Day 35- Tuesday 12 June

Well, it was a work day. Rushing out of the house with a Nutellawich, I was a bit late for class and put on a Guilty Face as I crept in, making a hideous amount of noise tiptoeing across the old wood floor, dragging the metal hunk of chair back, screeching my way discreetly in closer the table, sifting through my bag for my book and dropping pens in an echoing racket, agh. And then there was more lecture, three hours, for history, but in between we had three hours of break, so Lauren had the idea to go to the Jewish Museum of Art and History so we did, along with Ingrid.

The bottom floor was organized thematically, introducing and explaining Judaism and its customs, the second more chronological with artefacts, and the third was modern art and very difficult to understand, especially as no explanatory text was evident. Because Lauren is Jewish, she told us about how she celebrates holidays, and how some of the items were used, and about her relatively moderate religious practices [compared to the people who don't carry their keys out of their house on Saturdays], yep, neat. She was unable, however, to translate the items on the third floor for us, so. Today's new pastry was a tarte poivres-chocolat, basically pear pie-crumble with a sugary-glaze on top and chocolate chunks embedded throughout, fantastic, I ate the whole thing before it occurred to me to take a photo. Then, as I mentioned, was history, our prof happy in a new semi-subterranean classroom in which her projector slides showed up beautifully but had my comrades [not me, heh] dangerously lethargic. Why was I not lethargic? Because I got eight hours of sleep, and did yesterday, too, the first times my entire time here, because I've finally figured out how to sleep, I wear two pairs of earplugs and tie a scarf around my eyes and ears, and I think it's working, I was so happy I almost cried. Maria made this really weird stuff for dinner, and I'm not sure what it was, but it was almost Mexican. My entire time here I have only seen two Mexican food places ....

Right, I took no photos today, so it occurred to me that you, as mostly my first-degree relatives, might be interested in seeing my face, ergo proof that I have not frozen into a permanent French scowl, or that I'm really competent at Photoshop:

This is me at le Mont Saint Michel, obviously, in the parking lot [it was beautiful], taken by Lauren, right after my camera entered its coma.