I haven’t posted in a few days, mainly because things have just been pretty boring around here. On Thursday, I decided that the grammar class I was taking was a bit too advanced. I’m trying to switch into another, easier one; the FLE people, quite wisely, deliberately put those classes at the same day and time so that students could switch if they decided they were in the wrong class without messing up their schedules. I appreciate this bit of forethought; actually, really, the people at the FLE department are very nice, and as mentioned before the class scheduling is much simpler here (though you either have to run directly from one class to another, or have a minimum 3-hour break between them). I have a feeling this other grammar class will have some overlap with stuff I already know, but I figure it’s best to play things safe.

My professor from Thursday’s other class, a francophone-lit class, is on strike; she explained that this means the professors will not be teaching their classes as long as the strike lasts, but they will try to be at their classrooms at the appointed times and, while there, will try to teach the students about things. Apparently the difference between this and not-striking is that, while striking, they throw out the syllabus in favor of material about the strike, have politically involved artists over to speak, and so forth. Our homework for the it class, for example, is an op-ed by the president of Paris 8, who’s in favor of the strike. The whole thing seems a bit convoluted, but one can appreciate the level of thought that goes into it.

Yesterday, with nothing better to do, I went for a walk. I have, since arriving here, decided the best way to learn a city is to get systematically and enthusiastically lost in it. I wandered about without a map and found myself in Montmartre, right by the hotel where MICEFA had sent us for the first 5 days. There was some kind of Scottish festivity going on in the neighborhood–which is full of Scottish places and has Scottish flags all over–with people dancing in pubs and a lot of men in kilts (which, incidentally, aren’t really an Ancient Scottish Traditional Garment, but rather an innovation an English factory owner came up with in the 18th century. This is among the wonderful, essential pieces of knowledge I learned in Intro to Comparative Politics last semester).

Anyway, I didn’t have the camera, so no pictures of French Scottish men in kilts, nor of those long, long sets of stairs that one finds in the streets around that rather hilly part of Paris. I must get a picture of those, very dramatic, especially at night. What I do have pictures of is the Paris 8 Campus:

The library building spans the highway:

This footbridge also goes over the highway:

For some reason these buildings look to me like they belong on a beach:

I kinda like the rust thing they’ve got going here, contrasts nicely with the grass:

A pigeon found its way into the building on Thursday. I found it wandering about several times. Or perhaps there were several pigeons. In any case, here it is by the escalators in the area between the library and Bâtiment A:

A thoroughly graffittied exterior stairwell in, I believe, Bâtiment B:

I’m somewhat fond of this little collection of bridges and stairs, which makes for easy cross-campus access from the area in Bâtiment A where mos of my classes are held:

And a very melodramatic rooftop shot:

I’m halfway into my first week of class. Monday was at the MICEFA building, a pretty low-key course about foreign poets in Paris. Turns out it’s being run as something of a writing workshop, which is nice, that way I don’t feel I’m slacking off on my major. The first thing we did was work out the schedule because, of course, not all University of Paris campuses have their vacations at the same time. Promises to be an enjoyable course.

Speaking of the MICEFA building, I took some pictures around there a while back but never got around to posting them:

The Port Royal RER B stop, closest train to MICEFA:

Not the MICEFA building, but a nice building with a parking lot that serves as a pretty shortcut to the MICEFA building:

The MICEFA building:

Me approaching the MICEFA building:

Their lovely sign, assuring students that, yes, this is the MICEFA building:

Tuesday was Comprehension and Analysis of Texts, at Paris VIII. I got there about forty minutes early, in order to have time to explore the building and find my classrooms. Paris VII has a very nice campus, a little used and graffitied but laid out quite nicely. It’s pleasant enough aesthetically that I’m willing to forgive its utterly chaotic floor plan, evidently designed by the esteemed architecture and aeronautics firm of Daedelus & Son. At any rate, the professor took roll and quizzed people on their majors and all the usual stuff, outlined the course (apparently, we’re going to be comprehending and analyzing texts. Go figure), and spent the last hour giving us a detailed explanation of the current strike, and why professors aren’t wild about Sarkozy’s reforms, and so on.

I have an issue with the idea of students going on strike, from a purely semantic standpoint. How, exactly, does the customer go on strike? If it’s simply a matter of refusing to participate with the business/school/etc in order to show solidarity with striking employees? Because that’s a boycott, not a strike. Given the very different economic roles played by clients and employees, it seems like an important distinction to make.

