Back in action

Well, after exams, illness, holidays, and approximately 37 hours of travel time, I am back to Paris, and back to my sadly neglected blog.

The holidays were interesting. They had high points and low points, but this is not the place for those stories.

I arrived in Paris on Sunday morning, after having left on Saturday afternoon. It was 7:30 AM in Paris, and 1:30 AM in my brain. I actually slept some on the long flight, which was a pleasant surprise. In fact, once the plane started landing I started to get grumpy because I wanted to keep sleeping. But land we did. Customs was much quicker to go through than when I flew in in August, and I got my bags without trouble, at which point I headed off to find the subway. Little did I know that I had to walk about a mile in the airport before finding it.

But walk I did, carrying nearly my own weight in luggage, and eventually I found the entrance to the RER. I managed to make it through the turnstile with my giant rolling suitcase, matching carry-on, borrowed duffel bag, and giant backpack. Then I settled into my seat for the long ride back to the Cité U.

When I finally got back, I had to go upstairs and get my key from Vaune. Turns out Renata Maniaci had it, and was also sleeping in my bed. So we rousted her out of there and I promptly took a shower and slept until 5 PM. Meaning I didn't get to sleep until maybe 3 AM that night. This proved fun the next day, as it was my first class teaching English conversation to computer science students.

No one had signed up for my first class so I cancelled it, meaning I got to sleep in. But around noon Vaune, Renata and I headed over to the school to grab our students. Four of my six students showed up and we went to see Gone Baby Gone at the Gaumont Parnasse. It was pretty good, I recommend it. It was also a low-stress way to ease into teaching English classes to French IT students. Afterwards, they asked me to go bowling with them, which was nice. I didn't go, but at least they like me. I'm thinking about making a bowling class for when we get back from Italy.

SPEAKING of Italy. Vaune and I are going to Italy from the 17th to the 27th! We are spending 2 nights in Pisa, 4 nights in Florence and 4 nights in Rome. It ought to be pretty awesome. Vaune's taken care of figuring out most of the travel arrangements, and I am working on places to stay. Mostly through Couchsurfing.com. I have already had one person stay with me and it was a very positive experience. I think this website is really great and helpful and they've built a really amazing community of people who love to travel and want to help other people be able to travel to the places they want to visit. I really encourage you to check it out! Especially the Beyer aunts... for some reason I think you would all find this site very interesting.

As for now, our last week of classes has started up. It's review time before my two remaining exams - Grammar and Swedish. I also have to complete two Swedish assignments by Thursday. I think it will be okay though. As odd as it was, I kind of like that two of my exams were before my two week break (because they were held during class) and two of them are after (because they are held during exam periods). All I have to do now is work out the timing between those two exams, because they are on the same day. Hopefully this week I will also find out some of my grades from the exams I have already taken. We'll see how it goes!

Also, I now have something called SkypeIn. It means that I have a US phone number that is assigned to my Skype account, so you can call me from a US phone and reach me on Skype, costing no more than it would normally cost to call a number from my area code! It's very cool. I also have voicemail so if you miss me you can leave a message, and I am trying to set up call forwarding to my French cell phone as we speak. If you would like the number, please ask me and I will e-mail it to you - I am obviously not going to post it on my public blog.