April 25th Friday

Today was the finish of our first week with professor Lafond. This meant that our class was now half over. I got up at 9:00am and had some cereal for breakfast.

I walked to class. Today we were discussing genetically modified organisms. Lafond was very much against the idea which is apparently the general European opinion. I hadn’t thought about it before but I didn’t really have a problem with GMOs. I’d always been fascinated by biology and genetics. If there was a way for science to create food that would stay fresher longer I was for it.

After class we went to the cafeteria. I bought a ham baguette sandwich and an orange juice. It was only after I’d bought the sandwich that Amanda invited me to go with her to have lunch with a friend of a friend. I ate half of my sandwich on the way because I was hungry. Amanda and I walked to Sèvres Babylone to meet Jessica. We all walked to Le Café du Marché. Karuna met us there. We were able to get an outside table. I split a salade césar with Karuna. It was one of the restaurant’s special salads with tandoori chicken on top. We also shared a tiramisu for dessert. We sat there for a while and talked. I’d been hoping to leave by three. At that time, there was a gathering of Obama supporters on one of the bridges. Across the world, supporters were taking pictures on bridges to show Obama’s ability to bridge the gap. I wasn’t necessarily going to jump in but I wanted to at least see it and take a picture myself. Sadly though, we were there until after 4pm.

We split up and Karuna took Jessica to a sewing store. I walked with Amanda back in the direction of my place. We talked along the way. Amanda told me some more about her friend. The strange thing was that Jessica had just gotten married to a man that was about twice her age. She was our age and her husband was in his forties. Apparently they met while she was doing an internship in Albania. He was stationed there. Now, she’s in Paris with him. It sounded like a strange couple.

Amanda walked me home and then took the metro home. I stopped in Nicolas and bought some wines before going to the apartment. When I got home I hung out with Adrienne for a bit. We watched some more Smallville. For dinner we simply heated up some vegetable soup and had it with bread and butter.

That evening, John (Euromaster) was hosting a party at his apartment. I got ready and then left with Karuna on the metro. We went up to the Barbès stop and got off. All around the station there were these really creepy guys. Some of them were trying to sell cigarettes to the people coming out of the metro. Some of them gave us a look that made me want to get away very quickly. We had trouble finding the apartment but eventually succeeded. We went up and joined the party. It was a very large apartment. John lived there with five roommates I think. There were Euromasters and other guests there. It was fun to see everyone.

They were worried about getting noise complaints from their neighbors so as it got later and the guests diminished, we went to a bar downstairs. We stayed there for a while but then the bar closed. We ended up going to a nearby club/bar called Le Blue Note. Tonight it was playing Brazilian music. I wanted to just stop in for a minute and then go home. I was starting to feel kind of tired. I listened to the music and liked it all right. There were two guys that asked me to dance with them. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to dance but I figured it would at least pass the time. They were kind of weird. I don’t know why it’s always the weird guys that ask me to dance. Just once it would be nice for a normal, attractive guy to show some interest.

I’d finally had enough and told Karuna that I wanted to go around 3:30am. We went outside where we found John and some of his friends. We talked to them outside for a while. I kept waiting for Karuna to pull herself away. We ended up leaving at 4:30am. We had definitely missed the last metro. I wanted to take a taxi home but I wasn’t sure if we’d find one. We decided to start walking in the direction of the apartment and catching a cab if we saw one.

We ended up walking the entire way home. I was tired and still mildly cranky when we arrived at the apartment between 5:15 and 5:30. I went to bed around 5:45. I was exhausted.