de tout et de rien

I am finally eating a real canteloupe. These silly French people call everything melony a melon, so when I think I'm buying a canteloupe, I'm actually buying other melony things. My melon repetoire has grown immensely, but damn, this canteloupe is good.

The sales are on! Twice a year, in late January and early July, the stores in Paris (France?) have these amazing 30-70% off sales. It's incredible. Think Black Friday, but in French; the grand magasins (Le Bon Marché, Printemps, Galeries Lafayette) open at 8am on the first day and stay open past 8pm for the first week, an unheard-of thing here. The boutiques in Galeries Lafayette are secured - that's right, secured - by guards and barriers to prevent overcrowding (and stealing, I suppose). It's a crazy sight. I haven't seen as many tourists in the stores as usual, maybe because they've been scared off by the hordes of French women. Men, too, actually; when I hit up the men's store with Harry we had to fight our way through determined French men to get to the Pink shirts. I can claim a good haul from the past week: three Longchamps bags, none of which are for me; a La Baggerie purse for me; some tops, a skirt, and a trench from Gap; and two tops and a work skirt and dress from Alain Manoukian. It's been excellent.

I was out with Imogen, a friend of Harry's, today, and we stumbled upon a market-y street near Denfer-Rochereau in the 15th. We came upon a guy playing the sax outside a cafe, and sat down there so we could listen to him. Just as we sat down, though, he stopped playing. We chorused, "Oh, no!" and he looked up. "Would you like me to keep going?" he asked. We nodded eagerly, and he played for another 20 minutes. Afterward, we invited him to join us for a drink. Turns out he's from Boston by way of Kansas, and came to Paris three years ago to go to conservatory. (Apparently the saxophone was invented in France. Who knew?) He was really good - and very interesting; we spent a while discussing politics and education and fun nerdy stuff like that. He's playing with a jazz trio at a restaurant in that area on the 20th, so I'm going to try to convince Harry to go with me. Egyptian-influenced jazz + couscous = yumminess all around.

I'm a little nervous about how little I'll be working (working, in this case, means earning money) over the next couple of weeks; since I quit with the crazy family I probably won't get more than 15 hours of babysitting each week - 20 if I'm lucky - from various families, and most of my tutoring is winding down as the kids finish school and go on vacation. This will free me up to start researching my thesis, but will absolutely curb my dining out and shopping activities!