Phonetics are no Phun

---

So Michelle and I started our phonetics classes this past week. For her, that means she has to stay for another hour after her grueling 8 a.m. class everyday. For me, it means that before my 10 a.m. class, I have class at 8:30. I can't whine to her, but it seriously sucks.

Not only do I have to wake up way earlier, but my class is horrendous. I thought I would get all buddy buddy with the professor because she is Armenian, but when she got to my name she pronounced it wrong... if she can't even get it right, there is no hope. Not only that, but she is on a total power trip. Instead of explaining the question, she will just keep asking it louder and louder until you react in some way. In addition to her being a horrible person, the class is completely miserable. I'm learning things that I learned when I started taking French in 7th grade. Must have really bombed that placement test...

Anyways.. on to some of Mooshy's and my adventures. On Wednesday last week it was a really nice day so Michelle and I decided to knock out some touristy stuff. We went on a lovely walking tour of the Latin Quartier and saw some really great sites. We went to the Pantheon, the Sorbonne's main building (which is the oldest school in Paris), L'eglise St. Julien le Pauvre (the oldest church in Paris with a stellar garden and view of Notre Dame), and L'eglise St. Severin (super old/cool gothic style church). We also looked for this street called "Rue du Chat qui Peche" (street of the cat who fishes) which is supposed to be the most narrow street in Paris. It got its name from when the Seine flooded and the water rose in the road so high that a cat who lived on that street could fish out of the window of his apartment. We were slightly disappointed to find that the street was pretty much just an alley. Sounded way cooler in the book haha After our tour we stopped in a Tunisian bakery and tried some very interesting looking desserts. Michelle was adventurous and got some thing that kind of looked like an egg roll. I got baklava... hers was way better.

On Thursday last week we went with our class to the Cluny Museum, which is where most of the medieval art is in Paris. We went to look at the tapestries called "The Lady and the Unicorn" ... we had to read a book about them for class and they are really famous. Michelle and I were not really feelin the whole tapestry scene at first, but these were actually really cool. Just an FYI, if you have a canon camera and you want to turn the flash off, you have to do it each time you turn the camera on and off. Michelle and I both got yelled at by a short Asian woman for taking pictures of the tapestries with a flash. "NO FLASH" "NOOO FLASH!!!" ... haha oops! At least Michelle got one good picture.



Friday night was another interesting evening. There is a girl in my class from Thailand and she asked me and a few others from our class if we wanted to go get drinks with her later that night. I said sure and we all exchanged numbers, etc. So Michelle and I went to meet her and her friend that night, and it ended up just being the four of us. We went to a pub close to the Pantheon and hung out for a bit. The girl from class (I'm not even going to attempt to spell her name.. she said just to write Amy), was super funny. She wanted to know all about America. "I have a question about 'mean girls'," she said. "Are there really mean girls in American highschools?"... obviously referring to the movie. Michelle and I loved this, especially when she said, "I think I want to be friends with 'mean girls'" ahhaha. Later in the evening she said, "I have another question about mean girls. Why do they always date football players and they are cheerleaders??" ... LOVED it. Clearly Michelle and I had great answers for that one.

Later that night we tried to go to Duplex, which is a club that is supposed to be pretty sweet. There was like an hour long line so we decided to go back to a place we had gone Wednesday night called the 6 7. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into there! We walked in and looked around only to realize that there were only girls there. We thought this was strange, especially when we noticed a large group of girls circled around something on the dance floor. When we tried to see what everyone was watching and cheering about was about the same time we noticed several extremely tan and muscular men wearing very small towels standing behind the DJ booth. After witnessing a police officer strip down to his American flag thong, we decided it was about time to leave!




Apparently Fridays at the 6 7 are ladies nights? Won't be making that mistake again haha. We ended up spending the rest of the night at a club called Queen... which we later discovered is a gay club! That explains why no boys wanted to dance with us!!


On Saturday we went to this crazy flea market at Porte Clingencourt. It has 3000+ stands all selling different clothes, shoes, jewelery, bags, and other kinds of junk. It was in kind of a sketch area, but still really cool. Michelle got a great dress and I got a shirt and a vintage puma bag... love it!

Saturday night we went over to one of the girls from our program's house. Most of the other girls from the program were there. We played very many drinking games and were about to go out.. everything was going very well. I ended up going home early... but I'm sure Michelle will fill you in later on all the details of the evening. I think we all had a very good time at the pregame though:





Sunday we tried to go to the Musee D'Orsay because its free the first Sunday of every month, but for some reason they closed an hour early... boo! Instead we walked down to La Duree and got macarons and ice cream... OMG I died. They were amazing and the vanilla ice cream was probably one of the top 10 BEST things I've ever tasted in my entire life.

Last really funny story... Sorry this is ridiculously long. Monday in class we were supposed to each talk about something we had done over the weekend using different past tenses. A girl volunteered to go first and started talking about how she had gone hunting for the first time last weekend. Apparently, wherever she is from, it is tradition for a hunter who kills his first animal to drink some of the blood and to eat some of the heart and balls (i know EW!!!) of the first animal he/she kills. So my teacher thinks this is extremely funny and interesting and writes the word "testicule" on the board. We are all cracking up, except for the girl sitting next to me. Obviously, the word in french is very similar to the word in english, so most of us understood. THe girl next to me is from an Asian country and didn't quite grasp the meaning of the word. I see her write it down in her notes, look it up in her computer dictionary, and turn to me with a frantic and confused look on her face. "Oh no," I'm thinking to myself, "She is totally going to ask me to explain this to her." And of course she did. "What is 'testicule'???" she asks me. So, I attempt to explain what balls are to her IN FRENCH. My best attempt was to say, "Ummm dans un garcon?" (on a man) and point down to that general region.
Not sufficient.
"Stomach?" she says.
"No... lower"
"Kidneys??"
"Umm no.. lower"
"Intestines??"
"LOWER"
It took her about 10 more seconds with a very pensive look on her face until her face lights up and she exclaims, "OHHH... TESTICULE!!!" and starts laughing hysterically.

Gotta love cultural differences.

---