Land of milk and honey.

So, on saturday I got back from one of the coolest vacations in my life. I don't have the energy to go through and deal with pictures for the blog, so if you'd like to see them, I made an album on Facebook. They also include ones that pertained to the last post.

Monday morning, I flew into Casablanca only half knowing where I actually needed to go to meet the people I needed to. The flight there was alright save for the small child that decided to scream at the top of his lungs for an hour and a half. My parents have told me stories about how on the flight to America I was that child, so I guess I'm paying for it dearly now in my old age. Upon arriving in Casablanca, I was greeted immediately with an offer to take a taxi somewhere, but I knew that there was a train station 10 minutes from my hotel. Unfortunately, I didn't know exactly which train station that was, so when I went to go buy my tickets I merely asked to go to the city, and they gave me tickets to the largest station there. As it turns out, this station is about 10 minutes away from my hotel as well... by car. Thinking I could get there easily I decided to just start walking in a random direction until I found a street on my map which I cleverly purchased at the airport before venturing into the city. I quickly realized that this map could have been a map of Cairo, Washington DC, or Tokyo and it would probably have served me better. It had neither train stations on it, nor any of the streets that I managed to find. Not to mention that the location of my hotel was completely uncharted. I feel like the google map might have actually served me better. In any case, after realizing that the donkeys on the roads had a better idea of where I was going, I decided to taxi it after all and ended up at my hotel after some time. Meeting up with my friends was not a huge problem after that since they were just getting back from exploring the area.

Casablanca, as it turns out, isn't the best city ever. In an attempt to avoid the phrase "shit-hole" I'd like to elaborate on the ridiculousness of the little streets of the town. There were many uncharted and many without any sort of semblance of sanitation. There were many times when I was offered weed and other various things of which I'd rather not go into detail. In general the scenery wasn't anything spectacular, and the shops and restaurants seemed like they haven't been cleaned in a good year and a half. Of course there were interesting little markets and people selling all sorts of random crap, including bootleg DvDs and 1 MDH fried doughnut heart attacks. I actually bought "Horton Hears a Who" (which is different than Harry Sees a Who, which is what Paul remembered it as) although it doesn't have any of the special features, but I can't be picky. That night we did go to a restaurant to try the local Moroccan cuisine, and I had a lot of olives and a small dish of seafood bathed in cheese and the seafood's own juices. Personally, I thought the food was lovely, but it didn't sit very well with some of my colleagues who woke up in the middle of the night with food poisoning. My parents thought that I was going to be the one ending up with the food poisoning, but little do they know what kind of crap my stomach's gotten accustomed to in the past three years. I think after Pierce dining I can withstand anything.

The best day in Casablanca was the same one that we were leaving. It wasn't the best because we were leaving, but rather a mix of that fact and tanning on the beach. We were able to see a bunch of moroccans play soccer, a sport which they are surprisingly good at on the beach. I, on the other hand, decided to sit in the sun with my shirt off in the same position, receiving a ridiculously ill proportioned burn on my body which by now has started to peel back to pale. Everyone else got a nice tan, although Paul did suffer some of my bad luck and got a spectacular burn on his arms as well. He always knows how to make me feel better. Getting to Marrakech that day was a trial to say the least. First there was a little suspense in having to meet Sam at the train station, but after that got settled we were able to all congregate in a semi-orderly fashion onto the train. Unfortunately by the time we got on the train it was already packed, so we couldn't all sit in the same compartment. Upon getting to Marrakech it was already dark and there was absolutely no way that we'd be able to make it to our hostel on our own, so we got in a cab. As benign as that sounds, Paul and I were scrunched into the front seat, me with my head sticking out the window and him basically sitting on the gear shift. It was one of the best taxi rides of my life, mostly because I got to keep my head out the window and act like an idiot, hardly a common occurrence.

