i think today was the first day i saw one of these since i've been here.

it was in the very hot and stuffy classroom in which i had my first french university class--an "analyse de texte" on baudelaire's fleurs du mal, among other things. the class should be good fun, and it doesn't seem to hard. only thing is, more cell phones went off in that 40 person class than at penn. fo sho.

to backtrack--the shabbat thing in torcy (not in lyon) with other french students was really great. i'm glad i went even though the idea of going alone scared the shit out of me. however, i realized that had i just been another french student going and not knowing anyone, it would've been scary and probably not as good, but being an american i got a bit of attention which was nice. basically, it was run by this organization called uejf (union des etudiants juifs de france) and was the prepatory conference of sorts for students before they start university where they'll face anti-semitism and will have to be able to defend themselves. although this didn't really apply to me, i still went to (almost) all the meetings and stuff. the french kids came from all around france--lyon, toulouse, paris, etc. i got there on friday (the program started on thursday) and people were in the middle of lunch. loic, one of the organizers, was really nice and helped me by introducing me to people who spoke pretty good english and stuff. but i still tried to speak in french the whole time and practiced. i learned random words like "sympa" (basically cool), franchement (frankly), truc (stuff). the first person i talked to was a guy who was studying business (everyone was studying business, medicine, engineering or law, but the first two seemed to be the most popular. goddamn jews) and we talked about random stuff, including anti-semitism in france which he thinks people really blow out of proportion. that was interesting.

other nice people i met were: natalie, a girl who studied in san diego for a semester and spoke pretty good english, her boyfriend joseph who's black, father's jewish (but no connection) and got really into judaism and is in the process of converting, johanna, a lubavitch girl from lyon. most of the people there weren't religious, but knew hebrew songs and stuff. uejf is nice because they have a lot of programs (they take students to israel in the summer and have a conference every year, last year it was in new york) and a lot of people knew each other already. the fact that i'm from new york was really to my advantage because apparently that's like the center of the world to them. many couldn't understand what the hell i was doing in paris.

saturday night there was a party with music and alcohol (gasp) and it was fun. i got to chat with some random people and stuff, and went to bed at 4, which wasn't so good for my 10am wakeup call for more conference crap. i sort of drifted in and out of each speech because there were often things i didn't get. anyway, i have to rush this because i need to write a paper here at reid hall before it closes in 3 hours, so maybe i'll have some good additions later in life. i should be getting internet in two weeks or so which will make me very very happy. i do hope people haven't forgotten about me.

oh and dalia, screw you.