the park and scheduling

i spent practically the entire weekend at parc de la tete d'or. it was so beautiful out this weekend, i just couldn't stay away.
at lunch my host mom even pointed out it was sunny out and asked if i would be going to the park. she knows me so well. of course i said yes! marc-philippe, who was home for the weekend, said he never goes there, not since he was little. i really don't understand this! why do the locals stop going when they reach a certain age?!
saturday i went with chloe. we told ourselves we were going to walk all over, but the sunnyness of the grass called to us, and we figured why risk having to walk through the shade for awhile? as we took off our coats because it was so warm we didn't need them, i wondered why i hadn't thought to wear a t-shirt. so i rolled up my long sleeves and was just so happy that it seems like spring might finally be arriving (i am trying not to think about the fact that i am not in california, which means the cold could return).

chloe and i are in love with the sun :)

 we regretted not thinking to bring a frisbee or a soccer ball (though neither of us owns a soccer ball), but decided that soon we would return and get a game going. assuming it stays warm, i will probably find myself at the park quite often :)
as the sun started to go down we wandered over to the islandish thing in the lake and watched the sunset. but mannn the temperature drops when the sun sets.

 meanwhile, chloe demonstrated the rules to badminton for me so that i would be prepared when we took that class later in the week. more on that later.

the badminton court, of course

saturday evening i found myself bursting at the seems as i left minerva's apartment after she had fed a few of us an amazing dinner. turns out she will be returning to the states instead of staying for the rest of the semester, so she had a lot of food in her freezer to use up. and by a lot, i mean enough for 5 of us plus some left overs. and alllll of it was delicious. i was still full hours later! duck. potatoes cooked in duck fat. home made baguettes. lentils. palenta. chocolate cake. pumpkin pie. some almond cake dessert. and some other chocolate cake that patrick had brought.

then sunday after lunch i found myself returning to the park. it wasn't quite as warm as the day before, but it was still a perfect day to wander around. i even visited parts of the park i had never seen before!

but even with the park and sunshine trying to take my mind off school, knowing i still needed to figure out my schedule for the semester plagued my weekend. i wish there were two of me so i could go to all the classes i want at the same time so that i could make a decision without having to miss classes. my schedule has probably changed 5 million times at this point. why? because my classes are at two campuses on completely opposite sides of town. so even if my classes aren't actually at the exact same time, it makes classes that are back to back impossible to get to unless they are at the same location.
so after two weeks of classes and having been to a few extras/missed the first week of one class, i think i have finally figured out which classes i will be taking. notice it's a little different than when i was so proud that i had figured it out before classes had even started. why am i even surprised? so i am taking:
theme: traduction francais -> anglais
psychologie: education-formation
psychologie cognitive: education
version: traduction anglais -> francais.
so two classes that i am hoping will help me make progress toward my education minor, and two classes to help improve my french (seeing as i can't get any other classes to go toward my major/minor anyways).

and then the sports classes get involved. i am officially taking salsa dancing. never did i think i would ever say that, but hey, this i'm in france, and why not? this class wasn't a problem to get into because i managed to make it the first week.
but i am also trying to take badminton and table de tennis. because once again, why not? badminton got complicated when chloe and i showed up to a time that worked for us and found that class was already full. unfortunate but not entirely surprising since we missed the first week. yknow, because we were more concerned with figuring out our regular classes than making sure we got first dibs on sports classes. its a brutal cycle, really. butttt luckily. we showed up to a class on wednesday that had space in it, and were able to ask the teacher if there was actually space on monday, and he said yes! so i will be playing badminton monday mornings :) table tennis wasn't a problem at all to get into. sam and i showed up, asked if there was space, and we were in! sweeeettt. only problem was that for this week at least, i played an hour and a half of ping pong. then directly after an hour and a half of badminton. which means.... my shoulder really hurts. awesome. good thing they will normally be different days!


looks like this is going to be an ok semester :)
plus. now i can start making weekend travel plans!