Le MEILLEUR de la musique. HA!

Saw this ad on my way to school Friday ... It says "The best of music," and do you know who that is, off on the right? GEORGE MICHAEL. What group was he a part of that I love? Oh, right, WHAM. No more comments about my musical taste, this ad vindicates me :)



Saturday was fun, if exhausting - three hours of orchestra rehearsal, then a lunch break (group of us went to a Japanese place, so that was fun), then another three hours of rehearsal, although I think we got out a tiny bit early? Then I went for a hot chocolate with Raphaele and Arthur at a cool place with metro inspired light fixtures nearby (kind of resembles Tiffany stuff, too).

Sunday morning was another three hour rehearsal, but I guess we did well, so he gave us a reprieve and canceled the afternoon rehearsal! So I came home, took a quick nap, and studied for the GRE, which I take on Wednesday. This is going to be such a crazy week:

Monday: teach 8h15-17h30, orchestra dress rehearsal at 20h
Tuesday: teach 8h15-17h30
Wednesday: GRE 9h-13h, babysitting afterward until 18h30
Thursday: Babysitting noon-16h30, concert call at 17h30, concert at 20h
Friday: teaching 13h30-17h30, mental breakdown.

Please excuse what I know is going to be a lack of posts this week. I'm not doing too much you'd want to hear about anyway ... but I will try to get pictures at the concert!

Here it goes again

I forgot how busy it gets when I have to ... you know, work! Classes on Monday and Tuesday went well, very busy as always.

If anyone can contribute songs I can teach the kids, I'd really appreciate it - they LOVE singing, but it has been a long time since I was learning songs in my normal classes (I'm not familiar with any songs that pertain to imperialism or campaign finance, at least).

On Wednesday I met with a family that I'm going to start babysitting for!!! They have three boys, 6, 5, and 5 months. They're very sweet, and it's fun to play with kids and not just have to teach them. Snapped this picture on the way home from their house (not too far from Trocadero). I guess it was pretty foggy that morning.



Wednesday is also a holiday in France (and much of Europe, actually) -- for them, though, it's just known as the "onze novembre" (November 11th), and it commemorates Armistice Day. No doubt that's what our Veteran's day was based on, but I'm not sure how many of us realized it.

Everything was closed. It was as bad as a Sunday. I hate the fact that the city just shuts down like that, it takes all the convenience out of being in a city!

There's a Gallimard Publishing bookstore near me though, and they were open, so I stopped in to wander for a bit. They have some fun folio editions that are out (ones like this, with crazy cases for the book), and I happened to spot this one. Our title is The Moveable Feast, interesting to see theirs. Also that the cover the selected was blue and glittering. I suppose zebra print was already taken?



Snapped a stealth shot of the homage to Obama table ...



Better shot from down the street when I went back to babysit ...



Anyway, I have a SUPER busy weekend to look forward to, more about that soon!

I get the feeling that I look absurd.

Today I went to my newest school acquisition, Babeuf. It's a little bit farther out than my other three, but it's only about 15 minutes on foot from Victor Hugo/Honoré de Balzac. The principal and other teachers seem very nice -- I'm going to be teaching an after-school program there three times a week.

This means that the official count is now: 13 sections across three schools, plus three more sections at a fourth school for the after-school programming.

Awesome. My life = awesome. Seriously, preps for everything else have got to be easier than this. As if covering kindergarten through fourth grade weren't tricky enough, the skill levels within each grade are so diverse that I have to make my lessons adaptable on a class by class basis.

It's the moments like this that fire up my sense of the absurd. I mean, really, how can I take anything seriously when I work in four schools and teach 16 different groups of kids? If I weren't laughing so hard, I'd probably be on a plane out of here :)

Fortunately, the kids are [mostly] wonderful, and at least for now, I'm still their hero. I can live with this.

I can't believe I have to do this all over again tomorrow.

Last night my friend Anna came over for girl talk, conspiring, and general ridiculousness. Made Dave's epic chocolate sauce and we put in a little ice cream for show. Followed this with general silliness, which included our consensus that the true French immigration plot involves involves preying on our non-Gallic genes (Anna is British) ... And thus rendering us bald (we both seem to have sudden onset hair loss), fat (damn pastries and cheese), and wrinkled (the stress is unbelievable).

To round things out, we watched part of Airplane! before remembering how early we would be waking up today.

Saturday I had dinner with my friend Fanny, which was a lot of fun. She had an apparatus for making raclettes (think of a less messy version of fondue) and it was delicious. We also watched Crocodile Dundee, which is stunning in its display of late 80s/early 90s fashion, although it does slip in a few good lines.

I'm so tired, I'm not sure I can climb up into bed yet. Perhaps some chocolate sauce on a spoon will restore me ...

Must. Press. On.

There is absolutely nothing to report, because I have worked on nothing but grad school applications for the last two days. Not. Fun. At. All.

At least I feel productive.

Two nights ago I had dinner at my friend Raphaële's -- it was a big group, seven of us! But it was a lot of fun, my friends Arthur and Amélie from orchestra were there too.

