Wow! Three years later, I return. By now, all of my fans have stopped checking in to see what's going on in my life, but I've decided to use this as almost a working journal, a place to bounce off ideas so I can finally stop saying "I should write a book" and voila, actually write a book.

It's one of those "I'm in my mid-30's with not much to show for it" sort of lapses, where all the successful writers, journalists, screen directors and so forth are starting to look like people you know, because they're your age. At the same time, you start hearing about people you knew in kindergarten or met at a wedding recently who came down with cancer and died, without even barely having started a life yet.

And so it begins, a mini-mid-life crisis for those of us in our thirties still waiting to start our lives.

I haven't really neglected this blog. I started another one related specifically to wedding planning, which is not girly and sappy, but I find to be somewhat amusing. However, I will be back after all the hoopla is over.

I was back in town for my MBA graduation and came upon even more business cliches. It's like people forgot how to talk and need the T9 text to fill in the rest of the words for them. Anyway, Gary and I had a lengthy discussion about some of the newest business cliches and phrases we've come across that we had a good laugh over. Here, in list form, some past ones I've mentioned, and some new ones. The problem with pointing these out is they make me laugh every time someone in a serious meeting uses them.

Low Hanging Fruit
At the end of the day
Ultimate (count the number of times someone uses this in one breath)
Utilize (what's wrong with "use" -?)
Synergy (I mean, are you for real?)
Bootstrap
Touch base
anything sports-related
COB
Ideate (Gary supplied this one)
QA
"To network" as a verb

I also love when People unnecessarily Capitalize letters in Documents.

Even better, Gary said some businesses are just using pictures to discuss. As in, stick figures. I can't wait to get into that.

I suffer from Grass is Greener syndrome. This after spending a week in sunny LA driving around in a tacky PT cruiser convertible. The convertible part, however, was incredible. I don't know why I never considered it before. Well, I had, in fact, but it's like the beach: when you live there, you don't really go to the beach, or drive a convertible. I had a new cap-sleeved short sleeved t-shirt on while cruising around in my PT and the top down, with the radio blaring (the news on NPR, that is) and now have a cap-sleeved t-shirt baked onto my skin. I had left behind a rainy D.C. and entered the solitary world of southern California again, where nothing changes, and the weather is always beautiful. But perhaps something about the idea of no change feels somewhat stale and stagnant. This is the problem when you move around too much. Sometimes it's better to know less, but now that the box has been opened, there's much to be seen.

Yesterday I thought I would be a super-nice sister and help her scrub all the moss growing on the back brick patio so we could enjoy the summery weather. There was so much moss it was like they had a lawn. My plan was to get it all removed, get a nice outdoor rug, set up the table with colorful linens, candles, Christmas lights, and the Weber smoking chicken.

Instead, while scrubbing away at the moss, giant juicy, shiny worms poked out of the ground where the moss once lay, writhing and slithering. I screamed. Tom decided they would serve well in the compost bin, so I spent several minutes trying to shovel them up with the snow shovel while shrieking and cringing as they recoiled in their squirmy way. I tried to picture the earthworm I dissected in junior high. I tried to think of Oscar the Grouch's worm friend. I thought about the worm friend in the children's magazine Cricket that I read in the third grade. None of those images helped. I stopped cleaning the patio and decided it was better to eat indoors anyway, for the purposes of containing my allergies.

People's perceptions of safety in cities back east differ greatly than those on the west coast. Back in L.A., everyone hesitated to let someone walk to her car alone or go running in the streets at night. It got annoying, but I got into the habit as well - watching my back, skittering quickly past any dark corners and bushes. But in NY, Boston or D.C., people are untouchable by that which goes Boo in the night. I don't know if it has to do with a lower crime rate (though not necessarily in D.C.) or the close quarters and tighter population per square foot. Last week in New York, my friend Steve was more worried about me getting tired while walking down Broadway back to my hotel from the Upper West Side than the idea that someone would attack me en route; last night, my friend Jenny planned to hike back a couple miles at 10:00pm down dark Porter Street from Cleveland Park to Columbia Heights. I recently discovered a quaint, peaceful woodsy running trail adjacent to the Capital Crescent Trail that resembled the environment where Chandra Levy was abducted. I figured that as long as I wasn't having an affair with a married congressman, I'd be safe enough.

It’s a sad reality when blogging about the fantastic life fades off when one suddenly becomes fully employed, as if my current life is no longer interesting enough to warrant an entry in the comedy that is what I go through every day. But it’s not to say that living in Washington, D.C. isn’t any more interesting than living in Paris, France; that driving across Texas en route from L.A. to D.C. isn’t any more weird than the sites from Prague to Budapest via Vienna and Bratislava. In fact, there are probably plenty of French short-term visitors here in our nation’s capitol filling up cyberspace with their amused observations and experiences of being yelled at by other metro riders for drinking their café crème on the train (yes, it happens, to French people and others). Or that C-Span is shown at bars and people watch it recreationally like a basketball game. Or that suddenly, I went from being the only person in L.A. who shopped at Ann Taylor for work clothes to being one of many, many females who shop there (time to find a new staple brand).

But I can talk about the intricacies behind packing one of those moving crates that picks up everything you own, places it on a train and then forklifts it off to your new home. For two days straight, with rains finally threatening Los Angeles, Jon and I played Tetris with our boxes into this giant crate, disassembling anything that could be disassembled, stuffing anything that could be stuffed (random shoe, yoga mat, etc.). Then, we got to do the whole thing in reverse when the entire crate arrived. Tried not to silently curse the memory foam that we insisted on shoving into the crate. Praised my excellent and experienced packing skills that kept all the dishes unbroken and unchipped. Wondering where to put everything and when it will be warm enough to wear all my Californian clothes. Realizing my Parisian purchases are way too stylish for lobby-and-political-happy D.C. Fur hat too warm for the 50-degree winters. Still adjusting.

I've finally arrived... Washington, D.C. Sorry about the six-week hiatus from updating my adventures in Europe ("we're going on an ad-VEN-tuuuuure!") More updates to come.

Well lucky for us, the Hungarians have decided to go on a transit strike because it is so fashionably European, according to the man at the train ticket counter in Prague who refused to sell us even a back-up ticket. This after spending an entire day seeing EVERYTHING before the sun set by 3:45pm. First thing we ran up to the castle museum which featured funereal clothes removed from dead bodies of royal people who once lived at the castle. It was creepy. Then we actually visited a miniature museum where there was art in microscopic sizes, from paintings by Degas to a train on a piece of hair. Ah, the work of someone with nothing better to do than go blind as I nearly did from staring into microscopes for an hour. Then we went to the Jewish quarters and ran through the cemetery, described as “bursting” in our guidebook, quite accurately and disturbingly, as well as a very depressing museum featuring art of children sent to concentration camps. Jewish museums rarely uplift me, and I’ve decided to open a happy Jewish museum even though I’m not Jewish and Jon doesn't really know much beyond what he learned as a 13-year-old in Hebrew School.

Anyway, we ended up having to rent a car to get to Budapest. I drove, since Jon can’t operate a stick shift, from Prague to Vienna for Viennese coffee and instead stumbled upon a very fun and lively Christmas market there that humbled the Czech ones greatly. People of German descent sure know how to operate things well. After a dinner of bratwurst and mulled wine, plus a run around the city and apple streusel at a café, and after spending an hour trying to get our car out of the locked garage with directions in German on how to access the car after hours (apparently by sliding a credit card) we drove to the city of Bratislava in Slovakia, an hour away for the night just so we could say we'd been to Slovakia. At 11pm we were touring the small, politely clean city where we couldn’t spend any cash unless we traded in money for Slovakian somethings. In the morning we drove to Budapest where the people at Budget Rental Car had no idea what strike we were talking about.

It is cold here that I can barely type properly, so we went to the baths twice. The first bath looked like a church with water and we went from warm tub to cool pool to even warmer tub to hot tub. That was fairly luxurious. The next day we managed to top that bath with an even bigger one featuring 12 pools of varying temperatures. We stumbled upon this magnificent outdoor pool that was so hot, it was evaporating and creating a fog over the pool so you could barely see in front of you. It was also snowing flurries outside while we swam in the hot water, then walked around in just a swimsuit and bare feet into the sauna, then jumped into the cold bath, then back into the sauna. It was great fun. Fat Hungarian men played chess along the side of the outdoor pool. If I thought Czech was a weird language, Hungarian is even weirder. And because Jon and I are not native speakers, the restaurants do us a favor by handing us… the German menu. It’s very difficult to read a menu when words don't make any sense or even give the slightest hint of something familiar, so we just rely on the waiters, who don’t speak a syllable of English, to order our food and trust that it isn’t too weird.

