Last weekend was a long long weekend. The French do this thing where they randomly put public holidays on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then they 'make the bridge': ie. they take the day in between off too, giving themselves a massive weekend. I unfortunately still had to work.
Actually, i pretty effectively wasted the weekend. But i made it to H&M and bought 3 new tops,
and i went to the 'big' park for a run. The 'big' park is 'big' by parisien standards, but it takes about 5 minutes to run around the perimeter, and there were so many people there it felt like merging into traffic. Still they have wifi which is cool. And bathers-clad old peope trying to get a tan. Which is not.
I went to the Galleries Lafayette and the Printemps by accident (i was looking for magic shoes - found them but not in the colour that i wanted). Those are crazy places. Talk about mindless consumerism. Giant posh department stores, with the chanel section next to hello kitty. bizarre. i had a coffee in one of them because the guy looked like he knew what he was doing and it smelled so good. Unfortunately, liek the rest of french coffee, it was not.I bought my 2nd piece of french cheese to sample - a proper camembert from normandy. Its really good - much stinkier than we're used to, but not nasty. Kind of like that dusty taste red wine gets (tannins?) with a bit of parmy tossed in.
I also bought some more flowers, and made friends with the flower seller. He was one of those flirty market salesman type people who'll charm the socks of anyone to get them to buy their stuff and come back. Well, i'm in need of friends and french conversation, so it worked on me. I'm quite happy to choose him as my local florist if i get french practice thrown in for free.
The teaching is going...ok. I think i could be quite good at it, and i really like a lot of my students, but the transport and all the preparation required is really stressing me out. As is having to find my way around paris on deadlines.
my french classes are going well. It's made me feel a lot better about being here - like i'm actually achieving something rather than just treading water. It's also made me realise though tht 4 hours a week is nowhere near enough. I made a friend in my class - an American and on tuesday we went for a walk in the Marais and had a lovely 3 course dinner (when in Paris...). It really was excellently good...
I made a couple of pilgrimigaes out to yarn shops. they were quite disappoitning - small and cute but with ridiculously lame ranges. I guess french women don't bake and don't knit.Why would you bother when you can buy amazing pastries and clothes i guess.
On the way home from one of my classes i found an amazing park. with a big becuatiful building and avenues of trees and crazy maroon irises. i didn't know they cam ein htat colour.Today i tried ot go back to H&M to buy a dress that i saw that i liked, but there are 3 shops in spitting distance of each other, and i popped out the wrong metro and went to the wrong two, and then proceded to walk in the opposite direction by accident for a km or two. But which point i couldn't be bothered anymore. I think the lesson to be learnt is to buy stuff from h&m and return it, rather than to sleep on it, becase they're huge and busy and you might not find them again. Maybe i should stop shopping at h&m because i'm sure there are more interesting unique shops around. But the close are cheap and cool.
Tomorrwo i have to open a bank account. To do this i had to make an appointment two weeks ago. So it'd better work or i'll be very cross.
Also, for any knitters out there, i'm on ravelry now.
Sorry this is a terrible post. I am terribly tired.
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