Taking some courses here have been nice.  It really helps to boost my understanding of the Word.  I feel like I’m getting a lot of apologetics thrown in with a good mix of different perspectives. However, I don’t feel like I can keep up with all of the courses — not because it’s too heavy, but for a couple reasons.

First, I don’t think I’ve totally recovered from jet lag yet.  It seems so lame and wimpy to admit this, but I don’t think my body has adjusted well from being in another time zone about a week ago.  For the past 5 or so days, although I’ve gone to bed around midnight I’ve been waking up at 5 or 6am.  I’m trying to sleep until my alarm at 7 or 7:30am, but it’s not working. One of those nights I forced myself to sleep as late as I could handle (2am) and in the end I almost slept past class time.  It’s weird but I’ve never dealt with jet lag in this manner before.  So I’ve been taking afternoon naps here and there.

Second, my work ethic (or lack thereof) is showing through.  During university, I usually did school work in bunches every few days.  Here, to keep up I really need to be doing readings and assignments each day.  I enjoy the readings and I frequently want to finish the assignments on time, but I realized I never really did work like this before.

I’m glad, however, that there’s not that much crazy pressure to perform.  I know that I just want to learn as much as I can without overloading myself.  The last thing I want is to be burned out when I go home and get ready for hitting the campus again.

There are a lot of staff here from all over America and it’s been neat to meet great people.  Their accents are obviously different and we’ve analyzed it quite a bit.  I’m reassured that there are other Canadian staff here too, which makes the environment a bit more familiar, although I don’t get to see them all that regularly, just at mealtimes and such.

Apparently Florida is the thunderstorm capitol of America.  I don’t doubt it.  Almost every single day we’ve had a thunderstorm and rain at some point during the day.  It’s very humid and warm out all the time, but the crazy thing is we have over-air conditioned buildings (we can only adjust the thermostat for our individual rooms, not the house; the lecture hall is usually freezing, and the cafeteria is pretty chilly too).  Crazy eh?  I’m sure glad I have a hoodie to wear in the house.

I’ve listened to more of Coldplay’s new CD “Viva La Vida” and I’m still really blown away by it.  There are a lot of spiritual themes laced in the songs too.  I wonder about the line “missionaries in a foreign field”.

Many of the guys in our building are Mac users as well.  It has been intriguing to see so many MacBooks around and on the network.  I’d say we have almost 1/2 Mac users in our residence of about 20 guys.

I’ve put up a gallery of my Paris vacation photos (from digital) up on Picasa Web now.  Check it out.

Checking out of my hotel in Orlando now.  Making use of the free internet and downloading some iTunes music, some podcasts, and syncing my iPod.  Just downloaded Coldplay’s newest. I’m not being let down, and I’m only 3 tracks in.  This stuff is truly world music… so singable and so anthemic.

I was so glad for a shower after almost 16 hours and three flights in airplanes and airports.  Airplanes are soooo dry..  they brutalize my skin perhaps even more than the Sahara.

What do you do during a day in Paris when you are supposed to have left?

Today I woke up, packed my bags, and sweatily got on the Metro and went to Charles de Gaulle Airport.  After a weird moment at the check-in counter…

“Sir are you sure you are on this flight?  I don’t have you on the list.”

My heart skipped a beat. I whipped out my iPod to grab my confirmation number, and then realized that my flight departs on June 21.  “What day is it today?  The 21st?”, I thought to myself.  No, wrong..  Apparently it is the 20th.

This whole week I thought that the present day was the next day.  So the whole time I thought Tuesday was Wednesday, Thursday was Friday.  I even told many people yesterday that it was the last day I had in Paris. 

So realizing I had a whole other day to do stuff, I went to work completing some unfinished business: riding a bike in Paris. Apparently the Velib bikeshare service is only useful for those with a carte-bleu credit card.  Even for day passes and one-time rides.  This is very unhelpful for those from countries like Canada.  I found a bike shop and they referred me to another shop just south of Gare de L’Est where I could rent a bike.

For 8 euros, I rode around most of the downtown area for about 3 hours.  I saw so much.  I think this definitely beats the 5-day Metro passe in terms of seeing the city.  It was less tiring than walking everywhere.  But the Metro passe allowed me to get to very far places, however.  So I don’t regret getting it.

But anyway, the other day I went to Versailles and was absolutely blown away by it.  It’s actually worth a two day visit, on a Friday and a Saturday, so that you can see the light/water/fireworks show in the summer evenings.

Aight I’m out. This Korean internet cafe is comfy but the owners smoke just outside the door, and it all comes in.  I rarely see Koreans smoke in Canada, but I guess this is still France.

I’ve been packing in a lot of sights here in Paris.  I tend not to see the normal tourist things, but I did hit up a few of the must sees in the city.  Here is a good list of what I’ve seen:

• Tour Eiffel
• Champs Elysees
• Arc de Triomphe
• Concorde
• the Louvre
• Grand Palais
• Grande Arche de La Defense
• the Seine
• Notre Dame
• La Villette & Cite de la musique, Geode

Grande Arche de La Defense is one attraction less seen.  Look it up on Wikipedia.  It’s actually truly amazing as a building.  It seemed like it came out of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Kind of otherwordly.  I went to the top of the building as well but the view wasn’t really that terrific.  But just standing outside on the Promenade de la Defense was pretty awesome.

The Arc de Triomphe is also quite amazing.  It looks small in photos but it is actually mad mad huge.  I would not classify it as just an Arch.  It is like a building with ornate carvings on the outside.  I thought it was quite awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time to understand that the Arc was built to commemmorate all the victories of the French Republic when the world was still primarily about world conquest.  I can’t remember the word that you use when a country just invades to increase its territory.  Anyway, the Arc actually inspired awe in me.

Right now I’m sitting near Porte de Clichy but there really isn’t much to see here.  I got on the wrong direction on a train and ended up in a suburbish area that isn’t too touristy.  It would be more exciting if I had a local to bring me around, likely.  I originally wanted to do some more actually local stuff but my limited time here is pressing me to visit the tried and true attractions.  I am going to get back on the train to head towards the right direction to see the Chateau de Versailles.

2 more days.