After the taxi stopped, we weren't actually anywhere near our hostel. Oh no, after that we had a nice trek through the maze known as the Grand Place (it's in French). From there, there are about 13 different entrances into the small streets which encompass the large central market of Marrakech, where we spent virtually all of our time. After we walked aimlessly for about an hour realizing there was absolutely no way that we were going to find this place on our own, we asked somebody where it was. This was our first lesson as tourists in Morocco. If you ask for directions, you don't get pointed in a direction and told where to go. Oh no, you get walked right to your destination by the person you asked. This may seem like a friendly gesture, but that's before they ask you for 100 D's (Moroccan Durham) for their kind service. Ultimately, we did get to where we wanted to go, but I'd rather not have shelled out the D's to some 14 year old punk that knows how to navigate the streets. The hostel wasn't anything special, and in my opinion we made out pretty well. Upon getting there, however, they told us that we had 2 rooms for 6 people, one that housed 2 and one that housed 4. Now it doesn't take a genius to see that with a group of 3 guys and 3 girls, one of the guys (read: the guy that gets confused during lodging procedures) is going to get shafted into the girls' room. Not only does he get shafted, but then all the girls decide to take the large beds and leave him the smallest and lowest to the ground. I'm not bitter though, because the sunburn I received earlier that day prevented me from moving in my sleep, so all I had to do was get comfortable once. Also the girls decided that it'd be a good idea to make my bed into a harem, which entailed setting up the curtains so that they draped over my bed making it look very royal and moroccan. That's right, I was the king (of the castle).

The following day, we had our first foray into the Moroccan market. The first few hours weren't too terrible. They involved just walking through the shops and looking and browsing, the entire time receiving very rehearsed offers to browse their wares and many jeers towards the ladies of the group. I was more or less used to this kind of market structure, and handling the people wasn't a huge problem for anyone I don't think. The problem was that we were trying to find the leather tanning grounds, and there was absolutely no way that we'd be able to do it. The worst thing to do is stop as a giant group of tourists. The 14 year old punks, henceforth known as guides, cling on to you and ask you questions about where you're trying to go until they get an affirmative answer. Using one that claimed to work for free, we found the tanning grounds, and immediately the first thing they gave us was a few mint leaves that they called "gas masks." It didn't immediately click why we would need gas masks, and even less why they were simply mint leaves, but we quickly discovered as we walked into the tanning yards. This was the first time in my life that a stench has made me gag. As it turns out, these people use pigeon shit as a regular means of working with the leather. Not only that, but they didn't actually know how to say a nice word for shit. According to the tanner, first they put it in water, then the pigeon shit, then grain, then whatever color they need. It was somewhat ridiculous. After the tour they took us to the shop that sold the leather, a quality of which I haven't seen yet. I couldn't resist myself so I bought a sleek leather belt (bargained down to 150 D's from 400). They also had a bunch of rugs and carpets made out of silk, proven by holding up their lighters to them. Also, the quality of the leather was tested by throwing water on it and watching it just glide off. I was very impressed.

Other than that Morocco is simply a place where tourists go to get haggled and buy a large quantity of crap that they're never going to use. Our entourage got a whole lot of crap from morocco, and all of it had to go back in my bag. Paul and I got a hookah for the apartment next year, which was actually a great deal. On top of that, we spent a lot of time chilling on top of the roof of our hostel overlooking Marrakech smoking it, playing cards, and munching on dates and cacahuetes (peanuts in french). It was undoubtedly one of the best vacations of my life. I was so relaxed and at peace that coming back to school is somewhat of a shock that I'm not too pleased that I have to endure, but that's for another time. I'm actually glad to be back in the land of pressurized showers and merchants that don't try to sell their wares.

Only three weeks left. Cheers.

Milan... after some time.

Hello.

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated. Each entry seems to take longer and longer to write, but I feel like enough time it's passed for it to be well worth it.

I'm writing here from Milan. It was a great day, and a lot of great sights were seen from all over the city. Unfortunately I don't have a cable to unload the pictures, but throughout the day I happened to find myself at the top of the Duomo downtown and amidst a lot of the many many shopping districts of the fashion capital of the world. I'm here with my family (extended) and it's really nice to have been able to see them again. Not only that, but seeing my parents again meant that both my laundry got done and that there was a king's dinner each night. Needless to say, I ate much more than was probably necessary in anticipation of the next four weeks when I'm going to be going to Morocco and then back to the land of the bourgeois (as much as they don't like to admit it.)