I was going to insert here some pictures of the Paris VII St-Denis campus, but I realized I haven’t uploaded them yet. I’ll get around to it tomorrow. In the meantime enjoy these other pictures I uploaded and hadn’t yet posted:

This was the snowfall that apparently completely screwed up Parisian traffic last Monday when we were moving in:

Today I got to school for my 9:00 class, only to discover that it actually started at 12:00. I then discovered that, unlike Hunter, Paris VIII does not have chairs, tables, and couches all over the place; nor does it have a whole lot of electrical outlets where one may plug in one’s computer so as to not run it totally dead before class. I was going to go to the library, but they were closed because of the strike, so I was reduced to searching for outlets in the hallways. It might be that students don’t use laptops as much in France; then again, the majority take notes by hand in New York, and that doesn’t stop us from having a decently wired campus. So it goes, at any rate.

At 12:00, I went to my class, found it empty, and went to the FLE department to check that I had the correct room. On the way there, I ran into another MICEFA student, and learned that the first day of class would be next week. This had not been posted as of yesterday. I am missing American-style bureaucracy more and more. At Hunter, at least, there would have been a sign on the door of the classroom, even if they didn’t tell us ahead of time.

Apropos nothing, here’s the wonderful view from the elevator in the dorms. I forgot you can’t tilt the camera when taking video, so it really looks best if you turn your head 90 degrees to the left.In other news, I’m getting quite fond of the Metro. It’s fast and pretty efficient, and has a better range than the New York subway system. Transferring is less of a hassle because the trains arrive more often, and I’ve confirmed from observation that the door-opening handles and buttons don’t activate until you reach the station, so there’s no need to worry about someone opening up the train in the middle of the tunnel. The metro is great for people-watching. Yesterday I had fun observing how long it took people to react to the smell of the homeless woman sleeping on the seats, and what form their reaction took (bolt back out the door? Go to the other end of the car? Cover nose with coat collar?). Today, going to school, I paused my iPod because I felt I ought to practice my French eavesdropping skills on the trio of thirtysomething women having an animated conversation next to me. It turned out that the conversation revolved around one woman explaining how she had seen someone fit all of their fingers between their eyelids and eyeballs.

Oh, and over the past 5 days I watched Arrested Development. Not a bad show. The first season is a bit formulaic but strong, the second starts hitting its stride with rising absurdity and an increasingly evident metafictional bent, and the third manages to keep on cranking up the crazy without jumping the shark. From the look of it, it was probably canceled at just about the right time; it’s hard to think of what more could be done with the characters without getting repetitious or too over-the-top. The show has a pythonesque ability to balance the intelligent and the idiotic, running the gamut from a wonderful David Blaine spoof to convolutedly subtle Incredible Hulk references. By eschewing the reset button, the show is able to eke the full potential out of premises that might otherwise have been squeezed into a single episode. Okay, I’m rambling, but it really is a good show. In honor of it, please enjoy the following montage, which immortalizes one of the best running gags ever and ends with what may be the funniest scene of the entire show:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the French design their bathtubs and showers specifically to irritate me. According to the check-in sheet I got for the dorms, the bathroom is suppose to come with a shower curtain. It didn’t, in my case, but it’s supposed to. This makes it all the more puzzling that the room doesn’t come with a shower per se. There’s a showerhead, but no means with which to attach it to the wall. This is inconvenient because the tub was evidently designed so that no one would be able to actually take a bath in it, with the possible exception of skilled contortionists under 3 feet tall.

Thus Saturday’s project was to go to Bricorama, a hardware store I’d noticed on the Boulevard Ney, between here and the station for the train to St-Denis:

(note that this picture was taken on Sunday, when they are closed, because I was too lazy to bring the camera Saturday. They were not all gated-up when I went in. I don’t believe they would have appreciated that)

I didn’t find any showerhead holders there that didn’t require holes to be made in the walls, so I got duct tape, double-stick, and a toilet paper holder:

The result is this lovely fixture:

In other news, I checked out the flea market just west of here:

I was looking for a watch, since my old one has stopped working. I didn’t find one that was the proper size (what is it with people wearing ridiculously large watches?) and had the date. But the flea market was… well, actually, it was nothing special. It’s like any street market. People sell stuff under tents. Whoohoo. Nothing against it, perfectly nice, just not terribly thrilling.

