Today, I was an insufferable know-it-all! For my literature class, we went to Victor Hugo's house at La Place des Vosges and I got to impress my professor with what I've learned from my new agenda! You know, sometimes I feel like the only reason I've been doing well in France is because of Justine. That's probably right...
Anyway, this house is very ostentatious, kind of like Victor Hugo's writing. It screams: "I know I'm the best, and you can't deny it." I wonder if he was picked on in school...he had a gigantic nose. Nah - I'm sure the students at Louis-le-Grand are beyond making fun of each other. They all must have respected his brilliance. They did name a courtyard after him there. In the house, there was a whole room devoted to China, and I also got to see his desk where he wrote STANDING UP!! In the room with the desk, there was also a bed which Hugo obviously never used. You see, there was this gigantic bookshelf filled with just the books he wrote. After seeing the mountains and mountains of literature, I figured it was highly unlikely that he slept very much. I guess it was interesting to see the bed in which Victor Hugo never slept, and where he worked and never sat down. Obviously, the man was a machine - a scary, scary French machine.
The rest of our visit consisted of the CUPA visit to Le Marais with Michel, but backwards. Instead of starting at Hotel de Ville and finishing at La Place des Vosges, we started at Vosges and left at Hotel. We saw a few different things, though - I particularly enjoyed one story he told about this cloister in the middle of Le Marais that was founded because of an antisemitic legend in the middle of the Jewish (and gay) quarter! He's a very interesting professor. Oh, and I apparently misunderstood the final assignment for this class. When he said a creative writing assignment, he didn't mean a short story exactly - he just wants us to go to our place twice and write down everything we see and relate it to the history of the place, mention what we thought of it, what we were expecting, what differed from that, etc. I'm slightly disappointed. I wanted to write a short story.
Other than that, I taught English today. Jerome said the funniest thing. He said he hoped he wasn't giving me a bad impression of French people. His exact words were: "I'm not depressive, I'm just sensitive!" It was a pretty funny statement. And, I went to Paola's house for dinner since her host mom wanted to meet her friends. Her host mom is really cute - she reminds me of Mme De La Taille. The only problem was, I got there at around 8:30 and didn't leave until a little before midnight. Yes, French meals can be pretty long - with the apero, the salad, the main course, the cheese, the dessert, and the coffee. Plus, afterwards, we had to watch the burka debate. Basically, I think I'm going to go to bed now after a very long day. I should probably wake up early tomorrow morning to read my history chapter that I completely forgot about during the vacation. Or, I could just ignore that and figure out a way to study for philosophy. I don't want to get a 10 on the quiz in history, because if it counts, it will lower the 14 I got on my partiel!
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