If I was a teenage girl this would be something clichéd, but I'm not, so all you get is this as a title

Today was such a wonderful day!

In one my classes, we started a discussion of poetry (in French of course). In a brazen attempt to toot my own horn, I'm quite good at reading/writing poetry in French. Yesterday, for my other class, we had to write some sort of descriptive paragraph about the sociability of the French. I chose to write something about parks (we've been to so many parks, so it was an easy paragraph to write). When my professor (she's actually French) looked over my shoulder to read my masterpiece, she said it was beautiful and very poetic (well I'm pretty sure she said the poetic part, but I'm sure she thought it was beautiful, because quite frankly, it is). While this only brought my ego to a slightly higher level, class today (the one that I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph) brought my ego to levels that haven't been reached in quite some time (2-3 weeks, after I received my bio 119 grade).

A little background information: the French class I took last semester was a phonetics class. Ergo, we learned a lot about pronunciation and such. "And such" refers to different types of alcohol drank in France and how to read French poetry. The weird thing about French poetry is that many of the letters (ok so it's only the letter "e") that would be silent in normal conversation are pronounced in order to add more syllables to the line of poetry.

Now back to me talking about how awesome I am.

Before 27ish hours ago, I'm pretty sure that only me and 2-3 other people in my class were aware of how weird reading French poetry is. Today in class, we were studying a particular poem ("Correspondances" by Baudelaire). To teach the class the intricacies of reading French poetry, my teacher had most everyone in the class take turns reading the poem. After each of the first few readings, she would take some time to discuss different aspects of French poetry. After the first 3 or so, she discussed the pronunciation of silent e's to maintain a proper syllable count. When she was going through the first few lines, I kept on bringing up different examples of pronounced silent e's that she had overlooked in each line (it should be noted that at this point in time, only the two other people who had taken my phonetics class with me knew about the e's, and thus, they were the only people who understood why I was able to drop some knowledge). This continued for a while, and my peers were in stunned silence by my mastery of the pronunciation of French poetry (I was referred to as a "genius" before I explained that I took a class where we learned about reading French poetry. Nevertheless, I believe that the "genius" comment still holds true). After showing up my professor, it came time for the next student to read the poem. In choice that was completely out of nowhere, I was chosen to be the next reader.

Unfortunately, I had not yet completed my analysis of the poem, so I wasn't actually prepared to read it at the time (I had yet to look at the last two stanzas to figure out their pronunciations). It didn't matter. My reading of the poem would have made angels cry. Sure, I made a few mistakes (I was under quite a bit of pressure, and as I previously stated, I wasn't actually ready), but Baudelaire himself couldn't have imagined a more perfect reading of his work of art. The end of my reading was greeted by a lively applause (and I'm sure if there was more room, there would have been a standing ovation). When the professor asked who wanted to go next, no one wanted to; it was obviously because they knew that their readings would pale in comparison to the vocal masterpiece that was my reading (this was actually somewhat true). Others ended up reading the poem (they had to), but I'm sure my recitation of the poem still resonates within their souls at this very moment.

Well I'm glad I got that out of my system.

After class today, we "flâned" a bit.

Here's some background information on my current story (and it may or may not be an integral part of my next story): my friend Daniel and I both wanted to go clothes shopping, mainly so we could get some actual European clothes and not look like n00bs. I had another reason. I was pretty much out of clean clothes. Many of the shirts I've been wearing had been worn at least one other time under the hot Parisian sun, and it was getting to the point where I couldn't bear wearing them again. I had to get some new clothes. Yesterday, we went to a store that we had walked by this weekend (there was a big sale there), but all the clothes there were really, really weird.

And now we're back.

We were in the general area of a mall (apparently), so Daniel (if you're reading this, do you prefer "Daniel," or do you go by "Dan," "Danny," "Danny-boy," etc) and I wanted to go to get some clothes. Unfortunately, the women we were with decided to go into this one thrift store/dance club (there appeared to be strobe lights and music half a story above the main floor) and take a lot of time there. We checked, but there wasn't really anything there for guys. We got impatient, so I said: let's go to the mall (not actually, but I wish I had in retrospect). The H&M there had really good prices. I got some v-necks, other things that I was running out of  (I'll leave this to your imagination)...

...and gray skinny jeans. And these are actually legitimately skinny. I'm trying to fit in with the French, though, so I had to buy them (and they were cheaper than most jeans I own, which gave me another reason to purchase them).

And now, time for the best part of my day (and possibly the best part about my time at Paris thus far).

When I returned to my room, MY CLOTHES WERE WASHED!!!!!! Now my host mother told me she would wash them for me (French washing machines are apparently absurd). I just thought she said she would do my laundry Monday; when I returned from class yesterday to see that my clothes weren't washed, I panicked (which was part of the reason I went to the mall today). I was so happy to see that my clothes were clean, that I didn't have to wear a smelly shirt for once.

Time for the randomness:

Sunday, my friend Ananya and I decided to explore our neighborhood (we live on the same street) and get dinner together (with our friend Anna). We were feeling pizza. After walking awhile, we found this one pizza place that looked reasonable. We each got individual pizzas that we had to eat with a knife and fork. Here's a picture of my pizza:

This may look janky to you, but it was delicious. The egg needed a bit of pepper, though.

It was quite good (I felt like I was taking a huge risk getting an egg on my pizza). Holy crap I want another one right now. I'm kind of hungry right now. The last few days, the majority of my diet has been comprised of golden delicious apples and granola/cereal bars. I could do something to get more filling food; I just chose to be incredibly frugal and only buy golden delicious apples and granola/cereal bars instead of real meals.

Oh man, looking at that picture is making me drool right now, and I'm kind of tempted to eat my computer screen right now because in my deluded, malnourished state (if you're actually concerned, I'm just being melodramatic), I'm convinced that this picture of the pizza on my computer will taste like the pizza did.

Anyways, I have nothing else to say (I managed to combine to random stories into one, so I feel quite accomplished right now).

Au revoir tout le monde!