16

for those who care to see:

naked french peoples! my drawings thus far from modele vivante

why yes the mans name IS François! bien sur. but it actually is.

15

When the moon is shaped like a c it is called a croissant. When a person has great abs it is not a six-pack it is a "tablet de chocolate".

FOOD IS EVERYWHERE.

Trying my best not to come back obese and addicted to brioche.

Also last weekend I went on the elelelelephant:

that little house there is where the man sits who operates the elephant. If you walk too close to the snout he will pull a lever and spray you with water from the end of the nose. Even if you are just trying to take a picture. he is my hero. 

also heres a video to show just how thrilling it was (aka not at all)

but you only get to ride a giant elephant once in your life and when you do you better enjoy it even if it is raining and a snarky 10 year old is hogging the best spot on top of the elephants head.

14

i begin to learn the words that are not words at all - sounds that are far from meaningless but whose sense you would be hard pressed to find in a dictionnaire:

(bahhh oui, euhh, en fait, en fin, euhhh, how to pop your lips and shrug - which is to say : euhh franchement je ne sais pas, donc, du coup, bahh non, and to finish every sentence with quoi. "et euhh j'aime la fromage quoi.", oop! euhh fin--,  bahh et voila)

also the level of someone's drunkenness depends mostly on how long you stretch out the word. "il etait bourré"  "il etait bouuuuuurré" "Il etait booooooouuuuuuuuuuurrrrééééé quoi" 

the reasons i have gathered for everyone to come to france si possible are as follows
- you can have sushi delivered to you on the back of a moped
- it is not at all strange to be a socialist
- it is not at all strange for strangers to nod and tell you "bon appetit" if they see you eating in the street
- it is not at all strange to sit at the tables outside MacDos (Mcdonalds) like its some classy cafe and smoke a cigarette after you finish your hamberguer
- they have like 7 different words for which english only has one:  "pastry"
- in french being right or wrong is not something you are, it is something you have
- goodbye = "au revoir" meaning literally until we see each other again. everyone says this to everyone even if they are pretty positive they will never see you again


c'est pour ca en fait euhhh, donc bahh oui

13

also for those who care about the more academic side of things (aka hi mom, dad) I think I have finally figured out my classes. They are these:


French - (just auditing not for credit)
Drawing
Literature - French Writers and Foreign Nations
Live Model
Prehistoric art/archaeology
Sociology of Marginalization
Sociology of Aestheticism


pas mal ! I am taking the minimum amount of credits possible.. but I still think it will be a lot considering I gotta practice piano/guitar also bien sur.

12

Just got back from Oktoberfest. Am exhausted. Also nostalgic for all the short-lived German/Aussie/New Zealand/Swiss/English friendships I forged. Turns out everyone is your best friend when you are holding a 5 lb stein of beer 
"PROSCHTT!" = "cheers" in German. Probably butchered the spelling. 

Anyways there will of course be a post about Oktoberfest but before that I gotta tell the story of how I found myself leading a license 3 sociology class the second time I had even set foot in the classroom. 

 I had gathered from the 60% that I understood of the first lecture that I was to do an exposé along with 3 
other French etudiantes on the subject of "Discrimination and Exclusion in the Work Force". Quite honestly I 

picked the group that I picked because it had the cutest boys in it...

Seemed like a solid strategy at first . I didn't at the time realize that I had just signed up for the first time slot. Regardless, I remained brave. This would not be so bad. The exposé fell off my radar 

UNTIL two Wednesdays from then. The night before the exposé I met with the 3 french etudiantes in the Sociology library. I had some trouble finding it. I called Maxime the shorter of the cute boys

"I'm outside but the door is locked"

"D'accord"

Moments later he poked his head out of a room farther down the hallway to my left. He waved. I realized I was standing in front of a closet.

... whatever. I remained confident.  When I sat down they launched into a description of what they had gathered so far. On the docket was a short video, an analysis of a 30 page reading and two sociological studies. I felt I was missing something.

"Donc, how many minutes do we have? 15? 20?"

"Mais non. We have the whole class period"



merde..

I tried to act like this information wasn't horrifying to me."Oh bien sur. C'est excellente"


Fortunately, all ends well. Thankfully, not only were the mecs pretty cute they were also very capable and intelligent. And they also concluded that I would have no idea what was going on and so did all of the work for me. They showed me the two pages I would discuss and told me to put it "in my own words" (i.e. grammatically incorrect and practically incoherent). Formidable ! I would also need to lead a discussion. This proved to be awkward and difficult but not altogether impossible. All in all the worst thing that happened throughout the whole thing was that I looked down halfway through and realized I had spilled yogurt on my pants. 

Pas mal. c'est la vie en fait