cell phone absolutes

I always get a kick out of how self-centered my cell phone is. I don't have a plan; I bought the phone for 39€ and get minutes from a prepaid card. The phone, taking initiative, sends me texts when my minutes start running low. The first text always says this:

"Your credit claims the greatest attention. There is no more than __€."

The greatest attention? Well, okay.

The second text, which is sent after I have used up the card, says this:

"Think about buying a baguette, about brushing your teeth, about not sleeping too late, and about calling 224 to recharge your card."

Well, okay. You dig the priorities of the French? baguettes = hygiene = getting to work on time = having minutes on your cell phone. I dig.

waiting for rain

Sounds like an emo album title, right? It's true though; we're desperately waiting for rain. It's been dry here for weeks (which is great for tourists, but bad for those of us who have spring allergies), and we really need it.

Even though rollerblading isn't au courant anymore in the states, it's still huge here in Paris. They (whoever "they" are) organize a rollerblading parade thing through the streets of Paris. It's intense; there must be nearly two hundred people - mostly young adults, but some families participate - and they're escorted by the police and four Red Cross vans. If you get stuck trying to cross the street while they go by, you're screwed, as it takes 8 full minutes for the whole pack to traverse la rue. Intense, I tell you. It looks like a lot of fun, though.

AmCath was fun today - I'm looking forward to Sundays more and more, no matter what the music, as I become better friends with the other kids in the choir. (Actually, today the music was great: we did a Parker "Agnus Dei" and Britten's "O Be Joyful." For some reason, though, I have the Walton "O Be Joyful" stuck in my head. Next week we're doing the Mathias "Let the People Praise Thee" - woohoo! On the 18th, we're scheduled to do Finzi's "God is Gone Up," but I'm thinking Ned will change that, as there are two soprano parts and 4 of us sopranos will be MIA.) Anyway, I'm totally digging the people and our dynamic. Markie and Jo, my uncle and aunt, came to the service and stayed for the coffee hour, which was nice. I'm so glad my family (Mom and Dad were here last week) have gotten to meet all my friends, both from school and the choir. This is totally a remnant thing from high school, but my friend's don't seem officially my friends until they've met my parents. Doesn't matter if Mom and Dad like them or not (although they almost always do), just that they've all been introduced. (Harry, incidentally, was a rockstar with Mom and Dad. I'm very proud of him. His parents come into town next week - yikes!)

Okay, must write papers. Must. Write. Papers!

Bah humbuug to homework.

summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime

It's in the mid-70s, the sun is shining, the breeze is doing it's thing - and I've officially checked out. This may be a problem, but one of the side effects to checking out is not really giving a damn.

Okay, I do care just a little bit. See, I've finished my major major work things: all three of my exposés have been turned in or presented. Reid Hall classes end on May 11, so I have just three midterms (that I can't start studying for until the last minute, obviously) and an art history dossier left. No worries. The Paris IV classes don't end till June 1, so that's going to be more of a poo. There's a 10 page paper due on May 7 on women in the "Lais" of Marie de France for my medieval class, which I'm looking forward to writing, and a final (not yet announced) paper for my Belle Epoque class. The pooey bit is that I only receive two grades from my fac professors, and Reid Hall required three per course, so my tutor is going to assign me an extra project or paper to complete in the next month. Awesome.

Really, though, life is otherwise too lovely to be gloomed over by homework. (Who can think about studies when she's spending an obscene amount of time strolling through Paris hand-in-hand with an adorable Brit? Not this girl.)

oops

Turns out, I forgot
to write about my Spring Break
adventures at all.

Tanned for two days on
the beach in Marbella, Spain.
Paella - delish!

Venice: so lovely.
Tourist swarms; better to stick
to side canals, yes?

Fell sick in Florence.
Mostly stayed in the hotel.
"David" was ginorme.

I would live in Rome.
A lot like Paris, 'cept for
the Italian thing.