Destination: Prague! Or as they say in Czech, Zwergwhsck srhduwe Gwvcfhdlpz. No, not really, but that's what it looks like. Yesterday after we got off the plane I went to the ATM to get money and calculated that $100 should be sufficient, which is 2000 Czech crowns. Out of the ATM came a crisp 2000 czk bill, sort of like getting money in a Las Vegas casino. Completely useless on the bus and metro, which cost 20 czk, and the driver wouldn't give me change for 2000. So we rode for free. It’s been fairly difficult paying for anything with this 2000 czk bill.

But once we did (I paid the hotel bill with it), we spent the whole day in the cold strolling outside from Christmas market to Christmas market. Lots of sparkly trees and lights and booths with wood toys, Christmas ornaments, crafts, hot mulled wine and some Czech bread-sugar pastry rolls that weren’t really worth the long wait. We also hiked up to the famous castle on the hill but it was closing so we saw the toy museum that was probably the inspiration behind the Chuckie films and some private palace museum.

The ground has officially frozen here in Paris, where the temperatures have finally reached 35 degrees and I am down to wearing about three possible outfits to stay warm. Over in Jouy-en-Josas, where school is located, the ground is covered in white frost that makes walking extremely slippery for fashionable heeled boots. At Versailles yesterday, where Jon and I took a tour of Louis and Marie-Antoinette's chambers, the flowers and orange trees in the famed gardens were gone, leaving a giant empty pile of dirt and a lot of imagination to re-create the geometrical patterned-laid gardens of the orangerie.

So where does one go to escape this cold? To Prague, of course, where it's even colder. But across Europe, EU members are preparing for Christmas - with outdoor crafts markets, tree decor, lights, mulled wine and ice skating all over town. In Budapest we plan to dip in the famous hot thermal baths while snow falls as scheduled on Tuesday. Then we return to Paris to (sniff) pack and do some last-minute Christmas shopping, watch Santas ride the metro and smoke cigarettes (something to explain to the children) and celebrate Christmas early, the Parisian way: eat oysters and drink champagne. What a joyeux noel it is!

The city of Paris set up its annual ice-rink in front of the beautiful Hotel de Ville in time for the Christmas season, so Jon and I partook in the tradition this afternoon. For 5 euros we got a pair of semi-decent rental skates and access all day. It was exactly as picturesque as any tourist dreams: gliding along historic buildings, with fountains dancing on either end, wind in our hair, ice skating in European wonderland.

Then came the Parisian equivalent of the bridge-n-tunnel crowd, bussing and metro-ing in their way from the suburbs, like a West Side Story of Left Bank meets Right. "Gangsters on Ice" is what Jon called them. They all donned hockey skates and zipped through the crowds at dangerous speeds, whipping around the other teetering skaters with such force but amazing grace that one wonders if figure skating is the Parisian inner-city sport, like basketball in New York. It was kind of like the Karate Kid, where all the "bad" kids specialized in karate, but this time it was figure skating, but on hockey skates. It was all very strange.

So after about two weeks of wearing the same two outfits around Italy and not caring whether I really looked Italian or not (kind of hard, even when in Rome) with my white sneakers and very purple-y LL Bean fleece. However it is hard to have a bad time in Italy, when surrounded by amazingness. Amazingness in the form of Renaissance art and sculpture, amazingness in its ornate churches and mosaics, amazingness in the form of meandering cobblestone streets, stone buildings, amazingness in the form of minestrone with fresh parmesean and various dried and cured meats.

If there is one way to sum up Italy on this blog entry, I'll do it gastronomically. First - at least two gelato flavors a day. I went through a fragola-and-limone phase, followed by the stratiacella (chocolate chip) and chocolate or tiramisu flavored day. There was even mango which tasted like a frozen version of the fruit; Jon opted for banana gelato frequently.

Then there was the fried artichokes in Rome; the roasted veal sliced so thinly and so succulent it was exactly how you imagined a baby calf to taste in Corneglia; the cafe in Genova Nervi while watching the oceans crash dramatically along the cliffs; the dripping Neapolitan pizza we ate facing a storage closet at a pizza place in Florence because we didn't make reservations; the grilled red peppers we ate on a picnic in the Boboli Gardens. At the Mercado San Lorenzo in Florence, one guy let us sample the majority of his food and even handed us a plastic Solo cup of sparkling chardonnay, before we committed to the chunks of parmesean with sweetened balsamic vinegar, the grilled red peppers, the smoked salmon pasta, and the marinated articokes. We ended up taking all of it to the Boboli Gardens. Fantastico!

Sure, there was often the pig's head sitting with a blank expression in the butcher's window or the time I pointed to some mystery meat and then pointed to my own head in an Italian sign-language attempt to confirm that those were, in fact, cow's brains sitting in the display case. Or the rooster with the flopping neck that the butcher thought I wanted to buy. Still, something very honest and organic about the fact that the food was real, not shrink-wrapped and sterilized in the meat section of Ralphs but this was a true-to-life animal entering the circle life. Just not mine, necessarily.

A couple of underlying themes here in Rome, where Jon and I have been wandering through the past few days. Ancient, with your choice of ionic, carynthian or doric columns broken apart - and Catholic. So religious, the city sells what appears to be pinup calendars of "hot" priests, if looking at them that way is even allowed. 12 months of dashing young Italian celebrity friars captured in black & white for young Catholics to swoon and pray over. Minorly disturbing, surprisingly funny.

One comment I will make about the church after wandering through the Vatican museums and St. Peter's basilica is that certainly, money was no problem when it came to furnishing any of it. Except with the toilets. Like many Italian public toilets, toilet seats don't seem to be a very popular option. So while the Pope probably has a solid gold bathroom he may not have a seat to sit upon.

And like the expense of the Vatican, our tea we ordered at lunch a couple days ago was - get this- 12 euros a person. Wine was only 4 euros, as was a cafe. We argued with the manager, and just like in France, customer service is not exactly something they believe in using here in Italy, because we were threatened with the polizia if we complained further and then told, in friendly Italian curse words, to leave.

It actually happened. My boulangerie downstairs officially ran out of baguettes today. It's like either the baker couldn't get to work because of the train strikes or the striking fever has caught on and spread to our local food artisans.

I am fairly disappointed because for about two hours I deliberated whether or not to head out into the cold to get a baguette. I had been overloading on refined sugars because it's winter and cold, but at the same time I have been losing weight to the pre-MBA days (and maybe even before that) so my pants are really starting to look ridiculous bunched up around the waist with a belt. And I also had a plate of saucisson, three cheeses (fluffy goat, camembert and something labeled "abondance"), mousse de canard (the kind with a little yellow fat on the edge), hearts of palm and chopped tomatoes settling into a vinaigrette, and some leeks that had a couple days to marinate their flavors together. All that was missing was the baguette, which I suppose will continue to stay missing the rest of the evening.

Leeks have become one of my new favorite ingredients since I arrived in Paris and found it so Parisian to walk around with a bunch of them sticking out of my handbag/ tote. They are a multipurpose food: tied and steamed (i had to use yarn, but still made for nice presentation), chopped and sauteed with potatoes, chopped and sauteed with mussels. Steamed they come apart like tender white asparagus - in fact, it's known as "poor man's asparagus" but seems to be so utterly important to the local kitchen. I haven't seen it appear on restaurant menus but it seems to be prevalent among the fellow visitors at the market. Partnered with garlic, shallots, tomatoes, butter and white wine, it makes for the perfect dipping sauce with mussels, if only one had baguettes available.

Baguettes are really a good analogy of Parisian romance: it's designed for two. Although I'm fully capable of finishing an entire baguette alone, just as I've discovered I'm equally talented in doing the same with a bottle of red wine. However, in reality the baguette is a couple's accompaniment to the table. So with Jon in Barcelona I couldn't justify getting a whole baguette alone, or crack open a bottle of Cote de Rhone. But with my French antipasta platter missing the one key sandwich maker, I decided to get a baguette, although it resulted in a failed attempt. I will probably end up just eating pasta for dinner. Sigh.

Day three of the train strike and finally, yesterday, I went nowhere. The only place I went was to Monoprix to pick up food for lunch, but it was so blistery cold I went back into the sanctuary of my apartment. My personal living space, I might add, has also shrunk in size to just the living room which I've been heating with the electric heater for the past waking hours. To stay as warm as possible, I've had to close off the doors to the bedroom and the kitchen/ entryway just to retain the living room at a toasty 65 degrees or so, that's fahrenheit, and huddle under a wool wrap I brought from the U.S. that's now being substituted as a lap warmer.

As a New Yorker I always scoffed at the Californians who kept whining how they hate the cold. I would fly back East for work or holidays and spent a few Decembers in Las Vegas and weekends in Mammoth and Tahoe, continuing to scoff at the whining Californians.

But I have to admit, I've recently discovered just how much more of a Californian I've become. Four+ years of living above 60 degrees year-round will re-adjust the body thermometer to let me become one of those types who might, say, wear boots in summertime (although I think that's just another instance of L.A. missing the fashion beat). It's been a tougher adjustment to the slow chill that is seasonal change. For instance, I was already wrapped in scarf, hat and gloves when the temperature hit 60, much to the amusement of the French people on the streets still sporting short skirts. It's not going from surf-to-ski in one day and putting on a hat; it's the slow chilling of the days that creeps into your bones and leaves your toes, fingers, and tip of your nose just a little cold and numb; it's the shivering at night waiting for your body heat to warm the covers and it's the fear of getting out of bed in the morning air, which is about 40 degrees in the bedroom, and the fear of getting underdressed just to get re-dressed, properly.

