Plus fatiguee.

I think that everything caught up with me today! I started with a 40 minute run again -- this time I crossed the Seine to the "Rive Droit" -- first time to the other side! And also past the "Hotel des Invalides" (again, hotel meaning mansion, not a Marriott).

I had my meeting with our director Martine this morning to finalize my classes -- in addition to the architecture course, I'm taking a Theater course (as my literature course), a class in the history of the relations between France and Africa, and a course in the Economics of Development which is at the Institute Catholique. So hopefully that will be a pretty balanced course load!

I then headed to lunch with Alex and Justin (Alex is from Amherst, Justin from Hamilton) and they introduced me to a place that has "Pates a emporter" -- so for 4,50 euros, I got a little(ish) carton (think Chinese food) of pasta shells with my choice of sauce -- I chose pesto vert with parmesan on top. It wasn't amazing, but not bad at all! I also brought some of the chocolate chip cookies that I made last night...needless to say, they held up pretty well.

Because Justin had class, Alex and I continued to wander around the area by ourselves. Very interesting to see the differences in the neighborhoods. We decided on trying to make our way to the cemetery near Montparnasse. Morbid, I know. But very cool. Filled with beautiful stone work and tombs -- it's really just incredible.

After meandering, we headed back to Reid Hall (Hamilton's home base along with many other schools), for a presentation with Katia (our student assistant) who presented on how to find activities in Paris. There's SO much to do -- hard to know where to start. After that, I accompagnied Katie to her class at SciencesPo so that I could see the buildings -- unfortunately, I got somewhat lost trying to find a useful bus stop, and ended up missing the group tour down the Seine on the Bateau Mouche -- I was not happy about it.

So I decided to just walk home, since I wasn't too far, and I was tired from walking all day long. I actually ran into Marilu in the street while she was going to the grocery store to pick up some pie crust, and so we walked home together.

Dinner! Which was delicious. Appetizer of canteloupe and then a quiche with creme fraiche, eggs, cheese and ham. Yum. Yum. Yum. Followed by a small cheese course -- my favorite cheese is the Portugese cheese that's about as hard as a rock, but has a nice flavor (almost like parmesan) and is also delicious when eaten with Portugese bread (which is extremely dense, and has almost a sweet taste to it -- so so good).

That's about it for today! I'm currently sitting in the living while Alain watches the debate among the Socialist candidates for the French election. Exciting! (not really). The unfortunate/fortunate thing is that I've found it rather easy to tune out French when I don't feel like listening (but the flip side is that when I do listen, I can almost understand everything I hear now).

Picture(s) of the day! I couldn't decide, so I thought I'd pick one from each side of the spectrum:

A tout a l'heure!

And Jen -- I'll try to get a picture of the building soon! It's not super exciting, but I'll post one at some point.