Yearned for home by Thurs.
Can't belive Paris is home!
So good to be back.

spring break, abbreviated, and more

Okay. I don't think I'm going to write so much about my travels for a couple reasons. Reason numero un: this week is kind of nuts, as the Reid Hall semester ends in two weeks and I, like the dedicated student I am, didn't really work during vacation. Reason numero dos: mes parents sont à Paris cette semaine, and I'll be busy squiring them around. (Don't worry, though; althought this means I won't be writing about les vacances, it doesn't mean I won't be blogging at all. Upwards and onwards, I say!) Reason numero tre: I just can't. Sorry.

(You should all be impressed that I got all three languages - French, Spanish, and Italian - in there with the numbers. I am a linguist like whoa.)

Also, I'm kind of self-conscious about my writing style right now; my dad read my blog recently for the first time in a while (read: since the last time I reminded him to read it), and commented on how "stilted" my writing had become. I've re-read some of the post from the past couple weeks, and I think I must disagree, although I'm totally open to your opinions, dear readers. I don't think I've become stilted; rather, I think I've been writing less stream-of-consciously and more essay-ly. I pondered this on my last train (from Florence to Rome, absolutely beautiful), and realized something horrible: I don't have my own writing style! I mean, I guess the stream of consciousness thing is about as me as you can get, but I unconsciously chameleon into whatever author I'm reading at the moment. For the past couple weeks, as I've been reading Adam, I've been essaying, as he does, using lots of semi-colons (although I'm kind of obsessed with semi-colons anyway, and have been using them excessively for years) and parenthetical asides (see above). When I read all my old L.M. Montgomery books, my writing drifts into language like, "she gathered the dear, blossomy, filmy things to her breast with rapture," and when I'm in the middle of a Terry Pratchett novel I have an incorrigible urge to irreverently footnote. I can't help it. It's horrible. Well, no, it's interesting, actually, but I wish I was a writer enough to find my own style!

Maybe I'll write my next post entirely in haiku.

things I've learned so far on spring break:

a) my Italian - culled from opera librettos, one summer of an intensive italian course two years ago, and eight years of singing in latin - is totally inadequate.
b) Venice's population is made up of 0.33% residents, 0.33% tourists, and 0.34% mosquitoes.
c) the BWI stop on Amtrak’s NE Corridor train is greatly underappreciated.

I'll write actual things about all my travels when I get back to Paris.

For those of you who are totally out of the loop (losers), my Spring Break itinerary is as follows:
April 12-15: Marbella, Spain (with friends)
April 15-17: Venice, Italy (on my own)
April 17-19: Florence, Italy (on my own)
April 19-21: Rome, Italy (con mia mama!)

delirious on the train from Florence to Rome

When I wrote my pathetic woe-is-me homesick-in-the-most-beautiful-city-in-the-world post, I asked at the end, “How weird is that?” Turns out, according to my newfound hero Adam Gopnik, it’s not weird at all. (By the way, when I read the bit I’m about to quote, I had one of those deeply satisfying “yes” moments you’re supposed to reserve for writers like Sartre, when you realize that hell really is other people. This may be sacrilegious, but then, isn’t all hero-worship?) In his book Paris to the Moon, Adam, who despairs when his son displays an agonizing Frenchness in his approach to playing soccer, recounts how he began crafting a bedtime story for the three-year-old about baseball. The story, he hopes, will both tie his Parisian-bred son to America (and to New York; the star player pitches for the Giants) and soothe his own homesickness. Of the latter, he writes,

“The things an American who is abroad for a very long time misses – or at least the things I missed – I was discovering, weren’t the things you were supposed to miss. …The things Americans miss tend to involve that kind of formlessness, small, casual, and solitary pleasures. A psychoanalyst misses walking up Lafayette Street in her tracksuit, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup with the little plastic piece that pops up. My wife, having been sent the carrot cake that she missed from New York, discovered that what she really missed was standing up at the counter and eating carrot cake in the company of strangers at the Bon Vivant coffee shop. I thought I missed reading Phil Mushnick in the sports pages of the Post; when I read him online, I discovered that what I really missed was reading Phil Mushnick on the number 6 uptown train on a Monday morning around 10.” (Paris to the Moon, 206-207)

Yes. Deeply, satisfyingly, yes. I only got it right when I wrote about needing to walk down Broadway at dusk and wanting to drive to the Cathedral in the morning, but I realize now that the other bits are just covers for what I really miss. My Columbia boys – sure, I suppose I must miss them somewhere, somehow, but what I actually miss is delicately shoveling Ethiopian food into my mouth with my fingertips at Awash alongside Amar and Josh. Snickers – of course I miss him, but what I actually miss, morbid as it is, is walking into an otherwise empty house, checking that the comatose dog is breathing, and then waking him up because, each time, I’m so overjoyed he’s still alive that I can’t help but jump on him.

