Une Baguette, s'il vous plaît

The rest of my week went well. I had classes again Wednesday and Thursday. I’m still not sure what I think of most of my classes and I haven’t really figured out how difficult/ easy they will be. It seems to me that they will be mostly reading, except for my French language class. My reading for my PoliSci. EU class was extremely long and would have been challenging in English, so it was definitely a task in French. But it seemed like most of my class felt about the same way.

I didn’t have class today (Friday) so I spend the morning running errands. I bought a new book to read for pleasure since I finished Harry Potter. They didn’t have the seventh Harry Potter book in the cheaper pocket size, so I bought the second book in the Golden Compass series. If that goes well I’m thinking about buying Anna Karenina next sine I never got around to finishing it this summer. We’ll see how ambitious I’m feeling – it might end up just being Le Petit Nicholas (children’s book for 7 year olds – very cute and amusing, nonetheless). After Fnac I went to Monprix to do my grocery shopping. I’m hoping it will last me two weekends (besides maybe a new baguette and some more lettuce). I was better about healthier items this time, now that I wasn’t feeling quite as overwhelmed. Buy bread still causes problems for me. For some reason whatever type of bread I decide I want is never labeled with a name – all the other one’s are, just not mine (and I did try the walk up to the counter and ask for a baguette idea, the baker looked at me and was like which type?). What I want is probably never labeled because it is like one of the most basic types and every French person knows what it’s called. But for me this leads to a very complicated process of me trying to tell the baker guy which loaf I want without just pointing. I sounded especially like an idiot today. But I finally ended up with a batard (yes they call a type of baguette “a bastard” here). So maybe I’ll just stick with that for now on to limit my mumbling descriptions.

So after running errands I was ready for lunch and made myself a salad and had some hummus and little toast crackers with it. Then I headed over to the Louvre for a couple of hours. I figure since I have unlimited access to the Louvre I can take it slowly so I just chose a section and walked around that, it was almost all sculptures. I had so little time last time I was in the Louvre, I didn’t really have time to admire the building itself. You see this amazing, huge building from the outside, but when you get inside you’re distracted by all of the artwork. The building itself is amazing!!! I really wish I could take a tour that talked about that and not the art. I tried to make a point of really taking in each room as a whole and then looking at the sculptures.

I decided to mail some postcards from the post office in the Louvre because I was feeling too tired to find one of the post offices in my suburb. While in there, this American couple came in and asked about buying a phone card. The guy behind the counter offered them a 6 euro phone card, but the guy just wanted to call a restaurant to make a reservation. The post office wouldn’t sell them anything less, so I offered to let them borrow my cell phone (I figure I could always use a little extra good karma).

By the time I decided I was tired and should head home, I was really hungry and it was only 4pm so I figured I could get a crêpe somewhere as a snack. I refused to buy my first crêpe in Paris from the Louvre food court, but sadly the Louvre is surrounded my touristy shops and then super chic and ritzy areas (literally – I stumbled upon the Ritz in my search for food). So there were sadly no crêpes for Devon (the only ones I could find were pre-made and then the guy would just heat them up and add filling – not authentic!). I headed home, even more tired from my crêpe search, and made dinner. I should really start thinking about doing some of my homework, but I think that will just have to wait for tomorrow…