Finally Internet

Hi all. Sorry for not updating this more recently, but I had been unable to due to a combination of a lack of WiFi/useable power converters/adapters/unwillingness to take my laptop out of my backpack/the inability of the blogger app to work on my phone. Now that I’ve managed to overcome these many, many hardships, I’m back and there’s a lot to catch up on…so good luck.

To start off, the plane rides here were quite good. I highly recommend Turkish Airlines. Food was solid for airplane food. Lot of amenities too, considering we flew economy and all. Beyond that, there wasn’t anything noteworthy, except for seeing a sunrise on an airplane. Unfortunately, the picture I took on my phone wasn’t the best quality, and Instagram filters can only help so much, so I may or may not include it here (I haven’t decided yet).

I swear the sunset looked a lot better in person

Our little stop in Istanbul was quite fun. It was surprisingly easy to get in and out of the airport. Getting to the restaurant recommended by my sister’s Turkish friend, on the other hand, was not as trivial. The address that my sister had was wrong, so it took a while to get there. The taxi driver also didn’t use his GPS, and instead relied on asking random people on the street if they knew where the restaurant was going. It got to the point where he would park the car on the side of the street, get out, and ask someone. When we got to the wrong address, someone there thankfully knew where the restaurant actually was, and we managed to get there fairly quickly from that point. In spite of the hour or so spent in the cab, it still only cost around $20, which was remarkable. The food at the restaurant (Uludağ), was phenomenal. I had a döner kebab, which was delicious. Also had this one delicious thing for dessert. I don’t remember the name, but I remember having something like that at the calabash place in Myrtle, and this was actually edible, so that was good.

I want this again. Like right now. I'm not even hungry.

On our flight to the motherland, we stopped at the Maldives, which was super cool. The airport is so beautiful and flying there is a great experience (picture below). Most of the people on the plane actually got off there, which is understandable.

From the runway. Flying over this place is amazing. Unfortunately my pictures taken in the air weren't that great.

Being in the motherland has been good so far. On our first day (Friday), were picked up by my mother’s niece, nephew and sister (although she wasn’t the mother of the cousins. I may make some sort of family tree later to clear up anything confusing/to help me actually understand who is in my family. The tree will include what we refer to the family members as to help improve my/your Sinhala) at around 3 PM (9.5 hour time difference; not sure whether or not I’ve actually stated that before. I’m not actually connected to the internet right now and I’m just typing this into Word). We then went to my mother’s childhood home, where my mom’s older brother (the parent of the aforementioned cousins) now lives. I have vague memories of the house itself, but I definitely remember playing in the rice paddies next to the house 12 years ago. The picture may or may not be below, but it is on my #instagram/Facebook, so you’ve likely already seen it (especially if you’re actually reading this). After having dinner (since we all know how much I love Sri Lankan/Indian food (I hate it), I had Chinese food. In Sri Lanka, it’s much spicier, which isn’t a bad thing), we were driven to my dad’s older brother’s house where we’ve been staying ever since. On our way there, we stopped by my dad’s youngest sister’s pharmacy where we got to say hi to some of our cousins (the elder of which I remember playing with a lot the last time I was here. Thankfully, his English is very good, so we were actually able to talk to him). In my dad’s older brother’s house, we all are sharing the one air conditioned room since we’re spoiled Americans. I’m currently typing this in that room since I don’t feel like sweating right now. And the reason why I’m typing this in Word is the lack of WiFi in this house (for now. Dad’s actually getting a router as we speak). Since we were pretty tired, we didn’t do too much the first night (it was kind of late anyways). The only other thing to take note of is that my dad’s older brother looks like a combination of my dad (80%) and Alan Thicke (18%) (the other 2% are Willem Dafoe’s eyes). It’s weird/cool.

Day 2 was a lot of fun. Whenever we finally got out of bed, we were driven (driving here is ridiculous. That’s gonna get its own blog post…) down to my dad’s childhood home (I’m also going to later get a map of the country and show where everyone lives to give an idea of where we’ve been going), where my grandmother and one of my dad’s younger brothers (he has 3) and his family lives (if I have pictures worth sharing, they’ll be below. I don’t remember what I took. UPDATE: I didn't take any pictures of the house itself. Only my sister did. Oh well). It was definitely nice being there. Had some coconut water (it wasn't referred to as that, but I think that's what it tasted like) straight from a coconut, and while my dad visited some of his childhood friends, the rest of went for a walk to the nearby river that my dad and his family used to swim in as children (again, the picture may or may not be included. It’s on Facebook/Instagram).

