Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Les directions ?

Today, I was mistaken for a Parisian! Yeah, it surprised me too. The first time was while I was waiting for Alexandra to meet me at the Cluny-Sorbonne métro stop and an old lady asked me which way to take the métro to get somewhere. Sadly, I had to tell her I was American and had only been using the métro for two days and had absolutely no idea, but still, it was cool that she thought I knew what I was doing! Then, someone asked me a question about the RER a little later - this person was obviously American, and she was disappointed when I said I didn't know. But, I do know how to get from my apartment to CUPA, then from CUPA to Alexandra's dorm, from Alexandra's dorm back to my house, from CUPA to the Latin Quarter, and from the Latin Quarter to Alexandra's dorm.

The Latin Quarter is very lively - there are a lot of students everywhere and it's incredibly crowded, especially around the schools. I walked by La Sorbonne (Paris IV) and across the street was Le Lycée Louis-le-grand, which is basically one of the hardest high schools in the world. We saw some kids standing outside, but I figured it would be a little weird to accost them on the street and ask how stressed they were. We didn't end up seeing l'ENS because Alexandra had homework, but I saw "all the gods" at the Pantheon (Pantheon comes from the Greek for "all gods" - something I learned in French class last year). I saw Hugo, Dumas, Zola, Rousseau, Voltaire, Lagrange, the Curie's, and Braille, among others. They had taken the pendulum down for some reason, though...hopefully they put it back up while I'm still here.

Well, I'm tired, and I wanted to read before I went to sleep tonight. Pierre (my host brother) lent me a ton of French books, so I should get started now before my university classes start.

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