Each morning I wake up completely dissatisfied with my bangs (or fringe ou frange) and give them a trim. Now that I have been here for five weeks, they look nothing more than confused, lost and afraid. So after French class, I found a stylist. The salon is decorated in a sort of organic modern with a marine twist. (Google tells me that marinal is definitely not the word I am looking for.)

With the help of another stylist, I explained to Yoni what I wanted. Because the French lovhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.photo.gife to get unnecessarily exasperated, he barked (en francais) "What is this? I can't work with this! No cut, no cut! This? No cut!" while gripping the sides of my bangs. I promised him I would buy a barrette and would never attempt to cut them on my own again. This solution seemed to satisfy him.

My next stop was a library exposition on images of the Commune. Each poster explains the related events of that day and is accompanied by illustrations, the style of which I just loved. Here's an illustration of Courbet.

I raced back to the apartment to meet with the internet technicien I found in a magazine for English ex-pats. He was Scottish. He fixed madame's router within ten minutes. It just needed to be reset. Unfortunately, it took a professional opinion until la madame would believe such a thing. When she asked him what exactly was wrong, he explained: "It is very difficult for me to tell you in French. It's very technical. Let me try in English. We have this phrase for when something stops working. We say its 'knickers are in a twist.' Basically, your router's knickers were in a twist." It was clear that she didn't understand the idiom, so he mimed it for her by pulling his own underwear out from the top of his jeans and pretended to wring them out. Wonderful.

Afterward, Cat, her friend Lara and I went to the Louvre. I did my best to summarize for them two years' worth of knowledge on 19th-century French visual culture. I didn't do half bad, but I could use a lot more practice with my presentation skills.

Mika leaves tomorrow for Japan, so we went out to a bar near the Trocadero (Le Coq) for drinks. We were a little too rambunctious for the pretentiousness of this champagne bar, but the staff liked us enough to bring free food (in addition to the mandatory olives and almonds). I ordered du porte rouge and loved every intoxicating sip.

Here's a snippet to explain just how sassy my roommate can be. This morning at the breakfast table I asked if I was showing too much cleavage for French class. Her response? "What cleavage?" Sassy, sassy lady.

For dinner? Roasted duck. For the appetizer we ate lentil (maybe?) soup with dollops of thick crème.