A half minute walk from my dad's house.

On the way, we saw a stray puppy, which was really cute, but a little sad (not too sad, though. There were bowls of food in the little house thing it was napping in. I think animals, if not just the stray animals, will get their own post later). A picture of the puppy will either be included below or in the blog post mentioned in the parentheses.

He looked so sad, but he did have food (not pictured), so at least it could have been worse. The animals are honestly treated fairly well, but I'll get into that later.

When we came back, we hung out for a little bit and then went to my dad’s uncle’s house, which was fairly close. This house used to be my great grandparent’s house, and it’s actually where my dad lived for 4-5 years of his childhood (he’s the second eldest in a family of 7 so there was hardly room for him or Alan Thicke uncle in their own house). There we got to see how cinnamon is prepared for market. Had a bit of the bark to try. It wasn’t very good since it was bark. The fact that it was cinnamon made it bearable. Anyways, when we went back to my grandmother’s house, one of the two younger cousins who currently live there (the youngest of two boys; their older sister is at boarding school) was home. Unfortunately for us, he doesn’t speak English, so there was no communication there. I think he had no idea who we were, although I’m sure it was explained. He was watching Ben 10 in Sinhala, which was funny (it was also the only time I had ever watched Ben 10, so there’s that). Eventually, him and my dad were talking about cricket, and somehow it turned into my dad wanting to play cricket with him. My brother and I joined. It was quite fun. Right after we started, the other cousin showed up and joined us. It was definitely a lot of fun. Dad was pretty bad at bowling. So was Nipun (aka Booshtar aka the younger brother). I managed to get a wicket on my second bowl on the youngest cousin. When batting, I did fairly well (albeit I was playing with two kids who were no older than 10 or 11). Got a few sixers (I’m not going to explain cricket rules here. Just look it up on Wikipedia. Though if I’m nice I’ll include a link here). Unfortunately, after getting hit with a ball in an unfortunate location by the elder of the two cousins (who bowled much faster than everyone else because he’s at that age where he wants to show off #iknowthefeel), I lost my mojo, and he soon got a wicket on me (on an offspeed bowl too that I should have crushed). Nipun was pretty horrible at batting. He managed to hit the wickets with the bat twice, which counts as a wicket. It just never happens because you have to be really bad to do that (in his defense, there was much less room between the wickets and the crease than normal given that we were playing in a very small space). After finally getting us to stop playing (it was getting dark (it gets dark really early, like at 7:30 or so)/we lost the ball), we had some ice cream which was really good (better than what we get in the states) and then we left.

Yesterday (Sunday) was pretty cool too. We went to my mom’s second oldest sister’s house (which was really nice) and got to see two of our older cousins (everyone on my mom’s side is way older than us. Everyone on our dad’s side is either our age (the eldest cousin is a year older than my sister) or much younger). The younger of the two took us out to lunch with his mother. Went to a Chinese restaurant (because I’m well known for being a picky eater. I’m not as bad as the last time, but they stocked up on the food that they remember me eating), and it was very nice. Had some watermelon juice with lunch which was delicious. After lunch, we went to one of my dad’s childhood friends’ home. It was very close to the restaurant/my aunt’s house, which was convenient, and man was it nice. 3-4 stories. Rooftop pool (I’ll have a picture when we go back, but for my loyal Snapchat story followers, you’ll have already seen it). Air conditioning. A nice TV and a solid selection of DVDs. We was all quite content. They also spoke English, which was really nice for us. It was actually one of our first conversations with people here since only my sister speaks a little Sinhala, which my brother and I only kinda understand it. Shortly after we arrived, we went to this place that recreated life in the olden days (like Williamsburg/Sturbridge Village). It was pretty nice. There was a small zoo there so I have some pictures of animals (we’re supposed to go to the big zoo here later today so I’ll have pictures from that up later).

Chickens were kinda just walking around the place. Little children (myself included) spent more time chasing them than looking at the different parts of the old school village.

Snake charmer. It was kinda freaky. I almost got a cobra wrapped around my neck. I somewhat regret not doing it.