I exhaust the hot water in my shower nightly now and I stand over the stove of boiling eggs to warm my nose and probably get a free facial in the meantime (and a free face scalding, but it's so cold I wouldn't be able to tell). There really is a difference between living and visiting the cold, and I guess having lived it for most of my life it just becomes daily routine. But re-adjusting back is more of a challenge than I anticipated. However, today I've decided to end my hibernation and head back outside; after all, this IS Paris.

Paris is under siege again as the good people of the metro and SNCF have decided to protest Sarkozy's attempt to raise the retirement age from 50 to 60, which would mean an additional 10 years of shlepping to work before they can receive their pension checks, 10 years before they can sit around drinking wine, eating cheese, getting up when they feel like, and enjoying life finally without much cares in the world other than how much of their savings are depleting.

I can relate, since that is all I've been doing the past week upon returning from Barcelona. When the trains are on strike, there's not much else to do since I can't get to class in Jouy, so I get up when I feel like, sit around around drinking wine, eating cheese, and enjoying my life without much care in the world.

Fortunately some of the trains are running, though sporatically. And they aren't even checking tickets and leave the gates open, so you can ride for free. If you time it properly, you'll be able to squash your way onto one (unless you're carrying pastries in a bag because the lady behind the counter refused to put them in a box). And I don't really mind walking all over Paris to get around, although it has gotten significantly colder here in Paris. I did all my Christmas shopping by foot, trying to snag gifts while the dollar is still at $1.46 (it wavers between $1.45-$1.47, and I intend to return the unwanted items when it goes to $1.50 so I can make a small profit).

You'd think getting an MBA in L.A. would mean your classes were filled with celebrities, producers, all trying to get an edge on the entertainment industry and we'd have all sorts of glamorous case studies.

Instead, I signed up for a marketing class here in Paris and got the following as my syllabus.

Paraphrased: each class is planned around some movie. No, not a documentary. An actual movie, where we have to watch it beforehand and come prepared to discuss how the situations are handled from a b-2-b marketing perspective. I'm fairly excited to see how "When Harry Met Sally" plays out: using Harry and Sally in a buyer-seller interaction, what are their limitations? (this is actually on the syllabus)

The professor apparently is still searching for two more movies, so I thought it would be fun to see what movies would be relevant. On searching the Internet, I found the following: "Management goes to the Movies." There, you can download (for a fee!) some study guides that go with a variety of different films that, in the end, you'll earn a Hollywood MBA. The movies are grouped into business topics: entrepreneurship, management, leadership, sales, role of the firm, etc. If you don't believe me, since I don't really believe it, check out http://www.moviesforbusiness.com.

I believe the word "gaudy" came from the Spanish architect Gaudi, famous for his ability to transform an otherwise ordinary European city into one that looks like its buildings come alive at night, and not in a cool "city life" way but a Night at the Museum way. Thanks to Gaudi, he made Barcelona for what it is. At least, that´s what I gathered from the Barcelona guidebook I bought at Paris Beauvais airport, which was entirely in French except for the Catalan map.

The nightlife in Barcelona is some of the coolest I´ve experienced, considering restaurants don´t even open for dinner until 8:30pm and stay open past 1am. Which Jon and I took advantage of last night, each blowing about $100 (thanks to the good ol´ sinking American dollar) on a tapas dinner, two pitchers of sangria, dessert wine at a bar, two macarons in a dessert shop resembling a jewelry store with cookies displayed in glass cases, and then two dozen oysters and a bottle of wine at a second restaurant around 12:30am. Yes, they were shucking away past midnight. Wine is really cheap in restaurants here, so the only reason we partook in the bottle is because it cost 10 euros and not because we necessarily needed any more to drink. We paid for it this morning with a massive hangover in our hostel (yes, hostel. I am probably the oldest person here) where I slept in on my top bunk.

A quick aside on hostels. It´s been nearly 12 years since I spent the night in one. And boy have I risen in life: no more dormitories! We splurged on the private room. Still have to share a bathroom. But it´s been entertaining talking with the college kids studying abroad here.

It´s still a lot of fun being one of the gazillion tourists who frequent the tackiness of Las Ramblas and hoard their way towards the Gaudi monuments that dot the city like poofs of dough exploded over buildings. Since it is the off season, however, the majority of sites are covered in scaffolding for renovation, so many of our pictures are of us standing in front of what appears to be a construction site. I happen to like the fact that Barcelona´s architecture is kind of ugly, because it makes for a unique city and the reason I´m here at all.

Finally, a vacation from my vacation in Paris. Jon (who arrived last week) and I headed out to the champagne capital of Reims (pronounced something like "Rans" but no one really knows what I'm saying - Americans or the lady behind the train ticket counter). Even though I had an appointment booked for a tour of the Veuve Cliquot cellars, I decided I didn't really want an uppity, snooty French-accented discussion of the brand's distinctiveness so we opted for the campiest of tours listed in my France guidebook: the Piper-Heidseick cellars. There, we hopped into a little automated car attached to a track and were driven along the old champagne cellars-turned-Disney ride. It was very reminiscent of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, except this one followed the life of a grape and ended up with a glass of Piper Heidseick champagne waiting for us.

The next day, my Czech friend Michal and his girlfriend Klara picked us up in their little European car and we drove along through Troyes and Dijon to our B&B chateau in Saint Loup de Georges, outside Beaune, the Burgundy capital. On our drive we passed through long stretches of fields covered in grape vines where, say, an American may be more used to seeing corn fields. In Dijon we had Bouef Bourgogne (beef Burgundy) and escargot (an excuse to eat garlic butter) at some all-smoking restaurant. They were both fantastic.

The following few days went like this:

-Wake up and have very quiet and slightly awkward breakfast prepared by proprietor of the chateau. Awkward because I was too tired to make conversation in French, and when I did it would sort of drift off in silence. Breakfast consists of hot chocolate and a basket of bread selections - plain, toasted, toasted and dried in the oven, or a croissant. We were pretty breaded out by the end of the trip.

-Drive to a town with a lot of wine cellars.

-Eat lunch because everything except restaurants are closed between 12 and 2:30.

-Enter cellars and try lots of wine. Emerge a little drunk.

One of my favorite cellars was this large, expansive Marche aux Vins in Beaune. For 10 euros you got a little tasting dish (not a glass) and you descended underground into the caves that eerily resembled the Catacombs in Paris which we just visited the day before Halloween - caves filled with bones and skulls from several now non-existent Parisian cemetaries due to overcrowding. Anyway, instead of bones, there were rows and rows of wine, and of course we double-served ourselves. Upstairs we were invited to try several Grand Crus, which are the best wines and the most expensive, and there we were carefully watched by the sommeliers/ wine guards to make sure we weren't taking refills.

Another one was a father-and-son operation where the son somehow took us in and gave us a grand tour of the cellars, took a pipet into several vats and let us taste not-yet-bottled vintages at several stages in the winemaking process. This, of course, was all done in French. Fortunately between me and Michal we were able to put together one conversation. Sometimes we think our French is fantastic the more we drink, but these French countryside types liked to let us suffer through our sentences and make us complete them because, apparently, "In England I speak English, but in France I speak French."

Yesterday I had what I call a "Stare Day" in which the main activity was, in fact, staring. First James and I headed to the Picasso Museum where we stared at his strange cubism art, trying to figure out what they were (bunch of squares/ lines became a Man with a Mandolin, etc). After a couple of hours of staring at Picasso's art, we move onto a cafe in front of Pompidou where we continued staring, except this time we didn't have to move from painting to painting. The art, some more interesting than others, moved by us. With James' background in appreciate the art of women, I learned how to distinguish the differences in unsexy, sexy and slutty when it came to boots, tights and short skirts. There was also the guy who showed up on bike in Roman sandals, a manpurse and his jeans rolled up to his knees; the older woman with her coat collar flipped upward with a hint of vampire to her (it is near Halloween, after all); the super skinny 19-or 20-year old girls-next-door (James explained) who will, apparently, be very attractive when they're older. Then it started getting too cold to sit and stare any longer.

I am probably a business school's least favorite type of student: one who enters and learns through the course of her studies that she doesn't really want to make a lot of money, own a huge house and lots of stuff. I'm that alum who is least likely to have all the disposable income to contribute back to the school.

Not that I wouldn't mind a huge salary with my MBA, of course. But living happily in Europe for the past couple months on a suitcase of clothes and my laptop, I (and a bunch of us) have realized I don't really need a whole lot to live contently here. I'm already pretty good about keeping my belongings to a minimum, with about 12 years of experience schlepping from city to city. However, after hanging out California for almost five of those years, I discovered while packing just how much stuff I accumulated.

