Hey There

Hello... Sorry it's been so long since I've checked in. I feel like I say that a lot, I just get busy and this kind of falls to the bottom of my list of priorities. Anyway, things are still going well here. I had a big grammar test yesterday and I'm not sure I know how I did. That brings me to an interesting point though: the French grading system. Everything is graded on a scale of 0-20 with 0 being the worst and 20 being the best. I have never seen anybody get a 20. The average score is 10-12, decent is 12-14, good is 14-16, really good is 16-18, and anything above that is almost impossible. So what they do is you start with 20 points, and then for each mistake that you make, you lose one point. Unfortunately, that does not leave much room for error. If your teacher is nice (which thankfully, mine are) they will only take off a half point if the mistake is not serious. The difficult part comes when you get your grade. Although a 12 is average, it still has a tendency to remind you just how poorly you speak French. Fortunately, I got a 16...

Anyway, on a lighter note, I saw my first French protest today. For those of you that don't know, France is renowned for its workers going on strike. Some French people even joke that it's France's national sport. Since I've been here, there have been at least three strikes that I know about. Today, there was a strike by most of the high school professors and some of the students. The cool part of it is that they closed down one of the busiest streets in Southern Paris. It was funny, the police knew that they were going to protest so they closed down the street to give the protesters a staging area. Then all of these vans showed up as part of the protest and they tied big balloons to the top of the vans with the name of each school that was there. I felt like I was seeing a practice run of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or something. So then, after about 45 minutes of standing around, things got started and the protesters marched down the street to one of the busiest intersections I know of, right in front of a major train station. Everything just shut down and nobody acted like it was abnormal. It was weird but pretty funny. All I know is that I'm glad I was walking and didn't have to try to drive around all of that mess. Here's a link to a news story about the strike: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article_interactif/2009/11/24/les-enseignants-en-greve-pour-vos-enfants_1271261_3224.html. It's in French, sorry. I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

So last weekend I went to the Cathedral at Chartres. Chartres is a small town about an hour and a half drive west of Paris. There wasn't anything special about the cathedral except for the fact that it's one of the oldest cathedrals in the world. I guess if you include the Druids, people have been worshiping in that spot since 300 b.c. You can see walls that were built in 700 a.d. I will get some pictures of that up soon as well. (It's starting to look like my next post will just be pictures).

I also went to the opera last Thursday. We saw a German opera called Salomé. The story is pretty disturbing. Salomé is the daughter of King Herod from the bible. Well King Herod has John the Baptist arrested for something and when Salomé sees John the Baptist, she falls in love with him. Of course, when Salomé comes onto John the Baptist, he turns her down because he is entirely devoted to God. Well John the Baptist starts telling King Herod that his kingdom will not last and that the only eternal kingdom is God's. So Herod gets sad and asks Salomé to dance for him. Salomé doesn't want to because she is heartbroken over John the Baptist. King Herod offers her anything that she desires if she will dance for him. (That's where it starts to get weird. See, there's a creepy, incestuous sexual tension between Salomé and her father, King Herod). So, Salomé does a dance.

Now, I was disappointed in her dance. It's the infamous "dance of the seven veils" where Salomé is wearing seven veils and she takes them off one by one until she is totally naked. It's supposed to be very sexy and is often considered the first strip-tease. Somehow, the director of this opera managed to make this dance very unsexy and really just weird.

But anyway, back to the story... So when Salomé finishes her dance, Herod asks her what it is that she wants in return. Since John the Baptist denied Salomé, she demands his head on a platter. King Herod tries to talk her out of it, but it doesn't work. So John's head gets cut off (offstage) and then they bring it on stage and present it to Salomé. She gets really weird at this point and starts professing her undying love (and lust) for John the Baptist, to his severed head. There's a lot of writhing around on the floor and then she has a schizophrenic attack and tells John's head that she hates it, then that she loves it, then that she hates it, and so on. Long story short, she makes out with his severed head and then lays on it, weeping. The end. Like I said, it's a weird story. And the opera was in German (they had French subtitles above the stage). Needless to say, I didn't really care for it. But it was kind of cool going to the opera in Paris.

So, I think that's enough for now. I will try to be in touch and try to get some damn pictures up. If I don't talk to you before Thursday, happy Thanksgiving.

Hello There

Hey friends. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Anyway, I survived Amsterdam. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I didn't have much fun and the city is a little creepy. But I had plenty of good beer and even tried some pretty good dutch food. I'll post some pictures in a few days, but I don't have time right now. Last weekend we went to Versailles. It's pretty neat, but (and I feel horrible saying this), it's just another insanely large French palace. I know that sounds funny, but it's kind of true. After a while you start to feel like, okay, this was built by Louis XIV in the 1600's and there's a lot of guilding, and mirrors, and nice gardens, show me something I haven't seen. Anyway, rather than taking it for granted, I just take it as a reminder that I'm in Paris and I'm loving it. While it doesn't sound like Versailles was much fun, I did enjoy it and I will share some pictures from there as well. I met a French girl the other evening. I was walking to the Metro after class and I walked by the Pantheon and thought "hey Pantheon, what's up?" (because again, I see it everyday and it's pretty commonplace at this point) and when I looked back down to see where I was walking, there was an extremely cute French girl standing there. I thought to myself "now that's nice". Then she came up to me and asked me for directions to the Metro. At first, I wasn't sure that this was actually happening, I thought maybe Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out of the alley or something, so I said excuse me and asked her to repeat her question. She asked me again "Where is the nearest Metro?" So, I whipped out my map, and showed here where we were, and where the two nearest Metro stops were. Then it hit me, "I'm walking to the Metro right now". So I told her to follow me. We started walking and neither of us was saying anything. So I asked her her name and she told me it was Emily. We continued talking and I learned that she is 21, she's from Normandy, she is studying agronomy (which I later discovered is the science of agriculture), etc. The entire time I couldn't really believe that this was happening, but I figured I'd just go with it. So we get to the Metro stop and I start walking down the stairs to the train that goes my direction and I just assumed she would do the same, because why wouldn't she. She stopped me and said that she had to go the opposite direction and then she looked at me for a few seconds like "what happens now?" So, being the suave guy that I am, I said "okay, well I'll see you later" and she goes "Oh, okay, well thank you, goodbye". In retrospect, that was the worst possible way that I could have handled the situation. But at least I got some practice speaking French as our entire conversation was in French. So anyway, my new goal is to find Emily, and my second goal, if the first doesn't work out, is to find a cute French girl because in the words of one of my professors "at least if a French girls says something stupid, it sounds pretty".

Anyway, I am also trying to find new things to do in Paris or to see things that I haven't yet seen. I have an entire list of places already, but if you have any good suggestions, let me know. Talk to you later.