Fall break in Paris.

I have to say thank you so much to the Hindmans for having Carolyn and I in Paris. October 26 is Nationalfeiertag, a national holiday in Austria, and that meant...the beginning of Fall Break! Needless to say, my friend Carolyn, another T.A. living in Eisenstadt, and I took off Wednesday night. It was a crazy long journey there - I packed the night before and left my suitcase at the front door, left the house at 7am, like usual, got home from work at 3pm, grabbed my suitcase and ran to catch the next bus to Vienna. Because of this holiday, the bus, which normally takes about an hour, was taking about two hours and so Carolyn and I jumped out into the traffic and ran to the nearest metro as soon as we could. Our bus to Paris was leaving from another end of the city at 7:30pm. The best part of the day was seeing Navid and Babsi, former Vienna Monarchs LAX teammates who came to see me off.

The bus to Paris took about 18 hours. Yeah, that was real fun.

Actually, the excitement of the vacation lessened the pain quite a bit.

Because the Hindmans were in the U.S. for the weekend, Carolyn and I had the apartment to ourselves. This long weekend can best be summed up as: wine, cheese, shopping, morning runs to the Eiffel Tower, Lost (the T.V. show, we pretty much embarassed ourselves by showing up every night and inevitably became friends with the guy at the video store who insisted we learn French), long walks ALL over the city (we seriously walked from one end to the other in search of an interesting museum, the line at the Pompidou was ridiculously long and the Fashion Museum was temporarily closed, as was the Museum of Fakes), Champs Elysees, Rue Rivoli, Latin Quater, St. Germain, French television.

In the words of my friend Ludwig (who apparently made fun of me while I was away (happy birthday Ludwig!)), it's hard being an international fashion icon.

When the Hindmans got back from the U.S. (and Carolyn left to meet up with French boyfriend of two years), I really felt spoiled: homemade paella and macaronis, movies, the movie Scoop on the Champs Elysees, the Catacombs for Halloween, walks along the old above-ground Metro line, a walk through Pere Lachaise for All Saints Day, out to dinner (where I tried chicken giblets and warm goat cheese - both great - and had salmon salad and duck for dinner), a walk along the canal, a side trip to Normandy to meet friends of theirs (the same family I met at the chalet in Mont Blanc).

No complaints for now. This is the life. Now, back to lesson plans.

P.S. new phone number. from the U.S., dial: 011.43.699.81373884. long story. call or write!