A few things have been happening the past few days that may change my attitude forever, though that is a blanket statement that requires a soapbox to stand on so we'll just narrow my attitude change to a temporary one. First, I've been preparing for a presentation in my financial indicators class comparing the EU with the US. My portion examined consumer confidence and consumer spending. And, as we all know and hear, the U.S. is very, very good at consuming. We have tons of storage spaces and cabinets and closets in our homes to store all our stuff. Because we own a lot of stuff and we need places to hold all our stuff, all this stuff, stuff we hardly use or remember is even there.

In Paris, my place came with one closet. Not a lot of room for one's stuff; but that's okay, I was limited to two suitcases anyway.

Meanwhile, I've been talking to Jon back in California about the wildfires raging a little too close to Santa Monica, where most of what I own is located. And in the end, I made arrangements that should the situation worsen, to have him go to my storage area and rescue three things and put them in a bank: my important documents, my jewelry, and a box of personal journals I've kept since I was 7 years old. (I already had the other four most important things with me in Paris: my laptop and three old, fuzzy, little stuffed friends). Everything else could go, if need be.

The woman whose Malibu castle was eaten by the flames this week made a very inspiring comment that appeared in the L.A. Times. "Don't let your possessions possess you." She lost almost everything except for some jewelry and Elvis' wartime fatigues, but she wasn't devastated or horribly upset, which was a refreshing attitude.

This Christmas I've decided to ask for non-tangible goods that extend like a gift that keeps giving. Like, tickets to the opera or baseball games, or frequent flier miles, or massages, or classes in something fun, or even food. I'm not hippie enough to ask for carbon credits or a tree planted in my honor, but I suppose I'd be flattered anyway.

There's an internship at Louis Vuitton's Hennessy group available starting in January and I have been deliberating back and forth, for the past 48 hours, whether to bother applying. The last time I thought, "let's just stick in an application and see" ended up getting me to France this fall.

There are two reasons for me to apply for this internship. One, I don't think I am really ready to depart Paris in two months. Two, after taking this Luxury Marketing class here with the former CEO of said company, I've been completely sold on the idea of working in such a field. Talk about a power overhaul! Though in reality, I'm not sure if luxury marketing is what I really want to do later - I'm thinking online media is still the direction for me, but that's really just a tangential aside to my story.

Basically, luxury marketing (like most marketing) is taking a very ordinary product, like a piece of fabric that you tie around your neck (a scarf, some call it), put your company logo on it, convince the uberwealthy that it's worth $5,000, and get them to pay for it. I think I could amuse myself all day working on such a goal.

Sometimes the uberwealthy aren't fooled. But then there are the wanna-be uberwealthy, who are your main customers, who are the suckers. And apparently in luxury marketing, you treat every customer who enters the store like they are king, so they think they're kings, and they're buying royal items, and you say yes, this is a magic handbag was sewn by angels who have six fingers on each hand, oui bien sur the angels are French, and they hand over their credit card and you deplete them of a few thousand dollars or euros, and in the end their magic bag contains pretty much the same things that my non-luxury bag contains. But they will point their noses up at my unmagical bag, however, if I took the internship, I'll know that I (and the team) are the reason they thought their bag was better. Better at holding keys and a wallet, or something.

And I admit, I'm a vague sucker. Though I don't enjoy being the free advertisement for something like Louis Vuitton, which cannot sell a bag or briefcase without its logo plastered all over the product. But I am more of a retro-luxury type, who knows purchasing luxury often means the quality is incomparable. And classic. I still use some of my mother's luxury pieces because they were so well-made that they held up all these years and still look new. I like the idea of passing down the timeless items through the generations.

Or, there's Jen's way of doing things: stay close family-friends with your next door neighbor whose grandmother was a regular customer at Chanel until she died, and have the family try to get rid of her 8,000 Chanel shoes and handbags. Jen and her sister came home one day with three garbage bags full of shoes, sweaters, belts, scarves, and handbags. Some of them with the tags still on them. Very luxurious.

One of the bigger difficulties I've had here in Paris, language-wise, is reading menus. It's very different from reading the economic newspaper, where I just skip the stories I don't understand; or can figure out from a few words and pictures what a sign might say. But food menus are entirely different. You can't just skip over a few words because the next thing you know, you're ordering "sweet bread" thinking they'd be a delicious pile of beignets. Friday was the first time I didn't have the assistance of someone whose French is better than mine, and the first restaurant where the wait staff really didn't speak much English.

So there we were, my dad and I, at le bar a huitres (the oyster bar) for a lovely seafood dinner in the Bastille, where I had felt so confident about my growing French abilities because I had made reservations entirely in French without missing a beat. But that was the extent of my success. We were handed menus in French, much to my dad's chagrin, and I sat there surreptitiously looking at my dictionary to learn the words "cod" and "steamed" and "oysters" and "crab." What they did with the "cod" and "crab" I wasn't sure - which is what one of the great adventures of being in a foreign country is all about, discovering what exactly you are eating. My dad couldn't keep track of the different entrees and plats I was translating. I ended up with six oysters to start, followed by the steamed cod. My dad got the "assiette des fruits de mer" which was a platter of oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, mini-conch and even minier-conch. They turned out to be raw, and fantastic. For dessert we had the "coupe Madeleine" with something chocolate involved that turned out to be mini-Madeleines in vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge sauce; and we also shared a creme brulee.

Last night was a similar scenario, when I went out to dinner with Jen and Jamie who flew in from New York yesterday. Jen's in her second trimester with a baby boy due in March, who was draining all sources of energy from Jen very quickly. So we didn't really have the luxury of stopping home to pick up a dictionary and a restaurant that might have some English help. So we stopped into the first cute restaurant we saw, a candlelit dining room of stone walls and very chic waiters called Equinox, in the Marais. Every so often you could pick out a familiar word in the menu: "cheddar" or "petit camembert chaud" but the rest was questionable. Fortunately we had a waiter who could explain to us, in French, what the fancy menu lingo was. "Faux filet" of something turned out to be steak; Jen got something that turned out to be chicken stuffed with haricot verts and encrusted with a flaky cheddar; then we split a chocolate something or another which, in English, meant a gateau with oozing chocolate that was magnifique. So far I've been very lucky pointing to the menu blindly and picking something that turned out to be amazing. Who doesn't love French food?

Today I didn't have to get up early and rush to catch the 6:57 RER B because, well, it wasn't there. None of the RER trains were running, and most of the metros, too. Thanks to the mobilization efforts of the French train workers, I didn't have to go to class today.

So instead I walked my dad (who is in town for a conference) all the way to the 20th, since he is staying with me even though he's paid for a hotel that turned out to be grosser than a frat house. Then I walked back and met up with a couple friends who were dining in the 2nd. I saw my first French prostitutes on rue St. Denis, which was actually a landmark John included in his texted directions to the restaurant (wave to the hookers, then turn left). We met up with James in the 1st. We walked through Les Halles and stopped into the church there, which apparently is the size of Notre Dame, but more sunlit; then walked through the Jardin de Tuilieries to admire the random modern art placed on exhibit this month (my favorite: the high heeled sandal made of All-Clad pots and lids); then crossed the bridge and went to check out Napoleon's tomb. Afterwards we headed to the Eiffel Tower where they all lived, parted ways, and James and I shared wine, cheese and a baguette at his place until it was time for me to head home for dinner.

The last part - not so easy. James dropped me off at the metro near his place that said the next train was arriving in 15 minutes (usually, they arrive a maximum of 5 minutes) and so I waited, and played with my French phone, and waited. Of course, then the loudspeaker announced, en francais, "THERE ARE NO MORE TRAINS FOR TONIGHT." Everyone booed and groaned, and we all left. After attempting to hail a cab for 30 minutes, and after James came back down trying to find the bus (also not running) I walked all the way back to Place de la Concorde and fortunately caught the metro there - if I missed it, it would have been a lengthy 45 minute wait for the next, if there was a next. And because I'm not REALLY French, and I don't have a French bank account, I am denied the Velib bicycle program they have here in Paris where you pick up a bike at one location and ride it to the next and park it in their stands. I got home two hours later. I guess the only cool part was I got to see the Eiffel Tower light up, twice, which means I was there at 8:00 and then 9:00. C'est la vie.

And in all this, I learned many French words today, such as "strike" and "reduced traffic" and "suspended" and "railcars." Very useful terms, especially today.

Today in the middle of my Credit Risk class, a weird buzzing started in the hallway. It was faint, like an alarm clock that floats through a dream rather than waking you up. So my professor continued. Then we heard crowds gathering outside the building, and realized it was the fire alarm. But my professor was unperturbed. "You tell me s'il est smoke," he said and continued discussing the rating process defined by Standard & Poor. So we stayed, until an administrator knocked on the door and made us all go outside. Once outside, we all hung out by the entrance until we were cleared to go back in. A fellow American suggested that the French and American ways of handling fire alarms were significantly different, considering we probably should have cleared the way of the entrance for the fire department, or maybe not stood right next to a "burning" building, or maybe we should have left the class when it first went off.

