Il est rare de rencontrer un chameau a Paris!

I guess I haven't posted in a few days; the last week seems like it flew by! Wednesday I had class in the morning and then opened my bank account, which was exciting only because I did it all in French. Now I'm waiting for things to come in the mail for my card and checks. Then Thursday I was waiting for Amy to come in the morning, but I got an email from her that she wasn't going to get into Paris until 1, she was getting to London at 7 a.m.! so I went ahead and did some errands and luckily I was able to meet up with her at 5 after my class. But in the morning, it was so exciting because I found the market at Place d'Aligre, which has zillions of vendors and excellent cheap food. I got some oranges, a mango, Granny Smith apples from the Loire Valley, some spinach, and some broccoli. It was really fun just to walk around, and all the food that I've tried so far as been really good! I'm really excited to have found that market! Anyway I met Amy at Bastille at around 5, which was nice, and then I had to go to the theater with MICEFA. It was really a cool performance - this string quartet played all kinds of cool music and it was like a whole show, they were acting and dancing and singing...it was really entertaining and funny, and I sat with Cory from my MICEFA class, so we had a good time.

Friday morning was when I was supposed to go register at ILPGA (Institut des linquistique et phonetiques generales et appliquees) for the Finnish class and the linguistics classes...several people, including MICEFA people and ILPGA people, told me I didn't have to have a carte d'etudiant in order to study there...but as soon as I went into the secretariat to register in the administration system, the lady would absolutely not do anything with it. She had some problem with MICEFA because we have to pay for it, basically she couldn't confirm anything about MICEFA through other people she knew so she refused to do anything. I was so furious, it's ridiculous that all the Erasmus students there had student cards and I have been here a month and I hadn't even applied for mine. So I went to MICEFA, and they said 'it won't make a difference if you apply for the card now, you won't get it until next week, none of the other foreign students have their cards, and if you can't get into a class because it's closed, then you can show up on the first day and see if they will let you in...' - blah blah. Of course I said that all the Erasmus students had their cards, and I'm sure Nancy Merritt must just love my backtalk, but I am totally done taking crap from them. Everything is in their hands and my work schedule is in the hands of two schools who haven't been in touch since Wednesday, so I can do nothing about anything right now, and it's a bit frustrating. Then just last night I was talking to Greg and Anne about the 'you can show up on the first day of class' thing, and they both said, 'Sure you can do that, but you still have to register with the administration...it doesn't really matter if the professor says you can get into his or her class.' So I know I can't do anything until Monday, but boy am I ready to just have my schedules worked out! I ended up skipping the MICEFA dinner Friday night because I really didn't want to have anything to do with MICEFA for a while.

I made it to the end of class on Friday, apparently I got the highest score on my test - I only made one grammar mistake, the rest were things I didn't know because I went to Cologne instead of going on that boat trip that first Saturday! (C'est pas juste!!) I decided to hang out with Sasha and Amy on Friday, and we went to Pere Lachaise cemetery for a while and then we met up with Anne and went to a bar and I had my first kir (white wine with black currant sirop) and it was tasty but not my favorite thing ever. Pere Lachaise was really fun, it's huge and we had to get a map! It was weird to go to a huge cemetery and take a whole bunch of pictures, but there's a lot of really cool architecture and the layout is nice and it's really quiet, so if you don't mind all the dead people (which I don't, seeing as they're dead), it's a really nice and relaxing place!

Today I hung out with Sasha again, we met at Bastille and walked all over, from Republique down Boulevard St Martin to the Champs Elysees, and we sat at the Tuileries for a long time. I'm really enjoying spending time with her, she's a lot more talkative now and of course there are a million things to talk about! She's meeting her au pair family tomorrow evening, so I can't wait to hear how it goes!!!

I'll post again - hopefully next week - about the registration stuff, and if any other cool things happen over the weekend.