My Ears Are a Bit Colder Now

Chocolate. Cheese. Wine. Chocolate. The French know what they're doing, and also outside of the culinary realm it seems. Today (well, really I suppose yesterday at this point), I decided to check out the coiffure (hairstyling place) once more. If there was no one there, I confirmed to myself that I would not be getting my hair cut at all (at least during this semester). However, as everyone else in the world seemed to know, it turns out that hairstyling places are typically closed on Mondays (apparently in France, as well as in the States). In any case, I set out the conditions beforehand and had little alternative but to have my hair cut, except for the possibility that they couldn't cut my hair at that time (at which point I also would have decided not to have my hair cut). As it turned out, I was able to indeed have a haircut. Somehow, the haircutter understood my hair situation, through a combination of my French and her ability to actually understand my hand motions, and gave me a pretty good haircut. I told her (more or less) that I wanted it relatively shorter than the long hair I possessed, that she needed to pay particular attention to the top of my head, and that my hair gets curly when my hair is dry. Towards the end of my explanation, she asked me if I wanted my hair somewhat like the guy's in the window display poster. I nodded and threw in a oui, and with professional precision, cut my hair within about half an hour's time. Glasses off, I felt the pangs of the past couple of years and a few months of work to keep my hair long and saw the rather dramatic difference in terms of my hair length getting shorter as she worked. In the end, my haircut ended up being 25 €; I'm thinking it's because she cut a substantial amount of hair off and re-styled my look.

After a quick stop at the pharmacie to attempt to try and find some hair gel, I headed off to school. My Travaux Pratiques class was focused primarily on grammar corrections, followed by a reminder of the quiz we have to study for, as well as the multiple dossier projects we have to work on, by Thursday. My immigration class was great, as usual. We're beginning to get into immigration and citizenship theory within the French context. Fun stuff. I know, right? :)

I got my first set of grades back from both classes. I need to learn more French grammar quickly and concretely. Trevor and I have decided to take it upon ourselves to speak even more French and will soon try to proofread each other's papers.

After my five hours of class, we had our weekly conférence. This time around, the subject was the French media. Somehow, the hour-long meeting felt like only 20 minutes. There were two speakers, at least one (if not both) from RFI (Radio France International).

Following the conférence, I joined Gerald, Jill, and Sam, on the métro to tram ride to the Fondation for dinner, where we met up with Claire, Nicole, and Trevor. Trevor and I then went back to my room to work on some homework. In between my corrections and such, I happened to make some three-cheese bread as a snack, even though we both agreed that we didn't need to eat anymore. Comme toujours, we ended the night with my hot chocolate and some pains aux chocolat.