Over the past few weeks there has been a noticed change in the weather. Usually this isn't worth a mention, but there were a few days when it was extremely fickle and I hated the fact that looking out the window in the morning didn't guarantee any of the weather during the rest of the day. Hence, the fact that for the past two weeks it's been stunningly beautiful weather which even might let me get some sort of pigmentation (yea, right) is really appreciated. Unfortunately, today I didn't heed the usual warnings of the sun and forgot to wear sun screen, so I have nice little t-shirt burn lines. Hopefully either tomorrow or in Morocco I'll be able to get equally tan (read: burned) so that I won't have to keep explaining my wonderful lines along my person.

Apart from lounging out in the sun for a majority of the days over the past few days, I did start getting into the habit of playing sports outside (I know!). The wrath of the dirt soccer fields was unleashed on my shoes which I know now have very low tolerance for lots of dirt and quick motions. So, not only did I get glorious blisters on both of my feet, but the other day I decided to play ultimate frisbee with a bunch of french people again and that in turn ripped open the blisters in a torrent of flesh and pain. My makeshift napkin-in-sock bandage did relatively well until I got to Milan and now everything is fairly under control. It didn't feel too cool to have to sit out randomly in the middle of the ultimate game, but at the same time, I couldn't really run around with half my big toe trailing behind me. That being said, I now also need a new pair of shoes. Fortunately, I'm in Milan and hopefully I can weasel a purchase out of my parents, but I'm not going to press the matter. It's summer, and I absolutely love my flip flops. =)

Apart from that, I've gotten used to Paris by now. I know how to get to class, what side of the metro to get on, and I've scientifically tested the different methods for getting from A to B. I have a standard diet rotation, places that I like to go get drinks, and even a favorite beer. This beer, however, is a rather light beer that doesn't really taste like it's trying to be a light beer. It comes in a bottle that's re-sealable and very difficult to describe in words. I will take a picture when I can so that I can explain it in all its glory. Also, it's only 1.77 € for 65 cl at the Franprix, which is a steal when we're talking about beer. I.e. this beer is amazing. But other than that, Paris is really just a city where people live. I love being able to hop on the metro and go out at night, and I love being able to just hang out in a park at night with a bunch of people just talking and having a drink, but that's just Paris life. Our conversation person even told us that she'd never been to the Musée d'Orsay in her 20 some odd years of living in Paris. Go figure.

Morocco, on the other hand, is going to be a lot of fun. I'm expecting a lot of things involving avoiding running water while exploring the random parts of some Muslim country. My dad told me that had I gone to Morocco a few years ago, I could have gone as a brotherly Macedonian. Unfortunately now I'm going to be going as a dirty God-loving American who wants to end the Muslim religion with my loud obnoxious talking and similarly pompous attitude. It's a tourist country, however, and I expect to be treated like one. I barely speak the second most popular language, and I'm pretty sure they don't like the aforementioned third most popular. It's going to be an experience regardless of what happens, although that doesn't mean I'm not going to be taking down the name of the US Consulate in Casablanca and the Embassy in Marrakech, along with getting my passport number tattooed on my ass. That's probably a bit overkill, but they probably won't be able to steal it that way.

Stay classy.

-Pavel

Français... c'est trop compliqué

So I know I haven't updated in a while. In all honesty there hasn't really been a lot to report. The beginning of this past week I was bogged down with math homework. It was interesting how I kept telling myself I'd do it but I kept on winding up somewhere downtown which then made it all pile up over the week. Oh well, I like complexity theory just as much as the next guy...

There were a few interesting things that happened over this past week. On tuesday, for example, I went to go tutor a French girl in introductory calculus. It was very interesting learning how to say things like "2 times 3" or "x to the fourth power" in french. More than that, though, was the dynamic of actually seeing the way that French kids worked. The entire university for first and second year was encompassed in one building. Then the top story was a library, half of which we were allowed to talk in. French kids talk so fast it's ridiculous, though. I was pretty sure that people noticed the fact that I wasn't French very quickly. They do that everywhere, but it was nice of this girl to just put up with it. She was very smart, and she got the hang of the whole integral thing really quickly even despite my french abuse. I don't know if she enjoyed herself though, because she hasn't responded to my e-mail and I think she has a weekly homework due again. Oh well....

