[Paris] Autumn, going native, and Switzerland

Pretty soon I won’t speak any language. I am loosing my facility with English now. And after only 4 days of classes!

The air is surprizingly cool and crisp with fall much sooner than I am used to. I feels like late October to me.

Going native:
As I hoped, Muriel, Juliette and I went shopping on Saturday. We each bought a top. Sunday, Juliette and I went with Mido to the flea market, but only Mido was successful (getting things for her grandchildren; she’s due to have another one on Friday). Juliette went home because her back was hurting, but I went back to Mido’s to visit more. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but she ended up giving me a bunch of clothes she says she doesn’t wear anymore. So, I have a new parisien wardrobe afterall.

I’m a little sick this afternoon, but I have had lots of water and herbal remedies and should be cured (fingers crossed).

Ten days ago, I was in Basel, Switzerland. I went, again, to see some sustainable housing developments. We saw 2. All information on the tour was in French, and I didn’t try to understand it; so, this description is based strictly on my observations.

I liked the first better, maybe just because we got to see the interior of one unit, but it isn’t particularly transit accessible. In general, it is very simple and rectangular in form. Windows have big gray sliding shutters. Porches surrounded both the front and back of building’s long side with full-length glass doors along their entire length. At the front, there is essecially an ordinary-looking apartment building. Behind it, there are 2 rows of townhouses with flat rooves divided by lush beautiful gardens. Cars park in front of most units. The interior is open and spacious. Front doors openned onto the driveway and backdoors the garden. Again, windows are full-length and porches surround the second floors. Like the apartment building, they are charcole gray and rectangular.

The second development is the color of pine wood. Like the first, it is strictly rectangular. Closely lined townhouses open onto the lane (where no parking is provided, not sure where the cars live). Behind the units are small green yards. They form a small grid. Children and their equipment (strollers, bicycles, toys) punctuate each lane throughout. This development seemed to be in a closer suburb, near a tram and a train station. I left the group here to see Basel.

Actually, first, I took the tram to the other side of town for the art museum, Foundation Beyeler. It’s the collection of modern art formerly owned by the Beyelers. (The price was a bit of a shock after London’s free museums.) They have several nice pieces, my favorites were a small pink Paul Klee nude (I don’t normally like him in particular, but this piece was an exception) and Giacometti (my boyfriend at Hampshire had a print of one of his paintings on his wall, and despite the fact that that was my worst relationship, I like Giacometti). The museum’s garden is beautiful and cows grazed with their compulsary bells in an orchard on the other side of the fense surrounding the modern yard. Returning to the city center, the tram driver waited for me as I bought a ticket.

What do you expect of a city by a river in Switzerland? Well, Basel won’t disappoint. It is very pretty. The old part of the city is on a rise above the river with winding medeavel streets, a cathedral, town square, etc. The river has a really pleasant prominade and appears remarkably clean and clear. I was trying to take a picture of myself with some stuff in the background (the cathedal, a boat, a bridge) when an old man walking with his wife came over and demanded something of me (my german does not exist yet). He repeated himself several times, finally grabbing my camera from me abruptly. Now, I thought for a moment he might run with it, but he was very old, walking on his wifes arm for stability as much as affection, so I decided not to wrestle him for the camera and instead let him take my picture with it. I saw them several more times during my walk and each time he spoke to me kindly; I have no idea what he said on any occasion.

We dined in the hostel kitchen with some Scots who came to Basel for a kickboxing match. They told stories of a guy they knew who was kicked out of the hostel and arrested by the police for being too noisy. “That’s Switzerland for you.”

Well, I have worn myself out already, and Juliette has started cooking (so, I should help). I’ll finish these tales later.

