j'habite à Paris...pour maintenant!: school begins

let me just say...i really love commuting to school on the Paris Métro, and making transfers between lines. it's strangely kinda' fun! but yes, that's what i did this morning. i took the subway to school, and my first class was at 9:00.
it's a Langue Française Eléméntaire 3 class, and my professor is named Emmanuelle Saunier. she's a cute little older woman with dark hair, and an interestingly dorky fashion sense. she's very animated and fun, and she said that she doesn't speak English at all...or any of the other languages. there are people from all over the world in my class: Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Denmark, Korea, Peru, Spain, the USA, etc. etc. ...it's crazy having French as a common language, haha. speaking only French in class is very tough, but it's possible. my brain hurt by the end of that class.
then i met up with my CEA buddies at the cafeteria on campus, and had a little lunch and discussed our first class.

Prof. Saunier & my classrom, during our 15-minute break

i then had another class at 2...a Phonétique class. now, not only did my brain hurt from the class before...but THIS class made my entire jaw, cheeks, lips, and tongue hurt! it was pretty much 3 hours of pronouncing different vowel sound combinations over and over. but it's so helpful! my professor, Mariane Palmiero, is also very cute and funny. she's a little younger and ALSO has a strange, but cool, fashion sense! but yeah...she has no sense of personal space. if you were pronouncing a sound incorrectly, she came up to you and grabbed your face and told you to do it again until you get it right...and pushed your face the way it needed to be to make the sound. seriously...French phonetics are so much harder than German phonetics. sure, nobody in France really talks that way, with exaggerated facial stretching to pronounce a sound, but it's good practice to do it while learning the language, i guess. i just wish it were twice a week for 90 minutes instead of once for 3 hours. i think my face will be aching every monday afternoon for the next few months. :/

inside Building P

outside Building P

once school was over, i was really tired...so i headed out of there quickly. i went with fiona to CEA to mess around on the computers and look stuff up while she was working on something. we parted ways, and i ran a few errands...buying a few things i needed from a store. i returned home for an afternoon rest, and then went over to krystina's homestay in the 15th arrondisement. her host family is out of town for vacation for a few days, so tom and i got some wine and brought it over. we watched 30 Rock, got some Chinese food, watched Amélie...and eventually fell asleep there unintentionally. it was a good night.