La vie en rose....

Hi all,

Comment Cava? Or how are you? I'm doing pretty well. Just returned from my fulbright orienation in Paris where I got to hang out with mostly Americans for 3 days!!! Crazy. And it turns out that this other girl and I are truly the only ones who don't live in Paris. This other girl is actually a friend of Adrienne's (my best friend from high school for those of you who don't know) and we got along really well so that made it even more fun. With the fulbright we had lots of formal briefings my embassy people on security, a guy from CNN who lives here and people like that. We also had a reception Thursday night at the Palais Luxembourg, which is now the senate, and is pretty famous. The ambassador and minister of education were there as well as lots of really interesting old people and plenty of champagne so everyone had a great time. The next day all of us scientists got a briefing at the Institut Pasteur and learned all about the capital of infectious disease research. It was pretty awesome. We then went to this new museum in Paris called the Quai Branly where they take you on a trip around the world and don't just show you western european art. They managed miss Mongolia though. The audio guide, which the Fulbright provided for us (pretty swanky), also informed us that one of the jackets from asia was still being worn until 1997 when they purchased it, making it sound like they bought it off some poor hungry child's back or something. It was pretty funny, I thought. It was rainy in Paris but altogether a good experience.

I am currently using stolen internet from my neighbors and until about 2 seconds ago it had been working well since I returned last night. Now it is not, but what can you do?

However, I am very close to obtaining the final piece of paperwork needed for my carte de sejour which is the key to me getting internet. It is now necessary for all Fulbrighters who are doing research to register at the University so we are all scrambling a bit. For my university they were requiring me to produce the original copy of my diploma, which is already difficult but made all the more difficult by the fact that they just issued them last week. Luckily, Pitt is super nice and worked with my mom and I just received my diploma which means I can register tomorrow which is the first day of classes and then I can go to the prefecture (the mean carte de sejour people) and finish that up so that I can finally have my medical exam. This is a very strange and uninteresting post so I should add more to it. Well, I am going to see the american movie about Daniel Pearl's abduction (I don't know the name in English, but the movie might be in English). It's sunday here so movies are cheap and there isn't much to do. Hope all is well on the home front. I'll let you know what school in France is like sometime later this week.