"I dunno."
me: "You could try the handle."
me: "it doesn't look like it's even closed all the way."
me: "You could try."
William, slowly: "okay..."
Apparently she'd forgotten to lock it. It wasn't MY fault...
And that was the excitement for the week, it seems.
No, actually, it's been a fairly busy week. I wrote my final project last weekend, which I've been steadily expanding and revising since, plus another paper for Thursday, plus I had my final presentation (30 minutes), today - all of which is why I just did a recipe for my last week's nouvelles. The presentation went well. Incidentally, the reason I'm writing this e-mail early (today instead of Monday) is that next Friday will be the last day I can use the internet lab here - ever. I hadn't actually known it existed, either, until just about a month ago. It's very convenient, despite the occasionally long line, stretching along the hall, through the door, past the many signs saying "Please wait outside room," into the room, across the room, all the way to the desk of the hassled looking guy at his computer, printing out more signs saying "Please wait outside room." And all of this with an almost empty mac lab next door. Which I don't use either. (The macs don't like hotmail.) The line usually moves fairly fast, though, so it's not too much of a problem. The lab's a lot nicer than the media room, too, and open longer hours. To think: one week from today will be the last day I'll ever see it (wipes tear from eye). Then, the week after that (or, as Laura would call it, über-next-week) I'll be home for Christmas and skiing, barring mishaps.
Um, speaking of mishaps.... I broke a glass about a week ago. It was kind of embarrassing, but nothing too bad. I apologized, and cleaned it up. The next morning, the kids each spilled glasses of water, which made me feel better. I'm not THAT clumsy - it was the only one I've broken, after all. One broken glass, the entire semester, isn't that terrible.
Three days later, I broke another.
D'oh! (I'm planning on buying them some more for a Christmas gift).
The main news here, though, is the fête des lumières (festival of lights), which people have been telling me about since I first arrived. It was pretty impressive - though far, far, too cold. I think Lulu put it best: her mom was working on grammar with her, and asked (in French), "and what tense is, 'the weather is nice' in?" to which Lulu replied "past." "Past???" "Yeah," Lulu replied "it was nice in the summer, but it's too cold now." Kids are so cute. For the fête, I went on a city tour with a group of other foreign students. The main attraction that we went to see featured dozens of bulbs hanging from the ceiling, filled with phosphorescent chemicals somehow involving hemoglobin (I didn't quite catch that part) - none of which worked. The Japanese artist in charge of the project assured us "It was working fine yesterday!" There were plenty of other things to see, though. The entire city was filled with lights and shows: christmas lights hung overhead, tens of thousands of people
cramming all the streets downtown, making it hard even to move through the crowd, a congo line somewhere in the distance, vendors selling roasted chestnuts (which I'd had quite enough of at home, thank you very much), churros (which were very good), cheese, mulled wine, and cheap looking Santa hats with multi-colored lights that everyone was wearing; in the Christmas market at Perrache there were giant white tubes blowing out fake snow, some type of chemical foam, probably toxic, that made my eyes burn; the metros were all brightly lit in different colors, with lines stretching across the street to get on; streets all over the city lined with what first appeared to be strings of Christmas lights, but at closer look turned out to be rows of candles in all the windows; a giant glowing ferris wheel turning slowly against the night sky at Bellecour; dozens of spectacles all over the city, too many to possibly see in one night; tourists everywhere; the churches lit with candles - it had started as a religious festival, after all, before becoming a commercial one; the boats on the river all shining white, brightly lit bridges above, the public buildings glowing eerily blue and green and purple, shimmering on the water; movie projections on the side of the Hôtel de Ville (showing frogs, of all things, to fit with this year's nature theme); christmas trees, inflatable santas, reindeer, tents, stalls, dogs on leashes or carried above the crowd, shouting, singing, screaming carolers, running or staggering through the streets, with the cloudy sky reflecting a dull orange above it all. Very cool. You should all go. Next time you're in Lyon on December 8th, I mean.Au revoir!
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