Springtime is finally showing itself in Paris. And it's official, too; my calendar says the 20th is the first day of spring.
In early March I went running for the first time since the rain and cold weather began in November. I had the first two weeks of March off, a school break that French refer to as the "February holidays," when most people take off to the Alps to ski, only this year the Paris region's break happened to be in March, not February. It felt good to stretch my legs and run freely at a time when when other runners were still at work. The flowering plum trees and forsythias had just begun to bloom as well as the daphne bushes, whose sweet perfume I breathed in ecstatically while circling the lake. It took me several days of jogging afterwards to stop feeling sore; I'm apparently very out of shape. Ever since moving to the 16th arrondissement, running up stairs and between metros is about all the exercise I get on a daily basis. The rest of the time is spent sitting in front of a computer in the office or on a bar stool somewhere playing fiddle.
It's been a long time since I've written. Work, in particular, has been keeping me very busy. In January we welcomed in a new batch of students for the spring semester and took them on a three-day trip too the south of France as a part of orientation. Many of our second-semester students often come from Scripps, and I suspect that the trip is Monique's way of lightening the shock of the Parisian winter. Though it was nearly as cold in the south as in Paris, the sky there is not covered with persistent grey clouds the way it is here and the sunlight did everyone a great deal of good. We traveled Aix-en-Provence with our history professor, Mme Moll, and from there visited the cities of Nîmes and Avignon.
In early March I went running for the first time since the rain and cold weather began in November. I had the first two weeks of March off, a school break that French refer to as the "February holidays," when most people take off to the Alps to ski, only this year the Paris region's break happened to be in March, not February. It felt good to stretch my legs and run freely at a time when when other runners were still at work. The flowering plum trees and forsythias had just begun to bloom as well as the daphne bushes, whose sweet perfume I breathed in ecstatically while circling the lake. It took me several days of jogging afterwards to stop feeling sore; I'm apparently very out of shape. Ever since moving to the 16th arrondissement, running up stairs and between metros is about all the exercise I get on a daily basis. The rest of the time is spent sitting in front of a computer in the office or on a bar stool somewhere playing fiddle.
It's been a long time since I've written. Work, in particular, has been keeping me very busy. In January we welcomed in a new batch of students for the spring semester and took them on a three-day trip too the south of France as a part of orientation. Many of our second-semester students often come from Scripps, and I suspect that the trip is Monique's way of lightening the shock of the Parisian winter. Though it was nearly as cold in the south as in Paris, the sky there is not covered with persistent grey clouds the way it is here and the sunlight did everyone a great deal of good. We traveled Aix-en-Provence with our history professor, Mme Moll, and from there visited the cities of Nîmes and Avignon.
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| Spring 2013 students in Nîmes during the 2nd semester orientation trip to the south of France in January |
I'm offically a part of the SLC Paris team now that the website is getting updated. Monique's daughter did a quick photo shoot of the three of us one afternoon during everyone's lunch break. We look relaxed, but it was really quite cold outside.
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| The Sarah Lawrence College in Paris team: Natalie, Monique, and myself posing for an updated website photo at Reid Hall |
March 8th I returned to Brittany for an Irish music festival in the little town of Le Bono, in the Morbihan (southern Brittany). The festival itself consisted of 4 days of workshops and non-stop jamming in the various restaurants and bars and even the post office. The town is so small that everything was within a 2-minutes walking distance, practically. When the bars closed around 2am, the remaining musicians moved to the post office and continued playing until around 5am each day, when the festival volunteers kicked everyone out so as to catch a few hours of sleep. I stayed in a rented apartment with Guillaume (the penny-whistler pictured below) and 2 of his friends and we skipped out on the workshops to play in jam sessions, relax, and enjoy the warmish weather all weekend. The sun came out and I even gained a few freckles playing outdoors for awhile!
It's a good thing we did, too. As soon as we reached Paris Sunday night the temperature dropped and it began to snow. We had a good 6 inches, I'd say, before the sun came out again 2 days later and it all melted away. Hopefully, we've seen the last of ice and snow until next year...
Happy Spring!
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| Jamming at Le Bono Winter School Irish festival in Brittany, March 8-10th |
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| A very nice session |
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| The lovely port at the town of Le Bono |
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| Boats in Le Bono's port |
