Some people think they're always right...

Well, I'm now 21. Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. And yes, I did drink on my 21st birthday.

Yesterday everything I went to classes like every day. The only thing different was the protest I encountered while commuting from Grammar to Phonetics. Makes me miss the protests in DC.

When I got home Jean asked me something about Tai Chi, which then prompted his mother to launch into an hour-long (maybe 20 minutes, but it felt like an hour) lecture about how she'd read that Tai Chi was tied to Taoism, which is an occult religion, and how learning about natural energies is anti-Christian, and how if someone can break stone with their bare hand they're obviously receiving power from the Devil, and there was something about a priest who converted from Christianity to Buddhism and then back to Christianity because he found that Buddhism is evil. She grouped martial arts with African sorcery, Indian mantras, and Chinese medicine, and concluded that none of these practices come from God and are thus evil. Confusing "God" with "Europe," are we, madame? Is it 1509 already?

I just stood there and when I could take no more of it I very calmly stated that in my two years of Tai Chi I've never found anything occult or in fact religious at all. But she did inadvertently bring up a good point: I've been slacking off on my Tai Chi! I'll start getting up half an hour earlier to catch the train and I'll practice in the Jardin de Luxembourg before class.

After dinner I waited for my friend Sarah to text me about going to a club later in the night. Everyone else who was going had to attend some concert for their Art & Literature class and I was planning to meet them at the club afterwards. But as I was heading towards the train station, Sarah texted me saying that everyone was too tired and was going home.

So, fuming, I walked into the center of town to find a bar. So help me, I was going to have at least one drink on my birthday! Immediately after I found a place I ran into a group of four Welshmen and their girlfriends who were in France for the rugby game. I told them it was my birthday and they offered to buy me a drink. They bought me another one after that, but then we got kicked out, on account of them singing raucous Welsh songs at the top of their lungs. So the night worked out really well.