I've finally come down with a French cold, probably from not washing my hands after holding onto the metro pole and then eating a baguette, so I had to look up several words in the dictionary before making the trip to the pharmacie: cold (rhume), congested nose (congeste), non-drowsy (pour la jour). I got something that was half-effective, but it seems to be going away anyway.

My 1.5 year old niece, sister and brother-in-law are in town this week to see Paris from the point of view of a long-term tourist (me) and I've been throwing a lot of languages together: English, Chinese, French and baby-deciphering. But she's picked up a number of French words: Metro, saucisson, Eiffel Tower, bonjour, and baguette. We've also made friends with lots of babies from around the world at various playgrounds and I've discovered the power of driving a stroller through the skinny sidewalks of Paris - people actually get out of your way for once. Today we had a long nap so we were extra happy to visit the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre-Coeur and Eiffel Tower all in one day. It was pretty cool to view the city from the perspective of a small child who really has no idea that she's on a completely different continent than where she normally resides.

I've learned to become a pushy Parisian. When walking down the narrow sidewalks, I've stopped stepping aside to let others pass and continue swiftly in a straight line, basically playing chicken with the person aiming straight at me. I refuse to be the chicken, le poulet, in the scenario. It makes my commute faster.

Last night I had dinner with a nouveau ami, s'appelle Patrick, from Venezuela but who is about as German-Swiss looking as one can get. That's because he's a combination of all three, in addition to four years of college at Lehigh to make him a typical American frat boy. We ate at a bistro on rue Montorgueil, a tres charmant little walking street in the 2nd. The only vehicles allowed through are residents who live on the street or, in our case at dinner, garbage trucks. They came roaring through, puffing exhaust and dumping the dumpsters in their loud manners while I tried to enjoy my salmon tartar and wine.

After dinner we met up with another HEC student, Dmitri from Greece, at Patrick's new apartment for some wine. Now, the best part about Patrick's pad is not the full kitchen or the dishwasher or the view over the street, but the combination bedroom/ bathroom. Not a separate bath, though in typical French style the toilet is kept in a closet by the front door, but where his bed actually sits next to the full bathtub and sink. The owner did attempt to create some division between bed and bath with shelves and a screen, but not much else in terms of privacy.

Of course, since today is Friday and I have been getting out of bed super early every day, I slept through my two alarm clocks and woke up at 7. In record time, however, I got to school in ONE HOUR and TEN MINUTES for credit risk rating class. Door to door. I am tres, tres proud of myself.

Here's some of the fashions I've seen spring up this season in Paris.

-Pashmina scarves, wound gracefully around the neck. For men, that is.
-Purses the size of passport holders or camera bags, carried over the shoulder/ neck and in front. By men, again.
-the skinny jeans. Yes, by men. But women, too. The ones with short, stubby legs seem to wear them the most.

And for women:
-The mini-dress with knee-high boots. Apparently, based on conversations with American guys and observations of French men, if there was ever an epidemic of dry-mouth disease in Paris, women should just strut about town in this outfit (sans tights, I've been told) and the epidemic would be instantly cured by immediate salivation.
-Ballet flats seem to be this season's shoe of choice. As a foreigner I've been at a loss of what to wear around the city, up and down the stairs, through the cobblestone streets, that would stay on my feet without butchering them and without breaking my ankles. Thank god someone in Paris decided to make flat shoes hip. Though I have worn one pair of heeled sandals out and got my heel stuck in a grating.
-The overcoat. It doesn't matter if it's 70 and humid, the women are pulling on the overcoats and buttoning them up as if it's about to blizzard outside.
-Accessorizing: the cell phone. Or, one might call it, "le mobile." It's even more fashionable, apparently, to text while walking slowly down the already narrow sidewalk. There is something oddly familiar about this behavior, except I've only really seen it done from a car in L.A. that is driving very slowly and maybe weaving a little bit too.

Seeing that the most French I speak is "une crepe avec Nutella s'il vous plait" and "Pardonne, excuse-moi" I decided to search on craigslist for a language exchange. And I stumbled upon a great Parisian tradition known as Michael's Tea/Talktime. Michael is a half-Polish, half-French (I think) gentleman about 60+ years old who speaks English with a New York accent and hosts these afternoon tea language exchanges every Saturday at his huge apartment in the Latin Quarter. I went with Sean, a fellow exchange student from University of Texas, thinking maybe it was just some random attempt to gather people but lo and behold, when we pushed open the door, it was filled with people hoping to perfect either their French or English. Of course there are more French people than English-speakers, so we English speakers were highly coveted. For the first hour-and-a-half you speak only English, and the second hour-and-a-half is only in French. For 10 euros you get to butcher their language and watch them wince ever so slightly but hide it behind a teacup.

But as an Asian female, I also discovered how highly fashionable I was just being my own ethnicity. I had more questions about my parents and their birthplaces and judgments about whether I really looked chinois or japonais or whatnot. One older man shrugged off Sean as he attempted a "Bon-jour!" and beelined towards me, which was a little weird and scary.

The French can be fairly flaky, and I don't mean just their buttery croissants. Customer service, I'm finding, or rather, I'm not finding, rather sucks. Example:

-Signed up for French classes at Lutece. Sat with the administrator lady with my calendar going over my availability. Arranged for me to attend the 1:15 Tuesday and Wednesday classes for four weeks. Handed over credit card.
-Somehow, the teacher was "malade" three times in a row. In reality, they didn't have a class scheduled because I was the only student in the afternoon class.
-Today, I half-blew up at them when they told me the teacher was "malade" and demanded "un reimboursement." I actually managed to do this in French with a lot of English thrown in. It must have made no sense, but they understood that I was pissed and wanted a reimbursement. Thanks to the sinking dollar, I made a profit with the reimboursement.

Prior to this my dear friend who shall not be named texted and flaked out on our afternoon plans. The timing was impeccable - within five minutes I had enough flakes to recreate an entire croissant shop. Later I found out his reason was legitimate and forgave him, but luckily for said friend, I have been running low on cell phone minutes on my sim card and texting is ridiculous on this cell phone. Instead I huffed and puffed my way towards the Louvre, then over the footbridge, towards Notre Dame and then visited my friend Agnies instead. Not such a bad thing I suppose, walking off a lot of excess energy along the Seine.

Marina and her French husband Thierry are in town this week from San Francisco to visit the in-laws and celebrate their first anniversary, where they got married on a bateau-mouche last year here in Paris. So they invited me and a friend (James, my new best friend) to Thierry's brother's houseboat in the 16th arrondissement where he just purchased a new speedboat.

So Friday night I boarded the 9 metro towards Porte de St. Cloud. So did about a thousand drunk English people. Some in costumes. Others in green wigs. Also a number of people from the island of Tunga (where? who?) boarded the train, because apparently Tunga's rugby team was playing England's, and if England lost this game, they were out of the world cup. So the Tungans wore their flag, some red-and-white cross thing that resembled the Red Cross, like capes that flapped behind them as they strode onto the metro. Singing ensued, as did the chanting of "Tunga! Tunga!"

Finally, after the temperature rose about 10 degrees Celcius and the air smelled like stale beer breath, we arrived at St. Cloud, where everyone was waiting for someone, so it was fun trying to find James "at the entrance" where everyone was waiting. The crowd all headed up one direction to the stadium, and we were salmon, going the opposite way.

But at least we were headed somewhere really, really cool. At Greg's, we had a glass of champagne, then boarded his little speedboat. Six of us climbed in and set sail down the Seine through all of Paris. We passed the major French TV stations, the Eiffel Tower, the several bridges, Musee D'Orsay, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. With all the lights glistening along the water like stars, it's no wonder Paris is the city of romance. We all had what I call "I love Paris" moments - similar to the "New York moments" we used to have, before we had "I hate New York" moments more. Greg is infamous for being a bad car driver, so one can imagine his boat driving with water and wakes involved from larger boats. We waved at all the tourist boats and the dinner parties with party lights circling. Then we got pulled over by the river police for not wearing lifejackets, then arrived at our destination in the 13th, parked the boat and climbed on land. We ended up dining on a boat that didn't go anywhere, then I took the metro home, although Greg offered to float me down the canal St. Martin to Bastille. Only drawback was I wouldn't necessarily have a way to get dock and get off the boat without having to swim.

When we said goodnight, Greg said, "I hope you have a nice stay in Paris." and I was like, "WAIT! I want to hang out with your speedboat again!" but I don't think I will be. Oh well. I didn't bring my camera either, but as James said, I'll keep the pictures in my head.

