What a slow and boring blog, you must be thinking.

Well, I'm not a liar, and this isn't a blog for storytelling. 

The past week has been a little dull, beginning with last Friday night, which included no Halloween celebration, to my dismay. 20 years I've seen and this is the first time I've missed dressing up, eating candy, and having an uproarious good time. My American friends were busy being grandmothers at home. 

I've had a lot of time to break in my new bike, which has again been struck with a flat tire. I'm finding it to be as fast or faster than the metro in some cases, and it's always a real thrill and joy. I arrive at my destination with flushed cheeks, alert reflexes, and majestically windswept hair. Ha. As of now, I have ridden la Place de Charles de Gaule, where the Arc de Triomphe can be found, and descended the Champs Elysees en velo, just like in the final stage of the Tour de France. Actually, that time I was gently 'doored', meaning I had a slight accident in which I crashed into the opening door of a parked car. To my credit, I had plenty of time to brake and didn't even fall off the bike, I only abruptly hit the corner of the car door with my chest. Needless to say, the poor girl getting  out of the car was speechless, and I was surprised to hear myself respond in French to her and the driver of the car. "What are you doing!?" Was what came out. Don't worry, I'm ok, no marks or scars. No close call has caught me totally off guard or scared me yet. 

Sunday night I visited the la famille de Planta, the French family that hosted my sister Madeline last fall during her semester abroad. They're quite nice and were glad to have me over a second time, as the year before they invited my family to dinner at their home not far from the Arc de Triomphe and infamous Place de Charles de Gaule. Dinner was good, ate me some meat! By that I mean fish. 

This week I found myself faced with some of the first real schoolwork of this academic year. With it came a good dose of panic and procrastination, but in the end I was satisfied with the work I submitted. The assignment was a commentaire de texte on Savlien de Marseille's Eulogy to the Barbarian,  a text from the church addressing the sinful Barbarians invading the Occident and to the hedonistic Romans, whose sins were of greater consequence due to their understanding of the Christian faith. Tuesday I had a test on the balance of power in the European Union, and Wednesday I had a cumulative controle, more or less a quiz, in my 18th century French History course, which was murder. On a more positive note, I'm beginning to make some friends in my classes, meaning two, but I'll take what I can get. I was quite comforted yesterday to have one of my friends mention to me in class that no, she didn't understand what the professor was explaining, either. 

I've also had the chance to catch a few French films in the past week. I saw Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a hugely successful film about the North of France, which I highly recommend. When it released this March, one in three French citizens saw the film in theaters, setting a new record for box office sales in the nation. Still, it was no Titanic. Ha. Before that I saw Brice de Nice, a comedy about an idiotic, self-obsessed surfer on the Mediterranean, where there are no waves. This one was also good. 

I've been hitting French libraries, a surprisingly difficult, or at least tedious, task. Since there really is no central library for the Sorbonne, students are left with the national resources. There are a ton of libraries in Paris, but the ones I've visited are the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in the 13th arrondissement and the Bibliotheque St. Genevieve in the 5th just across from the Pantheon. I have really mixed feelings about my experiences in both libraries. I'll spend some time reflecting on them before I speak. 

Oh, and today for the first time I walked five minutes to a municipal pool, which was quite a laugh! I thought I had walked in on a pool party when I first entered, there were so many people in such a small pool! It's a 25 meter pool with five lanes, in which 25-30 people were swimming, by my guess. That's a lot of people in a small pool! Everyone was getting their sport on, wearing the obligatory swim cap. Describing French swimming is difficult: it was like social swimming, but without the social part. Everyone was swimming quite happily at a tranquil pace, as if they were taking a stroll, but swimming. 

Tonight I'm going to a discotheque with my host brother and a few of his friends. It's costing me 20 euros, so it had better be fun. We'll see whether Tektonik is accepted there or not. Here, have a laugh at the website, it's www.lebackup.com. I sure did. Sorry for the lack of media!