On the way I noticed an interesting variant on the three-card-monte/shell-game scam—instead of card or bottle caps, they use big brown discs, slightly smaller than CDs, with a white sticker on one. Kinda looks like some sort of mutant Oreo cookie thing:

(Okay, not a great picture, but I wasn’t sure how photogenic people feel while scamming tourists out of money, so I took it from across the street)

Also, here’s some pictures of this cat who’s been hanging around the dorms. Because everything’s better with cats.

And the award for best use of the skeletal garbage cans goes to… whoever didn’t want their guitar case anymore:

Title: Registration Rant and Other Stuff

Enh, not much of a post, but I took some more pictures of the dorms and figured I’d upload them, so here they are.

This is Bâtiment B, where the entrance is:

This is the entrance lobby, with security desk and all that jazz:

This is the view of the Périphérique from the Super Secret Magic Passage:

This is the whole big building/complex/thing, seen from the street:

I still can’t believe the bureaucracy is so disorganized here. For the FLE (English as a Foreign Language) classes, you have to register at the department; for the other classes, you just show up. The registration itself is at least computerized, but students don’t access the system directly. There’s not even a course schedule online. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I mean I don’t think students need to be coddled, but it seems providing this sort of basic information a semester or two in advance would make things run so much more smoothly. I’m irritated that Hunter hasn’t posted the schedule for the fall semester yet.

On the plus side, French classes tend to meet only once a week, so that does make scheduling easier. It’s a pain at Hunter trying to juggle the Mon-Thurs, Tues-Fri, Mon-Wed, Tues-Wed-Fri, once-a-weeks, and other variations. Classes here also last an even number of hours—none of this 10:10-12:25, 1:45-3:00 stuff.

So the schedule itself is easier to arrange. You just have to do it at the last minute. And I’m just not a last-minute kind of person. I don’t mind complicated, so long as I have time to work it out. What happens if a class gets over-booked here? Are you just screwed over if you don’t get the sign-up sheet first? How do you make sure you’re going to get all the classes you need for your major? I suppose the requirements probably aren’t as Byzantine as CUNY’s GERs, but still.

On another note, I’ve been quite happy with the kitchenette here. It’s so much more convenient to not have to trek down the hall to see if the sink and/or stove are available. I wouldn’t say I cook per se, but I do engage in paraculinary activities. The latest innovation is couscous stir-fry. The recipe is as follows:

1) Take smallish pot and fill it (but you know, just kinda-fill-it, not literally to-the-top) with water. Add 1 or 2 beef bouillon cubes. Add couscous.
2) Bring to a boil.
3) Eventually decide things look right and remove pot from heat.
4) Add 1 small can of peas.
5) Stir stuff up.
6) Eat some. Realize you’ve made way too much, because you were thinking couscous would turn out about how precooked rice turns out. Put pot with uneaten 7/8 of the batch of couscous into Wonderful Minifridge.
7) Open up fridge the next day. Discover that couscous has entirely absorbed water and is now a roughly solid pea-speckled, beef-flavored mass.
8) Take a chunk of couscous, break it up, fry it.
9) Decide the above lacks a certain something.
10) Purchase a 5-piece Chicken Tenders meal from local KFC. Have some problems ordering when the pain au chocolat/Sprite conundrum hits, and you accidentally pronounce tenders with a [z] instead of an [s].
11) Eat fries and drink soda.
12) Repeat step 8, adding one chicken tender cut up into small pieces.
13) Repeat step 12 until couscous supply runs out.

See? Pretty picture!

I also discovered the following on YouTube—two wonderful renditions of the “Who’s on First?” sketch:

So the dorms here are somewhat awesome. All single studio apartments, one-room with kitchenette and attached bathroom, pretty spacious, in these really cool buildings that are kind of Blade Runner meets nautical.

Dorms at night:

These really cool super secret magic walkways are reserved either for emergency use (according to one sheet of paper taped to one door), cigarette/KFC breaks (according to the pile of cigarette butts and chicken bones on a ledge near another door), or getting from one building to another without going all the way down to the common ground level (according to common sense). Whatever their official designation, they’re neat. You get a nice view of the highway outside, and you can appreciate the curtain wall and supports and all that stuff.

These light shafts are a lot cooler in theory than in practice. They just don’t let in that much light.

My door! It’s heavy and armor-plated and has three different lock settings that were a pain to figure out.

My hallway!

My kitchenette!

My room!

While the aesthetic is very nice, the buildings don’t score major points for emergency preparedness. Each building has 13 apartments on each floor, with something like 5 or 6 residential floors, lower ones used for office-type stuff. Each building also has only one staircase, which is wide enough to fit two people but spirals so it’s really just a one-lane deal, especially in an evacuation type of situation. Yes, there are the magic passageways in the back, but only on the even-numbered floors. Is an evacuation likely? No, not besides our mandatory-per-trimester fire drill. But still, it doesn’t make one feel exactly safe.

