Saturday, September 24, 2011

No worries. I'm still here.

This was a very busy week. On Sunday evening, my Austrian friend Marie got into town, on her way back home after spending the summer working in Antibes. We spent a fair bit of time hanging out together during the week. Here she is, looking horrified at the lack of respect accorded her king:



You'd think that the pigeons would show a little more respect towards the "roi de la valse". But no.

On Monday evening my friend Michael came to stay for the week, on his way home to San Jose (he left this morning). Fortunately, the sofabed was comfier than it looked. Here he is, at dinner yesterday evening:


The profiteroles were excellent, as usual. I would gladly have shared them with Michael, but he is gluten-intolerant, so was not interested. I made the ultimate sacrifice and ate them all myself, as he noshed on his creme brulee, a dessert whose appeal I have never fully understood.


Mmmm. Delicious profiteroles.

Another high point of the week was lunch on Tuesday at "Les Deux Canards", with Marie, Michael, my friend Ellen from Genentech, and Vincent, the other Irish guy in my class at school. Ellen has signed up for classes at school as well, starting on Monday.

Another reason I didn't get around to blogging during the week was that, in addition to my morning group classes (still excellent), I had ten hours of individual lessons in the afternoons. So I really didn't have a spare minute. Tonight I am going over to Ellen and Leslie's for dinner. Then tomorrow it will be homework all day, maybe with a side trip to visit the toy exhibition at the Grand Palais with my former classmate Hee Eun. I will be continuing with the afternoon individual classes next week, right up to my departure for Cork on Saturday, to catch up with friends and relatives in Ireland.

After taking Michael to the airport bus this morning I came back and slept for another three hours. Because all this French is exhausting. But lots of fun.

Here are Titania and Puck, from last week's "A Midsummer Night's Dream":


During our morning classes this week, we studied French politics. One of the exercises was to come up with our own new political party, and to develop a party platform. Merrill, a new student (also from San Francisco), and I decided our party should be the Inquisition Francaise, whose platform would be based on continuing the important work of Torquemada. In addition to weekly public burning of heretics at the Place de la Bastille, we renounced this guy, and all of his works:


I know I keep repeating myself, but this week was the most fun I've had in ages.

1 comment:

  1. Those profiteroles...I trust you have your cardiologist on speed dial?

    ReplyDelete