Anyway, I tried, about two months ago, to recreate the walking-down-Broadway-at-dusk feeling. I had just been completely and utterly rejected romantically (French butchers, if you request it, will hack a thick slice from a chunk of beef that is so red and vivant that you can imagine it having mooed several days ago, thunk it down on the counter, where it will resignedly ooze a little blood, and then pound it with a mallet until it has been relieved of any semblance it once had to something you might find at the Tanner farm; this, I theatrically imagined, was a perfect metaphor for my heart), and couldn’t bear being around my flatmates’ silent sympathy. I fled my apartment into the drizzle of a February evening, setting off north down the rue Saint Jacques, towards the Seine. I crossed at the Pont de Notre Dame, lapped the Ile de la Cité, and then headed further north into the Right Bank. I wandered past the Hôtel de Ville into the Marais, up rue de Temple. It was a perfect night for my dramatic moonings: the mist of an almost-rain turned the evening sky a bruised purple, and the streets were, for once, practically devoid of tourists.

The problem was, while it’s easy to get lost in Paris, you never quite get lost the way you mean to. Parisian loneliness is unique to Paris in a way that, I suppose, New York loneliness is unique to New York. Adam calls New York’s brand “a scuffed-up soulfulness.” In New York, this can be accessed simply by stepping out your front door, no matter what the weather. In Paris, it is a state that, much like nirvana, must be achieved, and very rarely – if ever – is. Adam continues, “In Paris, no relationship, even one with a postman or a dry cleaner, is abstract or anonymous.” I agree, but would like to take it one step further. A character in another book I just finished, Arthur and George, by J. Barnes, mentioned his desire to be married in general, rather than in particular. I think that this distinction can be transferred to New York relationships versus those in Paris. In New York, you are allowed to disappear if you want because people look at you generally; a waiter smiles while taking your order in general, a man waking his dog grunts good morning in general, the girl sitting next to you in class asks if you’re prepared for the test in general. In Paris, this anonymity is nearly impossible to find. The waiter smiles at you (or not) in particular, the man grunts (or not) in particular, and, like as not, the girl in class doesn’t even look at you – however, she is not looking at you in particular. The same, I think, can be said for things and places. In New York, it’s easy to let everything be obscured in a blanket of oblivion: yes, this is the corner where I fell and scraped my knee in those painful new heels Carmen convinced me to buy, but it’s also just a corner in general. Pont Neuf, where I was once kissed in the rain (a dream come true, incidentally; what girl doesn’t long to be kissed in the rain on the Seine in Paris?), will never be a bridge in general. I had an amazing dinner with friends last spring at the Blue Water Grill in Union Square, but it isn’t really a restaurant in particular, whereas the café with 1.50€ espressos on rue Sufflot will never be a café in general.

Thanks to this, it is impossible to be abstract or anonymous – the people around you forbid anonymity, the crêpe stands and sidewalks conspire to keep you from abstraction. I found no consolation in my failed attempt to recreate the Broadway-at-dusk feeling, in my failed search for scuffed-up soulfulness, but I take refuge in the fact that I remember Broadway walks in general, while I will always remember that walk in particular. I find that it’s impossible to have the formless pleasures we enjoy in New York and long for in Paris when everything – everything! – in Paris has a form.

odds and ends

a) Photos from brunch numero deux on Sunday. The first is more for the leaves and the grass and the sun and the people sprawled behind us than for us because we were unaware of the photographer's intent (though I am quite taken by my jawline in the photo); nevertheless, we are, from left to right, Taylor, me, Jed, and Nellie. The second is of me and Nellie, whom I clearly adore, and the third is of me and Harry, whom, although it is slightly less clear, I also adore.



b) I was waitlisted by my medieval churches summer program. I plan to stay in Paris anyway until mid-July. To hell with the man, my friends, to hell with the man. (I decided at the last minute that I shouldn't use F on my blog. Sensitive eyes and all; you understand.) More on this later.

c) I leave tomorrow for a week and a half in Espagna and Italia, so I won't be blogging. I'll take notes and photos, though, so you'll get a full report when I return.