Stairs of Doom Going Up:

Stairs of Doom Going Down:

Also, the lighting in the halls has a frankly idiotic energy-saving mechanism whereby they are only lit by pressing buttons. There are about a half-dozen of these scattered around each hall. I’m all for saving energy, but seriously, that’s what they invented motion sensors for. Remember what I said about those light shafts not working too well? Yeah. I don’t think this is a big security concern, since the buildings have only one access point and you need an RFID key fob to get in, and there’s a guard/reception desk. I doubt I’m going to get mugged on my way to the light switch. I’m more concerned about people leaving things lying around, stuff spilling, whatever. Would it really hurt to put the lights on motion sensors? I don’t think so. The ones down in the main hall are. They work fine.

This place, as mentioned above, is pretty high-security. Access is more limited than at the Hunter dorms on a physical level (see above re RFID badge and armored door), but students are much more autonomous. No RAs, and a much simpler visitation policy. You even have to fill in for yourself the sheet about the condition of the room when you arrive.

Having had a prior bad experience at the Hunter dorms, where my checking-in and checking-out RAs had entirely different interpretations of the words “Good condition,” which almost led to my being billed for damage caused by the previous occupant, I was quite thorough in filling out my sheet. I had a lot of fun sitting down with my Oxford Hachette French/English Dictionary and learning words like abîmé (damaged), éraflé (scratched), fissure (crack, as in a wall), fêlure (crack, as in my sink), and branlant (loose, as in my towel holder). I also got to practice useful phrases like “Pas de rideau” (no shower curtain), “Pas de fauteuil” (no armchair), “Pas d’ampoule” (no light bulb), “Beaucoups de taches, rèsidu d’adhésif” (lots of stains, adhesive residue), “Bonne condition, avec un aimant en forme de grenouille” (good condition, with a magnet in the shape of a frog), and “Le sommier manque une vis” (the mattress base is missing a screw).

In other news, I’ve been getting better at doing the sorts of things here that I did back in New York; yesterday, I had an awkward conversation in a check-out line at the supermarket with an old man who asked me how tall I was.

The photo below demonstrates two things that New York and Paris have in common. First, both cities seem to have people riding their subways who want to learn English; second, both share a similar opinion of Wall Street’s recent performance.

So this was supposed to go up 2 or 3 days ago but then I moved into the dorms, which are very nice but lack wifi, and I only got an ethernet cable today. Tragic, I know.

The past two days, I visited the quintessential Americanities: McDonald’s for dinner, Starbucks for breakfast. Had to go at least once, you know? And McDonald’s is just so appealing because of the way they call it “Macdo” here. How can you not love something with such a cute nickname?

When ordering, I ran into what I call the pain-au-chocolat problem. I name it this because I’m never entirely sure how to pronounce the words pain au chocoloat when ordering in an American place; sometimes they pronounce the n, sometimes not, sometimes they pronounce chocolat like chocolate, other time’s its “shock-oh-LAH,” and so on.

At Macdo, I found myself entirely unsure of how to ask for a Sprite. Is it pronounced the way it would be as a French word, or in an approximation f the English? Unable to come to a decision, I got a Coke instead, which is also adorably shortened to “Coca,” and tastes better in France—their recipe here has a bit of a ginger-ale thing to it.

I also discovered that the meals are called “Best Of.” I’m not sure why; I’d expect them to follow the pattern of abbreviations and go with “combo.” Also noticed a slightly different procedure in the kitchen, there was just one guy getting trays of burgers put in front of him and boxing them all. I’ve also learned useful new phrases, such as “sur place” and “a emporter”—For Here or To Go.

Starbucks was about the same as anywhere else. The decorations are all in English. The sizes are the same, the menu’s about the same. The barista even spoke English. The cups were bilingual, and I learned that “custom” is translated as “Perso.” So back to the cute little abbreviations.

Yesterday I walked to the Eiffel Tower. It’s big. Here’s the obligatory picture:

Also some shots of the Seine, which really is a friendly little river:

They’s got pretty buildings!

Genuine Tourists!

The faucet in my hotel room has stopped dripping and is now just steadily running. This is good, because it’s relatively quiet. A few nights ago the drips kept switching between a 4:4 rhythm and a 6:8. Or maybe that was my imagination. At any rate, it was distracting and kept me from sleeping.