On Thursday we had conversation again in which we went to some dismal part of town that had a few cozy cafés, but was otherwise dirty and somewhat run down. After sitting in a café where the owners very clearly realized that we were American, there was a point at which our conversation leader seemed like she wanted to leave pretty badly. I'm not sure if the two events were connected or not, but it seemed like the guys that owned the café were kind of mean to all of the girls in our group. I wasn't too happy about that.

We went home that night fairly early because we had to get up the next day. Unfortunately what happened was that I slept too well and ended up completely missing my alarm. Actually, my alarm seemed to have been set for 6:30 PM instead of AM, so I ended up coming back to a ridiculously loud room. What I was coming back from, however, was the Chateaux de la Loire, a huge castle that was built over a few centuries. There were a lot of interesting things that happened there including the assassination of one of the Henry's. I don't really remember much of the specifics. There was a pretty cool terrace where you could stand and overlook a large part of the town right next to the water. It was nice with all of the red roofed village houses all of them with antennas. Paul and I were able to convince one of the girls with us that the antennas were actually early 17th century pigeon catchers. During that time when the peasants weren't able to get bread and cheese as easily they had to survive somehow, and they decided to make it via the pigeons of France. It was pretty funny.

Before that chateaux we went to a different chateaux (I know...) called Chambord which was Louis the XIV's hunting lodge, so you can imagine how huge it was. There were paintings on the wall of flamboyant ol' Louis standing on top of a boar which I can only imagine he didn't actually kill himself. The coolest thing by far was the architecture on the outside. There were gargoyles and staircases that were very ornate and crowned by domes and whatnot. I could see myself living there if I was King. There were two things that I found particularly interesting. First was the fact that the beds were about 5 feet long. I can't imagine that it was actually comfortable to live in them, but hey, they were kings. Second, there was a playground about four feet away from the castle that was arguably about as exciting as the castle itself. I know, I know... you're all invited to my 6th birthday next week.

Then yesterday after visiting the Sacré Coeur at Montmarte,  we got ready to go to a party at one of the Maisons of the Cité. The dynamics of this party were very very confusing. There was nothing short of 6 different languages that I heard within 10 minutes and choosing which to use was infinitely difficult (considering I only knew 1.5 of them) Bad French got me only so far, and it was no surprise that the majority of the attractive women at that party were in fact French. Unfortunately you can only imagine what kind of competition I have when I try to speak to people in French when there are equally attractive French men who are able to pwn me in everything related to smoothness. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Back to Math homework. By the way, if anyone can successfully install and run a sample application of  Crystal Space on a Mac running OS/X 10.5, please send me an e-mail.

A bientot.

-Pavel

Cliché

Hello, everyone. I know, it's saturday night and I'm staying in doing homework because I'm cool, but I'll have you know that I haven't just been idly letting the wonders of the city slip through my fingers. Oh no!

First of all, Thursday evening was the first time that my group met up at a cafe in the gayer (literally more homosexual) part of town to chat and have a few drinks. It was interesting to learn a bunch about the french colloquialisms that I'm sure we also have in English but never really realize we're using. It becomes apparent when we need to translate phrases like "to run into" someone, but overall our discussion friend/leader/person was very nice about the whole procedure. On top of speaking french for a good two hours without having anyone resort to anglais, I found a new beer that's absolutely fantastic. I don't know if it exists in the US, but if anyone finds a beer that goes by the name Adelscott, please don't hesitate to tell me where so that I can buy it by the barrel. Other than this wonderful discovery, the consequent adventure into boys town really required me to stick close to the two other girls in my group. We actually walked down a block where out of about 200 people I counted about three women.

After realizing that we probably weren't going to find anything that we wanted there we decided to venture over to the Eiffel Tower just to walk around and absorb the city. After somewhat orienting ourselves in the right direction from boys town we came across a street that caught me pleasantly by surprise. If any of you have seen that M&M's commercial it was a very "He does exist!" moment. In order to satiate our hunger, on the way to the tower we found a few sandwiches that only cost us 4€ each, which is pretty good for France, so we got our dinner along the way. If any of you have ever been to France you'll know that the Eiffel Tower is simply magnificent although taking pictures of things that emit light at night without a tripod is somewhat difficult, so you'll have to bear with me. Another thing that I didn't know is that every hour the tower decides to sparkle with a bunch of camera-flash-esque bulbs that go off at once. It makes for a fireworks show every hour without all the smoke and annoying things. Apparently that's where people go to propose to their girlfriends, and I don't blame them, it's very pretty. We ended up just sitting at a bench with a bottle of wine chilling and wondering how we ended up under la tour d'eiffel. 

