mes pensées

20 days later....

So 20 days later, I've finally decided to start this blog! Ifigured out the internet at my school Sciences Po about a week ago. (the official name is Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris for those who were wondering).
So where to begin? How about classes? Well firstly, I miraculously got placed into french 199 here. So apparently that means I get 2 credits and can pretend like I've take French for two years! So that's good news as far as improving my french at a rapid speed, but hopefully i'll do okay in the class! My France in the EU class provided me with a lovely midterm the second week of class, so that was pretty cool...haha. It wasn't too bad though so hopefully I wrote what the prof wanted to hear. The class is pretty interesting but sort of chaotic. Basically we all just share our opinions about France, including the French students' own interpretation of their State and Nation (the State is basically the government, but it's a lot more complicated than that...I won't bore you). So writing notes is hard bc I don't know if I should be writing down what everyone's saying or not...madness. My public health class is really interesting. Today we are having a guest lecturer who is a public civil servant (which is more respected here than having a public office job in the U.S.) and is a member of the Inspection general des affaires sociales. It should be a blast! hah...

And now for my social life which isn't incredibly more interesting but nevertheless worth mentioning. I'm currently a member of a soon-to-be "acapella group" known as TLP feat. Ludakrishna, created two weeks ago. We're kind of a big deal here...and by a big deal, i mean we sat in the back row of the bus on the Normandie weekend trip and did karaoke, inlcuding tangling up our two sets of ipod headphones. We probably drove anyone crazy but it made the drive interesting!! T is Tanto aka Dan, L is Lil Papi aka Victor, P is for Dulce and I, aka Princess Peach and Princess Daisy and Luda is Moulin. We, as well as Gauthami aka Toadstool and Jocelyn and Sarah, had a great time in Barcelona! It's nice to have a solid group of friends that I can do anything with. I also got a CELL PHONE!! It's free for me to receive calls so call me anytime! If you're having some sort of Jessica withdrawal, from the states you diall:
011-33-686-080-305 or from France 06-86-08-03-05.
I realized living in my homestay that I'm kind of excluded from the planning that goes on in FIAP, the hotel where just about all the NU kids are living. So in order not to miss out on the fun, i got the cell phone. I was hoping not to get one but it's just too hard when i'm living alone. At least I'll always have Emily, who is a fellow Californian (what are the odds?) living in the homestay with me and our "housemom" Annie aka Mme Battard. Emily is so much fun and we went out the first couple days I was here before I saw all the NU kids and she and her Smith friends showed me a good time. Hopefully we'll go out again soon!
I'll write more about Barcelona soon but I know if I write anymore you'll get bored and stop reading...and that wouldn't be any good!!! So for now I'll just say I miss you all back home and hope everything is going great!
<3, jess

posted by jessievon @ 9/20/2006 01:56:00 PM