Did I mention that it snowed yesterday? Well, it did. Enough, in fact, that on the way to my Arabic placement exam, I made a little detour into Washington Square to take pictures. First real snow of the winter here, and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. My concerns about the test proved unfounded: aside from a few problems with spelling, it felt pretty trivial. Good, now I can find something else to obsess over.

My grandparents were downtown, meanwhile, for a doctor’s visit, so we met up for lunch, at the Afghan restaurant in the East Village. I’m constantly astonished by how we manage to find parking within easy walking distance of our destination. In this sense, Manhattan cam be more convenient than Paris.

In honor of the impending weekend, I spent the rest of the day trying to finish my computer setup and a chunk of the next week’s readings. I had the bright idea to try and install Windows on an external USB drive, so that I’d have a portable Windows installation for my Mac (that would not take up much of my already too small 120GB internal hard drive). This, it turns out, is easier said than done, and since all of the web tutorials on the topic insisted it required disconnecting the internal hard drive, I simply gave up. For now VMWare Fusion will have to suffice. Incidentally, I’m a bit bummed that the Mac only has an unpowered microphone jack. This means my headset can’t be used for Skype.