Thanks to Christine, for suggesting that I borrow her camera and take pictures for you guys! I hope this gives you an idea of where I'll be spending the better part of the next five months. Before I get into my first day of class, I'd like to tell you about a game that I recently invented. It's called Trashball. HISTORY: invented out of bordom and laziness. YOU WILL NEED: one bag of trash, and one dumpster. OBJECTIVE: to get the trahbag into the dumpster. HOW TO PLAY: after tying up my trash and relizing that since it was the weekend, it would not be collected for another day, but still anxious to get the smelly bag out of my olfactory radius, and relizing that there was a dumpster near by building, I thought about taking ... read more

In the shoddy hall kitchen this morning, I heated up some milk to make hot cocoa with the mix I bought last night at the Intermarche. I ate dry cereal and drank the cocoa as I did online French grammar exercises. Though I've attained a strong level in French, I make mistakes all day and so I've instituted a regimen called "PRACTICE FRENCH GRAMMAR EVERYDAY OR ELSE!" It's going well so far. Today, my school orientation revealed to me that the French university system is quite complicated and bureaucratic (surprise? not really :) ). I'm going to start looking at courses and registering soon because courses start Monday, though nothing is settled until the end of January. The fac (campus) is composed of really old buildings, and the halls are a maze-like weave of honeycomb. ... read more

I let myself sleep as long as I wanted today, the first time since I arrived. I took my time getting ready; my socks and boots were warm from drying on the radiator and felt cheery against my tired feet. Last night, Regine and I watched FRIENDS in French and then met up with her boyfriend Hocine. He's a really funny guy, and is good at making people feel at ease. We wandered around, trying to decide what to eat, and settled on a North African burger/sandwich joint. The fries had curry seasoning and were so good! And they came with various sauced, like curry, Marocain (dill, and some curry), and other neat ones like that. It was a small place that seemed to be popular for congregating. Someone would walk in, and everyone would know ... read more

With a sigh I packed my things this morning at Oops!. My roommates were still sleeping, and it was difficult to gather all of my things in the dark and try not to make too much noise in a room that is only 8X11. I said goodbye to Tom and lugged my things to the metro, where I made three transfers to get to Gare de Lyon, the place where my TGV train would depart. On the train, I watched as we left Paris and entered a rolling landscape covered in snow. As we neared Besancon (which is only about 2.5 hours away), the terraine became more extreme. I'm not sure when a hill stops being a hill and becomes a mountain, but there were lots of hilly-mountainy things that rose up into the white sky. ... read more

I met Aurelie (my Parisian friend who studied abroad at Agnes Scott two years ago) this morning in the common lounge of Oops! today. It was so wonderful to see her again! And then we were off for our adventure! Aurelie was a great guide, and had made a plan for the things we would see today. So for the first stop, we took the metro to.... THE FRAGONARD MUSEUM OF PERFUME: one of my favorite things so far from Paris, this museum is free and has information and objects concerning the fascinating history of perfume. We saw little carved stone flasks from Egypt circa 3000 B.C. and contraptions used for pressing the essential oils out of flowers. Then we went to the exit, which was the Fragonard perfume store. We smelled the perfumes on display ... read more