I have to admit it's getting better

Well, it's inevitable that after a crappy week the week before last I find myself having a great time again. I'm not sure exactly what it was today, but I just had a really cool time in class and with people in my masters. Despite starting class at 8am with statistics and economic theory (econometrics for those of you not taking notes), and after two slightly frustrating hours of matrix algebra and huge data sets, we managed to use this powerful statistical software all by ourselves. Yes, we only managed to replicate the results of a journal article, but it was still a cool moment: after several misfires, we finally put in the right variables in the right order, got the error correction to work, interpreted the results, and could test and critique the results in the published article. Nerdy, I know, but it was cool.

For the next class a few hours later we had the awesome American lecturer, and despite the fact that I don't know how I'm going to go back to listening to the French profs (and being like my French friends in class today), I got the most I could out of this guy. I got good responses to questions, had actually done the reading and could explain the article in a few sentences to the class, and explained stuff in French to the other students afterwards, etc. Yes, if you didn't know already, I am a total nerd. But this guy is a big name, who knows if could help to not appear like an idiot in front of him? Afterwards I chatted with a few of the French girls in my class and their boyfriends (freshly arrived from South America) and just had a grand old time making fun of each others' accents, basically having another three-language, complicated conversation like at the party on Friday.

All in all, life is good. I'm glad I'll be at home for xmas. And for those of you (including myself a few months ago) who were hoping I'd hate it here, sorry to disappoint, I really will only be in the States for a week. Unless things tank from here on. In any case though, I can't wait to see all of you.

And now, a few photos leeched from my friend's blog, both from the evening at Favela Chic (my favorite real club) a few weeks ago:





James, me, Ramon

Can you believe I was dancing for an hour before this, and an hour or two after? Who knew I would start going out to dance?



DJ and MC, all artsy and black and white