He liked me/the camera.

Star shelled tortoise.

Porcupines eating some coconuts

On our way back to my dad’s friend’s house, we drove past the Parliament building, which was so nice. I couldn’t get a good picture of it, so it may not be included, but it’s on an island in a lake. When we were back at the friend’s house, we watched some TV while the adults mingled, and then had dinner which was pretty good (had chicken curry because that’s the only Sri Lankan food I’ll eat). We then came back to my uncle’s house and my youngest aunt and her two sons came by (mentioned them earlier; the eldest speaks English), so that was nice. I didn’t get to go to sleep until 1ish, so we had a late start to today. To the point where we haven’t done anything yet so I was bored enough to write this blog post. We’re supposed to leave for the zoo in a little bit, but it’s already after 2 PM here and our parents are still not home yet from shopping, so I’m a little doubtful that we’ll have sufficient time there (UPDATE: I was correct. There was not sufficient time. We have an early day tomorrow, so we decided it’d be better to stay here and rest. I'll maybe write my blog posts on different aspects of life here (specifically driving, feral animals, and the fruit/food) if I feel like it. Unfortunately we haven't gotten the WiFi working yet). Anyways, that’s all that’s happened so far on the trip.

Au revoir tout le monde!

Return to Motherland/Blogging

Hi all. Figure I might as well bring this back prior to my family's trip back to Sri Lanka as the whole point of this blog was to document my world travels (forgot to do that when we ventured up to the great white north last year). Anyways, we're leaving tomorrow night with a layover (8.5 hours) in Istanbul. As of now we plan on having dinner at a restaurant recommended by my sister's Turkish coworker, but beyond that I don't think we'll be doing much with our time there (much to my dismay), as it'll be the evening when we arrive. We'll hopefully get to do more on our way back, since we'll have a layover of a comparable length, but we'll be there at a better hour. All I really want to do there is see the Hagia Sofia, but I'll have to wait ~3 weeks for that opportunity. I hope to be able to check back in sometime after our brief excursion in Istanbul, although I'm not entirely sure when the next opportunity will actually be (to that point, I don't even know how frequently I'll be able to blog since I don't know how frequently I'll be able to access the Internet/be able to charge my laptop (the latter is a bigger issue since my battery life is poor in the twilight years of my laptop and we only have 3-4 adapters)).

In regards to Sri Lanka, I'm starting to get excited about going. It's been over half a lifetime ago since I was last there and I only have vague memories, so it'll definitely be good to go back at a time when I can visually document my experiences as opposed to having to rely solely on my memory. I'd go into more detail about what we're doing there, but I pretty much have no idea what we plan on doing. I think we get to go on a safari and visit an elephant orphanage (which I'm really excited for, although I'm not really sure what that'll entail), but beyond that (and visiting family), I'm clueless. I'll do my best to blog about anything interesting that happens.

As for now, I should probably pack (but I probably won't for another 17 hours or so).

Au revoir tout le monde! (wrong language, but I don't speak Sinhala so you'll have to deal)

Headed home...

Well I finally head home today. I can't believe I've been here for 6 weeks already. I honestly feel like I just got here yesterday. I do wish I got an earlier flight today, mainly because I don't really have anything to do until I leave for the airport in 3 hours or so (and I'm getting to the airport absurdly early because I have to check in, and honestly, there's nothing else to do in Paris with all my luggage). I really don't want to have to leave the city, and all my friends here. I apologize for this poorly written post. I'm tired and triste maintenant, so I'm sorry

Au revoir tout le monde!

Denial

Well I'm done with my classes and my final projects. So that's good I guess. I don't have any work. But I still can't get over the fact that in 48 hours from now I'll be on a plane to JFK.

The last couple of days have been filled with ups and downs. The downs, of course, are the absurd amount of work I had (thankfully it's done). The ups: spending time with my friends. All of them.

Yesterday was such a wonderfully day. After working for most of the afternoon, I had dinner with Sai and Gabby in the Buttes Chaumant. I wish I had found this place earlier. Ils sont vraiment l'endroit le plus beau à Paris (well out of the places I've been to). Here are various pictures:

Gabby looking off into the yonders

Sai's turn to look into the yonders

Yes I'm wearing a scarf and gray skinny jeans. C'est très français!

