Paris!

Although we initially arrived in Paris just a little over a mere week ago, I feel as if I have just really gotten here. We settled into our Parisian apartments yesterday for good. I'm going to copy down here some pointed comments I made in my hand journal yesterday on our bus ride to the city:

- 3 hours to rest stop. I really hope that means a gas station. Am tempted to video record what one looks like.

- Got my vending machine coffee!! And fast food, which doesn't seem so at all, dear mozzarella, tomato, basil sandwich (Pane Bianco still reigns, no worries).

- I was thinking that if I grew up, went to school and had to pick a specialization at the university level here (referring to Europe in general), it would probably be in languages.

- So much reading work for Monday (Marie de France, Villon, Sir Thomas Malory)

- Thought: If big-band music introduced the D-Day video we saw in Normandy yesterday, would Lady Gaga, or some lesser equivalent, be the music choice to introduce some documentary of the Iraqi War a generation from now? Just saying.

- Giverny, Monet Gardens: His house painted in subdued-sorbet colors; blue against purple / green shutters / off-mustard yellow dining room and blue and white tiled design in kitchen, all beds of lace with fresh flowers in each room. The uncertainty of whether the rooms were actually set up like so during their original prime bothers me.

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Today, Sunday, was our first day off of no scheduled activities! We have no given meals anymore, so we had to go to the morning market, of which I have been so looking forward to. Lines of set-up stalls with the freshest food and local crafts with so many people composed of customers, browsing tourists and photographers.

Holding baguettes, cheese and fruit in bag.

Our kitchen!

"Fumer tue" reads, "Smoking kills" in French. The pure irony: What first attracted me to this package was the bold-lined rectangular white box. Maybe they should reconsider.

It's really weird to keep three different journals at once (here, Moleskine I carry around in my bag and the crappy 99 cent spiral for academic business turn-ins). It seems that I am keeping every other kind of log besides the one I'm supposed to be doing to turn in and be graded on.