Lovelove,
[Queen] Elizabeth

p.s. I've been practicing my "Elizabeth" signature. Just in case.

say what?

Can someone explain to me why France, a country that is obsessed with publically subjugating religiom to the state, respects Catholic holidays as bank holidays?

Regardless, it's pretty awkward that EVERYTHING is closed today. Bah.

Holy Week

So this past week was, not surprisingly, kind of taken over by Holy Week. I had Wednesday off - thank God; I don't think I could have functioned productively so soon after the seder - but had to jump back on the horse for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Vigil on Saturday night, and Easter itself. So. Holy Week:

For some reason I really like the Maundy Thursday service; I don't get my feet washed, but I find the ritual very intimate and comforting. Even devout Christians aren't better human beings than anyone else, so it's somehow reassuring to watch them delicately pour water over a stranger's feet and then dry them, gently and caressingly.

Good Friday: I never minded the three hour service at the Cathedral, but that's probably because we always did amazing music. As a reward for not doing music that was terribly inspiring at AmCath, we got to leave at 1:15. Okay, I'm not being entirely fair; we sang William's "Were you there?" and performed better than we ever had, so that's a good thing. I almost walked out in the middle of the service, though, because the bishop-in-charge (whatever that is) preached a sermon that I found really offensive. His point was that today we are all prey to the banality of evil, which I get and which I agree with. However. he started the semon by discussing Adolf Eichmann, and then moved on to the involvement of the [Jewish] chief priests in Jesus' murder. Maybe I was looking for it, maybe I extrapolated, maybe whatever, but I heard the bishop - the bishop! - comparing Jews to a nazi war criminal. I'm sorry. That is NOT okay. I usually don't give a damn about political correctness, but he should have been much more cautious about attaining his point; I shouldn't have been able to find offence, whether or not I was searching for it, in his sermon. Seriously, I almost walked out.

Anyway, the Easter Vigil was beautiful. I know it's theatrical, but I love how the service always starts in darkness, with the congregants holding candles, as if, in the bleakness of death, there are still pinpricks of life and hope, which will eventually conquer the night.

Easter Sunday was notable not for the service or the music - neither of which got me hot and bothered, but for fashion, a celebrity sighting, and the afterparties. (That's right, afterparties. We know how to do things in gay Paree.) Fashion: I love how women bring out the hats on Easter Sunday. Wearing two different fur coats to the two Easter services is a little over the top (bonus points to the old-school Nat'l Cath people who know what I'm talking about), but seeing Easter hats makes me happy. Celebrities: a very old and frail woman did most of the readings yesterday, and, as I was on the end of the choir row, I helped her down the steps and made sure she was comfortable walking to and from the lectern. She was lovely, with soft white hair done up in a chignon and a pale blueish green suit. Her voice was seductive and comforting and enveloping all at the same time; you wanted her to be both the voice narrating softcore porn and the voice giving you instructions in the nuclear bunker after a Soviet attack. Turns out, she's Olivia de Havilland. Yes. Olivia de Havilland. Melanie Hamilton. Two-time Oscar winner. Olivia de Havilland. (She'd beat a Marky Mark sighting anyday.) Yikes.