I also discovered, today, that there’s a useful little knob on the heater that allows one to turn it up. At first this seemed to be purely ornamental, but I’ve discovered the room actually has warmed up. I was a little distressed yesterday when I realized that this room doesn’t look out on the Rue de la tour d’Auvergne, but on the intersecting Rue Rodet. I’d gotten mixed up my first time getting here, in the elevator, navigating no less than three doors with four bags, and spent all this time thinking I was looking north when in fact I was looking east. It seems that, while I have a very strong sense of direction, it’s not always a very accurate one.

Getting used to navigating Paris now. Like New York, it can be broken down into a collection of grids; they’re just a lot smaller, and intersect with one another more often. But once you have a general sense of the main boulevards, you’re good. I’ve noticed a lot of homeless people here have dogs. Interesting. Also, fewer people wear sunglasses. I believe this is because the streets are mostly narrow relative to the height of the buildings, and because few streets go on for more than a half-dozen blocks without reaching an end or turning; thus you just don’t have to wear sunglasses that much, and it doesn’t become a habit or an accessory.

I also sat down with Wikipedia and the International Phonetic Alphabet to settle once and for all what the deal is with the accents. Apparently—going by IPA symbols—the accent aigue turns an e from its default schwa into an [e], while the accent grave turns it into an epsilon. I’ve been testing this on all applicable words I come across, and have determined that’s it’s somewhat reliable, though it seems to be the sort of thing that depends enough on idiolect that you can only use it reliably as a guide if you really know the language pretty well anyway. But at least it may prove a decent memory aid.

Yesterday was productive.  I went to the Orange store (big telecommunications company) and got €20 worth of time for my cell phone.  Tested a new communications tactic there: adopted an odd foreign accent, based on toned-down version of that of Rolf from in the Tintin movies, in order to helpfully signal to the nice employee-people that I’m a foreigner and they’ll have to use little words.  It’s either that or speak with relatively little accent and then stare dumbly for a few seconds while attempting to formulate a response to whatever they say.

A bunch of us CUNY exchange-students had a collective appointment at MICEFA at 2:00.  I left at 1:00 and succeeded, I believe, in getting a Passe Navigo, all loaded up for the month of February.  Found out, at MICEFA, that there are still a couple forms I need to take care of, but so far no major catastrophes.

I discovered my cell phone didn’t work, and went back to Orange with other students who were getting phones.  It transpired that, apparently, after 6 months of inactivity a SIM card will commit seppuku.  After that it no work, period.  I got a new SIM card and all was well.  Was too flustered to use foreign accent, managed to make sense of technobabble anyway.

In the evening, took a lovely rush-hour train to the Cimetière Père Lachaise, because I’d had the last line of Le Père Goriot stuck in my head and the whole “It’s you and me now, Paris” vibe seemed worth appropriating in a more optimistic tone.  The train was packed.  I noted that it seemed to have more headroom than NYC subways.  This was appreciated.  The area around the cemetery was deserted and rather boring.  I walked back, which was a bit of a trek, but not terrible.  I can now attest that, if you want French people to give you odd looks in the street, the thing to do is to walk down l’Avenue de la République at night singing Gilbert and Sullivan.  Also noticed a supermarket chain called G20, wondered if it was a loose pun on “J’ai faim,” didn’t ask anyone, ergo am still in the dark on this matter.

Discovered a nice little gyro place, possibly a chain, don’t know, on Boulevarde de Rochechouart near the hotel.  Lacking anything more to say, I shall post more hotel-room pictures:

Pretty lighting fixture!  These actually are quite nice, give a good diffuse kind of light—nice thing about hotels, unlike dorms, is that even the cheap ones don’t go for the Depressing Institutional look.

Observe the mirror, so placed as to not decapitate people of reasonable stature such as myself!

And the view outside the window. Innit pretty? It pretty.

Today, per the email from MICEFA, I went to the Opera metro station to get tickets and see about getting a Pass Navigo, which seems to be more or less a Metrocard equivalent, except far more complicated to obtain. This involved wandering around for a while before I finally consulted my map near the Jardin des Tuilleries and discovered I’d inadvertently turned myself around 90 degrees.

I checked which metro lines weren’t being interrupted by the transit strike, and went to MICEFA offices. Got mixed up between Rue du Faubourg St-Jacques and Boulevard du Faubourg St-Jacques, wasted 15 minutes going the wrong way, and decided that Paris streets must have been named by the same people who named the ones in Queens, on the philosophy that if it’s good to use the name “X Street,” its even better to have X Boulevard, X Avenue, X Place, X Lane, X Dead End, X Cul-de-Sac, X Plaza, and X Court, preferably in close proximity to one another, with intersections at odd, tangential angles.

