Basketball is apparently a uniquely American sport.

Today classes began, which was kind of unfortunate. There's so much to see and do in Paris that I feel like I won't have nearly enough time to get everywhere I need to--four weeks will only get me acquainted with Paris; I can't imagine how I'll feel spending only a few days in each city when I'm traveling afterward!

I got placed in the advanced level, which is the second highest. That was at first an unwelcome surprise (I assumed I'd be in intermediate) because advanced isn't just grammar but also French literature, and I feel like I need to practice my usage more than I need to explicate Baudelaire. They handed us a hefty "anthologie" of excerpts from works by French authors, but I'm sure we won't get through much of it in only four weeks.

My class is pretty amazing--the professor is a really nice French man who makes you feel at ease, and the students come from everywhere: China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Britain, Vietnam, etc. (although most are American, and most are other people from the UNC program). It's interesting that our only truly common language is French.

At the beginning of class we had to introduce ourselves, speaking for about a minute or two. I told everyone my name, country of origin, university (although many of the students in the class are much older than we are & are taking the course without any affiliation with another university) and concentrations of study. Then, because of my fierce Tarheel pride, I felt compelled to inform everyone that our fabulous university won the national championship "pour le basket" this year (amidst some mild cheering from my UNC compatriots). The professor first corrected my incorrect usage of the word "tournament" (should be "tournoi") and then laughed. "You are so American! That is so 'typique'!" he said.

Clearly only Americans get excited about an orange ball, two hoops and Psycho-T.

We completed a dictee at the end of class, which is a classic French assignment in which the professor reads a passage and you have to write down what he says. It's difficult because you have to understand his words vocabulary-wise as well as get the grammar right (especially conjugations). This one wasn't too difficult, though; I only made a few mistakes.

We're not sure if we have homework for tomorrow because we can't quite understand EVERYTHING the professor says :)

We tried to go to the Resto-U for lunch, but it was closed because apparently today is a national holiday, Pentecost (Pentecote). Instead we went to a grocery store and stocked up on some cheaper things to eat (I've probably mentioned that food is ridiculously expensive here on its own; plus the dollar flat-out sucks). I bought a lot of cheese, some oranges, a heat-up pizza (which was far more delicious than frozen American kinds and only cost like 1,50 euro), some peanuts to snack on, yogurt, etc. I got a ton of groceries for like 18 euro. In the U.S. I probably would have spent like $35 on the same amount of food, which was nice.

We all ate our homemade lunches out on the terrace, and I got more sunburned.

We had Costello's first class today, which is THREE HOURS LONG. Luckily it was pretty interesting; we talked about philosophy, and I was into it until I lost interest about 2.25 hours into the class. Pretty good attention span, I'd say.

Tomorrow instead of class we're heading to Versailles for the afternoon, which should be amazing.

Went shopping this evening with a few of the other girls. We went to H&M, Zara (adorable clothes but a little too expensive..especially with the shitty exchange rate), and a few other stores. I bought a cute slouchy blue dress at a store called Stick; it was only 19 euro. It kinda sucks to think uber-carefully about every single purchase, down to the 3-euro panini for lunch, but the exchange rate is so bad and it's unbelievable how EXPENSIVE everything is here. I need to do some budgeting so I don't unknowingly blow through my money--today I took 250 euro out of the ATM, looked online and found that 250 euro = $350 American. Crazy. Thanks for making me super poor by Parisian standards, failing American economy.

Trying to go to Brussels this weekend with Arden! We just need to make sure we can secure a cheap train ride and a hostel; I looked up some trains online for a Friday-Sunday trip but found that the tickets were like $225 each; however, if we leave early Saturday morning it'll be cheaper (like $140), and then we'd pay for only one night in the hostel. Plus, the train ride's only like an hour and a half long--oh, Europe & your tiny countries; you are so convenient.

Bonsoir!