Month 2

This post is a few days late, but we have now lived in France for two months.  You can see my post from the first month here.  Since I haven't written much the past few weeks, I'll use my monthly review to give a little bit of a synopsis.

February was a bit of a struggle, as February often is.  It always feels like the coldest, darkest month, the month that has to be lived through to access the joys that come other times of the year.  The days never seem to slip by in easy moments... you have to earn your victories.  And the cold certainly makes you grateful for a warm house, loving spouse, and full belly.


Most surprising evening of the month: some of the Spaniards in my class invited us over for dinner on a Thursday evening.  I was expecting something low-key and relatively quick, as we had class the next day and some studying to do (clearly I had never been to a Spanish dinner before). They had 12 people in the room, making miracles happen with our student-living arrangements.  We ate raclette, a French dish/experience kind of like fondue, but 3000 times better (the smell of fondue disgusts me).  Our dinner party that evening included 3 Spaniards, 3 Americans, 2 Russians, 2 Venezuelans, 1 Peruvian, and 1 Nigerian.  We sat and talked and enjoyed an ebb and flow of courses and by the time we excused ourselves at 11:45 I had laughed harder than at any time up til that point in Paris.  Of course, 11:45 was early for them, and 6 or 7 people were still deep in conversation when we left.  Made me very excited for going to Barcelona in April.

Worst part of the month: French germs.  I normally don't get sick very often, but kept catching minor colds and infections in February.  Don't worry, I defeated the French (germs).

Second worst part of the month: French homework.  I know I said we don't get much homework, but we do have a project due for each class, 3 or 4 of which were due at the end of the month.  We still had class all day, but of course our minds were with the projects.  So we spent all day having our time taken away from the tasks we really needed to be doing, and then had to finish up the important tasks on our own time late at night.  Kind of like a bad week at a real job, which is unfortunate because I thought the whole point of graduate school is to escape the working world for awhile (kidding!).

Haircut:  Successful, once I persuaded her that I didn't want it tres court (very short).  No buzzcuts for me, thank you.

Baguettes:  Still awesome.  I want to devote a whole blog post to my love of the baguette, but still haven't decided on the proper form.  So you'll have to wait.

Looking forward to: Rome and Barcelona!  We booked our tickets for April break and leave in a month.

OK, that's enough for now.  I should be back to regular blogging, now that all the projects are done.