Days since last round up: 21
Best bit of vocab: des bribes (snippets, snatches)
Reading: Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement by Assia Djebar
Weather: sunny but a bit chilly
The bi-weekly round-up has slipped a little, partly because I’m getting to that stage of settled-in-ness where there is not much new to report, but also because the last few weeks have been a little hectic. After my last post about the regional semi-lockdown, the French Government continued with their hokey-cokey COVID strategy (in, out, in, out of confinement and we might as well shake it all about because the Parisians pretty much carry on with their lives as before, restrictions or no), and announced a nation-wide lockdown which this time, horror of horrors for an au pair, included schools closing for an extra week before the upcoming holidays. There was an awful lot of suspense around Macron’s 8pm speech, and the family even talked about setting off that evening for the house in Brittany if he announced a full-blown lockdown, but everything calmed down a bit when Macron granted a few days’ grace period to move within France.
Originally, the plan was for everyone to head to the house in Brittany, where there’s far more space for the kids to do school online, but upon reflection the mum decided that it might be a bit difficult logistically to have one extra person doing classes online, and so we decided that I would join them a week later, once the kids were on holiday. This meant a week to myself in Paris, which was a nice break and a good chance to get ahead on some work, but is probably the longest I’d want to stay on my own for. I did the usual daily walks, navigating easily around certain parts of the city now, and had a bit of a mission to check out as many libraries as possible. The Sorbonne has various libraries and campuses across the city but because a lot of the pretty ones are around the 5th and 6th arrondissements, it’s not always worth the hour walk or 30 minute metro there and back on a day where I’m working at 4.30pm, so this week was the perfect opportunity to suss them. Some of the older ones like the Michelet library, just next to the Jardins de Luxembourg are really gorgeous and remind of Oxford, others are a bit more campus-like but very suited to purpose, bright, airy, and relatively aesthetic in a modern kind of way.
The extension of curfew to 7pm (apparently to account for the extra hour of sunlight after the clocks going forward - see above on the hokey-cokey approach) meant that I could take my time walking back in the evenings; the weather was generally lovely and the walk from the Latin Quarter across the river and up through the 2nd and 3rd into the 9th is really lovely, and covers some of the best bits of Paris. A few (outdoor) get-togethers towards the end of the week made me feel a bit sad to be leaving Paris, but I was quite happy to be joining the family again.
The pace of life is very different here in Brittany, everything is very relaxed, the weather is gorgeous, there’s a big garden, and I still have plenty of independence. There are some nice woodland walks nearby, which makes a change from Paris, and the surrounding area feels quite different to when we were here in February, when it was a bit bleak and cold. My hours haven’t changed from what I’d normally do in Paris, so I can crack on with uni stuff during the day, and then get to take the kids to the beach in the afternoon, which has been really fun. Four kids in one house isn’t exactly quiet, and they tend to flag a bit more towards the end of the day because of how much they’re running around outdoors here, which can lead to some spectacular tantrums, but generally they’re very well-behaved, the mum is amazing at keeping things under control, and we’re getting into a nice rhythm.
We’ve got just under a week left here before we’re heading back to Paris, and it remains to be seen what the French government will pull out of the bag for the rentrée. As I edge into the second half of my stay here, it is beginning to feel more like the end than the beginning, at least one the Sorbonne side of things - I’ve got two weeks of holiday coming up, before a few more weeks of classes, and then we’re in the exam period. Part of me is waiting to come home so I can see friends and family, and I’m definitely missing Oxford, but I think that’s all quite natural given the circumstances, and it’s not necessarily that I’d rather be there, as that it will be so good to see everyone when I do finally come home. I’m starting to have a look at what I might do over the summer, but that still feels a bit of a way off yet. France doesn’t have quite as clear a plan for coming out of lockdown as England does, so it’s a bit more of a guessing game as to what I’ll be able to get done before I go, but I’ve learned to keep expectations low, and if I round off my semester then have a few weeks of picnics and drinks in some aesthetic parks and days of reading in the sunshine, I’ll be perfectly content.