My school isn't even actually in Paris, although it is called "HEC - Paris" because they have one building in Paris. But who wants to live in the suburbs when they can live in Paris central? So I endure a very, very long commute every day to get to the HEC campus in Jouy-en-Josas. Though I have to say it's way better than driving, and has some excellent people-watching. My favorite are the American tourists with huge backpacks that knock over people as they board. And the snootier Americans with matching luggage, the size of the luggage I brought for 4 months but they packed for one week, who pronounce everything wrong. Anyway, here's my daily interaction on the Paris public transportation system.

1. Wake up at 5:45. (snooze about 4 times)
2. Eat American breakfast of special K
3. Haul ass to the Bastille metro stop (about 8-10 minutes)
4. Take ligne 1 - direction La Defense - to Chatelet stop
5. Chatelet is its own underground city. It is a hell of a time switching trains at Chatelet because you end up walking about a kilometer underground just to get to the next train. It is very stressful because people are aggressively shoving by you on the stairs, and then some stop in their tracks at the tops of escalators, and you have to take out your metro ticket to swipe several times. Switch to the RER B (includes a moving walkway and several flights of stairs). Be awake enough to get on the right train. Smell the fresh croissants at the bakery in the metro as it opens at 6:30am.

(sidenote: there's a huge absence of gyms and fitness clubs in Paris, and I have several theories why. First, who needs a treadmill or stairmaster when you're running up and down metro stairs all day long? Second, working out is fueled by guilt, and French people simply cannot feel guilty for eating pain au chocolat or eclairs or creme brulee. Third, French people smoke, and exercise hurts their breathing, so they don't bother.)

6. Ride the RER B way out into the suburbs. Try very hard to read the case for class, even though you really just want to close your eyes.

7. Admire the super cute little French countryside homes as you leave Paris.

8. Get off at Massy-Palaiseau (about 35 minutes later). Fight the hoard of people going upstairs to switch trains. Make sure you don't miss the next train or you'll be stuck in the cold morning air waiting a half-hour for the next one. Try to figure out what they are saying on the loudspeaker in French that causes everyone on your platform to leave.

9. Catch the RER-C to Jouy-en-Josas.

10. Get the right bus to campus, and not the one that gives the grand tour of Jouy unless you have a very strong stomach. Or, walk through the cute town, up the street, through the access door and up a very steep hill to the 1960's campus, a very big eyesore for France.

Total time: on a really, really lucky day is 1 hr 10 minutes, on an unlucky day is 2 hours.
Repeat on the way home, or make friends with Europeans who have cars. Enjoy listening to the GPS system in French.

I've met a Chinese girl in one of my classes (one of many Chinese people in Paris) which has turned me tri-lingual. It's been easier talking to her in Chinese than in English or French (in my half, since she has a French boyfriend). However, my dad is especially psyched that I may return fluent in more than just French.

Of course, at this point I have had two bottles of red wine and am surprisingly typing in a normal fashion (there are a LOT of deletions). I do love the French - too much wine is easily replaced by sleep, as I did this morning for my business plan class).

It's also been rainy and cold here, which is a good reason to sleep in for class.

Today it rained all over my laundry that was trying to dry outside. Not much else one can do but leave it there to dry out again. It could become a viscious cycle. I haven't seen rain since last year, so that was another cultural experience for me. Then I went running for the first time in Paris, tracing a route from my place to the Seine, to Pont Neuf, across the bridge to the Ile and then down the opposite side of the Seine. About 4.5 miles, some may say 7.3 kilometers.

James and Sean, two exchange guys on my program, decided to "work out" at the "gym" on campus. I wonder if they had problems lifting kilos instead of pounds.

Marina and Thierry are in town from San Francisco and we just finished dinner in the 12th near Cour St. Emillion, a very cute renovation of a former railroad and warehouse area-turned-chic al fresco dining. I love how wine is just a natural addition to all meals, like having a fork or napkin or bread at the table.

Laundry is another interesting concept that didn't translate directly over. First, I can't understand my laundry machine. My apartment agent had to explain how to use it. Second, everything is in Celcius, and I believe laundry washed at 90 degrees, Fahrenheit or Celcius, is pretty hot. Nonetheless, my clothes have come out super clean, even if I have to hang-dry them outside my window (except today, it started raining). My towels are a little crispy, but the clothes are incredibly clean. According to my foreign marketing class back in L.A., Europeans find American washers to keep clothes still dirty.

There's a lot that's confusing when adjusting to a new country, and it's a shame that once I get a handle on it, I have to leave. The process of getting a cell phone, a weekly metro card, an apartment, groceries, and realizing your American credit card doesn't work in half the places on purpose (they like to cater to Parisians) is half the battle. So far I've accomplished all four, though I anticipate more roadblocks along the way. My current new obsession is getting a razor scooter to get around town.

I live in a "garment" district if you will, where the streets are lined with wholesale clothing shops. It's both a curse and a blessing in disguise, in that every day I have to walk by all these cool clothes but not allowed to purchase them; but at the rate the dollar is dropping, I am fairly thankful.

Funny enough, the wholesalers are mostly, if not all, run by Chinese people. I know this because not only do they speak Chinese, but their shops and mannequins have that distinctly Chinese look that one can only find in weird Chinese departments stores in Beijing and Monterey Park. Every day, Chinese men push huge handtrucks full of boxes bursting from the sides filled with dresses, shirts, pants, and the like, that are probably made in China, which will eventually fill the boutiques that we perceive to be soooo francais.

Even funnier, this is where all the Parisian boutiques come to stock their stores for the masses. Sure, Paris has its friends Monsieur de la Renta and Hermes and all that, but the common folk can't always dole out their euros for them either. So, in essence, the fashions of Paris are really, in essence, controlled by the Chinese.

I'm writing an article about the hip newer parts of Culver City and it's really, really difficult to do from Paris. And now I'm not about to be this cosmopolitan snooty traveler, but it's difficult to tout how great a wine bar is because it serves cured meats and you can sit outside when it's nothing out of the ordinary to sit outside and eat cured meat with a glass of wine around here. Maybe it's more interesting here to eat some organic salad with no cheese because it's a vegan cafe. I don't know. In any event, it's taken me forever to praise the old architecture dating all the way back to 1924 and the greatness that is supposed to be the new Culver City.

Day 3 and I'm still not tired. I mean, I am tired. But not of this. Partly because I am still living like a tourist who happens to buy groceries and hang her laundry outside the window like other French people do.

I have been in Paris for exactly two full days, and already I feel like I fit like an old shoe - un vieux chaussure - to be exact. My apartment has French windows that when you open and lean out, you see the building across and all their windows with French people leaning out of as well staring back at you.

I had my first French food shopping experience at Monoprix where you can buy sweaters and computer gear as well as tomatoes and wine in the same place. Quel experience trying to figure out which one was the lowfat milk. Or what flavor all the yogurt was. Is the one with the picture of the ladybug on it supposed to be naturel or ladybug flavored? And then there's dealing with not just one, but two aisles of cheese. Where does one even begin? Did you know the laughing cow has a friend, the laughing goat?

Yesterday I bought a used cell phone from, of all people, a Chinese guy. He saw me and immediately started speaking in Chinese. Basically assumed I was Chinese. For a moment I thought he was speaking English because I could understand him that much more. There are a lot of Chinese people in Paris, which makes me fit in like a local nicely.

I am renting out my couch to a fellow HEC student from UCLA (James) who I met before coming here. His craigslist-found apartment turned out to be a well-furnished, well-situated hoax. So I've decided to be kind and make a few hundred euros back since they've been draining out of my wallet at a pretty quick pace since i arrived.

Yesterday we went wandering the streets from the 11th arrondissement all the way down towards Montparnasse to pick up my phone, and then towards the Latin Quarter. During this walk, we consumed: a chocolate croissant, a chocolate macaron the size of a burger, and a crepe with Nutella and bananas. During this time, I got a cell phone, James got a French sim card, we had no idea what the recorded instructions were saying on how to charge up his phone, and went to visit three places who could help. In the meantime he was calling various apartments hoping the people understood English. Then we made fun of the tourists at Notre Dame and then walked back to the apartment where we cracked open a bottle of Bordeaux and opened a Camembert and goat cheese, and whole wheat bread, and fatty salami ("les saucisson"). Ah, c'est la vie!

I've seen a lot of bad writing in my career, but none quite so much as the skywriter outside the office window this morning. He/ she was flying so slowly that the first few letters of whatever he was trying to write faded off into the blue sky, and the rest of it looked like a 5-year-old's scrawl. It made me think about what's involved in the career of a skywriter. How do you know where to aim the airplane to create the letter? Are their penmanship classes for skywriters? Is there a special exam you have to take to receive your skywriting license? Right now none of us are sure what the skywriter was trying to convey.

On Saturday I discovered the latest in parental coddling, spoilage and all-around example of pure American waste-making. It came in the form of a small birthday cake, about the size my family used to get for the four of us from Carvel ice cream. Except in this case, it was for the kid-of-honor: the baby turning one, sitting prominently in his high-chair on display in front of all the guests. After singing "Happy Birthday" and blowing the candle out for him, the small birthday cake was placed in front of the kid where he looked quizzically at it, stuck one finger in it, and then an arm, and then both arms, and proceeded to destroy the cake to pieces. Thus, the concept of the Baby Smash Cake was introduced to me.

