It has been a quiet week here on rue Oberkampf. Elsewhere, as you may have read and seen in various news outlets, things have not been quiet; a few hundred teenagers decided to change the face of what had been, up to that point, a very peaceful series of massive protests. Of course, it's the kids breaking windows who get attention from the media, so you might have thought all of France was in shambles, but for us, it's been normal. Our apartment is about a fifteen minute walk to my work, so I don't have to deal with subways and trains that might have been crowded or delayed, and I don't have a car in need of gas (problems for some of my coworkers, though). Some of my students took the day off to attend protests. But that's all the disturbance we've experienced.
Weekdays when I work are fairly routine: I get up and go off to teach, Jeff does whatever he does when I'm gone (I think he plays guitar, works on learning French, plots world takeover, etc.), and then meets me at school. Sometimes we get a coffee, sometimes we go for a walk, sometimes we go window-shopping. Eventually we get hungry and decide we need to find food, and depending on how ambitious Jeff's plans are, we either go to Lémo (humorously pronounced lame-o) the organic grocery store, or we run the gamut of butcher shop, fruits and vegetables, bakery, etc. The fruit and vegetable guy recognizes us and realizes that he can talk me into "un petit peu" (a little bit) of pretty much anything, and usually throws something extra in the bag, so he is particularly fun.
Then Jeff works his cooking magic while I catch up on the news of the world, but I like to let Jeff talk about that since it's his thing. I've cooked maybe three times since I've been here (other than toast and such).
Non-workdays are more fun and vary more; since I last wrote, we have been to the museum in the Petit Palais, we have gone actual clothes-shopping, gone out for drinks with some of my fellow lecteurs, we have been investigating French pizza, and today we are planning to head over to the Musée de la Chasse (hunting) et Nature, which we have read is surprisingly great, full of taxidermy and weapons and paintings, all commemorating the great aristocratic pastime of shooting things.
However, our big plans right now are a long weekend in Avignon. It's Fall break for all schools in France, ending with the Toussaint (All Saint's Day, an official holiday here), so I have ten full days off. In the middle of them, though, is a band that we want to see. So we're just planning a quick jaunt down south for some sunshine and Roman ruins.
I just realized I haven't put any pictures in this post, which I usually would add for interest - maybe we'll get some up later. In any case, that's what's going on - the streets are not burning, things are quite ordinary, but some excitement of the positive variety is in the forecast.
