WHAT'S NEXT?
It's a big week ahead. I have my first cooking class on Thursday! We're going to meet at the big outdoor market at the Bastille, on the right bank of the Seine. The menu isn't planned yet, so we'll see what La Chef has in mind on the day itself. I'll be chopping and dicing and doing dishes, and afterward, I'm invited to help with some socializing. I think La Chef likes me; she's started to call me "ma chere," which is quite an endearment.

In the meantime, the French national railroad is on strike tomorrow, which is, of course, the day we're supposed to head to Romans on the fast TGV to buy luxury shoes at the various discount shops in the town. We trekked over to the big Montparnasse railroad station this morning to see if we could find out if our train will be cancelled or not (two out of three trains will, in fact, be running; they just don't tell you which ones). The young blond man who helped us at the station was very handsome and bestowed his winning smile quite liberally. So, though the information he shared was mostly vague, we felt attended to. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

This afternoon, I'm dragging my father to the Luxembourg gardens to make a short film with my new digital camera. He doesn't like cities, he doesn't like crowds, and yet, he loves Paris and the crowds who gather every day at the park. He's been coming here for more than forty years, and when he dies, he says he expects us to scatter his ashes in the park. I want to get him to talk on film about his love for the park. We'll laugh as we watch it while he's alive, and we'll weep after his ashes have settled into the garden soil.