Little notes...

1. French fashion among the youth, as observed by me. Boys are really into "Official U.S. Marshal" sweatshirts and college gear from UCLA or Franklin and Marshall, the latter of which is apparently marketed by an Italian designer. Girls wear tights, heels, and scarves for all occasions. Girls hair is usually like long and faux-messy.

2. Children don't know how to be silly in English class. My lesson for this week was for students to bring up life problems and ask the class for good, bad, and ugly (the worst) advice. All of them took it so seriously! No creativity! The only smile I got was a girl's problem being "I'm too blond," but the advice was run-of-the-mill "Dye it, don't dye it, go more blonde." Boo!

3. Tiramisus are time-consuming. For his birthday, PA wanted my tiramisu but without the coffee liqueur flavoring--so basically creamy goo on lady fingers with chocolate shavings on top. It took over an hour to make, but it is super creamy due to the whole French milk I had to use ;)

My homemade tiramisu with chocolate shavings on top!

PA enjoyed his birthday gift :)

 4. My friend Allison is wise. This is an excerpt from her blog:
The right way for you to live simply might indeed be to trim down purchases and go through all that stuff lying around. Or maybe it’s deciding to buy fair trade foods and clothing. Perhaps, though, it doesn’t even have to do with money at all. Thomas Kelly is again quoted, this time about simplifying the way we use our time: “Too many of us have too many irons in the fire. We get distracted by...our interest in a thousand and one good things...simplicity needs to be expressed not merely in the dress and architecture and the height of tombstones but also in...opposition to the hurried, superficial tendencies of our age.”
(I certainly have no simplification problems in France...)

5. I am going to freak out next fall when I am in school and working! I do nothing here!!! I'm only working eight hours this week--three hours cancelled and one was written wrong on my timetable so I missed it--and there is not much filling up my spare time. My fellow assistants and I discuss this all the time here, and maybe the emptiness of time is what I will end up feeling nostalgic for...