Tea and Chocolatines

I'll start with the end of Edinburgh :-).

After touring the palace, which we could not photograph, we had some fun with the Abbey-- which by the way was like 700 years old.

I wasn't thrilled, particularly since it was almost a perfect fit...

Around the abbey, there were also gardens. With lots of purple flowers. 

Flying buttresses!

After the abbey, on our rather lengthy walk back, we found adorable sheep postcards!

We ended with a traditional fish and chips dinner and a trip to a vodka bar (don't worry, we only did two shots!) which had such intriguing flavors as birthday cake (for my belated birthday) and strawberry. 

Sunday was a travel day-- we went shopping in the morning with little to show for ourselves, and then I hopped on my plane back home. This time, although the flight was on time, the train running from the airport was under construction on Saturday and Sunday. So I waited in a lengthy line with a bunch of tourists to learn how to take the bus and to buy my ticket. Yes, they're tourists, not me :-). I spoke with the host in fluent French and he responded without blinking (I hid my American passport). Yay! Eventually, however, I did make it home in time to watch a bunch of TV and go to bed irresponsibly late (the story of my Sundays).

Monday was a stressful day. I went to the Louvre after class for a project and ended up having to pay 8 euro to get into it because I didn't have my actual visa with me and they did not like my art history student card. We also could not find the correct room for quite a while. Finally, I also had trouble charging my go-everywhere metro pass and ended up having to make my host dad pay for it with his credit card while I paid him in cash back. It made me an inexcusable 30 minutes late for class, and Katherine didn't receive the text asking her to tell our teacher that I would be running late, so he had no idea. I will be early tomorrow, don't worry.

Tuesday was a really great day despite its incredible length. After my first rounds of class, I went to my internship, where they were preparing for a party that night. My task was to help pick out books under a certain theme to use for the front display. We came across a number of themes and ended up with Eastern Europe (go figure). While doing this, I was sipping on hot black tea and mentally taking notes of which books I would ultimately buy for myself. I got to interact with the shopkeepers and practice my French. After the internship, I had to go to my Sorbonne class, which I found easily. What was not easy was understanding the Professor. The acoustics in the room were horrible, and I was nodding off at the table after being on my feet for so many hours. All of the American students (my three friends from IES and another girl) went up to the teacher afterwards to check in, and he told us none too politely that American students were annoying to him because they never were at an appropriate level of French for his class. We politely told him that we would stay in the class and sit up front in the future. He also gave us a list of 30 books to read (or something like that). This class could end up being a ton of work. Finally, at 8 PM, I was finished with the work part of my day. We staggered around until we found an Italian restaurant. I returned home to my room around 11 PM after having left 15 hours previously. Oh, Tuesdays.

Wednesday is not all that much easier, although my first class is at 12:30. After my class, I went back to my internship. This time, my job was to head out and try to leave stacks of brochures at various libraries. The unanimous response (though the reasons varied) was no. Despite this disappointment, I was happy enough to tour a few libraries and the beautiful 1st arrondissement, which was where I decided to go to the various libraries. The time passed quickly before I finished my time block and headed to my 6 PM class at IES for the seminar. It was fascinating, but once again at a time when I was fading. Happily I made it through the whole thing before heading back for dinner.

Thursday morning, I waited outside for a full 35 minutes for someone to open the door to OxFam. I'm still unclear whether Aurelie meant to tell me to come at 10:30 when it was fairly evident that she had no intention of being there before 11. Two women were waiting to work there, so I got a chance to talk to them. I also learned how to price books, which I'd never done before and thoroughly enjoyed. While I was doing this, one of the women arrived with a bag of chocalatines (chocolate croissants) which I readily ate. It was incredibly delicious. Thursday night was a stay at home night because I had to get up at 6 to go to Normandie!