Paris picnic

Yesterday my friends from classes at the Sorbonne and I went and had a picnic on the Champs de Mars underneath next to the Eiffel Tower, celebrating the first real flush of spring.  I'm pretty sure I got sunburned (that never, ever happens in March!) so next time I'll have to remember sunscreen!
I felt a little like a tourist, but mostly just really cool and excited.... the best part is that we plan on picnicking more often!
Do you guys like picnics?  What would you bring to them?  Have you ever had a picnic in Paris?  These two product roundups by Design*Sponge remind me of picnics in New England with my family (when I was very small we used to go over to the Old North Bridge but quickly changed over to Great Meadows when it turned out that everyone liked it better).  For a picnic in Paris, I would recommend strawberries (we had some) and champagne (we didn't) or homemade salsa and crisps?  What do you think?

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Today one of my best friends turns nineteen.  Or, in his words, "It's true!  Tomorrow I will be 1 day older than I am today.  OH MAN."  (he said that yesterday)
But even if he doesn't care, I do!  Yay, Mike!  You're nineteen and old now and I miss you like crazy.
Thank you for, oh, Christ, everything.  For helping me with math and chemistry, for letting me sleep on your shoulder when we used to take the eleven-oh-six train back from Concord, for letting me spend the night at your house when I had the Bio AP the next day and the train wouldn't get me to school on time, for driving me everywhere, for chocolate on my birthday (for coming to my house on my birthday!), for long late-night talks and long middle-of-the-day talks, for basically everything.  You and Sophie are basically my most important non-family people, and I'm sorry that I can't be home to come and ambush you with hugs at MIT for your birthday.  It's okay, though, because I will ambush you with both hugs and presents when I return, I promise.
In the mean time, enjoy your lovely birthday, visit your sister and then come take the train to visit me, and have a wonderful, wonderful day and so many months until I'm home.  In your immortal words, "I really care about you a lot."  <-- (means I love you but you don't have to say it)
Happy Birthday!
Love,
Bronwyn

Ready for Spring (also, weekend)

Today Paris is overcast and a little chilly - can I just say that this is the kind of weather we have at the end of April and here they get it in mid-March?  How is that fair?  But anyways, in the Jardin du Luxembourg you can see buds on trees - some of them will be mauve-tinged white flowers and some of them will be leaves - and on Saturday we all went to the Bird and Flower Market, which I had never been to and was absolutely amazing.
You can wander the maze-like greenhouses from little shop to shop, looking at their white climbing clematis (I had thought for weeks that they were forcing jasmine, but no - it's clematis, and now I really want some for our balcony) and the ubiquitous topiaries, the birdcages hanging from the ceilings and the plastic pots of tea roses waiting to be put in the ground.  We almost bought some, and then realized that we live above a flower shop and it would take some serious effort to lug a potted clematis bigger than I am home from Ile Saint-Louis to the fourteenth.
At home, my mother takes gardening seriously.  Our front garden is a cacophony of peonies and foxglove and salvia and hollyhocks and delphiniums and roses and clematis and mock orange and a lot of other things I can't name.  There are always the plants I know and love - "Caleb's" rose, the gorgeous old-fashioned one that smells like heaven and is actually just coated in thorns, the mock orange that I spent a while persuading my parents to get, the dogwood we planted a couple years back, the anemones that live in the shade of the Norway maple, the rambling sweet autumn clematis that blooms late in the season.  That's one thing about being in Paris - I miss our garden, and that one week in Boston where all the trees bloom.  If you happen to be there for that week (I would expect it in maybe April or early May) I highly suggest a walk or a bike ride down Marlborough Street in the Back Bay.  You'll see why.

Hello Monday Morning

I'm sorry about not posting much, but all weekend and most of the week I have just been astonished by the devastation in Japan - and so soon after the Christchurch earthquake!  My heart goes out to all those affected...  Here are links to the Red Cross and MSF if you want to help.
Also if you worry about nuclear things (I wasn't alive when 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl happened, so researching them turned out to be scary and rather a surprise) you shouldn't read "On the Beach," okay?  But you should still watch "Dr Strangelove" because it's one of the most interesting films out there.
Speaking of films, my family and I were talking yesterday about how we don't watch enough movies.  Seriously, I've not seen any of the films that were Oscar-nominated this past year and since we got to Paris (about a month and a half ago) I haven't seen any films, either....  So we will start of our film-watching with either "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" or "The Seventh Seal."  Which would you recommend?
I hope you have a good upcoming week!

What a week

Sorry I haven't been posting much, guys!
It's just been a hell of a week with school and family and the like... I'll post more soon, promise!
Love,
Bronwyn

To Kill A Mockingbird

For her "English class" - the one that I'm vaguely teaching by giving her books to read and writing out the "how to write a great essay" checklist that one of my favourite high school teachers gave his classes - Ursula is reading To Kill A Mockingbird. And, as far as I can tell, she loves it.  It makes me somewhat proud that she'll stay up late reading that rather than her new Theodosia book (more on those later - they're also pretty amazing), that she was so upset that she almost cried at the end of the trial scene, and that she can look at me and say "Atticus is kind of like Daddy, you know?"  Which makes me want to go "yes, yes, yes, Atticus is kind of like Daddy, I absolutely agree," but I digress.
Have you ever read To Kill A Mockingbird?  Did you like it?  I think that at her age - eleven-almost-twelve - she's getting to it at an age where she'll understand it but it will also change the way she thinks.  I remember reading it at her age and feeling like my whole world had opened up.  Did you feel this way when you read it?  Let me know!
On an unrelated note, yesterday was an amazing day.  Not only did we make it to the Chanel show - we also watched the Barcelona-Arsenal game and Barcelona won!

Chanel

This morning my siblings and I got all dressed up and went over to the Grand Palais for the Chanel show.  We didn't get to go in, but even outside, it's quite a scene!  People (yes, we were doing this too) just stand around and wait to be photographed.  It works surprisingly well.....
Caleb got a picture of Grace Coddington and Ursula and I had our pictures taken.
Have you ever been to a fashion show?  Have you ever stood outside one?  What was it like?