I’m halfway into my first week of class. Monday was at the MICEFA building, a pretty low-key course about foreign poets in Paris. Turns out it’s being run as something of a writing workshop, which is nice, that way I don’t feel I’m slacking off on my major. The first thing we did was work out the schedule because, of course, not all University of Paris campuses have their vacations at the same time. Promises to be an enjoyable course.

Speaking of the MICEFA building, I took some pictures around there a while back but never got around to posting them:

The Port Royal RER B stop, closest train to MICEFA:

Not the MICEFA building, but a nice building with a parking lot that serves as a pretty shortcut to the MICEFA building:

The MICEFA building:

Me approaching the MICEFA building:

Their lovely sign, assuring students that, yes, this is the MICEFA building:

Tuesday was Comprehension and Analysis of Texts, at Paris VIII. I got there about forty minutes early, in order to have time to explore the building and find my classrooms. Paris VII has a very nice campus, a little used and graffitied but laid out quite nicely. It’s pleasant enough aesthetically that I’m willing to forgive its utterly chaotic floor plan, evidently designed by the esteemed architecture and aeronautics firm of Daedelus & Son. At any rate, the professor took roll and quizzed people on their majors and all the usual stuff, outlined the course (apparently, we’re going to be comprehending and analyzing texts. Go figure), and spent the last hour giving us a detailed explanation of the current strike, and why professors aren’t wild about Sarkozy’s reforms, and so on.

I have an issue with the idea of students going on strike, from a purely semantic standpoint. How, exactly, does the customer go on strike? If it’s simply a matter of refusing to participate with the business/school/etc in order to show solidarity with striking employees? Because that’s a boycott, not a strike. Given the very different economic roles played by clients and employees, it seems like an important distinction to make.

I was going to insert here some pictures of the Paris VII St-Denis campus, but I realized I haven’t uploaded them yet. I’ll get around to it tomorrow. In the meantime enjoy these other pictures I uploaded and hadn’t yet posted:

This was the snowfall that apparently completely screwed up Parisian traffic last Monday when we were moving in:

Today I got to school for my 9:00 class, only to discover that it actually started at 12:00. I then discovered that, unlike Hunter, Paris VIII does not have chairs, tables, and couches all over the place; nor does it have a whole lot of electrical outlets where one may plug in one’s computer so as to not run it totally dead before class. I was going to go to the library, but they were closed because of the strike, so I was reduced to searching for outlets in the hallways. It might be that students don’t use laptops as much in France; then again, the majority take notes by hand in New York, and that doesn’t stop us from having a decently wired campus. So it goes, at any rate.

At 12:00, I went to my class, found it empty, and went to the FLE department to check that I had the correct room. On the way there, I ran into another MICEFA student, and learned that the first day of class would be next week. This had not been posted as of yesterday. I am missing American-style bureaucracy more and more. At Hunter, at least, there would have been a sign on the door of the classroom, even if they didn’t tell us ahead of time.

Apropos nothing, here’s the wonderful view from the elevator in the dorms. I forgot you can’t tilt the camera when taking video, so it really looks best if you turn your head 90 degrees to the left.In other news, I’m getting quite fond of the Metro. It’s fast and pretty efficient, and has a better range than the New York subway system. Transferring is less of a hassle because the trains arrive more often, and I’ve confirmed from observation that the door-opening handles and buttons don’t activate until you reach the station, so there’s no need to worry about someone opening up the train in the middle of the tunnel. The metro is great for people-watching. Yesterday I had fun observing how long it took people to react to the smell of the homeless woman sleeping on the seats, and what form their reaction took (bolt back out the door? Go to the other end of the car? Cover nose with coat collar?). Today, going to school, I paused my iPod because I felt I ought to practice my French eavesdropping skills on the trio of thirtysomething women having an animated conversation next to me. It turned out that the conversation revolved around one woman explaining how she had seen someone fit all of their fingers between their eyelids and eyeballs.

Oh, and over the past 5 days I watched Arrested Development. Not a bad show. The first season is a bit formulaic but strong, the second starts hitting its stride with rising absurdity and an increasingly evident metafictional bent, and the third manages to keep on cranking up the crazy without jumping the shark. From the look of it, it was probably canceled at just about the right time; it’s hard to think of what more could be done with the characters without getting repetitious or too over-the-top. The show has a pythonesque ability to balance the intelligent and the idiotic, running the gamut from a wonderful David Blaine spoof to convolutedly subtle Incredible Hulk references. By eschewing the reset button, the show is able to eke the full potential out of premises that might otherwise have been squeezed into a single episode. Okay, I’m rambling, but it really is a good show. In honor of it, please enjoy the following montage, which immortalizes one of the best running gags ever and ends with what may be the funniest scene of the entire show:

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