lundi 7 juillet 2008

A Mediocre Monday.

Bon soir!

So I may never get around to writing about Paris, but I did post some photos from our excursion to the Pays Basque (Basque Country), which was on Saturday.  I learned a lot, and posted fun facts in the photo captions.  One interesting thing (which I don't think I mentioned in those fun facts) is that there are seven Basque provinces, only three of which are in France (the other five are in Spain).  Bayonne is the capital of one of the French provinces.  We had a quiz on information regarding the pays Basque, and yours truly won it (you could choose your prize, and I chose an apron).  I even know the Basque word for house, "exte" (pronounced "etch").  Now that I've amazed you with my in-depth, apron-winning-worthy knowledge of the pays Basque, back to ordinary July life in Pau.

Now that the weather has turned warmer, the, um, culturally different standard for cleanliness has become pungently obvious.  Here is just one example: I got on the bus this morning, and an enormous man got on at the next stop. Approximately forty seconds after his entry, the entire bus smelled like rotten cheese.  After surviving the rest of that ride, my connecting bus was late, so I arrived at school just on time.  We had an interesting class, and learned about Le Tour de France (which will be coming through Pau on the 14th and 15th of this month).  

A note on Paris:

Steve did send me some pictures he took of our Paris trip, and of the many he took of us sleeping on the train to Versailles, this is the least embarrassing:


I took a lot of pictures (Paris V) of the new grille (gate) that was just restored at Versailles, and found a really interesting in Le Point (like our Newsweek) about it: there is a debate raging right now as to whether or not it was just a big waste of money, because it's so extravagant.  I decided to do one of my French presentations on this debate, because it is an interesting question: should a foundation use its resources to restore golden gates to dead kings' castles, or is the preserving of history a task that should wait for other times?

Marguerite.



  

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