no. There's no censorship, and she was really surprised by the question. She was even more surprised when I told her that (with the exception of premium channels) all of TV and radio in the US is censored. "In all of the states?" she asked, dumbfounded, "Even New York??" She couldn't comprehend that there was censorship "in a country so free."

Her conception of New York seems to be the big city that is home to everything bad. In the interview, we were talking about stereotypes of the French. She said le Francais is stereotyped as the man wearing a baret and carrying a baguette, and la Francaise is stereotyped as the beautiful, elegant model. I asked her if she'd heard the stereotype that all of the French smoke (it's true!!) and she said no. She was very skeptical when I told her that there are drastically fewer smokers on American streets, and particularly unable to believe it with regard to New York. But anyway, on to more interesting things.

Another day, which may or may not have been Tuesday, I went with some friends au Musée Rodin, home to some incredible sculptures. In the garden stands le Penseur. For the Detroiters among you, this sculpture should be very familiar, as there's a mammothified version of it welcoming all to our wonderful Downtown. Another day we went au Louvre. We made it through about half of the ground floor, the Venus de Milo being the most famous œuvre we saw. As there are three other floors, we estimate that with seven more visits we should be able to finish up the museum.

After leaving the Louvre, we chilled in the garden just outside. We said some nonsense about doing homework, but it was clear from the start that we weren't gonna be doing anything but laying on the beautiful grass, in the beautiful weather, before the beautiful museum. I have actually succeeded at getting work done in the incredible gardens and parks of Paris on two occasions, but this particular area seems to be hazardously breathtaking, since upon returning to it another day we were again unable to do anything but lay on the grass.

Another night, we returned to the Eiffel Tower, excited to see it lit up. It was as incredible as I expected it to be, but for about five minutes it got even more incredible. In addition to the brilliant yellowish lights already alluminated, dazzling dots of white were suddenly flashing all over the tower. I was with what has become my regular crew of three other people, the wonderful David, Beza, and Esete, and we suddenly lowered our standards as we quickly sought someone to take a picture of the four of us. Before, we were looking for a lone pregnant woman to whom we could entrust our cameras, but motivated by the dazzling spectacle before us, we settled for a woman we thought we could outrun. A gamble, yes, but my profile pic serves as evidence that it was a gamble well worth taking.

Hopefully none of you dear readers are OCD enough to expect this blog to be structured in any kind of way, chronologically or otherwise, 'cause I'm just talking about stuff as it comes to mind at this point. An interesting part of living in a city so focused on the arts is the number of musicians that one encounters. I take the Metro everywhere I go, and I encounter a musician on just under half of my rides. The standard formula is the person or persons sing or play, and then, just before his/her/their stop, they walk around the train with a little change purse, asking for money. Some are really good; others are not. The most amusing so far was a female rapper in her twenties. I had no hope of understanding her paroles, so I couldn't tell you if she was any good, but at least she was confident. She also didn't hesitate to use the poles in the train to enhance her act. Another favorite was an old Asian man with strange Asian instruments and a voice that was impressive in its capacity both for volume and annoyingness.

But anyway, on to my first Parisian weekend (the actual first one didn't count; it was more of a pre-week). After class on Friday, we bought some mediocre Chinese food, and illegally sat on some grass in another awesome park. Luckily the police waited 'til we'd finished our food to kick everybody off. We made it to our guided tour of the oldest areas of Paris only about 18 or so minutes late, and learned all about people building, destroying, and rebuilding statues. We also learned about the tiny statue of Napolean on the left arm of Louis IV(?) left by the Bonapartiste sculptor, as well as the critique of the king written galbedeblah. The galbededah represents my lack of knowledge which has equal chance of stemming from a bad memory or from bad aural comprehension skills. In any case, it's still a cool story.

I ate dinner chez David, and presque tout le monde went to UFO Bar that soir. I legally purchased a litre of beer and a shot of tequila, and wasn't even carded. I guess it's fairly evident that I'm at least fourteen years old. But lest I forget, I must tell you all of the old drunk woman we met upon arriving. A dame of her sixties, she drank and danced like she was in her thirties. I asked her what her name was, and she told me Madonna. I told her I was Elvis.

After the bar got tiresome, we headed to the Latin Quarter to check out some clubs, but everyone wanted us to buy overpriced drinks before being allowed to enter. Most of those who opted out headed back to the Metro station. Just outside, we encountered a group of (quite good) breakdancers. Watching them was twenty or so minutes well spent, and when the dust cleared, Beza and I were the only ones left that weren't either in the overpriced clubs or headed home. Being the adventurous folks we are, we decided to look for a club that would let us in, and came upon a decent one at the end of la rue. After a quick cha-cha lesson that consisted of bumping into lots of people, we called it a night.

Saturday night, most of the class went to a party chez the friend of the co-habitant of Adele, another of my classmates. 'Twas a legitimate party thrown by the youth of France. Besides knocking over a bottle of wine, I had a lot of fun, learned that the French (international, nonAmerican, whatever you want to call it) greeting does not involve actually kissing the person's cheeks, and fit in a rumba with Chantal, former and future member of the ballroom team.

Bringing a wonderful week to a breathtaking close, Sunday was spent at Cathédrale Notre Dame. We took a tour of the church, guided by an adorable old man. Though I understood no more than half of what was said, it was an awesome opportunity to get some context about all of the art inside and outside the cathedral. After the tour, we took a quick repose in a park, bought not-so-good Sprites (not because it's Euro-Sprite, but because their fountain was less than ideal) from Subway for two and a half euros a piece, and headed back to l'église for my first mass in I'm not sure how many years. I'd forgotten both how awesome incense smells and how creepy Catholic processions are. But the mass was cool. 'Twas an awesome experience, and I'm happy to be able to tell the world that I attended mass at Notre Dame.

Alas, that's all for now. The rest of my night was spent writing my composition or being unproductive. I started writing this Friday and spent the last half hour or so finishing it instead of doing my homework. Yay for getting to bed late!

As much as I'd like to update more than once a week, that probably won't be possible, as I'll be doing the things to be written about. But expect an update no later than early next Monday morning. Which, for my sake, will hopefully still be Sunday night chez y'all. The week ahead of me holds another demi-floor of the Louvre, les Catacombes de Paris, and a trip to Chablis.

Also, the title, in addition to accurately describing the contents of the update, is an inside joke. For awesome people only.

A n'importe quand,

Steven