Afterparties, woohoo! Creighton, the man I desperately want to be my gay boyfriend, threw an Easter brunch yesterday. I hightailed it to his stunning apartment - terrace and full, beautiful kitchen included - right after the service to help him set up. The party was so much fun! First of all, he's an amazing cook; we had carot soup and gigot and roasted potatoes and asparagus and cheese and there was a chocolate cake for desert that I didn't get to eat and and and and. We all helped out a bit with salad and bread and wine and fruit, but this man is a hosting genius. I want to sit at his feet and learn the secrets to making perfect hollandaise sauce. The guests were all - except for me, the lone but unwavering source of estrogen - boys from the choir, most of whom I adore. (I think Harry got a bit jealous of my butterflyness. Oops.) Couldn't stay as long as I'd have liked at Creighton's, though, as Nellie was throwing her own Easter brunch in response to my seder. Harry and I [party]hopped over to my apartment, where we caught the tail end of Nellie's yumminess. It looked like she really outdid herself; she made two cakes, a cheesy eggy crouton casserole, and pancakes. There was also cheese and store-bought baked goodies and, from the look of it, a lot of wine. We moved the party outside soon after we got there, taking blankets and wine and chocolate eggs to the Luxembourg Gardens. It was a stunning spring afternoon, and the lawns were packed. We managed to grab a spot, and luxuriated there for a while. Jed, in true paparazzi form, took tons of pictures; if any turned out well I'll post them. In the meantime, rest assured that there the leaves were full and sun-dappled, the company vivacious, and the wine flowing.

possibly moving to Belgium

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/europe/09medieval.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Paper topic: How is the United States manifesting its national identity crisis? Why? Compare and contrast the two reactions. (5-7 pages, double-spaced. Due next Monday. Late papers will be penalized 1/3 of a grade for every day they are late.)

[Mr. Barbee, you should totally hire me. Like, right now.]

literary aspirations

I have a new literary role model: Adam Gopnik, writer for The New Yorker.

Actually, I've never read Adam in The New Yorker; at least, I've never known that I've been reading him. (I feel like I know him well now, and that he'd want me to call him Adam.) I am currently reading, however, his collection of essays and journal entries called "Paris to the Moon" (New York: Random House, 2000). I'm only about 50 pages in, but I love it.

Adam spent five years living Paris - not living in, but living - from 1995 to 2000, and the book is a window onto his experiences there. Obviously, my own experiences are not same; I have neither a wife nor an infant son, nor am I a working adult, nor do I get to attend lectures just for fun. However, I sigh over or exult in most of his stories, as they parallel my own. (In a way, they must parallel my own; Americans who love Paris are, as Anne of Green Gables would say, kindred spirits.)

I'll try to avoid overquoting him in this blog, but I'm still in the early stages of infatuation, and so can't help myself.

"Paris - and this is the tricky thing - though it is always and indubitably itself, is also in its nature a difficult city to love for itself alone. What truly makes Paris beautiful is the intermingling of the monumental and the personal, the abstract and the footsore particular, it and you. A city of vast and impersonal set piece architecture, it is also a city of small and intricate, improvised experience." (p. 8)

okay...

The Columbia Student Survey of Wellbeing just asked if I believed in life after death.

And when you click on the "Take a Break" button (the survey lasts about 30 minutes), it redirects you to the New York Times website. Cause reading today's news is really going to increase your wellbeing. Right.

(Especially reading the article titled "A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them," which informs us that Columbia accepted 8.9% of applicants to the class of 2011, which makes me wonder how the hell I got in. And then makes me think I'm brilliant. And then makes me think they made a mistake with me. And then makes me think, "Je suis en France. La vie est magnifique. N'importe quoi.")

(My wellbeing is totally schizophrenic. Do you think that will be an option in one of the survey questions?)

passover in Paris

Every time I see someone of the street with a baguette - which happens, roughly, every 3.456 minutes - I have to remind myself that the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years and that I'm not so bad off.

Regardless, in a week I'm either going to look smashing in a bathing suit because I'm only ingesting coffee and almonds or be dead of cholesterol poisoning from eating just cheese, chocolate mousse, and chickpeas.

seder (the après post)

Was amazing. Had the best time. Needed a full day to recover.

I got to K's at about 4:30, and he helped me make more chicken soup and set up the apartment over a glass of a surprisingly good 2.50€ wine until he had to leave for a family thing at 6. Harry got there soon after and was totally grossed out by the matzah ball making process. Technically, everyone was supposed to arrive 7:30, but I knew that most people would be late and so didn't expect to start until 8:00 at the earliest. Boy, was that optimistic.