The following day after getting a disorienting 13 hours of sleep, I met up with one of my new friends Paul (who's super cool by the way) to go downtown and check out one of the jazz clubs close to an area in the Latin Quarter. There was a great band that we weren't really able to see very well because of the venue was packed tighter than calories in a Big Mac. We got there before the band actually started playing, but since they wouldn't let us down to the music area we decided to go walk around a bit and come back, but by the time we came back it was full. Go figure. There were some interesting rules, however, and overall it was a good experience. Not only that but the neighborhood that we got to walk around had a lot of street vendors and general night life which made it pleasant to walk around in. Not to mention we got to watch a group of street performers do some ridiculous break dancing. The group of 5 policemen watching made it kind of disconcerting though...

Today (that's saturday if you're keeping track), Paul and I went to go see the Musée d'Orsay. I'd already been, but I didn't mind going again since this time we were able to get in for free since I changed my major to something that appeases the government of France. Along with that I got to find that painting that I liked but forgot the name of. It turns out it's Vitrine - Rue de Sévigné (2005) Impression jet d'encre sur toile by Bertrand Lavier. It looked like something that I could make myself... basically just white paint smeared interestingly over a black canvas, but there was something about it that just struck me as really cool. I don't really know what...

Anyway, after a while we realized that we were kind of hungry so since the café in the museum was closed (bastards) we couldn't buy the famous chocolate waffle. Instead we went downtown to walk around and look at the local shops and restaurants ultimately finding a pizzeria where I was at long last reunited with my lost love: the Pizza Regina. It was every bit as wonderful as I remembered and the house wine was also cheap (6€ for 50 cl) and pretty quality. As the day turned out to be a lot nicer that evening than it did at its onset we decided to walk the rest of the way home, which only took us about an hour. It's ridiculous how large the city is since it takes a good amount of time to walk from one part to the other even though the entire city is lined with cafés and boulangeries and everything you could ever need. I bought myself a baguette on the way home and it's proven to be a great investment overall.

Now the rest of the weekend I will be punished by my procrastination over the past week. =(

A bientot.

-Pavel

Rogue Vinophile

Yesterday night I got to be a tourist for a second time, this time scaling l'arc de triomphe which has one of the most spectacular views I've ever seen. Unfortunately my camera's battery wasn't charged again so there isn't really any documented evidence, but we got there just as the sun was setting, so we were able to see most of the metropolis switch from daylight to nighttime. The best part, I must say, was watching the eiffel tower light up in the not so distant distance, creating a perfect parisian landscape. There was something picturesque about the whole thing... I felt like I was in some sort of postcard moment, and maybe I was. Who knows?

Today started out in a state of panic. The last few days I thought I was doing alright with the whole jet lag thing, but it turned out that I'm over it now... nice and acclimated. The problem was that I went to bed at a reasonable time (12:30) and set my alarm for a different reasonable time (7:30) but ended up waking up when class starts (9:30), so the morning scramble was a little hectic. I had to make quick decisions as to what to do in the morning while minimizing the impact of the 45 minute commute to class. Needless to say, I got to lecture not disheveled and very noticeably late out of my extremely large class of 5 people. Fortunately the teacher seemed OK with it after I apologized profusely, but my knowledge of the definition of randomness and bernoulli measure suffered significantly.

Afterwards I had a relatively uneventful french class in which we were assigned a significant amount of homework dealing with the explanation of differences between the educational systems of France and the US, but the really interesting part of my day was the wine and cheese tasting that I got to do but wasn't actually supposed to. As it turns out, the wine and cheese tasting for the math and astrophysics kids is tomorrow at 5:00 and I just kind of crashed the other programs' party. It was alright since not a lot of people showed up and there was extra wine/cheese, but I kinda felt bad after I realized that I wasn't actually supposed to be there.

