France doesn't do Monday

It is Monday night and I am drinking wine alone in my bedroom. My wireless has decided not to work tonight, so I will save this document and bring it to IES to post tomorrow morning after class. I rolled down the big wooden blinds over my window, so I can see, clear and vivid, my reflection staring back at me as I write this.
I’m drinking that bottle of white from Crus et Decouverts. I think I taste smokiness? It’s good.
Today should have been my first day at the Sorbonne, but it was cancelled. When I came home and told my host brother, he said, “Ah. Ca c’est la Sorbonne.” He hates the Sorbonne. He’s really great. He and I were supposed to go to a play tonight, a play that one of his friends was in—a university show, free admission. By the time I got home from my afternoon doings (=walking around Paris with some girls, realizing slowly that EVERYTHING is closed on Mondays) at around 7:30, I was exhausted; so, when Theo came stumbling into my room at 8 barefoot in sweats and said, “Euh…veux-tu aller?” in a tone that really indicated he did NOT want to aller, I was pretty relieved. We did, however, make plans to go to this tiny theater in St. Michel to see some Ionesco plays at some point. Ionesco is, like, a really crazy French playwright. I read some of his stuff in a class last semester—things about people turning into rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?), and dead bodies inflating and flying away, and mushrooms growing out of carpets. I think he drank a lot of absinthe. Anyway, there is this theater that I stumbled upon on Friday in the rain that has apparently been showing the same three Ionesco plays every night for 50+ years, so Theo and I are going to go, at some point.
On Saturday I went shopping with Loubna and she introduced me to her friend Fabian (Lou and Fafa, as their best friends [a.k.a. me?] call them). It was fabulous. Loubna had no interest in shopping for herself, but took me all around Paris, trying to “comprendre mon style” and advising me about what was worth my money and what wasn’t. Fafa had just gotten back from a year in London, and so was the “English expert.” English expert apparently = broken sentences and phrases like “I go Greece my cousin last year.” We sat at a café afterwards and the two of them chain-smoked cigarettes and Fafa showed me pictures of her many boyfriends and we talked about all sorts of topics that were pretty difficult to address in a foreign language, but fun nonetheless. They were fabulous (adjective repetition intended).
That night, they took me to Maxim’s, this club near Place de la Concorde, apparently one of the chicest clubs in Paris. At dinner with my host family that night, I told them I was going to Maxim’s, and they all gasped. It was quite the establishment—three stories, spiral staircases, velvet carpets, chandeliers—an old building still bearing witness to the décor of la belle époque. That, of course, means that each drink was 12 euro. And mom, you’ll be happy to hear that my host mother, Yolaine, called my cell phone at 2:30 in the morning because she wanted to remind me not to drink anything that someone gives to me, and to keep my eye on my glass at all times.



Ahhhh this one really was meant to be short. Okay real quick—Sunday I walked along the banks of the Seine and then met up with Hugo, Cohen’s host brother from last year (for those of you who don’t know Cohen, it is sufficient to know that he is some guy). I went to a bar in St. Michel with Hugo and his friends and watched the Ireland vs. Argentina rugby game (Argentina won, which is apparently bad for France). Hugo and his friends are all 19, so it was a nice break from the ultra-sophisticated Parisian world that seems to surround me pour la plupart du temps. They quoted Beavis and Butthead. And Hugo had been to Pomona to visit Cohen earlier this year, so it was really nice to talk to him about people that we both know. A (sort of ) taste of home.
You know what, I’m going to stop apologizing for long blog entries.
Bye.