Goodbyeee!

So Friday morning, I'm off on the great adventure within the great adventure! I don't know how much internet access I'm going to have, so I may update from the road if I get the chance. I'll be stopping by Amsterdam and Berlin, with a quick pit stop back in Paris for Christmas, and then off to Nice and Italy. Since I'm not normally a big traveller, I'm getting pretty excited, and a little bit nervous!

Things are really winding down with school. Tomorrow I'll turn in my last paper, leaving me with just exams -- and it looks like two of them will be take-home, because I'm leaving two weeks before the real end of the semester. I meant to take pictures of Paris 8 this morning, but I had a tricky time getting motivated. (Actually, it was just one of those days. I overslept by 40 minutes and couldn't really wake up all day long, despite numerous attempts to caffeinate myself into coherence.) I'll try and remember to do so tomorrow. It is, to be honest, fairly gross, as sets of university buildings go. The battalions of cleaning people can't keep up with the muck trekked in by 24,000 Parisian students every day. Add wet cigarette butts and strange, forbidding architecture, and that's pretty much it. Classes tend to overcome the relative shabbiness of the surroundings, in any case.

Last night my host family and I went to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to see a concert of Bach and Mendelssohn piano concertos. It was fantastic. And novel, because the conductor was also the pianist! When he was busy playing, he conducted via expressive head motions.

Anyway, more coming soon!