Day 60: Midterms and Visiters

Hello again,
Sorry it has been so long, I had a crazy past few weeks. First off, I had to move. My host family went on vacation to Rome and did a house swap with a family in Rome so I was kicked out of my house and moved in with my host grandma, who is 84 years old and Portuguese. She is probably my favorite person that I have met here, she is absolutely hilarious and very sweet. My move started off awkwardly because she did not talk to me when I first got there and didn't seem too happy. Once my host dad (her son) and my host brother left she got very nice and came over to welcome me which was nice (but also my first indication that their relationship is not great), however in the middle of making sure that I was comfortable she started crying. At first I was super worried about what I could have possibly done to make her cry, but than she came over and pinched my cheeks, kissed my cheek, and rubbed by back so I guess she was just happy to see me. Her apartment is closer to central Paris (right by the Eiffel Tower!) so it was really nice and convenient for me to have a 20 min commute to class instead of a 50 min commute. Also I have a GIANT, fluffy bed here which is always nice :) She is very nice and sweet, she gave me a bookmark of Portugal after we talked about how beautiful it is and how I have never been there (now I really want to go), and keeps leaving little presents on my bed when I am out (for example a box of Kleenex that she thought was pretty and a map of the world). She also lectured me one morning during breakfast about how I need to marry a french boy and have lots of french babies so that I can continue to practice my french skills. I think my favorite experience with her was when she asked me if I wanted her to buy me anything at the market that day and I asked for grapes. She asked me if I wanted white or black grapes and I said white. She than told me that she used those terms because my skin is white (hurrm ok?), after which she verified that I did not want grapes from Africa. I had not heard if grapes from Africa were worse than grapes from elsewhere so I said it didn't matter to me. She than informed me that people are black in Africa, and I had said that I wanted white grapes. Hahah, it was quite silly. Anyways, the week after I moved was midterms so I was absolutly swamped with work :( and very very stressed out. One of my midterms though is the hands down best midterm that I have ever had. It is for my commic strip class, we have to write a commic strip based off of one of 3 grim brothers stories. It is really fun, and it is actually pretty intense, we have been working on it for 3 days and it is due next monday. Thankfuly the artwork does not have to look good (mine is stick figures) but what is important is our stylistic choices in layout, and how that works with the story so it is a lot of fun and has given me more appreciation for commics as a letigamate form of art/literature. Anyways, my roommate from Tulane, Allison, who is studying abroad in Granada, Spain this semseter came to visit me this weekend which was a rediculous amount of fun :D We had missed eachother a lot and it was great to have a roomie reunion again even if it was just for the weekend. It was also just nice to have an excelent excuse to do all the touristy things that I had yet to do (like go to the top of the Eiffel Tower). I am going to get to go down to Granada to visit her in about 2.5 weeks and I can't wait! Sunday was the first sunday of the month (duh) and therefore all the museums were free, so we got to go to the Louvre (for the second time that weekend, its also free for students friday nights) and musee d'Orsay so that was a lot of fun. The best part of the weekend was Sunday night, when we were just walking around the Latin Quarter after dinner. We walked past Notre Dame and decided to take pictures of us pretending to be gargoyles, than we convinced my friend Joey who always has a mini-backpack in which he carries his stuff to put it on under his jacket and pretend to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame which was absolutly hilarious. Oh other random tidbit, last Tuesday I got to go to La Comedie Francaise with my theater class to see l'Avare by Moliere, which was a really cool experience. The theater is really old, and the troup that puts on plays there is basically where you aspire to work if you are a french speaking actor. The play was really really good, the actor who played Harpagon is a really famous french actor, and he was perfect, he was so funny and it was really an amazing acting job on his part. Everyone else was good too of course, but he really stole the show (which is appropriate because he is of course l'avare). Well that was the past couple weeks for me. I can't believe that in just a few weeks I will only have a month left here :( this semester has gone by so fast, in some ways I wish I was going to stay here for a whole year because I absolutly love it here, and I know I will be very upset when I have to leave. At the same time, I have realized that I am American and I miss being in the society that I feel I really belong in. I miss Tulane and I miss my family and friends and I miss California, so I guess its a good thing that I am not going to be here for a whole year, but I will miss Paris like crazy when I leave. It truly is the best city in the world.