It was wonderful having an ELHS reunion. I wish we could have done something all together earlier, not just during my last days, but I really shouldn't be complaining. Anyways, Gabby had to go watch a movie with her friends (I hope it was good!), so Sai and I (update starts here:) chilled in the park for a little bit when some random black dude grabbed my empty Orangina can and pretended to steal it before putting it back down and shaking our hands (I'm still confused. Also, the update more or less ends here; I just forgot that I told Sai that the random encounter was "totally going in my blog"). After that, we decided to go climb la Tour Montparnasse, which, according to Wikipedia, is the third tallest building in Paris. But it has the best view, especially at night. Now I haven't climbed la Tour Eiffel yet (hopefully it'll happen later tonight), and while that seems absurd, I'll show you why I gave higher priority to la Tour Montparnasse:

I'm so glad I did this. Most beautiful view of Paris I've seen (not the best view I've seen in France though (le Pont du Gard will always win that contest)

It was so surreal being up there. So high up, above everything else. A beautiful picture of la Tour Eiffel (while I want to climb it, I can't take a picture of the Eiffel Tower when I'm on it, so yeah). I really have no reason to complain (except for the fact that, since I stayed out so "late" (read as 23h27ish), I ended up staying awake until 2 in order to finish one of my final projects).

Today was our last day of classes. Except they honestly weren't real (so no complaints there). I just refuse to believe that we're done with them. After class, we all had lunch at Le Train Bleu, a fancy restaurant in la Gare de Lyon. Here's a shot of the ceiling:

This picture doesn't do this place justice

Very fancy. The food was quite solid. I definitely enjoyed myself during the meal. This thing (I forget the name) was delicious:

Some type of duck I think. With a gratin on the side. And something called a  "sasquatch"?

After lunch, our teachers bode us farewell...for the last time in Paris. That was one of the saddest moments I've experienced in recent times (I'm bitter that they left without hugs and such). At the beginning of the trip, they were our lifelines; we were pretty much incapable of surviving in Paris without them (ok so this was really only for the first few days). And now we may never see them within Paris again. Wow that makes me so sad.

Anyways, after I returned home, I just finished my last project and now I'm writing this.

Here's a list of things that I want to try and do tonight/tomorrow while I can:

• Climb la Tour Eiffel
• Conquer the metro (there are only two lines that I haven't taken yet. This is definitely happening)
• Visit le Chateau des Vincennes (probably won't happen)
• Explore the abandoned railroad (likely won't happen either since it'll just take so much time)
• Spend time with my friends (this had better happen...)
• Visit the museum at l'Institut Pasteur
• See Lauren Paylor while we're in the same international city...

That list was really just so I remember what things I really need to do tomorrow.

Oy vey I can't believe this is almost over. Veronica had told me that I would love being in Paris, and while I wanted to believe her, I thought I'd only be content with the trip due to my emotionless nature. Well, let's just say Veronica couldn't express how much I would love it here (I can't either). This has been, without a doubt, the best experience of my life. I'm strongly considering majoring in French right now (note that I was ready to never speak French ever again after high school), I want to try and get an internship here (like Sai) next summer, and scratch that last one; I want to try and get a job here (or at least spend and extended period of time in Paris/France/Europe). I will never be the same person again (this is clichéd but true). I hate to say this (mainly because it makes me sound like a female teenager), but it's true: Paris, je t'aimes.

Au revoir tout le monde.
Au revoir Paris.

PS: I don't know why I make it seem like I'm at the airport right now about to leave Paris; I still have another day here. Just gotta make the most of my time.

Apologies for not writing (if you care that is)

Well as you can tell, I'm sorry for not writing in this as frequently as I once did. I suppose it's partly because of the absurd amount of work we have to do so I have no time. I also suppose things here seem so routine that my life here no longer seems blog worthy.

This last week was definitely interesting. Wednesday, I had dinner/flaned with Gabby Wukye. It was so surreal. Had some nice Thai food and a solid crepe afterwards. It almost feels like it was a dream; three different worlds (the EL, Duke, and Paris) collided. At times I didn't feel like I was in Paris; I was just chillin with a friend from home. But at the same time, I was feeling whatever the opposite of that would be. I'm glad I got to see her, and if you're reading this, we had best do something this week Gabby!

