Guess what? The strike has been extended to March 18th! Who'd a thought...
On the bright side, my AYA courses have been bumped up to 3 credits a pop... 9 credits, baby! 3 shy of what I need to satisfy the Bard administration...who apparently knew nothing of the strike until yesterday when the mother of one of the girls in my program called them. Ha! I love how on top of things those guys are... I guess that means they don't care that I haven't faxed them proof of full-time-student status yet, not that I could if I wanted to (which I do!!). Hphm.
Monday sucked. And on top of Monday, the IRS had an issue with the account number I provided, which means they won't be autodepositing that check which means I won't have access to it until I get back... not that it was enough to make a huge difference in my quality of life, here, anyway. It was almost funny, though, cuz it was about the fifth piece of bad news in a row that day.
Tuesday, in contrast, was great. It was pouring. No class, but Adena and I met with our "Political Life and French Society" discussion teacher (and a few other students) in a cafe to discuss what we should do should classes start up in the middle of March. He suggested we do the work regardless, 10 page paper due March 31 included, oral presentation preparation included, although we'd have to do all of the research on our own since class is not happening. Awesome! I love researching unfamiliar subjects in foreign languages when I have no library access because the administration hasn't printed my student ID card yet... Heck, Adena doesn't even have the 105 pages double sided reading packet yet. The prof suggested she photocopy mine. He also said they may have to turn the two "review" classes into actual classes, extending my semester here by two mandatory weeks, oh, and they may take away vacation time. He did pay for our coffees, though, which was nice of him. I realize that sounds much less great that I made it appear it would be... the great part came next:
Since we didn't have class until Cinema at 4, we decided to go to a museum... then realized it was Tuesday and nothing we knew was open. Instead, I suggested we go to the Cinematheque at Bercy to see some 5 euro films. Turns out that was closed, too. We did find an organic make-your-own-sandwich shop which was delicious... and by the time we'd finished it had stopped raining and we tried to come up with something else to do. On a whim we decided to tour the Bercy gardens and fell absolutely in love with no exaggeration. I need to go back when it's in full bloom to get pictures... I kept kicking myself for not having my camera. First off, it was green, and there were flowers already (whaaaat? it's the beginning of March!), planted in carefully crafted waves leading up to an ivy-covered hobbit-like dome. Inside the dome was a semicircle bench around a concave tiled pool, into which dripped water a single drop at a time. Sun enters through a hole in the roof and glitters on the wet tiles that shimmer with each drop. The rest of the garden was equally amazing and "whaat?": There's a set of 20+ rectangles and a sign that indicates which of 60 (yeah, 60) species of rose grow in each rectangle. Also, there're these trellis-gates covered in flowering vines that flank a shallow cement pool. And there were curious greenhouses scattered around, one of which contained giant potted orange and palm trees. Adena was ecstatic, "They took southern California, and they put it in a box!... Why can't I get into the box??"
After touring the garden, we crossed this awesome bridge to get to the Bibliotheque Nationale and saw the Globe exhibit, basically two 8 m tall globeswith artistic representations of the Earth and sky as they knew it back in 16??... Upon exiting the library I realized what Adena meant by "sunken garden" -- basically a small forest growing at least 10 stories below street level. From above ground, it kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park, ancient-looking trees growing out of a gray cage of cement and steel... no raptors, thankfully. It took us a good 1/2 hr to successfully navigate the RER C station, but found the right platform on our fourth try. This wouldn't have been so embarrassing if the platforms didn't all run parallel on the same level. Basically, the same people waiting for their train got to see us come up to one platform, go down, come up on the next furthest platform, go down, come up... etc. I was gonna take a nap when I got back, but I walked in the door and my host mother said, "I'm baking a cake, does that interest you?" I think I love cake more than sleep. That's probably not healthy.
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