2009!

Just watched "Les Enfants du Paradis" with the ineffable Arletty (who looks peculiarly like Katie Gregory!). God, it was wonderful. Heart-wrenching (and y'all know not much wrenches my heart) and tragic and glorious. I didn't really pay all that much attention to the cinematic devices, but it was really difficult to tear myself from the plot.

My next assignment for M. Bondurant's conversation class is to observe my host family's behavior at dinner and write two pages about what they do. This assignment amuses me, because while most people's families seem to have very traditional hour-long French familial dinners, my family plops hot food on my plate, tells me to eat it before it gets cold (which we all commence doing as soon as the food touches our plates, ensuring that we all finish at very different times), pours me a glass of wine, and begins to chat loudly and very much in French about topics such as follows.

#1. Maritime law and the chemicals allowed in fish nowadays.

#2. How unfair it is that when boys have 1+ girlfriends then they're awesome and if girls do then they're sluts. My mother was getting really worked up about it.

#3. Non-polluting cars (My eldest brother and my father are into machines - engineering stuff. My mother and I pretended to fall asleep at the table once motors were brought up.)

#4. Obama's healthcare plans (upon which I cannot elaborate since politics #1 make me insane #2 pretty much just make me insane in a huge variety of ways) vs. French healthcare (free hospital visits, but as long as the immigrants keep taking advantage of it, who knows? according to my family. Oy.)

#5. Baking. My father is very good at it and I am very very bad. He wants to teach me how to make noodles.

#6. House slippers.

#7. Jean Gabin the famous French actor

Zut!

My new French class is in walking distance from my phonetics class, which I greatly prefer to the metro during the lovely sunny day. Abby and I walk together, which saves her from a certain annoyance and is generally wonderful for me.

This weekend is "Nuit Blanche" which is, as you can read here, an all-night arts festival in which various neighborhoods are open all night to provide space for various art installations and performances. Also, prime time for staying out late drinking in the park, at least until the metro begins to run again at 5h30 (in the morning). Abby has a friend in town this weekend, so we'll be drinking at the Tour Eiffel for his tourist pleasure on Friday and then on Saturday, during the day I will try to write some of this cinema paper on "L'Age d'Or" and once night commences (once you stop saying "bonjour" and start saying "bonsoir" - i.e. about 6pm), we will be heading to some club in the 14eme to see Abby's host mom's boyfriend play in his funk band. After, we will have drinks and we will chill in the Jardin du Luxembourg for probably most of the night, dancing to Nuit Blanche's musical offerings and toast champagne and whiskey all night long.

"Les Enfants du Paradis" made me think once again about how lucky I am to be able to travel. The main character, Garance ("comme le fleur") returns to Paris after 6 years of traveling with her kind-of lover and she has been remembered with the hearts of the others, and as G. Garcia Marquez says, the heart shuts out the darkness and calls upon the good in its remembrances.

Hope you all remember me for my good. There is a bit.

A bientot!