JVL
Today's Document
styofa doing anything
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
noise dept.
DEAR READER
🪼
Stranger Things
almost home
KIROKAZE
$LAYYYTER
AnasAbdin
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blake kathryn
@theartofmadeline
Claire Keane
we're not kids anymore.
d e v o n
Mike Driver
Keni
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Lithuania
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from South Korea
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@springinparis
Last week.
I can't believe this is the last week I have in class. I have less than a week--three days of class. I have to concentrate. On all of the things I have to do. My astro paper, preparing for my French final, saying goodbye to my friends. Enjoying Paris.
It's so much. And it goes so quickly. No use groaning. Get out there, finish the 2000 word paper, have good times with people I've made connections with.
I graduated last year--today. Around this time, too. Wow.
Friends
Looking forward to this week!
Dinner at my professor's house tomorrow night. He's such a cool guy. Very cognizant, sharp and aware of each of us as people. He has a sheet on which he wrote down adjectives about each of us. I don't know what he says about me, but I don't know if I want to. Maybe.
Cosmology is fascinating.
The universe is expanding! So quickly! Being so small is crushing and invigorating. I'm thinking of writing my final paper on dark flow, which is the acceleration of all the galaxies in the observable universe to a point outside of the cosmological horizon. So we don't know where they're going. Wow.
Night!
7th week travel!
People
This morning, I went to a flea market with three other girls. Two, I've known for a little while because they're in my program, the other, I haven't. It was very strange. I find that people say they value certain things, and then double back on it. They have such different perspectives. Such different points of view. Different backgrounds, too. I know that's not new, but meeting someone that thinks fashion is suspicious and food is just sustenance strikes me as strange. Especially meeting them in France. In Paris! Paris is for food and fashion.
Ugh, I dunno. Just weird. And I'm always very quiet when I'm around them, but I feel like that might be ok. Because they'll think I'm quiet. And I am, but not as quiet as I am around them.
Alright! Time to go eat lunch. Yum.
May Day
Yesterday was a national holiday here in France. Doesn't seem like anything that would ever happen in the US. I walked out into a beautiful day with lots of big, white clouds. I walked through a Socialist rally that took up half of Paris. I ate some delicious steak with salad and mashed potatoes. Good ice cream. Walking and looking at the sky. Wow, it was fantastic. I've never seen as many people out in the streets.
In other news, I'm going to Stockholm, Prague and Berlin for 7th week! Aah! Things are changing so quickly. Our second class is over on Friday. I went to a classical music concert at Saint-Chapelle today. I don't know very much about classical music, but it was incredible to hear surrounded by so much gorgeous light.
If you are ever at Versailles on a cloudy Friday afternoon
Do not eat in the restaurant and have to wait to go to the bathroom because two girls are having a deep conversation in the one stall.
Do not take deep breaths when passing the fountains.
Do not go inside the palace.
Do not become overwhelmed. Stay calm and take deep breath even though people teem past and tourguides wave sticks and umbrellas in the air to guide their specific gaggle of camera toting, ever flashing Japanese tourists.
Do not let the palace ruin your day. Go on a boat on the canal and try to row and enjoy it and don't run into other boats.
I went on a great food tour today. We walked through Les Halles and had delicious cheese and rum baba and good wine. Afterwards, I just wanted to pick up the phone and call someone, smile through the phone. But my phone doesn't work internationally, so I just walked through the rain.
And that's ok.
Paris is a bittersweet city.
What happened last Friday
so we were gonna go to this jazz club and dance we take the tram and I’m still weirded out because this guy in my program had just tried to convert me to catholicism some crazyness i just came for coffee, after lunch. not a proselytizing experience so i’m weirded out on the tram going to jazz whatever with these girls who are flaky and granola and go hiking and aspire to look like the Andrews sisters which is cool, i guess we get off at the last stop and walk along the river but then the sidewalk we’re walking along runs out and we’re in the median in a highway like, a freeway so we run across the street and end up on the border of a construction site and we’re walking along, lost. next to some cement trucks. which I don’t really care about but Lucie (this girl in my program) is freaking out about and we ask at this gas station and they direct us and we run around this weird, ghosty financial district looking for this jazz place and we find it! after being weirdly given directions by this dude outside a Japanese restaurant and we find it! but it turns out to be super swanky! like really really fancy. it has a coat check and valet parking and everything.
and they check our coats and give us this waxy prix-fixe menu. For 40e. And all the businessmen and their fancy wives stare at us while their little children eat mountainous desserts. and the granola girls eat the olives bread at our table. we’re sitting there, whispering loudly in English, they’re munching on the bread. the music is good but we couldn’t stay. so we walk out and uncheck our coats and run back to the train station because now it’s raining.
Later that day, the day we went to the market, we went to this contemporary art museum. Since it was Sunday and it was open. And I really didn't want to go because we had just gone to a museum and it took us forever to get there and most of the time museums aren't engaging. Maybe that's uncultured of me to say, but I really feel it. This exhibit, though. Wow. I loved it. I'm going to buy a poster and put it up in my room. Incredible and sizzling.
THIS IS THE BREAD I BOUGHT OH WOW IT WAS DELICIOUS
Ha! It really was, though. A fresh, gigantic, delicious loaf of bread.
Me and Lyon. Gorgeous city in the rain!
YELLOW CHICKENS for reference
The yellow chickens come to Lyon! Aah!
The story is that when I went to Oaxaca when I was...11? 12 maybe, we went to the mercados on the weekends and we'd be strolling through and there were these terribly saturated, dead yellow chickens with their feet sticking out into the aisles of the mercado. They scared me like no other.
These chickens aren't as scary, but uyy. Never seen dead, plucked chickens with their heads on before.
The market in Lyon, continued.
This was my Lyonnaise dinner! The first one is the appetizer, which is a mixture of offal. There's some snout in there, which was actually delicious with the bread they gave me, some sort of sausage and lentils. The second picture is my dinner, sausage made out of some sort of innards in this incredible sauce. It was warm--seemed fresh out of the oven in the little dutch oven. So good. The third picture is of the potatoes which were also incredible. Beyond incredible. Then, there's the unimaginable apple compote. It was buttery and intersting in texture and yummmm. Finally, the chocolate dessert.
This is the kind of food I love. And hopefully, I'm learning to like offal. Slowly and with bread.
French countryside from Paris to Lyon