Days since last round up: 25-30
Best bit of vocab: faire le pont (literally to ‘make the bridge’ - refers to a very specific case of taking a holiday on a Friday following a Thursday bank holiday in order to make a long weekend)
Language progress: confidence in everyday interactions has definitely improved, still very difficult to tell if I’m actually improving grammatically for more complex contexts, but who has time for grammar when Paris is opening up!
Reading: Gigi by Colette
Weather: glorious sunshine
The weekly round up has become a monthly round up, not because of any frantic busy-ness, if anything the opposite. That is, until the middle of last week, the all-important 19th May when terrasses (the equivalent of outdoor eating and drinking spaces), and cultural spaces were scheduled to open. Until then, my little routine had been quietly ticking along, and it really did feel like a bit of a mini explosion when I left my apartment around midday on Wednesday, to walk across what felt like an entirely new 9th arrondissement. Obviously the fact that the terrasses are the only option for restaurants to return to almost normal business means that they’re even busier and bigger than usual, but the Parisian post-work apéro culture really is real, and it’s given the neighbourhood a new buzz during my evening walk home.
It’s also been crazy to see the cultural scene open up again after so long, especially as I hadn’t been counting on being able to visit museums and galleries before I left, and now it’s going to require some efficient planning to get them all in before I leave. I’ll be doing individual posts about some of the bigger cultural attractions, but a highlight for this week was the Institut du Monde Arabe, where we went to see an exhibition called ‘Divas’, covering female stars of music and cinema in North Africa between the 1920s and the 1970s. An immersive and engaging presentation made it a really fun visit, and the women featured were genuinely inspirational.
Since my last round up, I finished off all my Sorbonne assigments, which feels like the distant past now, and am free to just work through some of my own reading and make the most of Paris for my final 5ish weeks. I’ve also been firming up summer plans, so have a finalised date to move to Nice at the end of June. Things with the family are as routine as ever, if anything a little repetitive, and so the gradual opening up has brought a nice bit of variety. The favourite finds are coming in thick and fast, especially now with the added dimension of being able to actually enjoy sitting in (or rather outside) a restaurant.
I still miss home and Oxford a lot, mostly the people, and so it’s been especially nice these last two weeks having a friend from high school/Oxford visiting Paris and being able to do some of the sights with a familiar face. As well as some fabulous vegan terrasses, and some more traditional brasseries for drinks, highlights have included a picnic at Parc de Vilette, a visit to Château de Versailles, as well as a series of solo lunches enjoying the chance to sit, read, and watch people go by. With the bank holiday Ascension weekend I even had a little more time off than usual (the Thursday is férié, and it’s very common to ‘faire le pont’ (see above), and make a weekend of it, so the family headed to their second house in Brittany, while I went to visit my old host family just near Montargis, for the second time since being here, which was epsically nice as they are a bit like a second family.
It looks like the weather is here to stay, and the success of this reopening has inspired me with a fair bit of hope for what’s to come. Who knows if the French government will stick to the next stage in their proposed plan, but that’s one to worry about in a few weeks. There’s still lots, and now a lot more, to do in Paris, and now in a limited number of weeks, so I think it will be a bit of a swing from one extreme to the other, but I’m so delighted to finally feel like I can make the most of everything Paris has to offer.