Faire des recherches

For the last week, I've been researching Paris. Actually, I'm not sure if I'd call it research. I probably wouldn't be able to write a very good report on all of this, because I've been looking at the same few things every single day. I got an iPod touch for my birthday (a little late, but earlier than my present last year) and I've been playing around on Google Maps. I've found the street where I'm going to live, le boulevard de Picpus from Les Misérables, the satellite image of the Eiffel Tower, the universities in the Latin Quarter, and my favorite building: le centre de Georges Pompidou! The street view of my new street makes it look like a fenced off area, which made my mom happy, and it is very close to both the subway and to La Bibliothèque Nationale de France, where my l'OuLiPo meetings will be once a month! So, it wasn't really research - it was more playing with my new iPod, but it was amusing!

The French book I'm reading now, Claudine à l’école, by Colette, is about students at a French school, and I'm really hoping it's not really like that. Basically, so far, Claudine has had an affair with her English teacher, Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay, made the headmistress jealous, begun to terrorize the English teacher's little sister, and just acted unruly in other, more normal, ways. I just read this one sentence yesterday where the headmistress said: "...vous ne valez pas chacune la corde pour vous pendre !" (You're all not worth the rope that would hang you!). So, that line plus the other things that happen in the book are making me think that French school is a little "different." But, at least I don't eat my school supplies like la grande Anaïs. She eats erasers, pencils, crayons...that can't be healthy. Anyway, I have to say I love this book! It's hilarious! Colette also wrote Gigi, but I think the next French book I'm going to read before I leave is Cyrano de Bergerac or Nadja. Probably Cyrano.

So, counting today, just 21 days until Paris! But I have to say, all this Christmas stuff was very inconvenient. It made it hard to send a Christmas card to my host family and a CD to the director of my program. I hope New Years isn't that inconvenient, but it probably will be because we'll be cleaning and cleaning and cleaning...