Mesdames, Messieurs.

Got home from work early today, because half of the schools where I work are on strike. Massive reforms to the education system are really ticking people off, and this in turn means that my schedule gets funky (depending on who's absent for which day's strike).

Upon quitting the métro at Saint-Sulpice, I was greeted by a massive marching protest - of teachers. Go figure.

When I got to my apartment, I grabbed my mail, where I came across the following letter:

Not sure how much of that you can decipher, but it's a notice that my métro station at Saint-Sulpice will be closed from March 1st to May 18th, inclusive. Closed. You cannot enter the station. Trains will not be stopping there.

Ugh.

Luckily, I can still intercept the 4 line at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which really isn't much further, but the fact that they just close down whole stations for months at a time still peeves me. Screw you, RATP. I don't care if my métro is '+ beau' (plus beau = prettier), I care about using it.

Finally remembered to snap a shot of this restaurant in Aubervilliers. Call me obsessive, but the diner in the TV show Bones where they often hang out is (I'm pretty sure) called The Royal diner. There are probably millions of Royal diners in the US, really, but I always think of it when I see this!

This is for all of my friends with ties to Australia (Brittany, Mell, Fanny, and anyone else). I was wandering around Châtelet the other day while waiting to catch the coach bus for orchestra (more on that in a second) when I came across this bar/café. Further investigation may be necessary!

This past weekend I was part of the portion of the orchestra that went to Pontoise to accompany a piano concours (a piano competition). We accompanied three candidates on the first movement of the Piano Concerto in A major by Mozart -- an American girl from Juilliard, a Polish guy, and an Italian girl (she ended up winning).

It was a lot of fun, and it's been quite some time since I was on a coach bus with a bunch of friends. In fact, it was very much like playing a normal concert at home in some respects -- we were in black on black (for once not our ball gowns!) and we played in a modern type auditorium like you'd find in the US, rather than some 14th century church or something. A temporary return to normalcy. You have to play differently in a modern room like that because it eats the sound, something that I think American music students are more accustomed to than we realize, whereas it's less evident for students with the habit of playing in acoustic magnifying rooms like St Louis des Invalides. They didn't have a shell though, so I wonder whether it projected well to the audience. Whatever.

Everyone is just WAITING for Friday afternoon, since that's the start of two weeks of break. I'll have Thursday to myself, at least until orchestra, because I'm babysitting a full day tomorrow. Friday is back to school for some make-up classes, and then after rehearsal on Saturday I'm on a train to Koeln, Germany to visit my friend Kelly who now works there as an au pair (Koeln, Köln, or Cologne... sometimes you wonder if they're really all the same place). I'm really excited to see her, and as Val knows, I'm trying some last minute German cramming.