Beginning of Second Quarter

Alright - so my only excuse is my horrible internet...but that's a pretty good excuse if you knew how horrible the internet was here! I'm currently in the process of uploading my pictures to my last post, so you should check that out!

*Mentally rewinds to last Sunday*

Sunday was full of studying for my two quizzes/tests, so that's not so interesting.

Monday I think I did rather well on the history test with just a few blanks, and I did pretty well on my French quiz with just two or three questions wrong. After class I walked around the shops trying to find a coat but having no luck.

Monday was the first day with my new professor, an old Romanian man who finds unlimited passion in life and who speaks in class as if he is telling a story, speaking softly at times, loudly at others, and laughing at his own comments. A really funny, interesting, and lovely man, but a little hard to listen to for more than two hours straight. I like him a lot though because he is not a typical UC professor, who makes the class talk the whole time.

What I hate about UC is that all I listen to are what other students think. I didn't come here for that. I came here to learn from UC professors, to learn facts and scholarly thought, not what Mr. or Ms. Know-it-all thinks. This is why Pavel, my current teacher, is high on my 'professor list.'

I've also started writing down his really insane comments...

Pavel: "All of us should eat cereal in the morning...with milk...AND EAT A VITAMIN!"

Pavel: "Kant is nicer than I am. All I see when I look inside me is a desire to eat an eclair."

Tuesday was a full day of classes. After classes I stayed at school, working to set up for an event at the nearby library and later take it all down, all to earn 30 euros. Success!!

Wednesday was more classes again. Afterwards I stayed for a visit from Peter Brooks (really famous, including directing Lord of the Flies!) and his troop of actors performing scenes from a new play entitle "11 and 12." It was pretty good and had a really interesting incorporation of movement, music, and a dramatic story. It was a little annoying because I could tell a lot of my classmates know nothing about theater, but that's a whole other story. It was really cool to be able to see Brooks though and finally get in some theater in Paris.

Pavel in class: "Poison is like vegetable...you have to eat them fresh."

Thursday was great because I only had one class - yay!

Pavel: "Don't laugh, don't laugh. I KNOW you are corrupt with those pastries!"

Pavel: (Speaking on pastries) "Virtue. On this one I would clearly be executed." "When I was your age I was ready to be shot right away."

Pavel: (Speaking on Burke's ideas) "I would like to unscrew my head and put it under my arm like in a Picasso painting. But for right now my head is here."

Pavel: "We are not perfect human beings and we will not be perfect for...the next two weeks. So be good."
After class Melanie and I went to the Rodin Museum, which I've been wanting to go to ever since I got here. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the museum had some outdoor exhibitions as well as two buildings full of sculptures.
Melanie took some really funny pictures of the two of us posing with the statues, so once she uploads them I will include some of them here. (I took minimal pictures due to battery conservation.)
What was really cool about the museum is that it was amazing to wonder how one single guy could sculpt so many things! It was also cool because he sculpted in a process and they had pieces of the same concept at the museum and then the final outcomes, which was really cool.

My favorite piece was one with a man and a woman together. I don't know why I liked it that much, but it evoked a feeling from me and I actually felt like there was a story behind it. Really quite amazing.
We also saw the famous "The Thinker" (which started my weekend of Touristic Obligation...as you will see alter).
After the museum Melanie and I separated and I walked through the Garden of the Tuileries. It was interesting in the fact that they had older sculptures but also had a lot of modern art exhibitions throughout the gardens, a mixture of the old and new.
When I was walking next to the pond there were these umbrella-shaped constructions in the water and I didn't know what they were until a heard the sound of a percussion instrument. From what I guessed (although I don't know for sure), I think someone threw a rock and I think the shapes in the pond were actually cymbals.
The garden also had these silver foam monster/dinosaur-ish heads...which were a little creepy. Some were scary looking, others just really funny.
After the Tuileries I had planned to go to Pere Lachaise, a really famous cemetery in Paris, but I decided I didn't have too much time, so instead I walked around the Louvre, which I hadn't been around during the daytime and then walked below the bridges and onto Pont des Arts, supposedly the best bridge-view of the city (I think others are better), and one of the scenes for that French song I posted a few days ago. The weather was so nice and the walk was a really peaceful experience.
I came back home and cooked myself some lunch/dinner before heading off with one of my group members Sara to our conversation session. We would have gotten there on time if we hadn't taken the wrong branch of the same Metro train...twice. After we finally got to our group our conversation assistant took us to a bar...but conversation was not productive at all and I didn't learn too much French, so it was kind of a waste of my time. Oh well.

After conversation I decided to head to bed because the next day was to be a huge excursion to Chateaux de Chantilly!

And all of this I will make a separate post later. I have some work to do first. =)