It now falls upon me, reader

It now falls upon me, reader, to relate to you the events of the previous weekend. By which I mean that I got a new Calvino book (dirt cheap, too- it made my yesterday evening) and am feeling literary.

I really just can't seem to stay put in Lyon. Two weeks ago, it was Grenoble. Last week(end) it was Paris. And again, it's as if I was living several lives all in one weekend. This time, let's go for guidance counselor, activist, and . . . art connoisseur. A peu près.

Oh, à peu près is my new most-used French phrase. It means approximately, or "something like that", but it doesn't sound silly, like approximately does.

Let's see. I get off the train from Lyon . . . the train is a TGV: train de grande vitesse, which means that it goes 300km/h. And I'm not doing the math to make that in mph. It sounds cooler in kilometers, anyway.

And I get off the train, and go straight to this huge university fair that has a huge section to help French people study abroad. The program I'm with has a booth. The booth is at the end of the room. And so is a gigantic, near-impenatrable crowd of French people. I break through the crowd, and start explaining the US education system. The hardest was the people asking about obscure business and engineering programs:

1. No, I don't actually know whether you need to work in business before you go for an MBA, sorry.

2. Yes, in America, you don't get any degree at all until you've been in school for four years. So don't try showing up at a university after getting your Licence (three years of school). They won't know what to do with you.

After that, there was a small interlude involving macaroons being served to people who helped out at booths. And then I meet up with the friend whose family I was staying with, and we head out to the Museum of . . . Indigenous Culture, I think.

Walking down the Seine, we were just in time to catch the rescue people fishing out a soggy car they had just thrown into the river. It was a Parisian Rescuers exhibition, I think. I suppose if they'd done it in Chicago, they might not have needed to bother drowning the thing in the first place . . .

And then we saw the museum. I don't think the name was actually Indigenous Cultures. But that is the collective term for things like Native American, Oceanic, and African art, right? At any rate, the collection was very impressive. They had a lot of large scary sculptures and other cool things in there. I have to say I was a little jealous of their Native American section. Why can't we have such cool objects in our Native American sections of the museums back home? Like, clothes that look like they were actually worn, and interesting weapons and masks. All we get are badly made manequins in beaded tunics, and maybe a feather headdress. Maybe I should just get out more when I'm in the States . . .

The next day there was a Protest. Just to clarify, from a distance, a protest looks, sounds and smells like a party. There were giant balloons all clustered in a huge square. Music was playing all over- clowns with trumpets and guys with guitars on parade float things. There were a ton of stands smelling of delicious kebabs and merguez sausages that were cooking on huge round wok-like things.

I met up with a friend, and we went to the protest for lunch. The kebabs and sausages went on a small baguette. These were topped with some onion, and were absolutely amazing.

Oh, and as it happened, the protest was right up our alley. It was against some new education reform they were trying to pass in Paris that . . . caused people in the protest to wear vests with targets printed on them. So, we both got protest scarves, and I even got a protest whistle. At any rate, since we were both . . . associated with the education system in France, we even had every right to be there.

And after that, we went to an American tea shop for tea. Seriously, the place looked like someone took out a piece of Boston, and plopped it in the middle of Parisian cobblestones. And as it happened, the owner, and her brother, spoke perfect American English ("Thank you, have a nice day!" is such a very American way to say goodbye to a customer. In Paris. Wow.) Um, the English was, in fact, because the brother, at least, was from the US.

The tea at that place was very good. I got some called Monk Tea, or something. And the tea shop had lumps (lumps!) of sugar to put in it.

Oh, and my friend told me about the grafiti in Paris. Apparently, there are a handful of well established artists, and they each have complicated and interesting stories about what they do and why they do it. One guy puts up little square tiles on walls so that the colored pieces look like aliens. Another does these really awesome silhouets. Another, giraffes. I was in Paris again this weekend, and these things really are everywhere. It's fascinating.

And then it was back to the family I was staying with for dinner (mmm . . . home cooked French food!) and a train back to Lyon.