Rambling

Classes have begun, and its hard to believe that its already the middle of September and I don't even have a mid term to worry about yet. I am taking six classes. One of which is the French culture class with Stephen Muse which just involves us touring around Paris and writing a paper. I have intro to French at 8:30 on Monday mornings, which is one of the roughest ways I could possibly imagine to begin a week. Our class was rather entertaining though...even the most sleepy of students has to appreciate the hilarity of learning the alphabet as a Junior in college. With students from Latvia, Germany, China, Lithuana, Sweden and America, I can't imagine it will be anything but entertaining listening to us all attempt to speak French in our various ridiculous accents. For our second class we moved up from the alphabet and learned the numbers. We then proceeded to play bingo and I managed to win a bottle of wine for being the bingo, or "lotto" champion! As soon as the teacher pulled out that bottle for the prize i could only think, wow, i'm REALLY not in an american university anymore!

All of my professors seem extremely well qualified.

I am taking finance which is taught by the former european CFO of Neutrogena. Advertising strategy is taught by a retired New Yorker who has had years of experience in the advertising world. Luxury Brand Management is taught by a former South African who has worked for such brands as FCUK, Boots pharmacy, South African Airways. And finally, Organizational Behavior is taught by another retired american whose credentials i forget at the moment but are quite substantial.

Classes are only an hour and a half once a week and so we have to do extra work for each class to accumulate the required three hours a week that is common in American universities. Its kind of a pain in the butt figuring all the class stuff out but i think it should be settled soon.

I spent the weekend in London visiting my grandparents and celebrating Rosh Hashana. It was really wonderful to see them and I also got to have dinner with two of my older South African cousins whom i havent seen for five years! I only got to do some touring on Sunday and although we attempted to see the changing of the guard, it was in fact cancelled because of a massive bike race through london that seemed to shut everything down in its path. Apparently hundreds of years of tradition can be cancelled for immensely irritating bike racing..who knew? We also visited the Tate Modern which was as strange and wonderful as ever. They manage to place artists such as Monet and Dali next to some of the most seemingly no name pieces, but it all fits together.

We had a bit of a scare when we returned on Sunday evening. The building smelled like smoke and it was quite unnerving. One of the roommates called the fire department and thankfully we found an english speaking resident to explain the situation to the firemen. It was a bit frightening to know that we wouldnt have really been able to express ourselves to the firemen without translation but thankfully they found nothing and the smell went away.

The days go by so quickly here. Its already 7 pm and it feels as if the day just began. I have so many things I want to do and places I want to go but i can't seem to find the time to do everything! I need to just start planning events and hopefully i can do all the sightseeing and exploring of this fabulous city before I have to leave. I also have a lot of traveling I want to do but at the same time I want to be able to enjoy my free weekends here in paris. So much to do..so little time.