Uhhhhhh. Thursday was la Fête de la Musique, where there are random bands and such performing all over Paris for most of the night. I enjoyed it for the most part, except I ran out of minutes on my phone so I ended up wandering around Paris all by myself until 2, 2:30ish in the AM. It was nice being able to walk around the city by myself, and when I wasn't really near any performers, it was quite peaceful.

Friday was also bizarre. For dinner, I hit up this diner called Breakfast in America (recommended by Sourav) with Daniel (from Duke) and Sai (from the EL). The food there was super, to say the least (had a super burger) and it was really nice getting to see Sai. After diner, we got to see this ancient stadium that they uncovered when digging for a metro line (I think). It was really cool, but unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.

Yesterday, after doing an absurd amount of work, I hung out with Sai again and then had dinner with him and my friends. Had another pizza avec un oeuf (my favorite) but again, I didn't take a picture of it (out of laziness).

This last week has been quite surreal (as I've said before) because of all the EL connections here. In spite of the fact that I'm in Paris (et pour seulement une semaine de plus), I've actually been missing home a little bit. Part of that is because, when I return, I won't have any work to do at all, and that kinda seems nice right now since the majority of my free time this week will be spent doing work. It's also because of all the time I've spent with Gabby and Sai.

So I just reminded myself that this is the start of my last week here. I don't want to leave. I can't believe I've been here for over 5 weeks. It feels like I just got here yesterday. This experience, without a doubt, has been the best of my life. I'm so glad that I've been able to enjoy one of the best cities in the world with some of the best people in the world.

Anyways, I haven't gotten a lot of sleep the last few nights, so I'm quite exhausted right now (it's why this post has been boring).

Au revoir tout le monde!

I'm getting bad at doing this consistently...

Well it's apparently been nearly a week since the last time I wrote in this. I guess it's because of the fast amount of work I have during the week so I really only have time to write on the weekends...

To start off, I don't think anything exciting happened over the course of last week (until the weekend of course). Thursday I got a foulard (read: man-scarf). Judge all you want; it's awesome. I unfortunately don't have any (good) pictures of me rockin' it at the moment (someone hopefully will eventually post a picture on the Facebook and then maybe I'll steal it for my own purposes). After that, Daniel (who got a matching foulard) and I went to le Louvre to look at some more art (the other time we went we were supposed to look at very specific paintings which, to me were boring) while looking awesome in our foulards. I enjoyed this visit much more. First of all, I got to see some artifacts from the Aegean Bronze Age, so I actually almost knew stuff about them:

A Cycladic idol. In theory, I was once able to identify the island that likely produced this and  the time period of production. At least I remember what it was...

After we got to see stuff from Egypt which was awesome. As a young'un i loved Ancient Egypt, so I felt like a little child again:

This may  not be the best photo I took of the Egyptian stuff, but the thumbnail looked really cool when I was picking pictures so you'll have to deal

Then we got to see some famous stuff (La Jaconde, etc.). Wasn't terrible, mais j'aime les autres choses mieux. Here is an interesting photo:

La Vénus de Milo et quelques touristes avec Nintendo 3DS audioguides

We had a group trip to Lyon Friday and Saturday. It wasn't bad. It was quite pretty (not on Avignon's level, but better than Aix). I don't remember what we did Friday (I was very callous and I'm really tired right now so even if something happened, I'm far too tired to remember, but more on that later).

Oh I remember what happened now. After flanning a bit, we got to take a cooking class. We made pasta avec muscles. Normally I hate seafood (read: I've never been willing to try seafood because in my head I hate it). Cooking it was pretty fun:

Scott showing off his mixing skillz

It tasted pretty good too. Like the ocean (aka the EL which was a nice memory of home).

I don't remember what we did the rest of the day. Oh I guess we learned about silk because there's a lot of silk produced in Lyon. Let's see, after that we a guided tour of part of the city from some random dude. We just walked a lot so we were all exhausted before dinner, so we just laid out on some grass until we had to eat. Dinner was interesting. I don't remember the name of my main course, but it wasn't the best decision on my part...

