happy valentine's day!

There's a student-run program at Columbia called "Stop AIDS in its Tracks," through which kids pass out free condoms on the subways. Only in New York, right? Wrong. Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, people were handing out roses at the entrances to the Sorbonne. The roses were in a brochure that said, "Dans 5 secondes, vous allez avoir un coup de foudre." ("In five seconds, you will fall in love at first sight," basically.) So I opened the packet, and inside, tucked among the roses, was a condom. On the back of the brochure was a clever little math formula: [flower] + [condom] = [heart]. Some things never change, no matter where you go.

I've now had all of my fac classes (except for the stupid medieval history TD that I couldn't find.) I don't really believe in shopping for classes and so I had made my schedule pretty inflexible when I put it together a couple of weeks ago, but luckily everything is coming up roses (and condoms) academically. Today I went to the lecture for the Belle Epoque class; like the medieval history course, it's the second half of a year-long thing, but it seems much more accessible. We talked about the general feeling of optimism and progress that surrounded the time, and about how 1900 was the first time people really got worked up about the century change. I don't know much about this subject, so although history is my thing this feels much more like an elective. (Like I said yesterday, I love learning. Woohoo.)

Tonight: V Day drinks with friends. Ethan has made it clear that he is less than thrilled. This is tons o' fun.