«Saturday, June 24, 2000»

11:45 AM... This morning I asked to be woken up at 10h00 to start getting used to the european time zone. It was hard, but I'm adjusting... I got up and wrote some postcards. Yesterday we finally made it to the Musée D'Orsay, but only an hour before it closed... so we're going to return today. After we got the boot we rode on this huge ferris wheel at the Place de la Concorde, where you could see everything from Mont-Martre to the Eiffel tower to Notre Dame. Then we ate some crepes (I had butter & sugar) and drank FANTA while walking about 2 km (a little over a mile?) down the Champs Elysées. Grég and I couldn't help but start singing that song, "Au Champs Elysées / Au Champs Elysées / Au soleil, sur la pluie / À midi out à munuit / Ily a tous ce que vous voulez au Champ Elysées." Silly, but fun. After buying a bottle of pastis, we went over to a couple of Grég's friends house and hung out ("faire de cunnerie," I think). Anyway... I'm getting more used tot he language. If only I had a long time to get emersed...

The agenda today is to return to the Musée D'Orsay (we only got to see the ipressionist works yesterday, and i want to see some of the furniture and the ancient stuff) and to watch the Techno-parade (the name is misleading; it's a gay pride march).

PS: si vous voulez des écrans de veille français, voilà le lieu.

«Friday, June 23, 2000»

3:10 PM... English (mostly) from here on out... I really don't know where to begin. It's been two fantastic days in Paris (though 48 hours of speaking French constantly is taking it's toll on my ability to think in English... or think ANYTHING for that matter!!). Wednesday night Grég and I met his friend Rudy and we went through the annual music festival together. Every street corner had a different band playing (mostly youngsters playing rock, but there were also jazz, classical, folk groups). I even heard the Pixies "Where Is My Mind" translated into French (but mostly when playing songs in other languages they sang them in the original language). I think also that everyone in Paris knows the Cranberries "Zombie," because I heard at leqst four groups playing it as we walked past. Side note: French beer is smooth.

Yesterday (and today for that matter), I woke up at noon. I'm still not used to the 6-hour time difference. Yesterday we went to the Centre-Pompidou and saw the Van Gough sculpture exhibit, and it was great. I didn't know he had such a fabulous body of sculpture work... and his clever usages of daily household items to create these people and cretures and scenes were very inspiring (on dit "génial!" en français). I also tried pastis, a liqourice liqeur (liquor-ish! ha!) from southern France (e.g. Marseille) thqt was good as well. I wanted to eat someplace very French for dinner, so we found a restaurant with snails on the menu. The menu said, among the appetizers, "6 escargots pur beurre" (6 snails in butter), but I of course had to make the pun: "6 escargots pour burr" (6 snails for Burr). I was obligated to eat them!! That was followed by steak and fries ("french fries," by the way, are a belgian invention) and i finished it all off with chocolate mousse.

After comming home last night I read some of an "Asterix et Obélix" book. One of the characters has a speech impdiment, and reading a different language spelled purposely wrong is difficult to do. I fell asleep doing that... but now I am off to the Musée D'Orsay to see the impressionist works, and after that perhaps I'll see some of the Champs Elysées before coming back to Robinson (Grég's suburb) to hang out with Rudy and some of his other friends. On y va!

«Wednesday, June 21, 2000»

3:14 PM... Je suis arrivé!! Parce que je utilise un ordinateur français, et je suis en France, je voudrais écrire en français. (Mais ces clés sont bizarre) Utilizez babelfish si vous voulez ce traduire. ALORS!! Je reste chez mon ami Grégoire Tardy, et ce soir on va à la Fete Musicale Parisienne!! Je ne pourrais pas choisir un meilleure journée à arriver! Aussi, je suppose que j'ai parlé en français presque 95 pourcent du temp. Par le fin de la semaine, je serai très bon, je crois. Ou j'espère. Alors, je n'ai gagné pas plus que trois heures à dormir sur l'avion, et je voudrais prendre un sièste. Au revoir, mes amis...

«Tuesday, June 20, 2000»

6:02 AM... All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go... All set. A few days ago I finally managed to track down my friend Marc Filisetti, a Swiss fellow who was an exchange student at my high school five years ago. I don't think we've talked since the summer of 1997... but thanks to Les Pages Jaunes, I was able to find the phone number for his father Bruno's auto garage, where he apparently works these days. After speaking some broken franglais with the secretary, I was able to leave a message and he called me back later. Fortunately, we will be able to meet up in his hometown in Switzerland (in Vaud) come mid-July. This is all very exciting. But for the meantime, I must get some sleep. The first leg of my flight heads out in less than 12 hours. And in 28 hours or so I will actually be on French soil. So long, kiddos... see you on the flipside...