When I walked into the bar, my first thought was, "I've made a terrible mistake". Laura and I made our way to the back of the bar where people wore plastered smiles and stared directly into my eyes, like I was a rare outsider entering the inner ranks of a cult. It was a French-Japanese cultural exchange night and to my horror I realized that I was ( Read more... )

What do you do when your philosophy chum invites you to his place in the countryside? Well me, I jumped at the chance, not knowing what to expect. A few other classmates came along, as did Laura. It turns out his mom is a bit of a hippy. This meant that everyone touched the wet dog and then ate dinner without washing their hands. Even if we wanted ( Read more... )

I got my grades back and I am just so damn pleased with myself! I got the highest grade in two of my classes. But I'm way happier about my 11 out of 20 in my really confusing phenomenology class (on melancholy and the "lived time"). An 11 looks bad, but it's actually like a solid B. More than half the class failed ( Read more... )

Yesterday was my first day of my Ancient Philosophy course. I approached my prof after class ( Read more... )

It's crunch time at school, which in this case means 50+ pages to write in three weeks. Mercifully, only 10 of those pages will have to be in French, but they will be harder to write than the other 40 ( Read more... )

Yesterday a good thing happened, followed by a bad thing. We went to an old palacial garden and in the little center, there was a group of local kids who were singing and dancing. They were teenagers with hand drums and loud voices, the equivalent of a group of American teens singing along to Weezer in unison, but I've never seen so much pure joy ( Read more... )

I know how to type periods now on Moraccan keyboards! And exclamation points ( Read more... )

There are some days when I feel like my French is pretty alright and school is totally manageable. Every once in a while, I even feel clever. Most days however, the deep sweeping valleys of time between these peaks, my French comes out like a drunk pirate and philosophy feels like an enormous machine designed to destroy me ( Read more... )

This morning I woke up at 7:40am and panicked. I'd only managed to get to sleep three hours earlier and I must've slept through the 6:50 alarm ( Read more... )

First thing! My brother and his wife, Amber, are having a baby! I'm going to be an uncle, which feels less weird than expected. You can congratulate me because I'm feeling great about this, but I have to be honest: I haven't done anything ( Read more... )