my life with depression.com

i was not able to write the last two days as i’ve been so tired from all the walking! tuesday the first day of my vive la paris class. it’s a tues/thurs class where you learn about the history of paris. this was really interesting. rather than staying in class, we were given walking directions and a map around the St. Sulpice church in the 6th arrondissement. we were also given questions to answer like: what was the first use of the Hotel de Finance building or what is the purpose of the original meter? the original use of the Hotel de Finance was that it was a seminary and part of St. Sulpice. The meter was standardized in paris and the actual length that people can see and touch is still in the original place! that was kinda cool.

the not so cool thing was that EVERYTHING was en francais! i had to keep looking at my dictionary just to make it through the afternoon. i did get lost because i misunderstood the directions, but thanks to my little map, i was able to find my way back. that was soooo tiring.

after that little exercise, i had dinner with a fellow classmate. we went to rue mouffetard. it’s one of the oldest streets in paris. in fact, you can still trace it’s origin back to the romans. the street is so small that cars are not allowed to drive on it.

so all i did was walk walk walk.

the next day was the same. that’s vendredi. my morning class ended up taking the metro to this famous cemetery where famous painters, writers and jim morrison of the doors are buried. it’s like a big park. in fact, it has more trees than jardin de luxemberg, but with just alot of head stones and little family house things - you know… just like what you would see on TV. i’ll post a picture.

This one is the famous author Oscar Wild’s grave. Note all of the kisses he gets from women all around the world. weird.

As no one else has afternoon classes except moi, the teacher stayed at the cemetery past our normal class time. i’ve noticed that our class sometimes overruns into my 30 minute lunch break because there are no clocks in the classrooms - not like in the US. well, since i missed my writing / oral class —- i was really really really sad about not being able to write french for 3 hours, sopie and i along with the korean gal decided to have a very late lunch at the marias.

this is the jewish and gay area. very popular and chic. we had Israeli food. pretty good if you ask me. sophie speaks english, but the korean gal does not, so communication with her was very difficult, but somehow, i was stuck being the one to ask her questions in french and explain things to her. sophie said that it’s because i am more animated that her. well, i guess i was able to practice…. can you imagine three asian girls in an israeli kosher restaurant in the middle of a jewish community trying to speak broken french??? our server certainly had fun with it. he was very kind in not laughing too much at us!

we went to what’s known as the best chocolatier in town. cocoa et chocolat. 4 pieces of chocolate costs just under 10 euros. i got 3 eclairs as it’s my friend steph’s birthday - that’s his cake. i don’t even want to talk about how much each was. i was asking myself ‘why didn’t you just buy some at a boulangerie or patisserie?’ that’s a bread or pastries place …. but you know, once i took a bite out of that eclair ….. YUMMMMYYYYYYY! soooo worth it. i got to experience the #1 rated chocolatier in paris.

bonne anniversaire steph!

this morning was my hardest class yet. well, yesterday was hard i though, but today was special. we did an assignment and because my understanding of spoken french is poor, i didn’t understand that there were two stories mixed into one and that we had to separate the two and put the sentences in order. because i wasn’t aware, i had the hardest time combining my sentences. everyone including the teacher elodie found it funny and cute! luckily i can laugh at myself. yet still i am called on to share in the responsibility of class participation.

i do have to say that other than that, i’ve been able to hang. i really like the life here. i love the use of the metro - which by the way, i’ve been in school for 4 days now and i have yet to take the same route twice! it’s not that i’m doing it on purpose, it’s just that i’m either not paying as much attention as i should or i’m trying to do it by memory or i’m just dumb. in defense, these streets all of a sudden become the same….

i studied and did my homework in a japonaise restaurant during dinner. i ordered some rolls, sushi and some teriyaki beef skewers. i was able to order in french. soooo cool. not trying to listen to other people’s conversations, but i recognized some verbs! i was so excited. i noticed though that they were speaking french rather loosely. to my dismay, the guy didn’t conjugate his verb: manger - to eat. he said je manger … when he should’ve said je mange.

people spoke too fast for me to understand everything, but ….

oh today - well this week is semaine de gaut. it’s the week when all of france offer tasting menus and little school kids learn about food. only the french - eh? their world revolves around food and eating it. oh, so today, we had a cordon bleu chef demonstrate for us. this is the famous cooking school in france. i grabbed some info because i think next year, i am going to take some cooking classes there. most of the longer classes are for serious people who actually want to be a chef, so that sucks - oh you have to have some knowledge of the kitchen already …. NOT MOI.

it’s a bit past 10:30pm and i must practice conjugating my verbs and practice my l’imparfait verbs for tomorrow. SOOO tired.

oh, i took this picture because all of these are free now in paris. i’ve never been inside one, but they are super clean as they are self cleaning … …