Not that it wasn't absolutely hilarious to watch as this kid tore into the cake and got blue-and-green icing all over him, his shirt, and pants. He didn't eat any of it. He just smushed it and lifted it and threw it around and had a field day, just like the grown-ups with the cameras. And fortunately I think his parents are pretty cool people, so i really can't blame them because they probably knew just how hilarious it would be.

Fortunately, there was an adult-sized sheet cake that would not be smashed into, unless we really wanted to, I supposed. Apparently sometimes a bakery will include a smash-cake with the actual cake as an added bonus. There wasn't a whole lot inside except a bunch of frosting. Anything that was considered food was in the adult version, so I guess it wasn't a horrible waste.

Finally, after 25 hours of traveling, I have taken a super hot shower and scoured every inch of me with the loofah equivalent of a Brillo-pad. Boris and I had checked out of our hotel Saturday morning. 40 hours later, we were wearing the same Delhi-dusted clothes to the markets to haggle for all our shopping and gift-giving needs. We also road a cycli-cab that went really, really slowly over every possible pothole, ate breakfast and lunch at the Park (the bar we all went to on the first night, where Boris claimed his sportcoat two weeks later at the lost & found), then at the Shangri-La for old times' sake, then dinner at "Piccadelhi Circus." Our flight to Chicago had a group from Kellogg returning from their 2-week stint. I watched Some tear-jerker Bollywood film that didn't have all the dancing but had all the cheesy songs and juicy lines and lots and lots of close-ups of the pretty lady's doe-eyed expressions to emphasize just how pretty she was. Then I watched "Night at the Museum" twice. In Chicago I bought a salad and ate it, even though it was 6:00am there. It was delicious. I am completely on India time, meaning right now it's noon here and midnight there.

In retrospect it was a fantastic trip and I had an incredible opportunity but likely I will not return anytime in the near future. I hate to admit that while I am capable of "roughing it" and I managed to stay healthy, I would have preferred the five-star treatment. It's either age or India was just that tough to travel. But I'm very happy to be home with my gazillion pashminas, and to be brushing my teeth with tap water and not smelling like curry and dirtiness and hand disinfectant.

This morning I started the day with a lovely view of a man with Harley-type on top(sunglasses, gray beard and hair tied up with a bandana) and banana-thong hammock on bottom jogging along the ocean. Then I made the mistake of entering one of the shops to examine its pashmina offerings and got accosted by five shopkeepers all begging me to enter her shop, and then her shop after that, although they all offered pretty much the same thing. I managed to escape with four pashminas.

Boris and I rented a moped to take us along the coast to the more northern beaches. Since I had never ridden a moped and would probably be traveling as fast as the cows on the road, Boris opted to get just one and I wore the lone helmet and sat behind him clutching the bar behind the seat for dear life. We rode up to beaches with similar beachfront shacks, chairs and nudist colony of Europeans. Boris wasn't sure if he should be excited or disturbed by topless older European women. Later we attended a "yoga" class which was led - like all the other ones - by a white woman who was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. Nobody in our class was Indian either. We learned to breathe, which I suppose is a useful tool.

Boris has now befriended some Israelis who are playing cards and smoking weird things and my contact lenses are starting to fog on me which signifies fatigue, so I might call it a night soon. We head back to Delhi tomorrow at 3:30 for one more night and one day of shopping before we go back to L.A. It's been a very interesting and fun journey, but I sure miss having hot showers and clean laundry. My interpretation of "clean" clothes is if they have only been worn twice before and smell better than the Indian next to me.

Last night Boris and I went to a rave. It was my first rave ever and probably the last, unless Boris wants to go to another one tomorrow night (apparently the area goes quiet on Wednesday evenings). It was something I regret not bringing my camera to. We met up with a Brit named Jake, and four female architecture students from Italy and Spain studying in Germany. This particular rave was on the beach, where people wore clothes all purchased from the giant market we went to today. They consisted of pants that looked like a sleeping bag with holes for feet, saris, linen skirts (men or women), underwear, or nothing at all. I felt extraordinarily preppy, although I don't think I was too far from their level of dirty at this point.

Boris purchased some kind of "special lassi" which tasted like liquified Laughing Cow cheese and apparently was special because they mixed in some hash. Nothing happened to me but Boris and Jake were having a field day. They jumped right in with the smelly dancing crowd (smelly because they were trying to be hippie, not because they were Indian. There was much interpretative dancing going on. I later opted to go home early to our lovely abode to take a much-needed shower and go to bed.

Of course, on the way back the tide had come in and I was wading through knee-deep ocean water to my hotel. The capri pants that held up for three full days of traveling and wearing finally added a layer of ocean water and sand to everything else that was collecting on the pants. Upon returning to my room I went into the bathroom and a giant yellow bullfrog leapt out of the corner and onto the wall. I screamed and huddled on my bed where a pile of giant ants had started making a little rave of their own on the flor next to me. Finally Boris returned and went to get rid of the bullfrog but instead found a gigantic cockroach instead, which he beat up with several whacks from his GQ magazine.

For the first time on the trip I went to bed stinky, sweaty, sandy and freaked out. In the morning it was better - no cockroaches or bullfrogs - and we went for a morning jog by the cows sunbathing on the beach. Later we headed to the Wednesday market to be accosted by numerous salespeople trying to convince us that we needed a set of drums. Then we took a cab to Old Goa to look at the Portugese churches built in the late 1600s. They were very beautiful and very cool temperature-wise, in contrast to the broiling hot and humid outside, and we were convinced that was how the Portugese managed to convert thousands of Indians into Catholicism.

The thing about hippies is they are all white, educated, and wealthy. They feel enormous pressure to dress and act and look as weird as possible. They are very snooty about their lifestyle and look down at others and don't believe they should pay taxes. In some ways they are like yuppies except they don't have jobs and they don't shower. Anyway today I am more hippie than yesterday because I have been wearing my new Indian skirt (desperate call for laundry) and a bandana on my head, and I haven't had a decent shower nor combed my hair much. I am on my way to dreadlocks land.

Boris and I spent the day dodging through traffic and flying to Goa on Kingfisher Airlines. Upon arrival to Goa I realized I needed hemp pants and a flowing linen shirt. We had Kingfisher beers (notice the trend here) and watched the sunset from our hotel. We ended up not booking into the hippie retreat although it seems that it might have actually been cleaner than this joint, but now we are oceanfront. There was a gentleman with a yellow shawl and underwear performing very bad yoga on the beach. Apparently he is an icon. Lots of Europeans are walking around showing their extreme paleness and their bellies over their Speedo-influenced swimwear. However, it was a peaceful start to our Goa travels.

Boris and I go on vacation.

That already sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but so far Boris and I are still friends. We said goodbye to our group on Saturday morning and boarded Indian Airlines, the state-run carrier with a pilot who flew like he got his pilot's license over the Internet. After thinking we might die on the way to Cochin, we arrived, wheels bumping, into our vacation. Upon getting off the plane a wave of great humidity and heat greeted us (in lieu of leis). We took a cab into Fort Cochin, where the Portugese settled. Our hotel was a building from the mid-1600s built by the Dutch East India Company. It was still in its original condition, with 20-foot ceilings, beautiful architecture, artwork and best of all, air conditioning. After enjoying the great invention, we headed out to check out the town.

Part of Cochin's history includes the introduction of Chinese fishing nets, which are giant webs on giant sticks hoisted by a complex rope system weighted with rocks. The rocks served as a balance as several people pulled the ropes and lowered the nets into the water and then hoisted them back up with fish. The waterfront was lined with many stalls of people trying to sell us fly-infested fish. We also wandered into the rice-and-spice market. Later we had dinner at some fancy-schmancy hotel with a bottle of Indian viognier and a classical Indian music performance which was kind of cool. Before leaving for our house boat I managed to call Jon and wish him a happy birthday. He was already drunk and lamenting with Sarah (Boris's fiance) about how Boris and I were havnig a romantic Indian getaway on a houseboat while he was drunk on his birthday without me.

Houseboating

The next morning our air-conditioned car arrived to take us to the houseboat, only there was no airconditioning to be found. We arrived at our straw-bamboo-basket woven boat which resembled half Chinese junk, half Sydney Opera House. Inside was a small bedroom with a mosquito net, a full bathroom, staff quarters and upstairs was a dining area and our lounge where we sat in the sun and watched the Kerala world go by. We sailed down the river and into the backwaters watching people gather by the waterside, washing dishes, laundry, their hair, their kids, themselves. We have a feeling our dishes were also washed in the same river. It was like sailing over a giant bathroom. We had a staff of three people who cooked massive meals for us served on plaintain leaves and Boris got a kick out of trying to eat with his fingers, as is the typical table manner. Later we relaxed on our sundeck and watched the sun go down and the night light up with lightning, some stars, and the glow of single bulbs from the houses lining the water, like candles.