The guy who was hosting the tasting had a strong french accent, and it was clear that he knew about as much english as we knew french, so it was really endearing to hear him explain the differences in wine, most of which I don't remember. Not only that, but both the wine and cheese selections were large and very good (5 of each). It was very cool to see what kind of wine went with what kind of cheese, and to learn the different ways to inspect wine to see if it was good. The first thing you're supposed to do is let it slosh against the side of the glass to see if any residue sticks. The French call this residue the "tears" of the wine, and that's what determines the sweetness. Apparently if there's more sugar, the alcohol binds to it better and creates a thicker wine which will stick to the sides of the glass more readily. The second method of testing is to smell the wine while sloshing it around to let the smell permeate and extrude from the simple sitting wine. This also makes it smell a lot stronger and better than usual. For someone like me, all wines were before this more or less the same. This time, however, there was a significant difference between the wines with just the smell even, which I was surprised to discover. The third and most important method of determining the quality of wine is to take a sip and then slosh it around in your mouth to get the taste out of it. Needless to say, all of the wines were French, and hence very good. I was very impressed and I realized why people drink wine when they want to be classy.

On top of the wine tasting, the guy who was teaching us how to find the quality of wine also owns a wine shop about a block away from the U of C Paris Center, and he said that he'd give us a 10% discount as U of C kids. Needless to say, he made 30 new customers that day and I myself found a new place to buy all my Pinot Noir.

Cheers.

-Pavel

First Day of School

Well, I got my first taste of what classes would be like today. Apart from waking up at 4 AM, which I'm hoping won't happen again, the morning routine went fairly well. We took the subway in two forcefully disjointed groups dictated by the closing doors of the subway trains. When these doors close, they close for good. There's no wrestling with them to get them open again. If you're stuck in the middle you have to make a decision, which usually leans towards the majority with which your body is residing. Once we got to the U of C Paris Center, it was clear that this was a very new part of Paris with modern looking buildings and fancy staircases that were too fragile to actually be used.

The facilities of the Paris Center very minimally mirror those of the actual campus. We have a library and computing room (mini reg and mini mac lab) along with several class rooms all built with very modern looking chalkboards and the chairs are actually comfortable enough to not get annoyed with but not so comfortable that you'd fall asleep in. Along with our introduction to the facilities, we were welcomed with a nice brunch and wine tasting. Although the brunch was very good, the wine tasting could have been better (people praised the white, but I didn't get any similar opinions on the red).

The first day of class was in itself very interesting. I feel like a lot of math classes would benefit from this sort of introduction into the subject that they're teaching because it got me into the mindset for the rest of the course. Today all we did was talk about the history of the evolution of mathematical thought over the centuries. Starting out from the early ages everything seemed to be very concrete and hands-on. Basically mathematicians only worried about things that were tangible in the real world... Afterwards people began using a more algorithmic approach to solving difficult problems involving methods of proving existence by the more classical notion of a proof. I.e. A leads to B and B leads to C so everything that applies to C must be true. Then somewhere around the mid 19th century, people realized that the best thing to do was to make everything abstract... i.e. prove things about classes of numbers and sets and other things. It was all really cool and we talked about the developments of non-euclidean geometry and basically all the things that can go wrong if you start thinking outside the box.

Apart from math class, however, French class was another fun experience. I really like my teacher, she's old but full of energy. I feel like she has a strong desire to make us speak good french and not to be able to just get by. The dynamic was significantly different from math since I was one of two guys in a room of 14 which was smaller than the room that housed our math class of 5 awkward math guys. Interestingly enough, we spent a large portion of the class asking each other the same question, to which there was a wide variety of answers. Come to think of it, there's a girl in the Astrophysics program majoring in political science... little weird, but hey, I don't judge.

After class today I went shopping and found a good amount of supplies for a relatively low price. I'll be using a large majority of it with the baguettes that I'll be purchasing in the next couple of days. Baguettes are cheap, delicious, and absolutely great for spreading anything on. Hence, most of the things I bought at the grocery store involved cheese, butter, and jam, which will ultimately be spread on the baguettes that I buy on my way home each day. I was never really a big cheese person before I came here, and honestly, I can see why. I've tried the Bries and the other random stinkies that we call cheese in America, and I'm not ashamed to say that this is one thing where France has us beat. Shocked and awed by not only the price but the quality of cheese here, I can see that it will be one of many things that will undoubtedly accompany many baguettes in the near future. There has not been a cheese yet that I did not like.

