Day 6- 1 June [written on the 2nd]

So, in summary, had my first day of class and I really like my teacher- she’s very nice and wickedly French accent-wise, so I’ve been listening pretty closely [not that I wouldn’t, but you know what I mean]. It’s different from other French classes I’ve had in that she just KNOWS, man- before whenever someone had a tricky question before, a really fine line one, we would all either consult a book or take the break in class to text, whichever, and it would come down to ‘do what your heart tells you and I won’t count off’ [weird sitch where my teachers before have all either been American or from North Africa]. But this lady, she KNOWS. Explored Jardin des Plantes, and made a mental to research whether or not their menagerie and Museum of Natural History are good, and then went to the Pantheon, which is right by my school. It’s a neoclassical building that looks like a Greek temple, commissioned by Napoleon III to honor St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, and included in the entry fee is a tour up it; like all cathedrals or large fake temples, the walls aren’t solid, and there are doors in them with tight, tight spiral staircases. We went to three different levels, up as high as the base of the dome, and it was really exciting to see how many places I recognized. I’m now saving the Eiffel Tower until the end of my stay, and hopefully it’ll mean a lot more then. Also went to a mall right by Hotel de Ville, where the French Open celebration was going on with more gusto than ever, and checked it out. Food for today, in order: Cereal bar, honey crepe, 3 gaufres nappees a parfum cacao [chocolate-covered waffles], another weird almost-ham sandwich and something that looked like ravioli but tasted like an egg and had weeeeeird crunchy bits in it.

More stuff that throws me off: Sometimes the toilet paper is pink. All doors have handles, and few have tirez/poussez [pull, push] signs, so I find it difficult both to enter and exit places, and you can imagine how this looks. Motorcycles drive on the sidewalks.