First of all, a big merci to those who posted comments. I didn't realize you had to have a blogger ID to post a comment ... I will no longer demand comments; however the occasional email would be nice. And, Jason, if you really know who said the quote, good job. I kind of doubt anyone else will get it. Sorry to doubt you guys, but prove me wrong (using google to figure it out doesn't count).

Oh, and I know why Americans are fat and why, in general Europeans aren't. It's not necessarily the diet; In Paris, at least, people walk everywhere. Not just cause drivers here are insane and suck (and I thought LA drivers were bad...), but cause it makes sense to walk and take public trans. And there are a good number of narrow doors and small places where there's no way your average overweight American could fit. That being said, I'm tired cause I've done more walking already than I'm used to. Speaking of subways, look who's at every subway station here...


A friend here showed me around today and took me to buy my railpass. Cost me more than I thought I had read back at home, so note to self - next time by the railpass at home. If it's not actually cheaper, at least the STA Travel people are nicer than the desk people at les Gares here.

Then I wondered around the city on my own, visiting la Tour Eiffel, and l'Hotel des Invalides, which is, of course, home to le tombeau de Napoleon. And anyone who knows me knows my weird obsession with the Empereur des Francais. And, if you happen to be those two Americans I explored the tomb with, email me soon so I can send you your pictures, so I'm not just holding on to pictures of random people. Oh, thanks, Jon C, wearing a Cal shirt today earned me some comments from another fellow alum. He noticed the "Roll on you Bears" part of my shirt and introduced himself even though we were going in opposite directions.

Afterwards, I went to dinner with the family I'm staying with here - good Italian place in the Latin Quarter. And then hung out with my friend with his friends by the Seine. Even though I think all of them knew English, they all spoke French to me. Which, I guess is good for me, but I yearn to be lazy and fall back to English.

I leave tommorrow morning for a 3.5hr trip to the south. It's been nice staying with these family friends here in Paris. A good home base that's safe, and i can trust leaving my stuff here. also, they tend to speak cantonese at home, so i've gotten a chance to work on two languages at which i'm rusty. also, they speak English, so I always have a fallback. Now I have to rely on my French. This sounds arrogant, well the first part anyway, but I don't mean it in an arrogant way - it's not the greatest thing to have a good French accent but limited vocab and poor grammar. People have told me I have a good accent (the sentence after they say this is usually when i totally don't understand what they said), but I've thought about it like this. You meet someone with a perfect American accent, but speaks like a foreigner. Wouldn't that be weird? I think I'd just think he was stupid or very poorly educated. I should work on crapping out my French accent. Or work on my voab and grammar, but the former is easier.

Ok, that,s enough for me. If you think I've talked too much, its cause the primary purpose of this is a journal for myself and i want to remember everything ive done/thought so far. So there. Instead of Herman's Head, you get Jon's Head.

And, if I remember, from now on I'll post the times in local times. The other ones werent, I think they were in PST. Damn, I gotta wake up soon. (7am)