The next day (samedi) was filled with a lot more walking and whatever. We got to visit the old part of the city, which was way up on a hill so it provided us with many beautiful views of the city. There was also this beautiful basilica, though there was some construction going on so it wasn't at its full splendor. After walking some more, we had lunch with one of our professor's twin sister and her two children, who were both absurdly cute and absurdly distracting during our guided tour that we had after lunch. We then took the long train ride back home (more things may have happened in between, but I wasn't exactly paying attention to anything over the two days so I apologize).

Upon returning, we decided to go celebrate Ananya's birthday (because son anniversaire was Saturday so it made sense). Jenn said there was a boat ride on the Seine for international students, but that didn't end up working out so we just chilled au Champ de Mars (near la tour Eiffel) and then flanned a bit until we were able to find a train to take us to an area we knew better.

When that was done, we started to head home. In a rather foolish move, Anna left her suitcase containing all of her clean clothes at Ananya's apartment (it was so travel to the meeting spot would be easier, even though Anna's apartment was much closer to the SNCF station). Since she wanted some clean clothes for the next day, she went to go get her stuff (Ananya and I live on the same street by the way). The real issue was that we pretty got on the last metro, so Anna couldn't have taken that back to her place. Ananya and I had taken the night bus before, so I decided to help her get back to her place since they're incredibly confusing (and as a large brown person I'd like to thing that, from afar in the dark, I'm somewhat intimidating). This is where things got interesting.

After walking for a while, we found a night bus stop that would take us in the right general direction. Of course, the first bus we saw just drove past the stop (the driver couldn't see us). Instead of giving up, we just walked to the next stop (which was in a slightly better location). We took that to the area that I think contains the largest amount of night bus stops (so we figured we could find a bus that would take Anna back and then I would just take the opposite path home).

I don't think I wrote about the first night bus adventure, but Ananya and I were at the area with the many stops and we once we figured out which bus we needed, we couldn't find its stop. We did see the bus in the middle of the street, though, and people were getting on there, so we ran across the street and entered.

Luckily, I think Anna actually found the correct stop, but the bus came very infrequently and it was cold so we decided against waiting for it. We walked to an nearby area that had a velib' station, because we figured we could take some bikes to Anna's area (we've all been wanting to use the bikes, and it seemed much safer to ride them at night when there were fewer cars to kill us). Unfortunately, our credit cards didn't work at the station (and the ticket the British dude we met at the station didn't work either so I guess that station was broken).

Since plan B failed, we just decided to walk back (I'm not sure what time it was at this point in time, but I want to say that we left my neighborhood at 2ish, so it was probably between 3 and 4 when we decided to walk). We got to the Bastille area after a lovely walk (though I almost got destroyed by a night bus which was pretty scary), but since the metro reopens at 5:30 (or 5) and by the time we got near Anna's place it was 4:30ish, Anna said that she'd rather go to a café and get some coffee/hot chocolate so I could take the metro back home as opposed to trying to figure out the night bus/walking/taking a taxi (we contemplated whether or not Anna should have taken a taxi from my neighborhood when we missed the first bus, but I'm very glad that plan didn't work out). We picked a café that was still open (actually there were many open) and we just talked some more while we waited for the metro to open. By the time we got it, the sun was rising and it was pretty weird since I honestly didn't feel that tired at the time (even without the coffee). We finally parted ways after our 3-4 hour adventure and I just took the metro home (there were some thugs with what I hope was a fake (and not a real) gun on my train so I was pretty scared the whole ride home, but since I'm writing this now, I obviously made it back with minimal damage).

Today (as in after I woke up) was much more low key, especially after last night's adventure. Just an absurd amount of work, grocery shopping, and dinner with my host mother. And writing this blog post.

I would like to write more about the adventure, though. It was honestly the most enjoyable night I've had (n'importe où). It was just really nice being able to walk around without such a huge group of people (not that I don't love you guys) and without an absurd amount of people in the streets. And it was really nice just being able to talk to someone about anything and everything. Sure, I could have gotten more sleep had we gotten a taxi for Anna at the beginning of our adventure, but I'm glad we didn't. I hope that I'll remember such a legen- (wait for it) -dary story (well in my head it was awesome, but I'm sure the story's not as exciting as I think it is when it's retold in blog form) for the rest of my life, because it really was one of the greatest experiences I've had.

Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted right now (who would have thought) and I have to wake up almost as early as I went to sleep yesterday so I can get ready for class, so I think I'm going to go to sleep now (instead of doing some more work because I think I have a lot for this week). My sleepiness is also my excuse for the above-average amount of spelling/grammatical errors that I'm sure I've made throughout this blog post.