Last night I had dinner with Julien and his friend Camille, then we watched a movie called "J'irai dormir chez vous, Hollywood." Part of a series where this French documentary guy, Antoine de Maximy, goes to a country and films himself trying to get to know people. It was a little surreal to see him wandering the US. Lots of poignant moments though, like his trip through the Hurricane Katrina ravaged parts of New Orleans, or talking to a man who is now homeless, and lives on the beach in LA.

It's raining today - I could almost be back in Binghamton! I'm settled in with my applications (er, laptop) and tea for the afternoon.

Orchestra tonight. Concert coming up soon, here's the flyer they sent us:

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

Sunday I took the suburban train out to the town nearest my friend and former pen pal, Emma, and spent the afternoon at her house! She and her parents are really sweet, and they always crack me up. Emma and I ended up going to see Le Petit Nicolas (they just made a movie out of the classic books). It was hysterical.

During one of my transfers in Chatelet, I discovered that there is a Rue de Lingerie. There would be. Not sure I want to go out that way. Ever.



Yesterday I spent the day pretending to work on grad school applications, and around 4pm decided I needed to do something more worthwhile. So I went to the Louvre. I started in Italian sculpture (Denon wing) and saw Michelangelo's slaves, moved to Etruscan burials, ambled back through Roman sculpture (shown here), and cut over to ...



The Venus de Milo. She's temporarily relocated while they do some sort of work on the big room she's normally in (in fact, I think the whole Greek sculpture room is closed right now).



Wandered back a different way, and came upon the Sphinx.



Found an exhibit in the Medieval part of the Louvre (AWESOME. Smells like the basement under the porch on the big house of Lake George a little bit) that involved lots of sentences about walls in neon affixed to the medieval walls of the original Louvre castle. It looked really cool, although it's a bit difficult to capture the effect in pictures.



After I came home and hung out for a few hours, I got settled, and almost didn't go to meet Sydney and her friends at a karaoke bar in the red light district (Pigalle). Good thing she guilted me -- I think that was the first night out that went for par with a night at Tom and Marty's with everybody :) Highlights included Africa, Take on Me, Britney Spears, and I sang No Scrubs. WIN. This might be my new favorite bar, and I'm going to drag everyone there regularly! Don't worry Kim and Josh, I'm counting the LCC as my favorite "café."

'Appy 'Alloween!

As previously mentioned, I had thought my costume would be strictly hypothetical -- at least, I did until Kim and Mariam invited me to join their Halloween shindig.

I ended up going as Audrey Hepburn circa Breakfast at Tiffany's ... somehow, I had the necessary ingredients among the relatively normal things I packed for France! Can't see all of the jewels in this picture, but you get the idea.



Kim dressed up as Hello Kitty (cue lewd remarks from French guys in the street ... ), and Mariam was a cheerleader (French people call them Pom Pom Girls).



After we hung out there with some of their friends, we headed to a club for dancing (but I ended up bailing and going home, since I had to be up relatively early the next day). So happy I got to have a dress-up Halloween!!!

But why THREE lawyers?!

So my friend Molly came through Paris on Friday, and I picked her up from Gare du Nord and brought her back to my tiny closet. Test one for visitors. It was lots of fun to have her here -- we took French together at Binghamton (and did orchestra, and pit orchestra, etc), and now she's an assistant too (in Abbeville, near Amiens).

SHE BROUGHT ME REESES PEANUT BUTTER CUPS!!! A true Halloween :) She found them while she was in London with friends. I was ecstatic, as you might imagine.



We spent the afternoon wandering around near the Bourse (Sydney had found a market there, but after we checked that out, we wandered). On our way to Montorgeuil, which I have previously mentioned, we saw this store, and both Molly and I could only think of that LaFontaine poem that Coates made us recite.



This isn't the first time I've seen these sorts of political headquarters, but here's the Socialist hangout. I think it might also mark the dividing line between the first and second arrondissements, but that might just be the headquarters for the two, so I'm not positive. At any rate, imagine the reactions if we had these in the US! QUELLE HORREUR haha.



In the windows of one bakery, they had these adorable pigs. MMMMMM. What would PETA say?



Molly and Sydney, with their pig. Which they ate. THEY ATE A WHOLE PIG. Turns out they're filled with chocolate. Who knew?



So perhaps this is because I have so many friends in law school, but avocat can mean lawyer, or avocado. You can imagine my surprise when I realized that they were selling three whole lawyers for 3 euros! THREE WHOLE LAWYERS! I wish I could say that I hadn't thought of lawyer first, but that would be a lie.



The old market at Les Halles. They don't use it anymore (they built a huge underground mall here), but this is much prettier.



As promised [Dave], my new favorite store. I can imagine such a great "Who's on first?" routine with this. "Where'd you get your shirt?" - "Oh, at Pfft." -"Where?!" - "Pfft."

Cracks me up just thinking about it.



Molly's only request for her Paris visit was a falafel sandwich and baklava, which I knew we could find in the Latin quarter (she spent a semester in Morocco, so it makes more sense). Anyway, the restaurant had this posted on the door. Call me crazy, but Sodexho doesn't exactly reassure me.



Pictures from my Halloween adventure to follow!