le 2 juillet

Thursday was our first day of French class. We had a little get to know you activity using French. It was kind of easy. I hope I can move up. I talked to my teacher about it and she said she would decide Monday. I really should have reviewed before the test... oh well, c'est la vie. My teacher and class are really good though, so I guess it wouldn't be too bad to have to stay in it. She is really beautiful, she kind of reminds me of the woman on Big Fish, you know the son's French wife.

We had lunch at a very popular little cafe type thing that has lots of food a emporter (to go - and there are accents there but I don't know how to write them on this computer). I got a sandwich with tomatoes and this really great cheese that I forgot what it was called and some type of meat. I don't know what it was lol, I think pork of some kind. We ate with our friends in the courtyard of the Catho.

Photo class was interesting. We looked at slides and learned about the beginnings of photography and a little about the science behind it. We saw some awesome slides by this one guy named Abe Morell. We looked at his slides as an example of a kind of camera obscura. And then mostly looked at historical pictures of Paris that were really great. It was so hot though. I was expecting the weather to be cooler and maybe rainy but it is in the 90s every day and like I said before there is no air conditioning and the metro is death. Like you can feel the sweat on the poles when you have to stand... so gross.

Our dinner that night was absolutely delish though! We had like wheat kernels that had been cooked somehow I think with like garlic and butter or something. O it was amazing and we had les haricots vert (green beans) and un omlette. YUMMY. It is the best dinner Madame has made us so far.

We just relaxed again and I watched TV to see if I could catch some things I know. TV and radio are hard to understand because people talk very fast. It is funny they show old American shows here all the time like Malcolm in the Middle comes on when we are eating dinner and they play other old series like Starsky and Hutch. They also have MTV but dubbed in French. It is pretty funny.

After we rested for a while, Brittany and I went out for a promenade in our neighborhood trying to take some pictures. The lighting wasn't good so we weren't able to really practice what little we have learned in photo class so far. We just are changing aperture really and keeping our ISOs at 400 and shutter speed between 125 and 250 so we ended up just using night settings but practiced finding things that looked interesting to us. It was fun. We want to go back sometime when the lighting is better. I really like our neighborhood. There is a busy street not far but as soon as you leave it there is a hominess and quiet sociableness to the area. It feels pretty safe all the time, too.

I'm still uploading pics so I'll include them in the next post :)