PETA, PARIS, and Pterodactyls

Les Champs lit up for christmas and emily taking a picture of it. 

PETA ads in the metro station- and I thought they didn't exist in france. But this one is shaky it is supposed to be a row of les lapins (bunnies) hanging up.
And the girl is saying I am a victime of fashion just like You! (to the bunnies) while holding a Knife. (makes perfect sense- that vest is ugly) and then 1 vest= 25 bunnies and 1 sac/purse is another amount of bunnies- I cut it off.
Then after saying that they don't allow ugly things inside the middle of Paris I see this! At St. Michel (right next to the Jardin du Luxembourg aka seat of french parliment or something like that and a very pretty park that was in a much older post) 
Then on my way to class I saw this cafe that was celebrating the arrival of this season's wines by blowing up balloons in the shape of grapes ad hanging them on the roof. I thought it was cool. 

C'est hyper mega super cool! 
This is a video of the bears in one of the shops along the champs. They sell everything from touristy trash to salami and instead of hot chocolate they sell hot wine (vin chaude)- because they're french. This clip is not THAT interesting but it comes from one of the bigger little houses built along the street. They even set up an impromptu Bar complete with ridiculous (ridic) high prices commonly found along the champs- even temporary bars for spreading christmas cheer won't pass up the chance to rip you off. Buddy the Elf would NOT approve.

Banking!

I went to the bank today with Samantha and we were going to be all like Look we need to get this money to our landlord! (plan b involved tears.) After we realized that we actually banked at two different BNP locations we first went into mine and we found that instead of the really mean lady that usually works behind the desk there was a really nice one and there was not a long line of customers waiting to be helped- we entered bank heaven- or the twilight zone. 

But within a mere minute of walking in the front door she gave me my debit card! Like simple as that- why had it been so difficult before- no one knows. But this lady is the angel of the bank. She then helped us get the correct form for doing transfers to italy for paying our landlord. She explained everything as best she could so we could understand it- while this sounds like regular service- this is EXEMPLIARY customer service in France. So we try to fill out the form only to discover that we do not have our landlord's bank's address but Samantha remembers that he sent it to us in one of his earlier e-mails. Sciences-po is just down the road about 5 minutes so we decide to stop in there and use the computers so that we could get this all out of the way today. On the way there we run into 5 different people who we stop and talk to because we haven't seen them in a while. Eventually we manage to get the address and get out of sciences-po meanwhile however, the nice lady has gone off duty for lunch and the mean one is back. Dang it. Fortunately we don't have to ask the mean one any questions because the nice one explained it to us- we simply have to hand her the form right?

Nope she demands an explination for why we're paying this much money if it is our rent and it was difficult for Samantha to explain what she was trying to ask about in french so we get frustrated and the lady gets frustrated and gives us that I wish I could kill you now look and she says alright I'm filing this away to be sent out today. Great right? 

Then we decide to head over to Samantha's bank in order to do the same thing with her account but for whatever reason her bank is never open on mondays- go figure.

So later this afternoon I received a phone call and a lady at the bank (I think it was the nice one) said that I needed to come to the bank tomorrow for some reason concerning my account transfer- great. I hope this doesn't turn into another daily visit to the bank thing like getting my debit card was.

a somewhat successful day.

School drools. Especially when they schedule an 8am class. There's reasons why I don't sign up for those!

Saturday- Fanksgiving. Thanksgiving à la France- we're doing it Saturday because we still have to go to class on Thursday : (

Una Ciccolata Calda

Hey! I've been having some trouble updating my blog-not sure what the problem is but my pictures from turin with some captions are what not are posted on picasa here's the link

http:/picasaweb.google.com/slindsey711/Torino#

The French Election.

Today's Newspaper.

Barack Obama- The American Dream

Yesterday's news paper.

The night that could change america.

Celebration of a Nation. Not only is Kenya declaring a national holiday- yes that's true, but many french people are celebrating as well. I have seen numerous stickers and t-shirts and buttons both today and yesterday in support of the new president-elect around the city. A little bizarre considering they have no opinion on the matter nor could they influence any americans that they might come in contact with to vote seeing as it is France! I know of at least one Barack Obama party that happened last night that featured Obamagles (Bagles with red with and blue toppings). Sciences-Po even decorated the main hall in preparation for the big day.  The small Japanese town of Obama is dancing in victory-  obama chopsticks and kimonos etc. are flying off the shelf.

Everyone in my french class is pro-Obama. However, when my french teacher went around the room today asking what Obama as president would mean to each individual's country most of the people said that nothing really would change and some said that it might be bad for their country (New NAFTA agreement might be bad for Mexico and Canada, South Korea and Japan might have some strained relations- not entirely sure why, Russia might not like him if he chooses to focus on their war with Georgia over the war in Iraq) but other countries, Tiwan, Ireland, Germany said that most of the stuff wouldn't really change for them. "C'est Bizarre!" my teacher said, "Obama's campaign slogan is Change, n'est pas?"

quick post- more later

I've noticed recently that if I bump into people or have to use some form of excuse me it used to come out as the french Pardon/excusez moi or english sorry/excuse me. But especially when I am at the sciences po with the question of is the person next to me speaking english or a french speaker I have started to say pardy-moi or said party because I accidentally combined french pardon with sorry and threw in me to make sure people knew who I was talking about.

So pardy moi, I have to go get stuff done.