The thing about the backwaters was nobody seemed unhappy or poor. They weren't rich by any means, but they were all mostly farmers (of rice or ducks, apparently) who live comfortably enough and had the river to give them all they required. It was an interesting side of India we didn't get to see during our first week with the business program. In the morning we got to take a mini-hike on land to see a very, very long snake boat (like a crew boat) that seated 150 people. They set these boats out during regattas to celebrate the returning of their god-king.

At one point several coconuts dropped on the ground with a big THWUNK and our guide informed us that many people die from falling coconuts.

Ayurvedic = oil

Finally we disembarked and headed back to Cochin, where we went for $12 ayurvedic massages which made Boris uncomfortable because he could only be massaged by a man. This being my second massage I have concluded that the word ayurvedic is really Hindi for "oily." The woman basically doused me in oil and I was so sure she was going to set me on fire or fry me. I then had to lay on a wooden table and hung on for dear life that I wouldn't go sliding off, I was so oily. It was not really worth even the mere $12.

Now I am being eaten alive by mosquitos so I shall go retire to my room. We switched hotels to a waterfront one with floor-to-ceiling woven bamboo, so we feel very tropical. Boris also spotted a bullfrog hopping around the property. Tomorrow we fly to Goa to our hippie retreat.

Yesterday after our visit to Infosys and Amazon, I went for a massage with my roommate. On the way there we got a tuk-tuk which halfway to the Park Hotel the tuk-tuk driver decided to stop at the gas station. This seems to be a common practice, to stop for gas or chat with friends while you still have customers in your vehicle. The Indian passengers don't seem to mind, but the antsy Americans did. Anyway after we complained and even got out of the tuk-tuk, he got back in and jumped to the front of the line for gas and then we were weaving at scary speeds through the traffic. Literally we almost hit lots of car mirrors off, but they are so talented here that nobody hits anyone (except some cars don't have side-view mirrors). We arrived extremely tense and stressed out. The massage was very oily, and fully naked, without sheets or any kind of modesty, and the power went out half-way (this has been happening a lot, maybe 5 times a day here in Bangalore) but then it came back on. Afterwards we got back into a tuk-tuk that made us all stressed out again.

Later, we all trooped out to M. Gandhi Road with Professor Dutta to a club where Indian rappers came out on stage all thugged out and rapping in Indian accents. Then we went back to our hotel's bar for the rest of the evening, followed by a smokeup session (I passed) of some mysterious hashish someone bought from a tuk-tuk driver. A bunch of them smoked it, but the rest of us decided it could very well possibly not be marijuana at all but ground up tuk-tuk tires.

Today's our last school day and tomorrow starts the real vacation. Boris and I are headed down to Cochin, along the ocean, before we board our houseboat in the backwaters. There may be no postings for the next few days, but trust that I'm enjoying every moment of peaceful bliss.

I suffered a bout of heartburn since Tuesday which I believe is a side effect of taking malarial pills on an empty stomach. A few of us are suffering from side effects but no one is actually fessing up to having full-on digestive issues. Yesterday a few of us hired a car to take us around Bangalore for the day. For 800 rupees ($20) we got this van that looked like a rectangle on wheels and ran on propane tanks, the kind used for barbecues. In the middle of our drive to this safari/ zoo, the driver drove across 6 lanes of traffic to buy another propane tank which he attached to a rubber hose in the back seat behind where I was sitting. We drove all the way out to this safari and paid 90 rupees to get on the "grand tour" of bears, lions, tigers, and deer. We all boarded a schoolbus with some bars on the windows that had holes so you could stick your camera out the window but the lions couldn't stick their teeth through. About 35 smelly people were piled into this bus and it was like entering Jurassic Park. Our tour guide, the smelliest of all, would point out the different animals and then the bus drive would yell and provoke the animals so we could take photos.

After an hour of animal viewing and body odor, we got back into our rectangle on wheels and drove back to Bangalore. We stopped at a botanical garden where monkeys and little boys ran around together. We took pictures of the monkeys, then of the boys, and then Boris gave them some bubble gum.

Later I had an Italian lunch because I needed a big break from Indian food, and then in the evening my roommate and I went shopping on this main road called Mahatma Gandhi Road where all the stores are. Crossing the street at night is even scarier than in the day, though by now I figured out they will not really hit you (although we still ran across the street screaming). According to our guide, more people in India die from snake bites than crossing the street. I bought some pashminas and then went into a grocery store and bought some tea because the boxes had elephants on them. Every shop we stopped into had very, very aggressive salesmen trying to sell pashminas. Even if I didn't want a pashmina. Even if they didn't sell pashminas, it was like they were still trying to get me to buy one. I kept running out of shops each time because I didn't want to buy a pashmina but they insisted that, in fact, I really did want a pashmina. We were so tired of negotiating that we forgot to negotiate our tuk-tuk ride back to the hotel and paid the full 100 rupees (I guess it should have been about 50, which is $1).

Someone on the trip is doing a basketball pool and we all paid in rupees. I think the winner doesn't actually get paid in rupees though.

Today we visited Infosys which had a really, really, really nice campus with a pool, ping-pong center, gym, golf course, and all meals subsidized. Then we went to Amazon.com, which is my project, and it wasn't as nice, but the presentation was more interesting. I have a massage scheduled at 7:00 for about $20 so I'll be heading out now.

Yesterday was the first day of "school" related items so we toured around Delhi, in the rain, to different companies which was somewhat interesting but it's all
software related, which I am not. At Wipro we visited the AOL call center for customer complaints and we got to listen in on British people trying to cancel their AOL accounts. Because they were British, we didn't really get to hear them yell and curse the way Americans would. This morning we left Delhi and flew to Bangalore. There was so much traffic that my professor was afraid we'd miss our flights, and then what was he going to do with 29 stranded students. There was even traffic on the runway (except there were no cows on the runway). Once in Bangalore we were greeted with more leis and a red dot smushed on our foreheads like Ash Wednesday.

After lunch Boris and I went to go buy plane tickets at a travel agent that required us to jay-walk, twice, across scary traffic. It was like playing Frogger except I was the frog. I held my hands over my eyes and yelled, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!" and ran across the street on the heels of a local who seemed okay with the idea of dying. I could picture the Daily Trojan with the headline: "Two Marshall MBAs die on Globe Trip" and subhead: "Students found smushed under tuk-tuk" but we made it. I don't think they ever actually hit people or other cars.

Then we went to a panel discussion with some local entrepreneurs which
was very boring and we were all falling asleep. There were some local
MBA working students too and we've been busy trying to be social and I
just get tired of talking about what I do and what they do and all
that. So far nobody on our trip has fallen ill to anything more than a little heartburn from too much spicy food, knock on wood.

For the first time, an overseas flight managed to be quite long. In Chicago our group ended up on an airport pub crawl through O'Hare, led by Boris and Anita. That helped them sleep the rest of the way to India but I managed to watch several bad movies (including one entertaining Indian musical with bad lip-syncing) and then slept about 3-4 hours. Upon arrival in New Delhi, the pub-crawl continued through the streets of Connault Place where we went into some bar at some hotel with a lot of Americans, British and Indians who knew all the words to "Uptown Girl" and "Junebug". Everyone who proclaimed they would stay for "just an hour" ended up staying until 5:30am, where we ended our night over pasta bolognese. At 7:00 Shelly banged on our hotel door - the bus to Taj Mahal was leaving and I was still in bed.

What should have been a 2-3 hour bus trip in the U.S. took about 5 given the traffic of there other trucks loaded with lots of people hanging off the back, tuk-tuks (3-wheeled open-air taxis), elephants, camel-drawn carts, bicycles, pedestrians, and cows walking around on the street. At different checkpoints we had various vendors trying to sell us wooden cobras, jewelry, postcards, and peacock fans (peacocks are the national bird, and I'm afraid they've all been made into fans). One man was pretending to be a snake charmer and played a pipe (very badly) to a couple of sad cobras who hardly found him charming, and then he tried to get us to toss him a few rupees for the photos. Other men stuck monkeys at our windows. Monkeys also run around on tops of buildings.

The Taj Mahal, however, was quite the highlight. The Indians are very, very proud of it even though the history behind it was pretty cruel (20,000 laborers forced to hand-cut marble etchings to make all the elaborate flowers, which are beautiful, and then their hands were threatened to be cut off so they couldn't duplicate the TaJ Mahal). Built for a dead beloved wife of the emporer, her two very demanding death wishes were the following: 1. don't re-marry. 2. Build me the Taj. We had to wear shoe covers to walk on the marble, while the local Indians just took off their shoes and when we went into the Taj Mahal it smelled like feet and curry.

There are lots of people wearing very colorful saris. I tried to discreetly take photos ofthe colorful saris, and in return many Indians in saris came up to take pictures with us.

So far I haven't gotten sick, so keeping my fingers crossed and the water out of my system.