Les vacances!

It’s a very strange feeling to be preparing to go on vacation away from Paris – who does that?! Despite the whirlwind adventure ahead, I’m pretty ambivalent about leaving the city right now. In the last few days, every tree in Paris sprouted a full set of leaves and every park (like the one where I’m sitting now – every one has free Wifi!) is overflowing with heavy pink blossoms. Although I have been penned up in libraries working on my JP, which is incredibly difficult under these circumstances, I did make it out last night with CUPA to see The Winter’s Tale – in French. Although there were some great scenes, mostly the one involving people in sheep costumes, the fake Romanian accents struck a bit of a wrong note. More importantly, Shakespeare really loses something in translation: it French it was a rather nice play with a decent but not overwhelmingly original story. In any event, my friend Caroline from Princeton, who is studying abroad at Oxford this semester, came and spent the night last night and left this morning. My art history class met today at the Musée d’Orsay to look at some of the Courbet, Millet, Corot, etc. that we’ve been studying – there is also a huge Manet retrospective at the moment, but we unfortunately have to go back later for that.

Now I am prepping for my epic country-hopping spring break. Here’s my itinerary, since I’m not sure how often I’ll get to post, if at all, during the trip itself.

April 7-10 Madrid
April 11-13 Krakow
April 14-15 Vienna
April 16-17 Braunschweig, Germany
April 18-20 Back in Paris! Writing that JP…
April 21-24 Normandy with mom and dad

I’m trying not to remember that I only have one week left when I get back, mostly filled with JPs, final papers, and exposés!