Nellie came at 7:30, Laura soon after. (Laura and Harry, who are absolutely heroic, ran out to five (FIVE!) different stores to try to find horseradish, but were unsuccessful. Poo.) Rob showed up at around 8, Jed at 8:30. By then I was getting pretty antsy, as I was expecting four more kids. Two called out sick about 15 minutes later, which was pretty disappointing, and two got the directions totally wrong and ended up at the complete other end of town, and so understandably gave up. I was kind of frustrated - I had planned for 7, accepted 10, and then hosted only 6 - but, on the bright side, had enough food for everyone.

Regardless of cancellations, the company was amazing. Nellie and Rob, who are both Jew"ish", had been to seders before, so they helped me lead the thing. We did an abbreviated version of the service bit; we told the story, prayed over the seder plate nonsense, the wine, the washing of the hands, etc. Then we ate. Yum, if I do say so myself. The matzah balls were a bit heavy, but the brisket and gravy were delicious and the charoset pretty much divine. (Betsy's New Trademarked Charoset: prunes, apricots, raisins, cherry jam, walnuts, pears, red wine, and salt. Don't forget the salt!)

K and his mother and two of his sister's friends showed up just after we finished eating - by the way, K, I'd marry you just to have her as my mother-in-law - and joined us for wine, dessert, and the ending prayers. (Elijah got to drink out of a "happy birthday" mug. And by Elijah, I mean me.) Mama K and the girls left soon therafter, but K stayed; after all, it was his apartment. We sat around for another hour and a half, delicately eating sorbet out of the container, scarfing down macaroons, and dutifully finishing the wine. It was really cool: we talked about everything from the role of the US Supreme Court to France's elections and immigrant "problem." I love having intelligent friends. Jed and Laura fled at about 12:30 to catch the last métro, and, after doing a whirlwind clean-up, Nellie, Rob, Harry, and I split a cab back to our hood. Unfortunately, all the left-overs are still at K's, but I plan on busting in tomorrow and stealing them back. (Muahaha.)

All in all, I think it went really well. The food was delish, the Jewishness interesting, and the company stellar. Can't wait to throw another dinner!

seder (the avant post)

So. Spring break is four days away, Jesus is about to die for our sins, I just found out I was waitlisted for my summer program, and it's Passover.

This is a big week.

I had class 9-6 yesterday (Hell Monday, remember?), so I couldn't have a first night seder. I'm doing it tonight instead. Yikes. You know how I always say I like entertaining? I can't wait to start; this running around like a chicken with it's head cut off is not working for me.

Last week I planned a lovely seder for 7 people. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to fit and feed 10. Yikes. Anway, I do love everyone who's coming, and I'm excited - as always - for my chance to feed people and prostelytize at the same time.

tonight's menu:
(seder plate nonsense)
matzah ball soup
brisket/asparagus
macaroons/sorbet

Yum, no? I also had a great time buying [6] bottles of wine. (Okay, seven, but the extra bottle is for me and K - and Harry, depending on when he gets to the apartment - to start because we're going to start preparing everything at 4:30 and people won't arrive until 7:30 or 8.) I went to two different caves and explained my menu to the guy, adding that I was cooking for 10 people who had different tastes and standards and that I am poor. The first cave gave me two different wines: the first, a Bordeaux, will be better with the soup and is relatively unobtrusive; the second is fruitier and, as the guy told me, more of an interactive experience to drink. The I bought two bottles of another wine at the cave near my apartment; it's also fruity, but has hints of cinnamon, according the the guy. (The bottle I got for the seder prep is a cheap but good almost-Brouilly that I've had before.) I'll save the labels so I can post them - along with my impressions thereof - later.

