Past/Present

Yesterday:

not so good.

I woke up with my alarm, and then apparently had a dream that I set my alarm to go off 15 minutes later. One hour and ten minutes later I woke up.

I cursed cell phones, and dreams, and closed shutters, threw on the first clothes I could find, and ran the two blocks to work.

When I arrived in the garden (45 minutes late), Helly was there in his suit, looking at some leaves and enjoying a cigarette. I apologized with gusto, and he said "Ah, don't worry, I myself am always late." I explained the alarm incident, and he laughed it off "just means you were tired, don't worry."

I love French people.

Since I'd rushed out of the apartment, I'd forgotten my agenda.

Lots of times it says trivial stuff like "tomatoes&cucumber", "write Amy", "look up plus que parfait".

Yesterday it said "Adrien's eye doctor-4pm".

His eye doctor is not nice.

If you're 3 minutes late, she reminds you that the appointment was for 4pm, and then when you leave she reminds you that the next appointment begins at 5. "Mais vraiment a dix-sept heures!"

So when at 4:30, Adrien asked me if he was supposed to have had an appointment, I felt my stomach sink sink sink.

The fact that Adrien then hugged me and cried "I hope mommy doesn't fire you for forgetting!!" didn't really help much.

By the time I crawled into bed, I was ready to savor it. I rolled around, enjoying the soft soothing pleasure of sinking into the mattress. I'd made it through.

Today:

has been nice.

I dropped Adrien off at school, and then took off towards my own educational experience.

I really love my French class. Just 6 of us. None of us is from the same country, so we all speak French, in and out of class. My teacher is a very typical French intellectual with a grey bob. All of her clothes are either black, grey or charcoal, and she wears these great half-horn-rimmed glasses. I can't tell how many languages she speaks, but she's always referencing similarities between french and our different mother tongues, so I'm guessing at least 4.

After class, my Swedish classmate asked if I'd like to go for coffee.

We found an empty café on a side street. They didn't sell croissants, and we were hungry, so the owner directed us to a boulangerie down the street, and told us to come back for coffee. Considering that the café sold sandwhiches, I found that to be pretty big of him.

We came back with our almond covered pastries, and ordered coffees on the terrace.

We talked about Stockholm, and Halloween, and with the help of the café owner, finished our homework assignment.

We parted in the metro, and I wrote in my journal for the next three stops.

On my way home, I passed through the open air markets.

There's really nothing like the markets in France. Grizzled vendors yelling between each other, fruit you can smell the sweetness of, the fish monger adressing me as "blondine", potatoes and carrots still covered in dirt. There is energy. There are shapes, and colors and smells.

I never get tired of it.

I picked up a huge dirty carrot, 4 baby potatoes, a box of cherry tomatoes (which the french graphically describe as "pigeon hearts"), and two giant, juicy nectarines that smell like eden.

Lunch is on the stove, and I've got Nat King Cole singing "Sweet Lorraine" on the stereo.

Bon-jour.