Classes aren't real.

Sometimes, Paris feels like an ugly stepchild…how can you possibly hate something you love so much?

This is how I felt Tuesday at my class at the fac.  I stayed up until 3 Monday working on a paper for the class, which we were given little instructions on (at least, little instruction that I understood).  Then, I woke up early to finish it since I was still confused.  I got to class, rushing because I went to NYU first to print it out, and no one else had theirs.

So, our professor said everyone could just turn them in next week.  Seriously?!  Can I become a blasé French university student now please?

At the risk of being a dork, I went ahead and gave him my paper.  I told him I wasn’t sure if I completely understood the assignment and he said he’d look at it and talk to me after class next week.  He’s really nice and passionate about what he teaches (sometimes so passionnate I probably wouldn’t even be able to understand him if he were speaking English…I gave up trying to catch every word a few weeks ago when the lectures started giving me migraines).  The only frustrating part is that I still have NO idea how I’ll be graded.  My tutorat at NYU told me that I need to be more forceful asking him next week and then we can come up with a plan.

Last night, I went to go see a play with my theatre class.  That is actually most of the reason why I’m in that class.  I took a French theatre class and a Shakespeare class last semester at UMW, but throughout both of them I wished I could be at the Folger Theatre in DC or somewhere showing Huis Clos, but all that was available at the time were movies and recordings of performances.  Now, I live just a few metro stops from La Comédie Française, so it really is the perfect place to learn about theatre.

We saw Jeu de L’île, a mix of three different stories by Marivaux, Île de la Raison, Île des Esclaves, and La Colonie.  The theatre, Le Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, was kiiind of far away and was actually in the outskirts of Paris, but it was brand new and the architecture was VERY modern.  Not exactly La Comédie, but it was still pretty cool.

The show itself was really well done and very simple.  It didn’t hurt that our tickets were in the second row and I was in the middle (thanks NYU!). I don’t really have anything else to compare it to yet, but from what I read last semester it seems like sets in French theatre are always more minimalist than those of the English (En Attendant Godot, anyone?).  The simplicity made the ideas seem more important though, which I think was the intention of Marivaux when he wrote it…obviously.

After the show, Effie, Stephanie and I went to Rue Mouffetard for drinks.  Our class consists of five girls, so we were the majority.  We went to The Student Bar, and as we were sipping on our first drinks (un mojito royal bien sur!), we watched our waiter place a giant bowl on the table across from ours: the Aquarium.

Literally, this drink is a fish bowl full of cocktail.  We ordered a Blue Alaska (I don’t remember what was in it other than vodka and blue curacao), which arrived at our table with skewers of marshmallows floating in the glass.  A lot of bars in Paris serve drinks with marshmallows…I’m not exactly sure where that trend originated from but I won’t complain.  We had to drink it fast though, because the metro was about to close.

I decided I was going to try to take the night bus (cooler name: Noctillen, unfortunately with no Harry Potter reference though) home because there was a stop just past Rue Mouffetard that went right to my stop.  Too bad the next one came in 31 minutes.  No thanks.  I ran to catch the metro as fast as I could, but there weren’t any direct lines to Place de Clichy.  Faiiil.  Luckily, my exploration the past few weeks has taught me the general areas that are near where I live, so I took the metro as far as I could on that line, then got in line to take a taxi up the street…I wasn’t trying to walk by myself at 1 a.m.

In line for the taxi (a very long line mind you), a man came up to me and asked where I was going.  I gave him the most general answer I could and he told me that he was trying to get to Montmartre but with the line so long it would only make sense to share.  NO THANKS.  Liam Neeson is NOT my father and I am not trying to get taken.  I basically told him sorry tant pis, luckily he left me alone (don’t worry Hel, I wasn’t in a scary neighborhood and there were a ton of middle-aged women and businessmen around…unless they were all accomplices I think I was safe).  Finally, I got home and ran to my room…I was exhausted!