February 18th Monday

I got up at 8:30am and tried to do some research. I was trying to find out more about women in politics in order to figure out what angle I wanted to write my paper from. I ate a yogurt for breakfast and got ready.
Adrienne and I walked to class. I was very nervous because I still didn’t have a research question. Finally, we were in Ms. Boussaguet’s class and it was time for me to share my topic. I told her that I hadn’t figured out how to word my question differently but I had thought about how I wanted to research it. I still had my original question of “How have women advanced in the two parties in government in France?” but I knew what angle I wanted to research from. I wanted to look at it from the women’s perspective. I wanted to see what women do themselves to get into politics. I managed to survive the class. She seemed okay with my question and told me that sometimes you can keep a really general question and then narrow it after more research.

After class I went with some of my classmates in search of food at the cafeteria. Unfortunately, it was vacation for the rest of the school so the cafeteria was closed. We ended up going to the café on the corner near the school. I ordered a curry chicken sandwich for myself and one for Karuna. We went back to the cafeteria to eat at the tables there. I was starving after only eating a yogurt for breakfast so I ate my sandwich there. Then Adrienne and I went back to the apartment so that we could deliver the sandwich to Karuna.

Karuna was going to meet her friend Natalie near Châtelet and I came along. She packed up her bags and took them with her so that she could leave straight from there. We met up with Natalie and the three of us went to a nearby café. I ordered some hot chocolate. It was very good but I burned my tongue on the first sip.

We sat there for a while and talked. It was an interesting neighborhood. Eventually Karuna had to go to the airport to catch her flight and Natalie had to go to work. We paid for the drinks and went on our way.

On our walk back toward the metro we passed the Centre Pompidou. I had only seen it in pictures before. It’s a crazy building with strange pipes on the outside. We also passed by some strange looking fountains. We stopped at a Panini stand. Karuna and I were feeling kind of hungry so we split a 3 cheese Panini.

Natalie got on the metro while Karuna and I hopped on the RER. I got off at the Musée d’Orsay stop and Karuna continued on to the airport. I walked home and met up with Adrienne. We decided to go to Franprix and get some grocery shopping done. On the way there, I dropped the cards to Amanda and Mormor into the mail box.

While we were looking around in the store, we got a call from Karuna. She was worried about traffic and asked us to look up flights for her in case she missed it. I told her we were in the store but once we got back we could look and see what there was. That’s what we did once we got back to the apartment. Thankfully, we got a call from Karuna saying that she made it on the plane but just barely.

Adrienne and I made dinner for ourselves. We had some bowtie pasta with chicken. I cut an onion up to put in the tomato sauce. I drank milk with it. We were awaiting a houseguest that would be staying with us until Friday. We didn’t know her so we weren’t sure what to expect.

Finally, Renée got in. We met her at the metro and showed her up. She hadn’t eaten so we fed her some soup. We tried to get to know each other a little.

I got to talk to Megan online. I’ve been trying to figure out when to go to Scotland and visit her. We got to talk about the possible dates a little bit.

I went to bed around 12:30am.