Day 8

Hopefully you got your fill of sightseeing in my two previous posts, because today was not a touristy day! It was quite pleasant (and Parisian!) though.

After a simple but leisurely breakfast, Isabelle and I, our legs still sore from yesterday, decided that today would be a relatively lazy day. We wandered over to the Jardin du Luxembourg to try and knock out some of our reading for class. The trouble was, it was chillier than we expected. It was fun to see the park though. It was brimming with life, from old men playing chess, to groups of elderly ladies looking quite bizarre doing Tai Chi on the grass, to children taking rides on donkeys, to very tan women smoking cigarettes and flipping through magazines. Many a toy sailboat zoomed around the fountain. (Stuart Little, anyone?)

We tried to read, but it was simply too cold and windy to sit still. Every so often we'd get a glimpse of brilliant sunshine and warmth, but then the sky would darken again. Nevertheless, we sat shivering on a bench for a few hours before calling it a day and taking refuge in the nearby Cafe Madame, which we had pinpointed a few days earlier as a worthy destination. (Isabelle has to make it through seven months in the expensive city of Paris, so we only go to cafes when the cultural experience seems worth the 4-euro cappuccino splurge.)

We stopped at Carrefour on the way back to stock up on fruit, vegetables, cheese, yogurt, bread and snacks for the rest of the day, and we've been curled up in our beds reading Proust ever since! I've read nearly 300 pages though, so the day has been productive. 

We're reading one of the seven parts of Proust's In Search of Lost Time-- called Swann in Love-- which is about a former rake who falls desperately in love with a woman named Odette, who at first eagerly becomes his mistress, but soon begins to manipulate him. The characters are odious but very cleverly equipped with many negative qualities I can see in myself and those around me. Proust was evidently a fantastic sociologist, and I constantly find myself thinking "wow, he is absolutely right about that!" whether it's a description or observation about life, love, infatuation, social cues, social class, or all kinds of other minutiae. It's fascinating, but I admit a lot of the conclusions I'm drawing about humanity from his descriptions are super depressing.

Tomorrow we're going to try and watch the finals of the French Open on a big screen on the Ile de la Cite!

Lots of love, and please may you send me as many decaffeinated tea bags as possible, my camera cord and my olive J. Crew jacket? Mrs. Patterson's coming Tuesday, yes?