So I’m off to Saint-Malo tomorrow. Here’s the itinerary:

July 1st-6th: Saint-Malo with parents
6th-7th: Paris with parents
7th: leave for Madrid, meet up with Malavika and Ana, stay at Ana’s
8th: leave for Tanger
9th: leave for Fes, stay with Linda’s old roommates
10th: drive to Casablanca
11th: drive to Essaouira
12th: drive to Marrakech
16th: fly to Paris, train to Reims

Internet access may be spotty.

All the Erasmus kids are leaving. Or they leave this week while I’m in Saint-Malo. When I come back I’ll have two weeks left here to hang out with Linda and whoever else is still around, pack up, close accounts, etc. Then I’m spending August 1st to 7th in Paris, I believe.

to listen to a ridiculous (and awesome) song made by my Cork host and her friends go here. It’s apparently rising fast in the reverbnation charts. Do a good deed and give it a listen!

In other news, the electricity on our block was cut today, probably by the massive travaux in the streets. Apparently the EDF is working on it. In the meantime I’m using up my free hour in the mediateque.

1) My birthday was last Thursday. Doris and Linda dropped by bearing gifts around 5 and we had a mini celebration. Then I went to orchestra rehearsal. I received pretty much constant facebook messages and gifts all day which is nice because most people can’t really call me.
2) Saturday morning I got up at 6:30 to go to my (finally) last day of work. I watched the students take the TOIEC. It was nice to see them one last time but also sad. Then my boss and her husband took me out for lunch which was also nice, but I expect to see them at least one more time before leaving for good.
3) My orchestra played a concert at the fête de la musique (which was also Saturday) in the courtyard of the Musée des Beaux Arts. It was really nice. There were a lot of people–all the chairs were filled and apparently the official count of people who came to watch for even a little while was 1200. It was odd too though because we could hear all the music going on in the neighborhood.
4) Afterward I joined Sandra and some French girls and we wandered. The streets were packed full of people and we had to stop about every minute because one of us would run into someone we knew. I saw lots of my second years out and forgot that I had my camera with me so I didn’t get any pictures of them. =( We walked down the Place D’Erlon, past the theatre to the Place du Forum and I took a few pictures but my camera is fairly useless at night. Heres’s few crummy ones just to try to show you how packed the streets were:

And then I stepped on a piece of glass and cut my foot open. It’s okay though, it was a pretty small piece of glass and the cut is really small. The French girls found a policeman who called the Croix Rouge who pulled up about 20 minutes later in a van, put some brown antiseptic stuff on it, and had me sign a form saying I didn’t want to go to the hospital. There was mostly just a lot of blood and I can’t yet put my full weight on it.

It was my first fête de la musique in France and I really really liked it.

5) On Sunday Linda came over around 4:30 to start setting up for the party. We knew that my friends wouldn’t be here till later because of the Spain-Italy game. A few people came early and we turned the game on toward the very end, just in time to see Spain win. In the end a few people stuck around playing I Never till 6 am. It was funny to be at a party (granted, it was the day after the solstice) where we watched the sun go down and then come back up. Doris took lots of pictures and she brought me and Linda roses.

6) The orchestra played another concert tonight, the last of the year, and we went out for drinks after. I may see a few of these people again in July though since there is a wedding that needs musicians.

So most of the Erasmus students are leaving Friday. I saw one of my favorite students for the last time at the party last night and I was fairly sad about it. There is supposed to be a party Thursday night, and I’m supposed to hang out one last time with a few other people. Then I leave on the 1st for St Malo! And the soldes start Wednesday! Of course I am going to wait for my paycheck to buy anything.

That’s pretty much me these days.

The ups:
1) I keep meeting really cool people. I had a long conversation with this Colombian friend of Spanish Ana’s last night, who’s doing Erasmus Mundus here and studies education administration. We ran into some more Colombians at the salsa bar last night and they were really friendly. Hope to hang out before I leave.
2) Considering a trip to see my Italian neighbor Francesca in/around Milan in late July. There’s a great SNCF promo to Turin right now and it would only cost 30 euros Paris-Turin.
3) Finally some good weather here.
4) Birthday tomorrow.
5) Good visit from parents.
6) Getting more excited about starting up school again. I can’t imagining doing grad school right after graduating. I think I’ve chosen the perfect time to go back to studying.