[Paris] Dagnabit

I put aside this afternoon to catch up on my blog, but instead I have spent it on personal email. If you didn't receive one in the last few days, you have only yourself to blame (or maybe it got lost in delivery...). I really need to make the blog a priority one of these days, since I definitely won't have time to catch up today. Meanwhile it is finally a beautiful day, and I am spending it at the computer! grrr

I started my language class on Wednesday. The school is very pretty and comfortable. Everyone has been incredibly nice. I think i will just stay there instead of switching to the more well-known Alliance later. It's cheaper too. My teacher is incredibly sweet and only speaks French to us. This works fine except when I get tired and it is hard for me even to comprehend English. The level of the other students is well matched (despite that i never took the test). I find that more often than not I know (inside) how to put the sentences together, but the words come out all wrong anyway. I'm incredibly tired and I think I have been grinding my teeth. This too will pass.

My hosts, J&G, are great fun. G (who asked that his name be left out of the blog) has been creating a database of every train ride he has ever taken -- yes, he has kept all the tickets! In a few minutes, I am going to meet J for what at home we call "happy hour" with the girls. Then there is a small dinner party here also including Muriel (whom you will remember from my tales of Mallorca). Muriel loves to shop, so I think I can get her to take me shopping this weekend, since I plan to start trying to dress less like a mission hipster and more like a native. If I can handle it. So far, I have been wearing makeup. Don't worry. It's still me.

The school is also a good resource for social activity. This weekend, there's a party one night, and folks might be going to a club another night. I also read on tribe about open studios in a near suburb; I'd like to see what the artists are going here. I'm not sure what I will make it to, however.

Enjoying being in Paris is difficult because I am so knackered from my studies (and there is homework nearly every night). But yesterday we had a guided walking tour (in French) of some lovely parts of the city (Palais Royal, Jardin du Louvre, St. Germain, Ecole Nat. des Beaux Arts). I bought some flash cards afterwards bc I really need to get serious about my vocabulary.

The teaching philosophy seems to be very organic: we sing songs, we have exercizes and attempt conversation. However, I am approaching it rigorously; I have 3 books in front of me at all times (dictionary, book of verbs, and phrase book) and refer to them constantly. I give the teacher a wink bc I know she doesn't want me to be using them, but instead to be listening to her and learning organically. At least maybe she believes I'm highly motivated.

There's one guy in the class and at one point I asked him why he decided to learn French now. He said that it was always his worst subject in school and he wanted to figure out why. Me too! I can't understand why I am so naturally bad at this! But here I am....

I had an incredibly beautiful weekend in Switzerland (it looks like a green Kings Canyon without all the trees and with European villages!), but you will hear about that in another entry.

[not at] Burning Man

Obviously, I wasn't there this year, but here are the picture's Cecile (my campmate from last year) took of 2004's Camp Hootchie (or whatever they called it this year). I am looking forward to being there with all the hootchies next year.
delorme.cecile.free.fr/

I also always enjoy the sfgate photos:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/09/02/burningman2004.DTL&type=gallerypage

[London] A few more words

The pound seems to buy you about as much as the dollar. But for some reason it is worth twice as much.

I went for a walk after blogging most of the day. The sun began to set and the sky turned warm and sharp. The buildings and leaves came alive with color. It was both startling and familiar, and I realized that I have seen it before in English landscape paintings. The English sky is something altogether different.

I walked across Hampstead Heath. It isn't a normal park -- the swaths of lawn are so huge they dwarf the people who enjoy it. Life changes scale, and I become disoriented and awed.

Simon (Natasha's, the 22 year old's, boyfriend) recommended I go to Hampstead High Street for its cute shops and pleasant atmosphere. There I found 2 GAP stores, a Body Shop, Crab Tree and Evelynn, Monsoon, a bookstore chain I recognised from Norwich, a French Connection, etc. Maybe 10% of stores did not have names I recognised.

London has good pedestrian and bicycle wayfinding signage. The bicycle facilities are OK -- better than in the US but not as good as Germany. There are lots of cyclists, but unlike on the continent, they are all wearing helmets and reflective jackets.

Music is everywhere. The boys at the next table are discussing it. It pours from houses and cars. It's no wonder this is the birthplace of The Beattles....

