Really Not Much To Report
Paris continues to be, as somewhat predicted, a bit dull, what with school being almost over. I suppose I really should go visit and touristify and so on. My last class of the semester is tomorrow afternoon. Honestly, the most exciting thing to happen recently is a fire on my stove last night, and that’s not even as exciting as it sounds. I was taking my frying pan off the burner when a bit of melted butter sloshed off and hit the burner and ignited. I put the pan back on to smother the flames, but obviously I couldn’t put it upside-down — which would probably have been better for smothering, all other things being equal — since it still had butter in it. I was going to toss some water on it, then I realized I wasn’t sure if water does the same thing to butter fires as to oil fires. Seemed likely enough that I didn’t want to risk it, so I went into the bathroom, soaked my towel, rung it out so it wouldn’t drip, and went back to the kitchenette only to discover that the flames had burnt out. So all I got out of the ordeal was a not-quite-dried towel the next morning. Oh, and yesterday morning the hot water was off, for some reason, while today a note in the elevator informed us that the people who pick up the garbage are on strike, or something like that. Whoohoo.
Some pictures I hadn’t uploaded yet:
A sign outside a bookstore. A reading tiger of sorts, if I recall. I kind of got it at a bad angle.
Last week for Discovery of Paris we went back to Bercy, as I’d said, and the pool thingy was full of water. Lovely, innit? Which reminds me, back then I also ended up musing on the joys of translating one grading system to another. The professor filled out MICEFA grade forms, just wrote in my grades and gave them to me, apparently not concerned that I might cheat if she didn’t send them directly to the MICEFA office. Didn’t even seal the envelopes and sign her name across the flap. At any rate, she has her own system of converting French to US grades: 0-10 = F, 10-12 = D, 13-14 = C, 15-16 = B, 17-18 = A, 19-20 = A+. I got a 16 for language, a 19 for research and so forth. Thing is, the class is officially listed as two classes, because it takes up two class periods. So I need to have one grade for each listed class, so I get B for one class, A+ for the other. Of course, if you average that out as most American schools would, that means a B+ average for those two classes, because A+’s count for as much as A’s. But if the language and research grades had been averaged, and that average given for each class, it would be 17.5 for each, so it would be an A average. Which it probably will be, once I get back to Hunter, since this was one class and Hunter, unlike Paris 8, doesn’t care if you have a class that’s twice as long as the others. Still, I am amused at how the same work, evaluated the same way, by the same person, using the same criteria, can give two completely different results depending on how one works with a bit of bureaucracy designed to aid in time-management. Kind of highlights the pointlessness of the whole grades thing. Of course, the whole grades thing sort of is the point of the whole exercise, so… yeah. Best not to think about it to much, and just laugh. To oneself. Because other people might not appreciate the humor.
I was going to by Windex or equivalent to clean my room pre-move-out, but then I discovered Mr. Propre wipes. Seriously, how can you resist Mr. Propre? Not “M. Propre.” Which I find even more amusing. It somehow feels like it offers an insight into marketing and demographics and so on. At any rate, I bought it. Wonderful Franglais. Which reminds me of a new expression I learned from a Czech student: “On y go.” A combination of the French “on y va” and the English go.
The adventures of store-brand cereal! That yellow thing? A big lump of clotted-together cereal dust. Didn’t taste bad.
The park at Paris 8. All grassy now! With the cafeteria in the background. Those orange boxes up top, i learned this weekend, are dorms. So all those times I was in the cafeteria building and someone asked me where the dorms were, and I said they were somewhere else, this was just the cafeteria… my bad.
