-- Have you found your way around the down and out?
I know it must seem long, so long
I'm still trying to keep this time from running out
Head down, always moving on and on and on.. --
Foo Fighters, New Way Home

Hello from Mc Do. Thats french for McDonalds. They all have wifi here, which is refered to as "weefee." A lot has happened since my last post, classes have started and I've gained my bearings around Paris for the most part.

I wanted to wait until after my first week of class to update this. My French Impressionism class is pretty cool; this week we visited the Louvre. I got a year long student pass for free becuase I've got a little card that says I'm an art history student at the University of London (UL). The atmosphere at UL is SO much more relaxed, not to mention way more polite than the Sorbonne. UL embraced us on the first day with a tour of the school, which is located directly across from Les Invalides where Napoleon is buried. The English welcomed us with refreshments and a word from the President.

Class also began at the Sorbonne, and over there, they have the attitude that they are doing us Americans a favor by letting us study there. They are pushy, and cold. But that's really no surprise to me after being in France for a month. I guess just seeing it compared with the English accentuates it a little. [Side story: the other day I was walking down the street in the 16th arrondissment talking with some friends in English, and a younger fella sitting in a parked dump truck mocked me becuase I'm american. I turned around and looked at him, and he made a face. Before I came here, I expected stuff like that to happen, and now that it has a few times, it has made me think. It really pisses me off. I come here to study their culture, and all the young kids can do is be assholes to us. I'm not totally sure when the anti-american wave started, but it is classless. I'd like to come back next time with a quick french retort and see what their expression is. Maybe if I know they are harmless, which most of them are. Possibly more on this later...] Anways, I've had two of my four Sorbonne classes thus far. The Cours Pratique is the regular french language class. The professor is very strict, but nice. For instance, once you enter the room, you can't leave, not even to go to the bathroom. If you are late by a minute, you can't get in. That one may give me some trouble because my phonetics class across town ends 15 minutes before Cours Pratique begins, and it is impossible to make that work....that reminds me I need to get into an earlier class. The other class I've started is French Civilization taught in French. Those three hours are exhausting, listening to French being spoken rapidly about stuff I am not familiar with. And I can't read the professor's writing on the board becuase it doesn't come close to resembling the Western alphabet. However, out the window sits Cathedrale de Notre Dame just across the Seine on Ile de la Cite, which is pretty cool. The class is on a picturesque street in the Latin Quarter, about a ten minute walk from the Cours Pratique, which is around the corner from the Pantheon, where Voltaire rests. The other two Sorbonne classes are a phonetics course that begins on the 30th and my other french lecture class beginning next Monday.

So life is going pretty great right now; homesickeness has not shown its ugly face yet, and I dont think it will. Paris is just too lovely. Tomorrow I'm leaving for a weekend in a part of France I have never been to: Normandy and Bretagne. Tomorrow I will walk through the American Cemetery near the beach head and see a piece of U.S. history and give thanks to the guys who lay under the white crosses. It will be powerful to say the least. Saturday night, we are staying in St. Malo in Bretagne. On Sunday, I will visit the abbey of Mont Saint Michel. Expect tons of pictures. I am also going to take some pics of where I'm living in Paris and where I'm going to school. Talk soon!