Another Entry With Large Paragraphs

Christine and I were reunited for the weekend. She brought Kelsey and Steve with her (all three of them are studying in Ireland through Loras), both of whom she fondly refers to as the "tourist Nazis." I thought it was a joke until I spent the weekend with them. By the time I met up with them on Friday at 6 pm, they had already been through 3 art museums and 2 or 3 national monuments. Considering that this had all been accomplished since 8 AM that morning, it was very impressive. And terrifying.

Molly and I took them on a crash course through the Louvre. We spent only an hour there, but we hit up all the good stuff like the Mona Lisa (overrated) and all the statues that are famous because they're missing limbs. Considering there are about 300 billion pieces of art in the Louvre, our 1 hour was impressive. I think they were all tired by then, though. I mean, it was a long day. Of course my "Ok, well that's really it unless you want to see some really weird, modern Dutch stuff" probably didn't make them want to stay in the museum.

They wanted French food (which is actually harder to find in Paris than you'd think. I could show you some good Italian, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants, though), so we took them to a crepe place. I don't think they got many tourists there because they guys gave us a free pitcher of wine and shots with ice cream and suckers along with our crepes.

Saturday, we went to the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and mass at Notre Dame, finishing our night off with wine and the Arch de Triomphe. Well, at least that's all Christine and I did. We let Kelsey and Steve go off and be uber-tourists by themselves for four hours and then met them for mass. It seemed like the intelligent, less masochistic thing to do. I can't remember everything the two of them ended up doing, but just multiply our list by 7, and I'm sure it's somewhere near that.

Today, we went to Versailles. We all got the audio guides, but decided we didn't like them that much. They were helpful sometimes, like on the rare occasion when they told you the historical significance of the room, but it wasn't very interesting when they said things like "and that cabinet over there was made by some cabinetmaker you've never heard of before. He came from a family of cabinetmakers." The audio guide person always said that last line as if it was shocking and you should have expected the cabinetmaker to come from a long line of unicorn-breeders instead.

I was sad to see the three of them leave, but I'm going to see them all again for St. Patrick's Day. I'm flying to Ireland the weekend before. I actually booked tickets.

Oh, I had another test on Friday. I was all zen about it until she handed it to us and I read the words "Final Exam" on the front (we have another week of class. I'm not sure whether or not this test is giving me permission to not pay attention for the rest of them). I actually did way better on the listening portion this time, though it's quite possible I failed the rest of the test. I'm pretty sure I invented some new tenses, but that's what they get for expecting me to learn 6 tenses in two weeks. I'm hoping that either a) my responses were magically correct or b) my teacher gets really confused and becomes convinced that she doesn't understand what I've written because I know French words/tenses that she doesn't.

I'm not really concerned about my grade because I did try. Even if I get an 11 (out of 20), I'm still going to be proud of myself. I asked my mother, and she never responded as to whether or not she'd still love me if I got an 11. I'm just going to assume it was a bad internet connection.