Sunday, July 6: Rainy Sunday

It was rainy and blustery until perhaps an hour ago but I can’t complain too much. The weather was a good incentive to stay in my room and get some administrative work done. My students’ discussion posts needed grading, my email was building up, 2 meetings required agendas, and most importantly I needed to get a handle on my “official” phone. Dr. Guglielmi bought me an inexpensive phone (this one) to use during the program and it had me flummoxed. At length I got it sorted out although I still can’t text on the dang thing.

With my phone in working order I set out to scout the route for Tuesday’s field trip. We are going to see a collection of Greek vases at the Musée des Medailles, Monnaie, et Antiques, which is at the “Richelieu” site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The Richelieu site is the original BNF site, if my memory serves; they have since outgrown it (not hard as the BNF is France’s national book depository, like our Library of Congress) and moved into the “François Mitterand” site that we got to tour last year. I am excited about this field trip as I think there will be lots of good stuff to see beyond the Greek vase collection. It is easy to get to from here and it’s across from a passage with some appealing antique book stores. I know where I’ll be going once I dismiss the students from the field trip.

Tomorrow we have our weekly faculty meeting and the first of our weekly program meetings, so once I got back from my recon mission I met up with Dr. Kirk to go over the agendas. We met in the café/restaurant down the street called Paris Orléans (Vicki, Samantha, and I had lunch there last year) where I had a “Parisienne” salad that turned out to be mixed greens with whole slices of ham and Swiss cheese laid on top, plus tomato slices, hard-boiled egg, and cornichons off to the side. All served on a flat plate that was very difficult to navigate. Note to Paris Orleans: Salad is served in a bowl for a reason. Despite my baffling lunch it was a very nice meeting and we got everything squared away for tomorrow.

On my return I did the work that the meeting had generated and then talked to my beloved Daniel on Skype. We went through the mail that had come for me since I’ve been gone, so I can say I’ve done admin tasks on both sides of the Atlantic today. Finally I had done all the finagling that I could, and cabin fever was setting in, so I took a walk back down by Porte d’Orléans. Passed a boulangerie/patisserie on the return trip where I bought a small baguette and some Tunisian sweets called something like “mokhoub.” [Update: It's "mokrouth"! Here is a recipe.] This place is 2/3 traditional French items, 1/3 Middle Eastern goodies so I went for something unfamiliar. Next time I will get one of the small lemon tarts that have “CITRON” written on them in chocolate drizzle. In case you are offered one and want to know what it is? I ate several mokhoub with my dinner while watching episodes of Un Gars, Une Fille, and the sun finally came out so I took some pictures of the view out my window. The construction site is not very appealing, I will admit, but it’s better than facing onto the street because construction stops at night and traffic does not.