J'ai mal au ventre

Today was a joyous day! My stomach would say otherwise, but I guess it can complain. I put it through a lot today.

I woke up early to make sure that I got to eat breakfast. The cereal that Madame bought isn’t my fave (I’m not really a raisons/nuts fan), so I had a tiny bit with some orange juice. After food, I came upstairs to take a shower and get ready for the day. I was in the middle of brushing my hair (like...I hadn’t even parted it yet), when the doorbell rang. Madame was still asleep and Amy was in her room, so I ran to answer it. It was the Fed Ex man with my debit card! I’m pretty sure he was embarrassed at my appearance. I mean...it’s not every day that an American girl answers the door in her cross-country t-shirt, boxer pajama shorts, and ridiculous wet hair. Nevertheless, he made me sign his little machine thing and handed me my envelope. Money at last!!!!

Around noon, Amy and I headed into the city to relax/socialize before class started at 2:00pm. Before we left, Madame insisted that I meet my 31-year-old host brother, Hugo. He’s been around since the beginning but I’ve never run into him at the house. Weird, right? Amy had met him already, but I hadn’t. He travels a lot for work but lives in the basement whenever he’s home in Paris. He was really nice to me and asked me if I lived anywhere near Joplin in Missouri after hearing about the tornado on the news. His English is fabulous! So that was a fun little adventure.

I brought my own lunch to eat at the Institute building...kind of. It was a cookie, some applesauce, and water. It was all I could buy with the cash I had left! But I ate it on the steps outside of the Institute building with a few classmates. After a few minutes of talking, Kenny asked if I wanted to go find food with him. I wasn’t doing anything, so I said sure and we went to a grocery store nearby. And that’s where we saw it. The most beautiful ice cream selection ever! Not really, but both of us were craving ice cream so we agreed to go halfsies to buy some. I dug around my wallet for some change and managed to find 2 Euros in 12 coins. We bought a box of 8 Magnum ice cream bars and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a white chocolate one! Alex pitched in too, so he got one for Amelia and himself. A few people back at the institute building pitched in as well, so there were enough left for Kenny and me to each have two. My white chocolate ice cream bar was heavenly, but there was NO WAY I could stomach two of them. They were huge! So, I gave it to Kenny and he had three. J

After finishing our ice cream, it was time for class to start. Dr. Hudson was really excited to get class going! We talked about our Normandy excursion for this weekend and everyone got SUPER excited. In fact, here is our itinerary:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GrBxoAQdUZB-PqGxkGaJE3kQd2I8BPfnCzZt_DPZ0JQ/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CIydmJ0J#

You’d be excited if you were me too, right?! It’s going to be a blast!

After talking about excursions, Dr. Hudson started talking about the history of Paris and how in some buildings, there are layers underneath to show different foundations from different time periods (there’s a neat place to see that at Notre Dame that a few of us are going to see tomorrow morning). He then related the many layers of the city to the many layers of a millefeuille. That’s right...he brought millefeuille’s for the ENTIRE class! These were much different than the millefeuille that I had yesterday and MUCH more delicious/huge!

It was so big that I couldn’t finish it!

The culture class went by really fast and I was done for the day before I knew it. The renaissance class was right after the culture one and it sounded really interesting, so I decided to stay and listen. I wish I had added it before coming to Paris! In fact, I like it so much I’m auditing it. Dr. Hudson did an amazing job today of making the city our classroom. He talked about the renaissance and different architecture and then took us on a huge tour of the city and applied what we learned to the buildings in our area. It was incredible! I learned so much! Class finished 30 minutes late because of all of the walking, but no one cared. It was a blast!

Beautiful Renaissance era architecture

Apparently this was the square where all of the parties went down in Paris during the 16th century. Exciting, right?

We were worn out from the day after class, so everyone headed home. My stomach wasn’t doing so great either, so I wanted to come home and lie down for a while. At 9:00pm, Madame called us downstairs for dinner. The house smelled interesting, so Amy and I were curious as to what she could have made. It was an upset stomach’s worst nightmare! She made rice with curry, salad with tomatoes, bread with hummus, herring (with the skin on) wrapped in raw onions and vinegar, and plain yogurt. It was delicious, but my stomach hated me afterwards. It's still not very happy. Poor thing. L

However, the dinner conversation was hilarious! We asked Monsieur and Madame what French animals sound like and they acted out all of the noises. It was hysterical. I also got Morocco confused with Monaco and said I was going to Morocco next weekend...not my proudest moment. But they laughed and we had a good time! Tomorrow is another class day but I’m really excited. These next few weeks are going to be amazing! Be prepared for awesome stories and pictures! J

À demain!