The downs:
1) Want time to slow down. Is weird meeting cool people just at the end.
3) Miss my students already.
4) Out of money! How do I do it every month? I was good actually until I went to Ireland and Poland. Since then I’ve been broke at/before the end of every month. I get extra pay at the end of this month that I was hoping to use to pay off my plane ticket home. Looks like I might have to hold onto some of it to get through July (Morocco and possibly Milan). So I want badly for June 27th to arrive so that I’ll be paid, but on the other hand I don’t want it to arrive because it’ll bring me that much closer to leaving.

Just finished the first season of Six Feet Under from the mediatheque. Only problem with renting from them is that you never know what’s going to be there since they only have one copy of everything and you can keep each DVD for three weeks. Still, not complaining.

with the parents.

Ran into this today while we were on our way back from the Jardin de Luxembourg.

Well I called Emily last night and she talked me down from my momentary panic. The long and short of it is that it’s so complicated to stay in France as an American that I think it is important to have a degree that’s valuable in the U.S. and I think an American masters is more valuable than a French one in that respect. And if it turns out I need a French masters to do what I want to in France, then I can always come back and get one here after.

In the meantime I’m doing research on ways for graduate students to come temporarily to France. Here’s what I’ve found that looks promising:

Internships in Francophone Europe has a promising-looking masters-with-internship program.
The Partner University Fund looks promising too but much more complicated and applications for the following year are due in December. Hrm.

Any other ideas out there?

I spent an excellent weekend (just wrote passed instead of spent there, durr) in and around Paris from Friday to Sunday. I finally went to Versailles, guided by a Frenchman, which is as far as I can tell one of the best ways to travel. Anyway we managed to be there for the eaux musicales which were very cool. It’s a bit sad to imagine seeing Versailles without them, actually.

So besides that, I spent the weekend at Unnamed Frenchman’s grandparents, and I ate several of the strawberries they grow. Among other things, we watched Scrubs (in French) and I gave away important bits of storyline before I should have (a habit of mine really), and he told me that apparently many of my students thought I was a lesbian because I’m married to a girl on facebook.

In other news, I’m in that limbo time where there’s not much to do since I’m done teaching. I have only one more exam to observe and it’s two weeks away. My parents will be here this weekend which will be nice. Linda and I are more or less planning a birthday party which we’re trying to squeeze in before all the Erasmus students leave. I’m still looking for an apartment in Austin because the one I’ve found seems to have fallen through.

And I’m wondering if it might have been more sensible in the end just to do a masters in France. The reasons to do it in the U.S. were because 1) I had so carefully planned out the schools I was applying to 2) I generally think the programs are better and 3) I’m not sure how I’d fare in a French masters program. All three of these reasons are good. But being a student does seem one of the easiest ways to stay in France…so why didn’t I think to take advantage?

Anyway it’s a silly, pointless what-if. I’ll find cool ways of coming back as often as possible. I’m already planning to apply to work here next summer. It’s a July-August camp so I think I could come to France for June to visit everyone before starting. It is a good excuse to come back to France but I am actually interested in programs like this so it’s not really a cop-out.

Namely, Ana. Jessi and I saw her off at the train station a few hours ago. But have been hanging out with them and the Erasmus students a lot lately (L and D were in Hungary) so have seen some of the Erasmus crowd leave too. It’s weird getting to know them right at the end of the year. Anyway it is a bit like being on permanent vacation and I’m getting in the rut of lazying around so much that I don’t do the few things I need to get done. Today I am trying to be productive. I can’t really complain though. And I am so glad I’m not leaving for another two months. Ana and Jessi (who is leaving Thursday) have been talking about being ready to go back and I am fighting a rising sense of panic at the thought. Last year at this time I was already home! And I was very sad. I have to keep reminding myself that this return won’t be like last year’s.

Even if I didn’t have all that much important stuff on my computer. Mostly it’s the photos I’m worried about–trying to figure out how to get them back from snapfish (there’s an option to pay for hi-res copies of photos, and even for all of them it would only cost $50, but I can’t get it to work!). I didn’t realize how attached I am to my photos! There were 1075 on my computer when it died. Anyway I’m also going back through all of my e-mails from the last two years (since I switched to gmail) and organizing THAT. It’s a weird, weird project. Mostly I miss my photos and am trying not to freak out about that. Sigh. Nothing much else is going on in my life.