aagghh my time here is winding down so fast! i'm so sad. i just went back to my alma mater, the alliance francaise, to pick up some test results from april. no, i wasn't lazy, they're just available now. i even impressed the secretary with my scores (oral comprehension 42/50 and written comprehension 41/60). i know i impressed her, cus she said so. so yesterday i decided i would walk to my school to get my scores. it took about an hour and by the time i got there i was a sweaty beast. so i get to the office tell the lady i want my scores and she says to write my name down and come back tomorrow and she'll have the scores ready. so i say ok. so i come back today and she didn't have my scores ready! i also took the test in may so i guess she figured i could wait til july when the may scores were ready to get my april scores as well, even though she told me to come back today. so she tells me to sit down, asks for my name, types it into the computer and prints out my results. i hope you're thinking "why didn't she just do that yesterday?" cus that's what i'm still thinking.

tonight is my last writing workshop at shakespeare and company. the leader told us last week that she's putting together a book of short stories focusing on shared experiences, and it just so happens i have a wonderful story already written on that subject. so here's hoping i get published! send out good vibes for me.

and my mom comes tomorrow! i'm so excited to see her and have her pay for stuff for me. (i want a new purse!) i'm going to take her on a tour of the paris sewers cus she really loves waste-water management (true!). she also really wants to see notre dame and the louvre (again) because i think that she thinks the more she goes the more her life will resemble "the davinci code." which reminds me that i should show her st. sulpice. (if i didn't write that down, i would forget. bear with me). i also have two friends coming in a few days as well and it's their first time in paris. i'm very excited to play tour guide and show them all the fabulous things that i have come to love in paris.

i may have already mentioned bagels and brownies, but i'll mention it again. it's this fabulous sandwich shop near the st. placide metro stop that serves all their sandwiches on bagels. they also sell brownies. so today after i got my test results, i got a fabulous sandwich (the los angeles!) and a brownie. i just finished eating them, and now i could use a nap. no point to that story really, except that you should go there if you get a chance.

i don't want to leave paris! i'll just need someone to ship me my cat.

Harry Potter and the Train of Awesome

Today, le train Harry Potter rolled into Gare du Nord here in Paris. Thank goodness facebook knows so much about me, cus the ad for it popped up on my homepage. I said to myself, "self, you need to go to there." So I hopped on the 5 train and took myself to Gare du Nord. So I get to the tracks at the train station and I'm welcomed by an arch that says "Harry Potter et le Prince de sang-mele" (sorry i don't know how to type accents, but that's pronounced mel-ay). I was so excited! The line wasn't too long which was good, cus I hate waiting in lines. So we get inside the train and we're taken through Diagon Alley where we pass by Flourish and Blotts. Then we pass through a classroom filled with potion, then the Gryffindor common room, and then the best part, Crookshanks was there! The real Crookshanks, who is Hermione's cat in the movies. I told the Crookshanks's handler (I would loooove that job!) that the cat was very brave, and he informed me that it's because he's a movie cat! I was petting a celebrity! The only other celebrity that let me pet him was Chace Crawford. I'm not sure which I'm more excited about.

i haven't been doing anything interesting

so i finished my french class a little over a week ago, and i have to say, i don't have much motivation to do all the exploring and sightseeing that i thought i would with all of my free time. tant pis. did i ever mention the annoying german kid in my class? i don't think he's annoying cus he's german, but it gives a little bit of identity to an otherwise anonymous person. so he just really bothered me. i didn't like the way he would say "merci" and give a serial-killer type smile to the instructor whenever she corrected him. mostly because i knew he wasn't listening to the correction and because that smile really creeped me out. so this kid would show up maybe twice a week and no earlier than 30 minutes after class started. so rude. so this one day, when it was time to take our break, dude just decides he's going to sleep (that's him in the pic!), so he puts his head down and really goes to sleep! i know this because i came back a few minutes early, and there he was, mouth wide open like he was in the privacy of his own home. then he woke up and knew i was in there, but he still kept on sleeping! i was making as much noise as possible but he just wouldn't wake up. i hate watching other people sleep. especially at noon in the middle of a classroom. so before anyone starts thinking i'm being too hard on this kid, let me just add that he pushed me. that's right. pushed me. it happened after i decided i hated him, but that just means that i was justified. so on the last day of class we all took a field trip to a cafe across the street. on the way back my instructor was showing me some ads at a travel agent, when all of a sudden i am being pushed towards the building by an unwelcome force on my upper arm. i turn around in disbelief and who do i see? the german kid with that serial killer smile on his face. i looked at him. then looked at my arm where he dared to make contact with me. then looked at him AGAIN to really make the point that that was absolutely not ok. for clarification, two french people who couldn't be bothered to walk around me were trying to pass me on the sidewalk, and instead of saying "oh hey look out!" he decided to assault me.

so we had to take a test at the end of the session to prove how much we learned. i did ok. so this kid from argentina showed up after the test had started. i had forgotten he was in the class cus he only came to one lesson, then didn't show up again until the day of the test, over a week later. so he walked in and clearly had no idea there was a test that day. the look on his face was priceless. so the instructor gave him the test but told him he couldn't make up the first part, which was oral comprehension. apparently this pissed him off and he never came back to class again cus he was so angry. maybe if you ever went to class you would know when the tests were...

so i finally won a t-shirt in my trivial pursuit of a...t-shirt. it's all that i wanted. i got it at music trivia where i proudly answered one of the tie-breaking questions correctly (in french!) the question was: who composed the music for "the simpsons" movie. i shouted out "danny elfman!" and won a tie-breaking point for my team. if i'm being honest though, i only knew that answer because it was a recycled question from the week before. but it was in french, and i answered, so i'm proud of myself. we ended up losing the tie-breaker and got third place but that was good enough for t-shirts and that's all that matters to me.

today was free museum day again. i went to the rodin museum. i'm glad i didn't pay for it. i saw "the thinker" and that was cool. the gardens were pretty, but other than that i was not too impressed. just something to keep in mind if you ever think of coming to paris. i should also add how i almost died at the museum. this woman was taking a picture and i waited for her to finish, then i walked past her. all of a sudden my eyes started watering, my nose started running, and my throat was so dry i thought i was going to choke. so after like 2 minutes of this, i left the room and was all of a sudden fine. i think that woman put a curse on me! it's the only explanation...