Day 23- Friday 28 June

Yesterday was a bit of a letdown, but I was back in form today, and an innocent series of everyday actions were turned sinister as a housewife proceeded to

Algeria beat England in the World Cup games, so currently outside my window, large quantities of Islamic-looking men are walking by, a fair few dressed in Algerian flags, others underwear, and police in riot gear are stationed every thirty feet along the street. Some of them are running up the median in the center of the street that the trains use, others are chasing scooters, and a van just got jumped by about twenty of them. This had been happening for the past two hours. I wonder where they're all going.

Well, whatever, the housewife in class today menaced various objects in various ways that had me cracking up, and I proceeded to periodically ask how to say random words for the rest of class. The professor is pretty cool, and I can now say 'slaughterhouse.' Sadly, quite the rest of the day was spent getting the dinner I was hosting that night for the other students ready; the market at Place d'Italie shut down before I could get to it, so I ended up having to go to the smaller Mouffetard market, the Fanprix near my dorm and rue Vavin to get all of the stuff I wanted, but dinner turned out quite well. As an appetizer, three different kinds of bread I got from bakeries in olive oil seasoned with herbs from the market, then as a main course kabobs [which I'd never had/made before, very cool that it tasted fab: chicken, peppers, onion, pineapple marinated for three hours and broiled] served with fresh fruit. Dessert, we made crepes with a mix and some Nutella and watched the people outside doing various almost-illegal things in front of national guard.

Traffic has now stopped and people are jumping on cars. The police are stopping this.

Weird stuff about France: Apparently football. This match didn't even happen in the stadium down the road, or in Paris, or in Europe; it happened in South Africa, and somehow probably thousands of people are walking by. What the heck. Also, third theory about skinny Europeans: They use the saunas also known as rush hour metros to keep their weight in check.

Ah, a firetruck now, lights flashing, is surrounded by people once again jumping on cars. They are dancing. It is a good day.