May 16th Friday

I got up at 9am and had bread with butter and orange jam along with a yogurt. We had Howorth’s class in the morning today to make up for one that had been cancelled. So we headed there.

After class I went to the CROUS cafeteria with some of the other students. This was the sit-down cafeteria a few blocks away from Sciences Po that sold hot food other than just sandwiches. I had smoked filet de lieu (fish), a potato salad, bread, and a chocolate mousse. It wasn’t too bad actually.

The group headed back to Sciences Po and I got a Coca light while we tried to read for the next class. Amanda and I were sitting on a bench tucked into some bushes and we kept distracting each other from reading by talking. We were using some of the other people in our class as a clock because they were sitting in the grass near us. When they got up we knew it would be time to go to class. Unfortunately, we did not see them get up and when I looked at my watch I realized that it was 5 minutes after the beginning of class already. We sheepishly went upstairs and into the classroom. This class was also with Howorth. Other than being late, the class went fine.

After class I walked home with Adrienne. I watched some Smallville online. We decided to make some tacos that night. So we made half beef for me and half of it chicken for Adrienne. We had it with some tomato, lettuce and salsa. It turned out pretty good and it was fun to eat some Mexican food. The Mexican food in France is a joke. It only comes in the form of taco and burrito kits to do at home. Occasionally there’s a Tex-Mex type restaurant that does weird things like put broccoli in the burritos.

After dinner I typed up my CV. The next day we were going to go buy tickets for the Sciences Po Gala. There were two levels of tickets. There was one to just the soirée part of it and there was an additional one open only to 5th year students to attend the dinner. Since we are masters students, we qualified as the 5th year level even if we hadn’t been at Sciences Po for that long. We had to submit our CVs because the dinner was a big schmoozing event for the soon to graduate students to meet with the now successful graduates.

Once I’d finished updating and translating my CV, I got ready for the night ahead. We were going over to Marilena’s place to celebrate her birthday. There was talk of going to Showcase after so we dressed up nice. We were able to walk to Marilena and Violetta’s place. As we were walking, I was talking on the phone with my mom about the possibility of mailing one of my formal dresses to me. The cost of mailing it was nothing like the cost of buying a whole new dress in Paris. The tickets were enough cost for me. I didn’t want to have to pay for a dress too. My mom was able to find one that would work.

We arrived at the apartment. It was a fairly good turnout of Euromasters and TAM people. We drank some wine and hung about the apartment. We took a few silly pictures. It was a lot of fun.

Then, Tobias said that he was going to meet some friends at Showcase. Nobody else wanted to go with him at that time. They wanted to stay around the apartment later. Adrienne and I decided to go with Tobias because we wanted to go to the club again. I also knew that Adrienne had a tiny crush on Tobias so I thought this would let her get to talk to him a little. We walked from the apartment to Showcase. It took a while to get there. When we finally arrived, we were able to get in without a problem. Sometimes they have a big line of people waiting to get in. We made it in and Tobias was able to find his friends in the crowd. His friends were, of course, two more girls. I’d been secretly hoping that his friends would be a couple of hot guys but, oh well. C’est la vie.

The large dance floor that was closed before was open tonight. It led up to a stage where a band was singing and dancing. I actually enjoyed the music much more than what the average clubs played in France. The club was really hot and everyone was sweating. The band looked really hot up under the lights. I know that we were getting hot dancing in the crowd.

We had lots of fun dancing to the band and eventually, the rest of the party showed up. We were joined by Christine, Casey, Amanda, Luis, Ludo, Marilena, and Violette. It was definitely more fun with everyone there because then I could take fun pictures of everyone dancing. There’s nothing like showing everyone their awkward dance photos on Facebook the next day.

Dancing was drying me out so I went to the bar and just got a Coke. The damn thing was €5!! This was a crime. Utterly horrible. I drank it anyway so that I wouldn’t die. We danced for a while just to work up a good sweat. Then it was eventually time to go home. Adrienne and I walked home and went to bed around 5:00am.