Au revoir tout le monde!

For the 3 (±6) people who actually read this blog consistently (I do believe it's possible that -3 people can read this blog consistently; I just haven't worked out the details as to how), this is must be a long awaited update...

I apologize for not writing over the past week. I blame it on a combination of the work we have to do (which is only increasing) and the fact that I'd rather sleep than write in my blog when I'm really sleepy. There's also the fact that I haven't really done anything interesting (in my opinion anyways) recently).

Let's see...after class on Thursday me and some people (Anna, Ananya, et Daniel) visited Versailles. We got into the château for free, and honestly, going inside would not have been worth whatever it cost. Sure, it was pretty cool seeing the ornate decorations and stuff, but it was packed with tourists, which made it hard to enjoy. Here's a picture taken in the hall of mirrors:

The hall of mirrors was quite disappointing as we had expected there to be far more mirrors there

The best part of the visit was our adventure in the gardens (which were gratuite by the way; on a random note, I apologize for my mélange of anglais et French; I'm not really doing it on purpose and I'm far too lazy to change it). The plants were quite beautiful in the sun. Random story, we were just chillin', near a fountain in a pond, when all of a sudden, Daniel yelled because he spied the downpour from a sudden cloudburst headed our way. Unfortunately, since my parapluie broke the day I bought it, I had to build a barrier from the rain using my friends umbrellas. As I mentioned before, it was a more or less sunny day before the 3 minute rain, so it was still sunny while we were taking shelter. Here's a picture of the weird weather:

This weather was absurd

Once it cleared up, we decided to head over toward a small lake/large pond in the gardens which contained rowboats. We wanted to go on a boat. And we did. And it was awesome. There's really no other way to describe it. According to the homme who reluctantly loaned us the boat (according to him it was too windy to go out on the water and he didn't want to have to save us if/when we flipped over), I was a good rameur (rower) since I managed to get us back to the dock without too much damage. Here's a picture of us on the boat:

An 11 euro boat ride for 4? Yes please!

The next day, we visited le Louvre to complete some sort of treasure hunt for our class. We didn't encounter a significant amount of tourists since les tableaux weren't near the more mainstream pieces of art (La Jaconde, pour exemple). This was pretty tiring since we had to walk a lot, but we got to see some pretty cool stuff. Like this:

Le singe antiquaire, de Chardin. He was quite fond of monkeys dressed up in cute little outfits. We definitely have similar tastes...

Apart from that, I didn't really do anything this weekend (lots of work). Sunday I went to go watch the finals of Roland Garros on a giant screen on Court 1. It wasn't terrible, in spite of the rain (and my lack of rain jacket and parapluie). I waited out the first rain delay in my seat because it wasn't raining too badly and I didn't want the seat to get too wet. But then I left after Nadal was up in the 3rd set 2-1. I suppose that's good because I didn't have to watch Djokovic finish his run of 8 straight games. I wish I could have watched the match from within Philippe-Chatrier, but I'm not exactly rollin' in the dough these days, so I had to settle for paying money to watch it on a giant screen (which I technically could have done for free but I actually got a seat and whatever so it was totally worth it).

Today we got to visit some sort of insane asylum/hospital and an orphanage (well the grounds of these places). It was...something. We did visit this one jardin which had really awesome plants (and sculptures). There was also a zoo there, but it would have cost us 8 euro each so we didn't go, which is really sad because I love animals.

I can't really think of anything interesting to say here right now. What is kind of scary, though, is the fact that I'm over halfway done right now. I hate thinking about that. I've been here for over 3 weeks, and I'll be home in less than 3 weeks. Honestly, I have no desire to return to the EL (no offense). I mean, I'm in Paris. And in all honestly, I'm never going to be able to have another experience like this the rest of my life. Sure, I can visit the city (if I ever end up rollin' in the dough), but unless I somehow get a job here, I'm never going to live here again. I'm actually strongly considering double majoring in Chemistry and French (dropping my philosophy minor because, let's get serious, that wasn't for real) and then maybe trying to get an internship here one summer because that would be even more awesome than this.

Well, I got nothing else to say now...(I've far too sad at the moment to write anymore)

Au revoir tout le monde!