EE-KAY-AH (Ikea)

With no classes to speak of, I spent the last two days helping my host sister assemble a small rolling drawer set, a glass-door bookshelf, and a glass-door armoire. As a person who enjoys manual labor (a "what-should-you-be-when-you-grow-up" quiz once advised me to go into contruction...), I enjoyed myself, and I got to practice, "I think we need this/that thing over there," a lot. When we finished, we were rewarded with cake that my host mom had made earlier.

So yeah, still no class to speak of. I went showed up this morning just in case, but there were all of 6 other people in the ampitheater and, after waiting for an hour just in case, I headed out at about 9:55. At least this campus isn't closed. Yet. Instead, I went for a walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg, which was gorgeous and sunny:

I just got an e-mail from my program director saying she wants to organize a translation class and a comparative literature class for us after we get back from next week's vacation. I'm already registered for a translation class, but it hasn't started yet... therefore, I feel like the program director may be losing hope that classes will ever start... which is making me pessimistic as well...

In any case, going home is not really an option at this point. One girl from the group already talked to her/my advisor who said it's too far into their semester to try and catch up. I never even really considered leaving, but it bums me out that other people here are so miserable. I mean, the greve sucks big time and I'm worried about credits and requirements and so on, too, but not enough to make me want to leave.

That said, I want to leave Paris next week. I have a week vacation and I need to do something with it. A few of the girls are going to London and they sort of invited people to go with them and sort of did not, so I dunno. Another girl wants to travel around France, a new town every day, not sure if she's looking for company, but I need to figure out by... tomorrow what I want to do and how I'm gonna go about it. Since my parents want to be here for more of my Spring Break, this may be my only chance to have my own adventure and I don't want to miss it because I was too timid to follow through.