Bonjour,

I'm still in ev'ry, and the weather has been at a constant 30 degrees C. It never really cools off and the mosquitoes here are vicious. They keep us really busy here at INT and I found out that INT is a Grand Ecola. Grandes Ecoles are the very best institutions of French higher education. To be considered as a "Grande Ecole", a school must be a member of the "Conférence des Grandes Ecoles" (www.cge.asso.fr), an association that was created in 1973. If one gets a degree from a Grand Ecola it is better than a Masters and you will get a job within 4 months of graduation (I have been told that Grand Ecola's are viewed higher than Oxford University).

On monday we were trained by a professional wine taster, so I now have the knowledge on how to pick a good wine (not really). It was fun, almost all of the students got drunk in class and so did the instructors, the professional wine taster never drank he spit it out, but everyone else drank. It was funny seeing our instructors getting smashed at 11:30 am. By the way, yes the wine was good. We also tasted some cheese, and yea, I almost threw up just smelling it, it was that bad. I think I was the only person, besides the profrofessional, who didn't get drunk.

Other than that, nothing big going on, except the sale. France has 2 sales a year, not like the USA. The sale is mostly for clothing and the sales are definately worth it. You can save anywhere from 30% to 70% depending on what store you go into. It is almost worth traveling to Paris just for the sale to do some shopping. I'm very surprised at how much clothes I got for the ammount of Euros I paid.