Last week, my computer broke, Emmanuel finally took his TV back, I had a series of awful finals (literature, history, art history, grammar, written comprehension, oral comprehension and finally yesterday, speaking). But now it's all over, I'm celebrating Thanksgiving tonight, seeing my dad Friday, going to London in a week, Oslo four days after that and then going back to Madison, via Chicago, via Paris. I can't complain too much.


Time to go search this whole city for some cranberries! How is it December already, by the way?

goddammit, sweetheart

"and if you love somebody, you show it
you learn to open up your arms and let go of it
you don't stay up all night drinking cheap bear
and act like we oughta know it"



This weekend, Jessi forced me into studying for at least eight hours. It was horrible. Let me give you an image of Jessi and me studying. Jessi is sitting on a chair in my room, surrounded by stuff, reading diligently, asking intelligent questions. Taking notes of notes she's already taken. Highlighting. Speaking about Balzac and Baudelaire under her breath.

Then there's me. I'm usually rolling around my bed in a pile of papers which all have doodles covering them from when I was bored in lecture. Or notes to Jessi from when I was bored in lecture. (Examples: "JE SUIS SOO FATIGUEE!" "True/false: I speak better than french people?[false] how do they not get this? Where are we eating? FRENCH = STUPID." "I am going to kill that swedish bitch") One pages features a list of all 50 states which I made when my apartment flooded and I didn't know what else to do other than sit on my bed and try to list all of them...anyway. So I'm laying on my bed, whining to Jessi, pretending to look up useful information, and eating sour patch kids. Every few minutes when she turns away I try to sneak on facebook for a few precious seconds, always keeping a tab with something about Romanticism or whatever open for going back quickly when she looks. You might think I am a horrible student. And I am. But the lame truth about this is that I don't really have to study for my lit final and I know I'm going to do well because I've already done extensive reading on all of the topics we've covered on Wikipedia, in my own time. Or made Emmanuel teach me. Because I'm a loser. Still, I'm really grateful I have her to try and make me work.

The real highlights of the weekend (not studying, actually) were the Sigur Ros concert, to which Ida and I arrived an hour late, the Des Ark concert, to which we arrived two hours early, and all of the beer and Mexican food surrounding both. Des Ark felt like Madison- a shitty warehouse with random pieces of artwork and old furniture sitting around, people smoking pot, the guys at the "bar" selling cans of beer for 1 euro each...everything. It was kind of amazing, actually. And Ida was the perfect companion for both.
I think though, that the best moment of the weekend, musical orgasms aside, was tonight at dinner. Jessi, Siril (who lives above the arctic circle in Norway, just for reference) and I are eating burritos which we miraculously found in Saint-Michel. Siril takes one bite into hers-which has beef in it- makes a disgusted face and goes "But it tastes like reindeer!" I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Ok, maybe you had to be there.

ps- in what entry was one of my labels 'rabies?'

a pain au chocolat a day keeps the boyfriends away

Just kidding. I don't eat a pain au chocolat a day. But I think I should start. Life's too short not too, right? As it happens, this morning I was reading an article* which listed and described the "10 best pains au chocolat in Paris." In all honesty, there was a brief moment where I thought to myself, "Well, I've got nothing to do today..." but I forced myself** to stay home and do my work instead. Ah well. Maybe the tour du chocolat is best carried out over a long stretch of time rather than an afternoon.

For those of you who, upon reading my last entry, thought maybe I had actually fallen in love with somebody who loved me back and was in a healthy relationship or something, I'm sorry to say that is not the case. Every few weeks or so I will have an encounter with a very attractive man (this time it was a student who was in charge of helping us foreigners figure our school business out) and then convince myself that I am destined to be with this person forever. Besides this, I picked up a habit from Clara and Lucas of declaring I'm "in love with" anybody I might have the smallest crush on***. I think it is a result of trying to translate the word "amoureux" into english. Or maybe it is a result of me being silly and dramatic. And Parisien men being too goddamned attractive. Who will ever know?

Finally, I just want to give a small word of advice- never, ever try to purchase (transatlantic) plane tickets while intoxicated. I realize that for most people this is probably a given, but if you ever find yourself on the verge of doing it, know that you WILL drop your computer (although in my defense that less to do with my being inebriated and more to do with my having to sit on the microwave for internet), and you WILL make stupid decisions ("maybe being home for thanksgiving would be more important than finishing out the semester" ), but luckily you WILL get tired while expedia is loading and eventually give up.

*I can't pretend I innocently stumbled upon this article. google search: best patisseries in paris, et voila.
**sloth 1, gluttony 0
***I cringe when I end sentences with prepositions. Just in case anybody noticed that.

themes/possible memoir titles

*French People Never Mess Up Except At Being Good Parents/People/Not Being Total Dillholes
*Chevre's Ok But Cheddar's Better: I Miss Orange Cheese
*French Women Don't Get Fat- But You Will, Stupid Asshole American
*Maybe I Should Just Date High Schoolers Because They Seem Nice And Not Terribly Unattractive When You Live In Paris
*Priorite A Droite Is The Only Thing Shittier Than Your Ugly Face
*I Should Probably Try To Hold Off the Tears Until I Get In the Shower: Life Without A Bedroom Door
*The Heat's Broken and You're Mad I Didn't Notice? Oops! Guess It Was Hard To Tell From the Attic!

I don't mean to whine (yes I do) but my host family is very difficult. Minus the cat. However, today I fell asleep outside in the sun- how many inches of snow has Wisconsin gotten so far? HA!

Things I am INTO: baguette (duh), chevre, chevre pizza, pommes chauffes, coca cola light, actimiel, prince cookies, nutella snack n go's (NOT to be confused with snack n drinks, which are creepy), my audi, violette (always), when kim is being cute and adorable as opposed to obnoxious and spoiled, sitting at school all day doing nothing, carrefour, this leather coat i am going to buy from promod, the weather here, common languages that are not native to either speaker.

Things I am not into: anne and beatrice both being out of the country thus leaving me alone with kim, the electricity not working in the morning, me having to puke for like a million years, kim throwing a tantrum when i try to wake him up in the morning, having to puke more, realizing kim wet the bed last night, having to explain to kim why the tv isn't working. None of those things are so shitty, but when they all happen within 15 minutes of one another, I want to shoot myself.