Since it's been a while since I last wrote, I'll keep things short and simple--i.e. not flighty, to avoid the vanity. I have been attending these things French people call 'aperos', which comes from aperitif (before-dinner drink), which aren't really related to dinner, and which turn into miniature apartment parties either before going to a bar/club or in lieu of that. What's nice about them is how informal they are, and the fact that they have given me an opportunity to speak lots of French with people my age (and to observe how my French gets better, then worse, then waaaay better--according probably to me and only me--as the night progresses). That's one thing that's been happening.
Also, my parents came to visit! They arrived the day before Christmas and stayed until New Years eve. One of the best things about their trip was the opportunity we all had to stay in my landlord's place, who let them stay for free while he and his family vacationed in Tunisia. So we set up in a very French home-away-from-home and had a great time. As the three of us tend, we walked masochistic distances and time-periods and always turned in at night with rolling eyes and saying, 'let's not do it like that tomorrow', but of course we did. We hit all the big places--the Champs-Élysées plus Christmas market, the Eiffel tower and the area around it, the Louvre, the Chateau at Versailles--as well as other areas like the Marais and the left bank from the Jardin des Plantes to down Boulevard St. Germain via about everything else. I encourage all who can to ask them for details and pictures. As for me, it was nice having them here both so I could show them the city I have gotten to know pretty well and so that I could reconnect with something deep-rooted after a rather fugue-ish few months. As with most vacations, I probably most enjoyed the space it gave for chatting with the parents while en route to some place or other.
What else is new and noteworthy? The winter is really here, it's snowed several times (kind of rare for Paris tout à fait), and I'm kind of getting OK with not going outside much, or going outside to get inside again in the most direct way possible. No winter blues yet, though those of you who have lived in cold places will probably gather a kind of perverse and infinitely unnerving self-satisfaction from telling me that, 'well, it's not REALLY winter in Paris after all, (i.e. why did you even start talking in the first place?).' To this, I don't care to stress a response. This said, it is pretty amusing to see how much people here seem really panicked when the weather gets bad or cold, and I got unanimous 'chapeau's at school the other day for actually showing up on a snow day. I of course accepted the compliments while noting that bad weather is a perfectly good excuse for me not to show up to work.
So to fight staying inside, I've started to take little 1.5 hour French lessons every week with an old woman who is very friendly. I still use the formal 'vous' form with her, which is good practice more than anything. I'm going on my third week, and the program is we meet and talk about a text from a newspaper that came out over the past week, then we talk about vocabulary words I have come across that I want to work on, then we discuss and edit something I've written (still yet to do this one, see above reasons for hesitation), and finally we work on grammar. It's money and time well spent, and I think it gives me just enough structure to make significant leaps in my French, rather than the kind of functionality-improvements that I've seen so far. Learning a new language is one of the strangest experiences but most rewarding experiences of my life so far, and I think that everyone can hugely benefit from those strange moments when you understand something in a new language that is untranslatable into English. Ok, I'll not get too flighty. More to come, hopefully. Thanks for staying tuned.
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