Change and other stuff
I thought it was probably worth noting that my stay in Paris has involved a lot of change. I don’t mean that kind of change, the stuff-becoming-different-from-how-it-was-before kind of change, which obviously has happened but really happens everywhere all the time and therefore isn’t particularly worth noticing in itself. I mean, you know, change. Pocket change. Coins. Euros come in €1 and €2 coins, smallest bills seem to be €5, so you use a lot of change. And then there’s the stuff you don’t use:
The taller cup is all the 1- , 2- , and 5-centimes pieces I’ve amassed over my months here. They’re just really not worth carrying around, you know? The smaller cup is the 10- and 20-centimes pieces, which I use to pay the laundry machine. I suppose I’ll pay for the last load or two with the smaller-denomination coins, just to use them up. That’ll be fun if there’s anybody in line behind me (it also reminds me of a lesson I learned when preparing to leave for France: when withdrawing money to buy a few thousand euros is travelers’ checks, don’t just automatically ask for it in twenties. Firstly, the poor guy at American Express will have to count it all; secondly, the nice lady at the bank will probably assume that you’re buying drugs or paying off a hitman or whatever else people do with large wads of unmarked lower-denomination bills).
Some pretty pics of the dorms — this is a nice walkway that is quite picturesque now that there’s actual green stuff on the trees and whatnot (pictures taken around dusk, so, you know, dark):
Some building in this dorm-y school-y complex:
Dorms, from walkway:
On that same stroll, I saw all three of the cats that hang around here sort of hanging around together. Well, not together, because they’re cats and they like to be semiantisocial, but on the same patch of lawn, eyeing one another warily. I took two pictures, one without night-shot and one with, neither particularly clear:
Finally, a movie poster that has been amusing me:
The title and the little subtitle are both in English. Which is puzzling. If it was originally titled The Hangover, why re-title it but still keep it in English? If it was originally titled Very Bad Trip, why subtitle it in English? Which one of these is supposed to be more intelligible to a non-anglophone audience? Is this, in fact, an imported anglophone movie, or do the French have nobody to blame for this but themselves? These are mysterious things.
