So yeah, my goal was to post an Italy blog right away. Whoops. I didn’t take into consideration real life when I made that decision. So, you will have to wait. But I’ll get it up. Soon. I hope.

Even writing regularly has been a hassle, I have been insanely busy with school, work, and of course, exploring the night life of Paris. So here is a blog that I started when I got home from Italy. Enjoy:

I got back from Italy Saturday night around midnight. I just went home, called my mommy, and then went to sleep. (I don’t care how old I get, sometimes just talking to my mom is a sanity check). Sunday I basically did very little. I sorted through my pictures, and relaxed. My legs really were thankful, they had been screaming at me since the third day in Rome.

Monday was right back into work and school. The weather was gorgeous, and everybody at work, the teachers and the students, were in fabulous moods. And my directrice was back! She had gone out on sick leave back in November I think, she was having some terrible back problems, that I think resulted in surgery. But it was great to see her. She has been helpful, and one of the contributing factors for my love of my job.

We were all talking about how we spent our vacation. Now we are all talking about what we are going to do on our next vacation.

Tuesday turned out not to be such a beautiful day, but everybody’s moods were still fabulous. The glow of vacation I’m sure. Although I did fall asleep in my Histoire des Idées class. I can’t help it. I was wide awake, until the professor started talking. I was taking notes. It’s funny, I fell asleep a couple of times while writing, my pages of notes are quite comic looking.

And Tuesday was also Katie Blonde’s birthday. Poor girl, she turned 21 while in France, where it really isn’t a big deal. But we celebrated anyway. We met up at our regular bar in the Bastille. And the bartender loves us. So when I had gotten up to buy a round of beers, that bartender asked me if it was someone’s birthday. I told him yeah, it was the blonde girl’s birthday. He told me to go get her, and when we got back up to the bar, everyone started singing Joyeux Anniversaire (French for Happy Birthday). And then he pulled out a bottle of Smirnoff and a shotglass. She thought that it was just a shot, and he told her no, he was giving her the bottle as a present from the bar.

Even though the bottle was shared around our little party, Katie had quite a bit of it. Yeah, that ended up not having such good results for poor Katie. But the night was fun.

Wednesday was my school day. It was really cool though, my History of Paris class went to the church of St.-Etienne du Mont. Of course I learned little tidbits of knowledge, which I loved. It was really cool.

And the teacher told us a joke, which I think I was the only one who got. She told us about why Protestantism never caught on in France. They used to not get vacations back around the time of the Reform, but they did get the day off for all of the important Feast Days of the Saints. So Protestantism comes around, and says the saints are no good. That means the Saintly days off would be out the door, therefore, the French stayed Catholic.

I was cracking up, and everyone else was like “huh?”. Either they weren’t paying attention, or (which I am guessing this is more the case), they haven’t worked here, and don’t know the amount of time the French spend talking about their next vacations.

The rest of the week wasn’t quite so exciting, and I had a quiet weekend.

On Saturday, MICEFA organized a tour of Versailles. It was amazing, we got to go on a tour of parts that are normally closed off to the public. It was really cool, and we got to see some pretty odd things, like Louis XVI’s toilet.



And the private dining room where he dined with Marie Antoinette and other court members



And an astronomical clock that has been ticking since the 1700s, and is expected to be accurate for another 10,000 years. After the Revolution, when Versailles was abandoned and plundered, this clock remained. When Versailles was empty, this clock was silently ticking away the time. Kind of odd to think about.



And of course, I was absorbing design ideas throughout the whole tour.

Our tour guide was the best part of the tour though. He seemed to believe that he was French nobility, and he was sharing with us a part of his life, and that Versailles was his chateau. It was a crack up.

Saturday night I went out with the Katies. We just stayed in the Latin Quarter area. We tried to go to a jazz club, but we missed out on getting seats in the cave, so we ended up going to an Irish bar. It was cool, and there was a little man singing. It was quite fun.

And Sunday started the cycle over. This week, on Wednesday, I went to a soiree for Young Democrats abroad in France. It was an interesting evening, and we watched An Inconvenient Truth. There are going to be some more soirees, including “Political Pub” and “Liberal Drinking”. You know I am there.

After the soiree, I went out to the Bastille with a girl Krisit, she is a MICEFA student who just got here in January. We had fun.

Except my dumbass wore new shoes. I bought these really super cute shoes,



they are actually the first pair of shoes I have bought here in France. So I wore them. I forgot about the whole breaking in new shoes thing. So I ended up rubbing my poor baby toe raw. We ended up taking a cab back home, there was no way in the world I was going to be able to walk home from the bus stop. (Cue violin music).

So yeah. School work, and insane lack of free time. Sorry the blog are so late in coming. I am still working on the Italy blog. Geez.

And this weekend, in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, I am going to Dublin! Yay!