My latest news and more chiens of Paris :)

Bonjour, tout le monde! (I'm writing this instead of studying for the French test I have on Monday, so at least now I can pretend I'm still practicing a little.)

Getting back into the school routine after our mini-vacation to Avignon, Nîmes and Arles wasn't exactly a breeze, especially after having to cram a whole weekend's worth of work into a single Sunday, but thankfully on Monday in my writing class we had a fun activity to ease us back in. We just finished reading A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, which is basically a memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920's/30's, so we spent the hour-and-a-half class walking around the Latin Quarter to see some of the places where he lived, worked, and "hung out," i.e. drank; Poor Ernest was a bit of a tortured soul and evidently liked to drown his sorrows in rum St. James. Really though, Paris is amazing as it is now, but I would love to be able to go back and see it as it was then. I guess reading about it is the next best thing!

Also this week, we officially planned our next trip: Vienna! Melanie, Jaci, Annie, and another girl named Bojana whom I don't believe I've mentioned before are all going October 23-26, and I can't wait! Apparently it's absolutely beautiful in the fall. Before that, though, I'll have my first visitor here! My friend Paulina has her fall break next week, so she'll be visiting from Finland from Thursday to Sunday! I haven't seen her since June, so it will be awesome to catch up and see a familiar face.

Hmm. What else to fill you in on....I don't think I wrote in any of my previous posts that I ran for student government, but I did, and I got elected! The five representatives are me, Jaci, Mel, Ethan (he was in some earlier pictures) and another girl named Shoshana. We get to help plan group activities and decide how to spend the rest of our class budget for the year. I'm so excited!

This weekend has been pretty busy so far, also. On Thursday, we all went to see a play that NYU provided tickets for. In our Cultural Foundations class, even though some of us have different teachers, we are all currently studying ancient Greek literature/history; my class is reading The Iliad, and another section is reading The Odyssey, so it fit perfectly that we got to see a play about the story of Agamemnon, a character in both of Homer's works. The only catch? It was a hip-hop interpretation. So instead of typical Greek tragedy there was beat-boxing, dance fighting, and rapping...in French. It was actually really interesting to see it presented that way, and I enjoyed it!

Afterwards, some of us went to hang out in our friend John's room. He lucked out and somehow got a room on the 5th floor that's bigger than everyone else's and has a REAL balcony, but I guess NYU figured out the mix-up and decided it wasn't fair that he had more space than the rest of us, so he had to switch into a different room this weekend, so he had one last hurrah to share the glory of the balcony with all of us.

He definitely had the best view!

Rue Oberkampf...home sweet home :)

Mel and Annie

And now, as promised, some more puppy pictures :)

Of course Parisian pooches have to be just as stylish as their owners

Okay, not a dog, but he finally let me pet him!!

Spotted on the metro

Just grabbing a bite to eat in a café

Are we there yet?

Speaking of the metro...I realized something odd this week. You know how sometimes you're driving, and then you sort of drift onto autopilot, and before you know it you're pulling into your driveway? That's started happening on my commute to/from school. I have to transfer lines once or twice depending on which route I take, and there have been several times where I completely zone out, and then when I look at the map to see how long I have left until my stop to transfer, I realize that I've already switched and am only a stop or two away from my final destination. It's a very funny feeling, but much better than having to stop and look at a map every time! Anyways, just a random tidbit I thought I'd share. Hope everyone is doing well at home! Hugs to everyone and thanks for reading!