Side story: I have a very clear memory of a Thanksgiving about 10 years ago, when Mark (and Caroline, I suppose) and the Rosenblums came chez Remes. I remember taking a field trip to Dad's wine store (called Something Morris or Morris Something... you know what I'm talking about, right, Dad?) with Mark and Dad and using a shopping cart - a SHOPPING CART - to pick wines. It was like being with kids in a candy store (or Camilla in Anthropologie or Mom in Benhkes or Nikki at a vintage store or... well, you get the point). I have no idea how much wine they bought, although I have a suspicion it was a lot, but I remember it was a very intense shopping experience. Inspiring, if you will.

Wish me luck, and expect a "post" post in a couple days!

exposé

So my second exposé was due yesterday, although I didn't have time to present it in class. It was for my medieval Paris IV course (which seems to switch titles every time I turn around; sometimes it's "Church and Society," sometimes "Power and Society," sometimes simply "The XI and XII centuries"). The topic was fascinating; the class was on the power of cities, and the text I had to commentaire was a notice from the cartulaire of Notre Dame de Chartres about a riot that occurred in that city in 1210. Here's a link to the text, if you want to check it out (it was, of course, originally written in Latin, and has only been translated into English, making my life a lot easier): http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1210chartres.html

The only difficulties I had in writing the exposé was that I didn't want to stop doing background reading! I read two books on the 12th and 13th centuries, one on the medieval city, and one on Chartres itself. (Hannah: the authors were Theis, Barthélemy, Le Goff, and Chédeville, respectively.) I did way more reading than was necessary (despite Harry's best efforts to distract me, ha!), but it was so interesting. The text itself speaks very clearly to medieval procedures of justice and the hierarchies of power, among other things. (If you want a homework assignment, Nana, look at how the author speaks of the rioters. Very cool.)

Anyway, I was supposed to present yesterday, but we ran out of time. I guess I'm lucky, because while it's done I have the next two weeks - Spring Break - to edit it. Wish I had known, though; I wouldn't have stayed up all Sunday night working! Meant that I passed out at 9pm last night. Bah.

catch-up

When I said, about a month ago, that spring was beginning, I lied. I didn't know what spring was. My eyes have now, however, been opened; my heart sings with joy, my skin thrills at the sun's caress, my hair waltzes with the wind, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The point is, THIS is spring in Paris.

Sunday was, I think, the first real day. It had been cold and rainy before, but Sunday was warm and sunny. After services, Harry and I walked down the Champs Elysée and Avenue Montaigne (where he was haunted by Ladurée bags), did some lèche vitrine in obscenely expensive windows and then caught a bus to Montparnasse. We ate amazing chèvre chaud salads at a café, and soaked up the sun there for a couple hours, goaning at tourists and the monstrosity that is the Tour Montparnasse. We then strolled back to my apartment (by way of the Luxembourg Gardens, obviously), and picked up my laptop for another café session. By 7pm I was ready for another 6 hours of baladering and caféing, but I had to leave for dinner at K's new apartment. Harry and I split on the subway (I took my inagural ride on line 13), and I headed up to the 18th.

K lives, almost literally, under the Sacré Coeur. It's crazy. His new studio is beautiful... I envy him his kitchen so! The flat gets tons of light, and there's plenty of space to entertain, as it has a bedroom niche, unlike most of the other studios I've seen. He's loaning us his apartment for tonight's seder (more on that later), so I had to take a shopping bag of food and stuff over early, check out his kitchen/dining area/kitchen utensils, and do some nosh prep. I brought over the chicken soup I had made the night before - I think my apartment still smells of it, yum - and made charoset and brisket there. I then worked on my exposé while he made us dinner. We had coquilles St. Jacques on a bed of watercress with some sort of jalepeno seasoning; it was amazing, but I don't want to give the recipe away. While the brisket cooked (three hours on the stove, yikes), I worked and he New Yorkered. It was terribly companionable. Again, thank God he'll be in New York next year.

Anyway, that was the amazing Sunday. I hope you're all jealous.

wonderful spring sunday

Will blog about today tomorrow - after I've presented an exposé on the riots in Chartres in 1210 in my Medieval class.

For now, though, let me just tell you who was at AmCath today: MARKY MARK.

omg is right, boys and girls.

(And yes, I know, I owe you a lot from the past week or two anyway. Tomorrow's will be a "gird your loins" post.)