Modern Art

Although i have been on my death bed this week trying to recover from la grippe, i managed to go to the doctor to get my carte de sejour. This was quite an experience in itself, luckily a fellow french tracker, Jill, was there to help me through. First, I felt the need to vomit on the way to the prefecture doctor, so i stopped at the only place who will let you use their bathrooms, Mcdonalds. While i was in the bathroom, i hear outside my stall door, "OOOOH la la, oooh la la, je doit faire le pee-pee, oooooh la la." (translation, oh my oh my, i must make pee pee oh my). This was followed by urgent knocking on my door. Now, I don't know if the person in the other stall died or what, but they were in there before me, so i was a little annoyed (and nauseated) by the fact that someone was rushing my out of my precious stall. Finally, i was done and i let pee-pee lady go, only to find that the hand dryer did not work. This would have been fine, but the four people in line insisted on showing me how to work a hand dryer and of course, were extremely disappointed when, in fact, la seche-mains ne marche pas. Moving on, i showed up at the prefecture and was shown into a closet with two doors, where i was told in five languages to take off all my clothes for my lung xray. Then, much to my naked surprise, a man opened the other door and motioned me into the xray room where a woman shoved me against the machine, positioned my arms and told me to breathe in in french. After that, I had to go through the not so rigorous process of talking to the doctor, basically i just had to tell him i was not diseased, had never been sick, had surgery, been hospitalized and was of course up to date on my shots. Then, i waited for the prefecture people to get done with their crossword puzzle to tell me to come back in a week for my carte de sejour. The moral of the story is, I am almost legal and i have a sweet chest xray to treasure for ever.
my xray and I went to afternoon class, where Samantha informed me that she could see my breasts on my xray, I said no you can't and the xray got passed around and then she said yes you can and pointed them out, at which point my teacher held my xray up to my chest and said hmmmm. Well, i was more than a little embarassed. After class, we had our etiquette dinner. It was very yummy, but i was forced to try (out of politess) foie gras, sweet breads and two different kinds of blood sausage and the tummy was not happy. Then, our guest speaker launched into a discussion about how i should hang my chest xray on my wall as modern art. All in all it was an interesting 4 and a half hour dinner. But I did learn the history of the kir, so it was almost worth the blood sausage.
For those family members and friends who are concerned that all i do is drink and travel and party, I assure you that I do attend classes (although not too many this weak due to the illness). My french is coming along nicely, although it is still very elementary. I am taking grammar, conversation and business french right now for six hours a day, every day. I still have not gotten an internship, but there are five of us in the same boat and our south carolina advisor is coming next week to sort things out. So hopefully that will be fine. At this point, i would sweep the metro for free. My aspirations are soooo high. Anyways, love you all!