The people at MICEFA were all nice and such and I got some preliminary paperwork out of the way. We’re all to gather there at 2:00 PM tomorrow to register for the residence and such.

Here are some pictures of the hotel room:

From just inside the door.

From below the TV.

Plan of the floor. Note this room in yellow! It’s small and generally pleasant. The L shape makes it feel roomier.

The shower has two settings: Ice and Steam. There is no shower curtain and the shower head is mounted on a series of hinges, ingeniously designed to turn around and spray the entire bathroom with water if you so much as look at it cross-eyed.

Paris has a lot of non-car vehicles, which makes sense considering the size of most of its streets.

You see these bike stands all over.

Also Vespas and these kind of 3-wheeler thingies like this one.

And oddly skeletal garbage cans.

Despite what we’ve been warned, Parisian drivers aren’t actually that aggressive towards pedestrians, at least not more so than in New York. Pedestrian traffic lights have no setting between red and green. I’ve taken to dashing across intersections as quickly as possible so that I don’t get caught by surprise.

The Paris Metro is pretty easily navigable. I haven’t had to wait long for a train so far. The cars are smaller than in NYC, but the seats are cozier and more comfortable. Doors don’t open automatically, which is a bit weird. Sometimes the conductors don’t announce what stop you’re at, so you have to look out the window to make sure it’s the right one. At least the signs in the stations are very easy to spot. All in all, it’s about on par with the MTA.

Ooh, and one definitely cool Paris thing: the light-up green cross signs outside pharmacies. There’s something kind of hypnotic and reassuring about them.

That’s all, folks. For today. I think.

My name is Julian Joiris.  I’m a student in the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, City University of New York, Center of the Universe.  I’m a Creative Writing major, but not the pretentious sort, mostly.  I’m a Pol Sci and French double-minor.  This is my fun and exciting Official Macaulay Honors College Study Abroad Blog.  Per the Honors College Opportunities Fund guidelines, I am documenting my semester in Paris for Posterity.  I have it from a reliable source that Posterity is quite flattered and really wishes more people would do this sort of thing, even when their funding wasn’t contingent on it.

Over the next five months, I will probably go through sizable periods of short and/or boring posts, complain about trivial matters, make jokes that no one else thinks are funny, and otherwise grow as a person.  Hey, I think it sounds like fun.

So far I have done very little in Paris.

My flight from JFK to Heathrow was largely uneventful.  Some suspense was provided by pondering when the poor fellow in the next seat, who had some sort of stomach virus, would get up to go to the bathroom; or wondering how many times the captain would interrupt my in-flight entertainment for some breaking news about how, yes, we were still headed for London.

Aforesaid in-flight entertainment consisted of reading the first half of Watchmen, and watching Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  That last gem was truly idiotic, though it gets points for an appealingly stylized esthetic.  By sheer coincidence, I’d watched Ryan Vs. Dorkman (both of them) last night.  These films contain all of the best parts of The Clone Wars–id est, “Whee! Lightsabers!  Color!  Crash!  ZhooOOOoom!”–while improving on the acting and plot.  Hellboy was very pretty and decently amusing, and Watchmen is so far every bit as brilliant a deconstruction of the superhero genre as I’d been led to believe. Which is good, because it won a bunch of awards and stuff.

Heathrow to Charles de Gaul was even less eventful.  Whoever designed the signage at CDG apparently decided it would be great fun to put signs for the RER about every thirty feet for a long stretch, then have them completely disappear in another area, resuming again at some random point down the line.  Once the ticket was purchased, it was just a matter of sitting on trains and getting on and off at the right stops and reading subway maps and locating platforms and all that other stuff New Yorkers can do in their sleep.

The Hotel Marena, where we’re staying before our official moving-into-places thing, is nice, and I suppose I’ll upload pictures in the coming weeks.  I had fun walking around Paris and trying to get places without having to consult my map every two minutes.  While I’ve gotten pretty good at getting a feel for the contours of the routes I have to take, I fail consistently at identifying street names, primarily because some sadistic city planner decided the best way to label streets was with tiny, grimy little signs high up on badly-lit walls, preferably at least ten feet from the nearest intersection.

I have nothing else to report, and nothing to do right now but succumb to jet lag.

Test, 1, 2, 3…