Chiche!

So when I left you last, I was enjoying free bread on the terrace of an idyllic café. Well, I’m still there.
Just kidding. Instead, I’ve discovered the marvel that is the university restaurant. Let me tell you, the French know how to do food right (something that may not come as a surprise to many of you). For 2.85 (Euros, naturally, so about $4.25 with the exchange rate the way it is), you get a main dish (meat, vegetable, and a grain), an appetizer or yogurt or fruit, and a small dessert. Or a main dish and a large dessert. Plus the ubiquitous free bread and water. It is perhaps not haute cuisine, but let me tell you, TDR has some things to learn about cafeteria food. Furthermore, we have spent long hours of conversation discussing why the amazing packaged mousse (made by such commonplace companies as Dannon and Yoplait) does not exist in the US. Epic fail.
My food rave temporarily over, except to tell you that surely heaven has crêperies and patisseries on every corner, I can now move on to a short explanation of my life here and what I will be doing for the next few months.
The past week and a half I have devoted three hours a day to an “intensive” French course, where we review basic grammar and French culture. It has not been particularly challenging, but I have learned a few things. For example, the title of this post, “chiche,” means basically “go on, I dare you” (i.e. as a response to something along the lines of “I can eat this entire cake in the next ten minutes”). We have also done some neat cultural activities, such as visiting a cabaret (no girls doing the can-can, sorry guys, just people sitting around singing old French songs, but fun nonetheless) and a guided tour of the Louvre. In any case, we have one more week of that, after which we head to our universities, which we (or at least I) have now chosen. I will shortly be enrolled in the Institut Catholique de Paris, a small(ish—it’s about the size of AU) private school with a beautiful campus in the middle of Paris. There’s a week of orientation starting the 22nd, and then classes start the 29th.
It may be worthwhile to take a minute to say that the whole process has been extremely disorganized and explain a little bit why. The French university system is very different from the American one. First off, it is state sponsored, and everyone who passes their baccalauréat at the end of high school may enroll. Costs of enrollment are under 500 euros a year. Secondly, the French enroll as part of a strict degree program, where the course is basically planned out for them with very few electives (they also get the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in 3 years). So they basically get told what classes to take when and so they show up. We American exchange students get to pick really any classes we want, but they don’t have the same mechanism to deal with that kind of choice, so it’s a rather frustrating administrative mess. Long story short: I don’t yet know what classes I’ll be taking.
Finally, in addition to hopefully traveling the continent, I will be doing some babysitting on the side to earn some pocket money.
Other updates/random trivia:
I still have no internet at my homestay. And now my battery charger has decided not to work. Technology is the bane of my existence.
My dad came to visit this weekend and we walked and walked and walked. Paris is enormous. Also, Sunday is a very interesting day because at least half, perhaps three quarters, of the stores are closed. Walk to the next corner to get your baguette, you lazy bum. (Oh and the Parisians walk a lot a lot. And there are stairs EVERYwhere).
Notes on French domestics: the washers are smaller and there are no dryers. Europeans sleep not between two sheets under a comforter or blanket like most Americans, but on top of one sheet and under a kind of comforter that has a washable cover that you change like you change sheets. Oh and the pillows are square.
Everything is super efficient. My family has a thing that hangs on the wall that dispenses not only paper towels, but also tinfoil and saran wrap. And there are jump seats in the metro (you pull them down to sit on them) to save space and allow for more standing room in crowded situations. Again, why do we not have these things in the US?
I’m still having a great time, still missing everybody lots. Hope everything is going well at home despite bank failures.
A bientôt!