Adventures

No fixed address

I will soon be homeless. Dominique & Hervé are coming at 8:00 on Saturday morning to move all the furniture, etc.; the estate agent will do her walk-through at 11:00; and Janette & Scott will arrive at about 12:30 to get me and my remaining belongings.

My internet access will be cut off tomorrow (Friday), because i have to mail the darned DSL modem back to my ISP. So, this will be my last post for a few days.

You can find my basic itinerary here.

Dinner last night

I had dinner with Mohiddine and his family again last night. Nacim (now i know how to spell it) gave me a few lectures on the French electoral process and the various presidential candidates. Apparently, Mohiddine and Aziza took him to a political meeting recently, and he was totally into it. He even asked a question. He's 10. Honestly, he talks so much, he runs out of breath sometimes, but he's a great kid.

All three of them are so nice and light-hearted. We laughed all evening. Just like last time, the whole family took me home with Mohiddine being a back seat driver: "Are the headlights on?" "Is it clear to the left?" They told me i have to visit them when i come back to France :)

Gang signs

Okay, sort of like the Homestar Runner cartoon and the gun control post on Renal Failure, this has nothing to do with me. This site is part of my daily reading, and i just thought this post was hilarious.

White girls giving gang signs

Weirdness

When Pascale brought me home tonight, we were greeted by this teddy bear in rue Messager. Bizarre.

Versailles & Mont Saint Michel

Busy, busy week.

On Wednesday, Pascale took me to Versailles. It was a beautiful day, and it wasn't terribly crowded (except for all the Italians). Unfortunately, the hall of mirrors was being renovated, so it was less than spectacular, but i got some pretty good pictures of other things. You can see all the photos here.

I have made a solemn promise not to tell anyone that Pascale cannot read a map, so i will just say that Marie Antoinette's little fake farm was not well signposted. We were unable to find it in the wilds surrounding Le Grand Trianon. Mostly because it's at Le Petit Trianon. Oh well. We had a nice a walk anyway.

This is going to sound stupid to anyone who knows better, but it had never occurred to me that there might be a rather large town at Versailles. When someone says, "Versailles", i always think of the chateau, but, of course, there's a bustling town that grew up around it.

On Friday, Dominique took Moïseanne and i to Mont-Saint-Michel. That was pretty cool. We got a good parking spot close to the island -- there were signs in the parking lot telling us we needed to reclaim our car by 7:30pm or the sea would claim it for us.

We went through the abbey, which was really interesting, and, as usual, i took quite a few pictures. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera died just after we left the abbey, so i don't have any pictures of the other things we did. You can see all the photos i managed to take here.

After Mont-Saint-Michel, we decided to stop in Avranches on the way back to see their new new museum, Le Scriptorial. All the manuscripts from Mont-Saint-Michel were moved to Avranches after the Revolution, and this museum showcases some of them along with discussing the methods of manuscript production.

The idea of the museum is great, but it was designed with only a small number of patrons in mind. If they ever get popular, they will have problems with their exhibits (labeling too far away from items, only 1 computer terminal for a whole room, stuff like that). Moïseanne loved it, though. We had to practically drag her away from some of the exhibits. She bought calligraphy supplies in the gift shop.

That's all for now. I think my last week here will be pretty quiet, but i'll keep you all updated.