Day 13- Monday 20 June

I think I'm past the stage where I used to deny ever being sick, which certain family members and old friends may remember; yesterday I felt a bit off, but figured it was just whatever, but today I was sick, and I still am sick, and I don't feel good, so this'll be a short and probably slightly nonsensical entry:

Actually late today, but not by much; my lagging neurons were besieged by the excessively vocabularic writing of la Bruyere today for three and a half hours, who complicated things by using nonstop irony that meant that once I decoded what he was literally saying I then had to invert it all to understand what he was actually saying about French society, which made my head hurt. Grabbing a pain au chocolat on my way to history, I met up with the class at the Hotel de Soubise and, sadly, failed to fully appreciate a tour of what used to be a royal residence but was now, of course, partly a museum but mostly the National Archives. The guide knew a heck of a lot, and I feel bad for not absorbing more, but because I'm not a brain on a stick materiality got in the way and it was more like two and a half hours of endurance-concentration on appearing alert. Bleeeegh. I felt better in the fresh air, and industriously began planning a route to one of my favourite parcs until I consciously used my brain to think, and realized that a) it was about to rain, and b) I needed to pass out, so I just laid down until dinner, ate dinner, and now have to do my homework because the director specifically told us only to not show up to class if we're throwing up, symptomatic of a highly contagious Thing [I think gastroentitis?] people tend to get here more often in the states, and even though I think I am highly contagious, I'm not throwing up, ergo tomorrow is a school day. Mememememememememe, sorry guys, really selfish blog. Here's more me:

Today's dinner table layout: Our plates, forks, knives, glasses set up, one (1) large bowl of rice with spoon at the ready, one (1) large bowl of salad with those salad-specific utensils at the ready, one (1) pan of this taco-stuff on the stove. I'm told to help myself, so I sit down, salad-utensil myself some salad onto my chosen plate and Maria immediately grabs my plate, shovels the salad back into its home, washes my plate, dries my plate, sets my plate back down before me and tells me to never to that again. Already somewhat irrationally angry with the world from being sick, and for the fact that their maid rearranged everything in my room and I'm missing a pair of pants, I carefully asked why and was told to never eat this particular kind of salad before the main meal and that it must never be on the same plate with the main meal but that there are certain kinds of salad that are main meals and other kinds that are eaten before the main meal and I don't even like salad I was just slightly delirious and trying to be polite.

In the midst of my battle with gravity and severely localised winds today, I took one photo of the Hotel for you, dear reader.