Okay, now it won't be QUITE as disastrous to feed my book addiction.

The French postal service does not have cheap shipping by sea freight, but they are so goddamn proud of their culture that they will give you ridiculous discounts specifically for sending books overseas. No, I am not making this up. They have a shipping category for books and educational materials, and it costs €2.13 per kilo, i.e. less than $1 per pound. Of course this is advertised NOWHERE on the website because it's probably imposed by the Ministry of Culture or something and La Poste wants you to pick the more expensive options, but it exists.

Also, Smith is apparently REALLY REALLY GOOD about paying for us to better ourselves. *g* There is talk of yearlong free passes to the Louvre, and there's a fund to reimburse our cultural activities. The fund was established by a very rich lady who, once upon a time, was a poor student on Smith's Paris program who was absolutely crushed by the price of opera tickets. Which means she'll probably fund all the opera my heart could possibly desire as long as I meet her and let her pinch my cheeks and tell her how much I loved Andrea Chénier. Also, one of the directors is not only on board with me getting voice lessons, she's positively on our asses to take part in some activity besides classes--so I'm considering not only voice but fencing. I doubt Smith will be paying for that, but voice lessons in one of the state-funded conservatories are apparently not that expensive.

One of the other Smith cultural activities is group excursions all throughout orientation, and possibly a few during the school year. The choice of excursions is very well-done--I think they assume we're all going to be visiting the Louvre and the towers of Notre-Dame and such anyway, if we haven't already, so they take us to places like Carnavalet and the Sewer Museum and the Hotel de Ville. The Hotel de Ville was really cool, because on the interior where you'd expect religious iconography it's all republican symbolism. Baroque ceiling frescoes with Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity surrounded by cherubs, stained glass windows with Virtuous Republican Artisans at work, that sort of thing. I don't think they usually offer guided tours--maybe it's reservation only--but at any rate it was really cool and not something I'd have ordinarily thought to do.

And now I have to translate the CompSci course titles into English for my academic advisor, work on an essay about François I, and think up tongue-twisters for my phonetics class. They do like to keep us busy.

Okay, now it won't be QUITE as disastrous to feed my book addiction.

The French postal service does not have cheap shipping by sea freight, but they are so goddamn proud of their culture that they will give you ridiculous discounts specifically for sending books overseas. No, I am not making this up. They have a shipping category for books and educational materials, and it costs €2.13 per kilo, i.e. less than $1 per pound. Of course this is advertised NOWHERE on the website because it's probably imposed by the Ministry of Culture or something and La Poste wants you to pick the more expensive options, but it exists.

Also, Smith is apparently REALLY REALLY GOOD about paying for us to better ourselves. *g* There is talk of yearlong free passes to the Louvre, and there's a fund to reimburse our cultural activities. The fund was established by a very rich lady who, once upon a time, was a poor student on Smith's Paris program who was absolutely crushed by the price of opera tickets. Which means she'll probably fund all the opera my heart could possibly desire as long as I meet her and let her pinch my cheeks and tell her how much I loved Andrea Chénier. Also, one of the directors is not only on board with me getting voice lessons, she's positively on our asses to take part in some activity besides classes--so I'm considering not only voice but fencing. I doubt Smith will be paying for that, but voice lessons in one of the state-funded conservatories are apparently not that expensive.

One of the other Smith cultural activities is group excursions all throughout orientation, and possibly a few during the school year. The choice of excursions is very well-done--I think they assume we're all going to be visiting the Louvre and the towers of Notre-Dame and such anyway, if we haven't already, so they take us to places like Carnavalet and the Sewer Museum and the Hotel de Ville. The Hotel de Ville was really cool, because on the interior where you'd expect religious iconography it's all republican symbolism. Baroque ceiling frescoes with Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity surrounded by cherubs, stained glass windows with Virtuous Republican Artisans at work, that sort of thing. I don't think they usually offer guided tours--maybe it's reservation only--but at any rate it was really cool and not something I'd have ordinarily thought to do.

And now I have to translate the CompSci course titles into English for my academic advisor, work on an essay about François I, and think up tongue-twisters for my phonetics class. They do like to keep us busy.