Bromework

"When my father died, I said, 'fuck school.'" - Barack Obama

Hello again toutes et tous, can you believe it's already the weekend? Well, almost. (Except in Australia, where it's probably already Halloween. Am I right, Nick?!) It seems like the school week goes by in a flash here. I have chalked it up to three potential reasons:

1. The metric system

2. Deceptively long lunch breaks in between classes

3. Pineau

My art history teacher has been trying since the beginning of the year to push our class back an hour so we can have 120 minutes of lunch time. What is this, nursery school? At Wesleyan, I'm lucky if I have 50, which roughly translates into 10 minutes of standing in line, 10 minutes of finding a table, 10 minutes of eating, and 20 minutes of throwing up in the bathroom. (If you're reading this, Mert, I got no problem with you. You can fix me up a pie any old time.)

I should mention here that from an economic standpoint, the Université Bordeaux 3 cafeterias are putting Westaurants to shame. I mean I'm getting a panini for something like $4.50 all day, every day. (...Not all day, just every day.) I could be wrong, though; it's possible that a hot meal, boy it feels weird saying that phrase, would end up being the same price as in Amurica, adjusted for exchange rate/metric system. Either way, the people at Le Veracruz (yes, one word) are very nice and have even spotted me a couple centimes when I couldn't foot the jambon fromage bill. The other joint on campus is this place called Le Sirtaki, but I haven't been there because, honestly, I don't know what the fuck Sirtaki means, and I'm afraid to find out.

How was today different from all other days foodwise? In two ways was it different. Whereas I usually snag a 'nini before the 12:30 lunch crush (which is incidentally one of Snorlax's deadliest moves), today I did not queue up because I was deep in a 2006-era Friday crossword puzzle from the NYT archive courtesy of Across Lite, it has truly become an addiction and I need help homework. I'll return to this topic later, as it is the title of the brost, but I wanted first to share with you the second novel food-related thing about today. (Was that a sentence?) From about 7:15 AM to 8:45 PM, the only things I had ingested were bread products with chocolate inside them. That means for breakfast I ate some cereal called Trésor that would put the Cookie Monster (or Snorlax) in cardiac arrest, as well as a slice of bread with a layer of Nutella arguably thicker than the bread itself; lunch was a gastronomic reenactment of the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds," starring Three Pains au Chocolat; after classes, I needed some re-fueling to get me through my evening basketball game, so I manically stuffed month-old pralines into a baguette on my way to the tram.

On an unrelated note, I have several cavities.

Which reminds me, back to homework. Right. Today was an absolute blague of a workday. In my 8:30 AM literature class I was charged with the simple task of writing a dissertation on a concept my professor invented: "marcher, penser, écrire." I originally put dissertation in italics to signify that it is a French word, but then I kept it in italics to emphasize how fucking ridiculous it was that we were writing a dissertation on the phrase "walk, think, write." More specifically, we had to channel Thoreau and discuss the importance of walking, thinking, and writing in Walden. Luckily, the chocolate-smuggling carb puffs I inhaled for petit déjeuner gave me the brainpower I needed to adequately baratiner the paper. Then I spent three hours scouring Wikipedia the library for info on Cardinal Richelieu and also every other important French figure between 1500 and 1661. Did you know Henry IV changed religions three times before the age of nine? YEAH I KNOW! Yo this is cool about Richelieu, though: while the Holy Roman Empire was engaging in a stupid Thirty Years War with itself, Richelieu literally financed the Swedish army which intervened and ended errything, and the ensuing treaty made France the most powerful nation in the world.

Alright, this post is dragging longer than a French teacher on a cig break. Basically, the world of academia put the hurt on me today, but I've emerged stronger and with less homework, so MDR to Thoreau, Oscar Wilde, Sweden, that sweater my professor was wearing, environmentalism, dentists, that skirt my other professor was wearing, Nero, the Medicis, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out.

P.S. American Friends India, Désíréé, and Steph are visiting this weekend; can't wait to show them why we call Bordeaux "Paris on PCP"!!!!!

P.P.S. If you made it this far, felicitations, you are rewarded with this unbelievably hilarious video of Bill Gates leaping over a chair.