Dance yo' pants off

What a weekend this has been! I finished Catch-22 on Friday, and have been reading Founding Brothers (putting my page total for this week over 1200, which I feel pretty good about). The red light also went off on Saturday, so that was happy and I got my laundry done. No more hand washing in the sink! Horay!

So, on Friday we did a walk (for the walks class), going through the old swampy portion of Paris (until they drained it and built a bunch of stuff on it) on the North side of the river Seine. We went to a few museums this time, including the Cognacq-Jay Museum and the Picasso Museum.

The Cognacq-Jay was interesting. Cognacq and his wife, (maiden name, Jay) collected art from 17^th and 18^th century France, and when they died the bequeathed it to the museum they had made. It was free to get in. I think my favorite thing about it was the one and two feet tall statues, which were done in renaissance style. Maybe that would be more realistic than getting life-sized

I felt like the Picasso museum was well designed. I was looking for some sort of cohesion to it, but it was super crazy. The room numbering was messed up, went out of order and in the wrong direction. There were some doors so small I had to crouch down to go through, and the halls certainly were not straight. Then I gave up with looking for order, and when I did I really enjoyed it.

So, we have the funniest shower. Picture above. Several key things to note about the tub.

1) Water heater the size of a large punch bowl (not shown here). We were asked to turn on the water, rinse, turn off the water, soap up, wash hair, etc, then rinse off.

2) No curtain.

3) Small hose. (Not shown is the single pound of pressure with which the water drips out of it—I hate to say falls, because that implies things like waterfalls and whatnot, with crashing, cascading water plunging into the basin below. That would be a severe misrepresentation of what’s going on here)

4) Ambient house temperature of about eight degrees Celsius (that’s about 46 degrees F in case you’re interested. Not quite t-shirt weather in Colorado, seeing as I usually wait till it breaks 50, but maybe in Alaska it would be…)

I could certainly go into more detail, but let’s just say it’s an adventure every morning. Lots of fun.

We’re going to Valencia (in Spain, and it was in my mission but I never served there) next week, which is really exciting. I’ve got a big list of stuff that I totally want to eat while I’m there, and I’m excited to be able to speak Spanish again. I watched Gattaca in Spanish today to commemorate the event. I figure it will also help me get jump started into Spanish again. They even spoke with the zeta Espanola. Props to whoever did the dubbing. J

We went to the city of Versailles to church today (our host family went to some branch out somewhere else and we’re not clear on how to get to our assigned ward without them driving us), and we got to walk to the train station. We left at 7:00am to make our 7:53am train, and made it without having to amputate any appendages, but I was almost unable to speak from the froid (cold—you know how your face kinda freezes and it’s tough to talk?). In the elder’s quorum class, one of the missionaries came up to me and thought I was French because I bought a French suit last week and I had a beautiful tie on, tied in a Spanish knot. I really like the new suit, it’s tied for my favorite suit I’ve ever owned. Sorry, Dad, it’s black, I know how much you don’t like black suits. I did get a black tie to go with it, but I need something super formal, right?

There was a dance on Friday night for the Versailles ward, which was pretty fun. I haven’t been to a dance since preference of my sophomore year, about 4 years ago. I didn’t really remember how to dance, but I don’t think I ever really knew, so I had fun making a fool of myself. I am pretty sure that I overheard one of the girls who actually knew how to dance poking fun of my footwork, so I tried to make it even more goofy. :-P

There was another on Saturday night for all of the Paris area YSAs. There were probably a hundred or more people there last night (Saturday), but I’m pretty bad at estimating how many people are in a given location, so I might be way off. I stayed up too late reading Catch 22, though, so I was pretty tired by the end of the evening. Well, that’s enough for today.

Life is beautiful!

Jeff