April Showers

...bring cold weather!!! Guess that week of high 60s spoiled me. Even though it's chilly, it still looks pretty out (well, it did last week at least) - check out my daily lunch spot, a bench in le jardin des plantes where I watch the strange Parisian attempts at jogging and the Parisians watch me eat my 'strange' lunch (you'd think they'd never seen hummus before):

Pro tip: don't step on the grass... there are guards who aggressively blow whistles if an unsuspecting pedestrian so much as toes the line between pavement and garden.

This is a teeny, teeny update since I'm basically in finals part one mode over here (finals part two comes in May). This weekend is work-free however, because my friend Gaby has come to Paris to visit! For non JJGE-ers, she's a friend from Grenoble, France who I met in (and haven't seen since) 2006 on an exchange program between my high school and hers due to some sort of long-standing friendship between the teachers (sad to say I think the program no longer exists!). Anyway, she spent two weeks with my family, I spent two weeks with hers, and thanks to Facebook we kept in touch on holidays and birthdays. Now that I'm back in France, keeping in touch has become a lot easier! It's so funny to catch up - so much time has passed, we both feel so old! We unfortunately have spent most of the weekend turning the wrong way down the street after exiting the métro and/or waiting in line to get in to expos (always an adventure) but we are having fun nonetheless! Waiting in line mostly took place at Hôtel de Ville for the Doisneau Les Halles expo (sup two hour wait time!) but at least the rain held off until the end of the day. We even had enough time afterwards to quickly go see a fashion expo at the Musée des arts decoratifs (fun fact: it's literally right next to the Louvre. Don't walk three métro stops in the wrong direction before you figure this out) that showed the history of Louis Vuitton (he had that ugly brown pattern down in 1880 y'all - also he died like five years after and it was actually his son Georges who designed the LV logo and basically created the company) and the influence Marc Jacobs has had on the company since apparently he's been creative director for the past, oh, fifteen years (apparently this is only news to me?). Anyway, here's Gaby playing the tourist in front of la Tour Eiffel (mandatory photo op) with her brand-new short haircut:

We had dinner with Brigitte (the first dinner with a friend where I didn't have to translate!), which was lovely as always, and tomorrow I'm going to the apartment where Gaby's staying because she is cooking me a traditional French lunch (ratatouille! I'm expecting this), followed by more free expo-ing until I have to head back to chez moi for an Easter celebration en famille. (In France, instead of the Easter Bunny, it's basically the Easter Church Bells... since the bells don't ring on Easter Sunday, the story goes that they are out flying[?] and dropping off chocolates at everyone's home... Brigitte has warned me that there will be an Easter-egg hunt awaiting me in my bedroom when I return tomorrow. I accept this challenge.)

Time for bed over here, chag pesach sameach / happy Easter / happy April!

x R.