with your head full of brains and your shoes full of fee, you're too smart to go down a not-so-good street

Alrightly - well- I am getting a little behind so I am just going to do a blog of highlights:

Wednesday:

• chocolate tasting in culture class - this was amazing we each got a bunch of pieces of chocolate w/ cocoa beans from different places in the world - and seriously you could taste the different flavors of the different places in the world - CRAZY!

• Checking out the Eiffel Tower with a fun crazy group! - of course jumpy pictures are a must.

• Finding out what Falafels are- WOW so amazingly good - and it was super fun because there are two places that sell them facing each other so there was a full on battle to try and win our business - it was AWESOME!

• Getting up early and walking around finding patisseries where I bought a pain au chocolat and ate it in the park while I read the book of mormon!
• Oh and... this morning I left madame a note that told her I hoped she had a good day, and when I got back that night she had crossed out madame and wrote claude! Then at dinner she explained that story to her daughter and you could tell she was super happy. Well, dinner was also an adventure because it involved talking politics w/ her daughter who spoke super fast!

Thursday:

• checking out the jardin du luxambourge - beautiful

• getting hit on by 13 year old boys - explanation: Mckenna and I were at Le gare du montparnasse where we were trying to figure out where to start our assigned "luxambourge walk". We sat down on short wall thing to check out our map and see where we were. Anyway while Mckenna was looking at the map I overhear these two punk french teenagers (seriously 13-14 years old) start talking about stupid tourists. So, very stupidly, I glared at him and said oui - to try and show that I knew what he was saying. Then I turned back to help mckenna with the map, but the kid sitting next to me started asking if we were belgian... I said no. He asked if we were french then, I said no. Finally I made the biggest mistake of all (hey at least I am learning from my stupidity) and admitted to being American (We have decided if this occurs again we will be Canadian). Anyway - he got all excited and started talking to me about Bin Laden, Obama, etc. He told me that he knew it was really all a scam and that the twin towers was just a stunt pulled by the president to make the middle east look bad (wow- I thought... the Bush has been blamed for a lot of things but that I never saw coming.) I tried hard not to laugh in his face. Anyway - instead I changed the subject and asked if he liked France. He said no and then he said something about how the france I saw was not the real France but that there was a whole other side that he would love to show me.... Only I didn't understand that part..... I only got that he was talking about being Algerian and how it is hard because france is so expensive and so there is a whole other part of Paris that is super poor.... so trying to relate to him I said that that was the same in the U.S. there are lots of places that seem super nice but have poor parts of them.... Well luckily Mckenna had understood the other part and stood up to leave. I didn't know why exactly we were leaving but I thought it was probs a good idea since these kids were obviously a little out there. Well... as we started to get up the kid who had remained silent this hole time shouted out in English- "Wait you are very beautiful! When I look in to your eyes my heart goes like this..." and then made some throbbing motions with his hands. His friend agreed and kept saying lovey dovey stuff in french..... I could not believe it. I wanted to shout back "SERIOUSLY? you are my little brothers age! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" but luckily Mckenna just dragged me away and explained her side of the story as well. We had a good laugh about that one. I am super glad I got to learn that lesson with 2 little pip squeaks who I could have thrashed --- and now I know better how to evade some of those issues.
• checking out the opera where there was a guy trying to get money by taking pictures with people dressed in a crazy chicken outfit.... we tried to avoid him but he came up behind me and started beezing me with his weird beak head and asking to take a picture.... it freaked me out so much that I literally jumped and screamed... boy did he smell "french" and that is not a compliment.

• on our way back from the jardin we walked through the latin quarter which was super cool, and we checked out a used book store that was super fun.
• Classes- just normal.
• That early evening I went on a walk by my self I stopped at a little patisserie and asked what their specialty was/what was the lady's favorite... she suggested the "Lumier framboise" I think that is what its called... anyway it was GOOD! I kept walking and ran upon a beautiful church (St. Paul's) where mass was being preformed so I went inside and sat in there for a while.

• Then that night we discovered that our shower water was again cold - so we told madame and she said she would again call the repair man to come fix it. Well, while we were talking to her I asked her about her large cupboard of old books. It was so fun to talk to her about why she started collecting, which ones were her favorite, which ones were the oldest, etc.

Well boy has it been fun so far - I cannot believe that I have only been in france for about a week - but on the other had I can't believe how little time I have left and how much I want to do!