whiners

Alright, here you go, this is what I've been up to lately. Hopefully it will explain why I've been so bad about emailing, updates, etc. these last few weeks. (warning: this is long!)

Exams!

First off, I had exams until Feb. 24. In addition to just being lame like finals always are, these were new and exciting because I had no idea how anything would work or be graded, so I was slightly stressed out. They were also scary because I and everyone else in my masters had no idea what we'd actually learned this semester. We blame it on the fact that it's a new, highly disorganized program. I'd also say it's partly because I spent about a week trying to study for everything but ended up screwing around most of the time. But ultimately I'm pretty sure I passed all my classes, which is what really counts, right?

Post-exam Fun

After the last exam we went off to Tom the Englishman's apartment for drinks and pasta, the latter generously provided by Antonio the Italian. Magically delicious, especially after a bottle or two of champagne. Tom proceeded to serenade us with Chinese pop songs and to teach me the basics of capoeira, which, just so you know, is a martial art, not a dance (lest you find yourself at a bar with two capoeira ladies and their English friend, all ready to pound your ass for making it sound like an equivalent of a waltz or something). I was pretty pathetic but it was good clean fun. There was also a gumball machine full of peanut m&ms, and we didn't even have to put in a quarter! Claire and a couple of her guy friends joined us later since we were obviously not going to get 10 tipsy econ students out to a club on the other side of Paris.

Lazy days and nights, poker, and how I lost another jacket

Let's see, that Saturday, I don't remember what I did, but it was probably nothing terribly interesting, maybe a bit of cleaning ... in any case, I basically spent the next four days with Claire. We watched movies, played backgammon, drank coffee, ate pain au chocolat, etc. We went over to Ramon's (the Bolivian-American) for a poker night, with James and Amon the Irishmen, a New Yorker friend of Ramon's, and Amon's Swiss girlfriend Emily. Yes, so very cosmopolitan. Not sure why I included those details, but whatever. Lots of beer, raisins, and snowflakes the size of Pringles. I lost that one on the last hand because I folded. Otherwise with a pair of fives I would have had the best hand, which is pathetic. Ending the game because everyone is sleepy is not a good way to get people to bet reasonably on the last hand. Oh yeah, Saturday night I went to a birthday party, and hanging out afterwards at a bar with a bunch of expats I got my winter coat stolen, sometime between 2 and 5am. That's what I get for leaving it upstairs in a pile of coats. I know, I'm a dumbass, but it was after an evening of Champagne and cheese, what do you expect?

New jackets are good

A few days later Claire and I explored the used clothing shops of Paris and actually found some nice stuff. I ended up with a corduroy jacket to replace the one stolen at the beginning of the school year (I've not been having great luck with jackets this year), while Claire gave me fashion advice and tried on some cool hats and ogled these old-school red Addidas sneakers. Then she went off to Strasbourg for the weekend to see her family (god, that's so lame!), and I sulked by myself in Paris.

Bulgarians to the rescue!

Then Ina came along and saved me! My Bulgarian/English brilliant law student friend from down the street happened to be on the same train home, and told me about her last-minute plans to head home to Cambridge for the weekend. Me being the jealous type and really fiending for a trip out of France, I was delighted when she asked me along. A quick search online got me my train ticket, and I was in London 12 hours later (the train isn't slow, I left the next morning).

London Fanboy

The train was super-fast and great, London was cold and expensive, but absolutely lovely and great. Mass transit in England sucks, but it works. I was surprised to find that the subway system, the Tube, is actually a tube, like those pneumatic ones they use at bank drive-thru things. Given the name I guess I could have expected it, but the trains are tiny and round, unlike the Paris metro cars. One trip costs 3 pounds, or roughly $5.25, and the 45-minute train to Cambridge was 25 pounds ($43.75) round trip. There was a bomb scare or something just as we were getting on the train, but apparently it wasn't a big deal as we got back into the station a few minutes later.

Protecting us from terror

Once on the train we were less than pleased to find out the young man across the aisle was on his way to see mum after a year in military prison for beating some guy with an iron. He showed us his house-arrest tag and everything (he had authorization for the trip) and then proceeded to tell us how it could be circumvented, how he was going to get off the train, get piss drunk and get in a fight, etc. The fact that he and the 12-year-old looking navy guy across from him had been stationed in Iraq does not bode well for the occupation there.

A weekend in Cambridge, or how to feel stupid

Once in Cambridge and away from these slightly sketchy guys who were paid to carry very deadly weapons, despite the fact that they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them, we wandered around and Ina told me about the history of the place, the college system, etc. School trivia and the like. Turns out that if you get the highest grades, you become part owner of Trinity College, the best and richest college at Cambridge. She wasn't bragging, it just sort of came out over the course of the weekend that Ina is one of those part owners. And that she entered the school at 16. And that she's at the top of her class in Cambridge and in Paris (having kicked the ass of all the French students -- her parents asked how she was doing). Cambridge is crawling with people like that, as well as the kids of rich, famous people, so I felt kinda stupid and poor all weekend. But everyone was way cool and nice.

London Calling

I spent Saturday afternoon wandering around London, popping up from the metro every once in a while to explore. Brixton, sort of the Mission District of London, was very lively and cool, and I wanted to spend my rent money on the dozens of great books I found in a nifty second-hand bookshop. It was just kind of a wandering day, so not much to mention here.

Back Sunday night, started school the next morning. A week of vacation is just not enough! But whatever, it was a fantastic week. I even got to read fiction! (see below)

Oh yeah, back to learning

Now back to the grind, and the frustrations of a poorly-organized class. I think the others will be much better, but last night everyone was pissed off by how the professor expected us to remember in excruciating detail everything we'd learned at the very beginning of last semester. He was really rude about it too. Fortunately there are a couple of professors so it won't only be his grumpy self we see for four hours Monday night. After getting out at 9:15pm, some of us went for pizza and argued about Roger and Me and the new labor contract for young people (so you can get fired at will during the first two years of a job), and of course complained about the class. And on the first day of class! Today I missed half of our 8am lecture because I just couldn't get out of bed before 8:30. I'm going to miss that one a lot I think, but we're organizing ourselves so that at least one person from our masters will be there every week and will type up the notes for everyone else. It's quite nice to have 18 people in a masters.