Making dinner today with one of my new friends (a cool guy named Sam), we met two lovely girls from Germany who were making some sort of beet & goat cheese appetizer looking thing. It wasn't much to be honest, but it looked like little cakes in the beginning, and since there was also eggplant in the mix (which I noticed right away). Anyway, it turns out that they're studying much more exciting things here than "Math." Some mix of civil planning based on the socio-cultural implications of the decisions in investing and whatnot in the community. It sounded really cool, but unfortunately their beets were done.

My camera ran out of juice this morning as I was leaving, so no pictures... I'm sorry. =(

A bientot.

-Pavel

Jet lag

16 hours of sleep, and the only productive thing I did today was wipe the contact list on my phone trying to get it unlocked.

-Pavel

I am a tourist.

I spent a lot of time today in the city. I think I saw a large majority of the tourist attractions, although I didn't participate in them since they were somewhat expensive (7 € to climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe?).  There was a lot though, and I got to see the outside of the Louvre, the Obelisk at one end of the Champs-Elysées in the middle of La Place de la Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Panthéon, and a large majority of the Musée d'Orsay. I did get to see most (all) of it with Kim, and it was really nice to have some company around the city. Walking around you really get a feel for its enormity. It's significantly larger than the downtown of Chicago, and since none of the buildings are allowed to be built taller than 5 stories, everything which is important is also super spread out. Also walking around, I was able to see a lot of Paris's interesting but not very popular architecture. My favorite was this building which seemed to be built out of dirt whereas this bridge looked like something out of lord of the rings (minus the cars and bitter french people). There were also a few fences that had spikes positioned somewhat peculiarly as to prevent people from climbing the french from any direction.

The Musée d'Orsay was very interesting and it had a lot of 19th century artwork, both painted and sculpted. I really liked a painting whose title and painter I can't remember at the moment (go me) but it had a lot of white paint seemingly just sponged onto a black canvas. It was very simple... enough so that you could probably do it yourself, but it looked very cool. Impressionism is usually very interesting when done with still lifes and not necessarily portraits. It was overall a great experience.

Afterwards, Kim and I decided to hang out with some interesting statues outside the museum before heading back into the Quartier Latin where we found a vietnamese restaurant with an incredibly cheap menu and a great walking area. It was a lot of fun just trying to pronounce all the French names of the different places even though I don't think we got any right. Oh, and hagen-daz (sp?) has some ridiculous fondue dish that involves dunking a dozen scoops of ice cream and a whole variety of fruit into chocolate with walnuts on the side. We didn't have the money/willpower to stop and try it, but it definitely is on my to-do list. I could definitely see myself living in this area and just hanging out at night, it was really awesome just walking around.

Speaking of which, I got tired around 8-9 PM, which according to the time difference should be about mid-afternoon in the states. This doesn't really make a lot of sense in the sense of jet-lag. I think I really screwed myself over with my sleep schedule, but somehow managed to make it work in time for classes on monday. 8 AM is not a fun time to get up... I don't know whose decision that was.

-Pavel

Arrival

So. This is it. I'm facing ten weeks in the very unpredictable but highly entertaining world known as the European Union. I can't say that I'm not nervous, but hey, it's France. What can go wrong? Well for starters my flight here was delayed two and a half hours (two of which were spent on the plane). The plane wasn't full though, so I guess having three seats to myself on an intercontinental flight makes up for my gratuitous delays.

Interestingly enough, when I arrived at the airport, I was picked up at the airport by my mother's cousin. Now, I know he's Macedonia's ambassador to France, but being picked up by a chauffeur was a little unexpected. I was introduced to the ways Paris is laid out and the different ways that you can get around it. All I'll say is that Paris's loop is a lot bigger than Chicago's. Riding with the ambassador was kind of cool too, how he went about answering phone calls and talking in politician. It made me feel important.

Getting to my dorm, the gorgeous Maison Internationale in Paris, was a little underwhelming, until I got into my room. Which is completely awesome considering it's the perfect size and it has a bed, mini fridge, and it's own private bathroom. Not only that, but it was really clean too. I feel like I'm going to enjoy this whole Paris thing after all.