This business about the cars driving on the opposite side of the road has been a very difficult transition. I think it indicates that my brain is getting old and less agile. It didn't confuse me when I was here 10 years ago (of course I was coming from a year of travel at the time).

I often have dreams where I can fly, but only when I am running away from something scary that's chasing me. Well, in Mallorca, I had a break through: I chose to run away in order to fly because it was fun, and it turned out that what I was running from was just some people trying to spray me with water. I made it to "base" safely and won either a vacation bungalow or a lifetime supply of toilet paper (housed in a tower), I am not sure which.

London/Norwich: catching up

Katriona lives in west Kensington, and I stayed with her for 2 nights before I went to Norwich. She met my mother and John in New Zealand, and I also stayed in her apartment in Rome a few years ago. She has a UK passport, but she grew up in Italy and went to grad school in Paris. In addition to her husband Oly (who is American and was in the states when I visited), she lives with 2 film makers, Alex (from Mexico) and Nick (from Italy). Katriona has written books (in Italian) on meditation, the psychological meaning of masks and performance, and what sounds like a kind of a Joseph Cambell type of thing about archtypes and psychology (what her degree is in).

We went to see My Architect (for her second time) the first night. (she is thinking about making a similar film about her Grandfather who was a famous Swedish doctor.) I didn't care much for the guy's architecture (except the building in medical research center in SoCal and the one in Bangladesh), but the son's effort to get to know his dead father was deeply moving. And it also made me uncomfortable. Maybe this is my own issue, but I didn't think this father, who was really not a very nice person (he had 3 families simultaniously, never publically acknowledged the filmmaker as his son or married the mother, and only very occasionally made time for any of them bc he was always working), deserved for his son to dedicate years of his life and make a film about him. I felt like the son gave more than his father deserved.

But upon further reflection, maybe the film (which has received critical acclaim, giving the son a name in the industry) is actually something that the dead father has given back to his son. Maybe we don't do things for each other. Maybe we do everything for ourselves, and in the end, we are the only ones who benefit or suffer for it.

I had one free day in London that time, and Alex created the itinerary. I walked along the south side of the Thames between Westminster and Tower Bridge, stopping off here and there, but mostly at the Tate Modern. Performance artists in crazy costumes stand still along the walkway until someone gives them money. This is common throughout the western world actually, but never have I seen them in such high concentrations and in such crazy costumes.

Katriona kindly offered to drive me, pick up my mother at Stanstead Airport, and take us both to Norwich. Crossing London was absolute gridlock -- it took hours -- this was not in the congestion pricing zone. There was also a lot of traffic around Cambridge. Once we arrived in Norwich, we toured the cathedral before it closed and then had some beer at the oldest pub in Norfolk, the Adam and Eve. Flowers poured out of the every available receptical. Maureen met us there.

I've already told you about NVC, which was how we spent that weekend. I only want to add that the class included lots of interesting characters.

My mother and I spent the rest of the week at Maureen's place outside Norwich (drinking all of her wine and trying to make a dent in the food in her freezer). She lives with her 18 year old son, Robert, and her 94-year-old maiden aunt, Bebe. There is a rail-to-trail pathway nearby which we took almost every day. My mother wakes up early, but strangly she seems to need to go back to bed around 9, which meant that we never got out of the house before noon. I noticed this when I visited them in La Vienne as well.

We biked to nearby towns to see churches and town squares, Blickling Hall (where Anne Bolynn was born), Norwich, etc. These trips usually involved a stop at a local pub for some excellent beer. We also took a day trip to Cambridge, where we did not make it through all the main sites, but we did have some excellent fish and chips.

I am sure I have a lot more to say about this, but I am all blogged out at the moment. Thanks for listening.

[London] Lovely. Cheers.

It's my last day in London, so I figured I would squander it catching up on the blog. Maybe not the best use of my time, but the best use of it I can think of for now.

I'm here at Kirsty's, Wendy's neice and Elizabeth's cousin, in north London... I think they said it was called Highgate, but I know it is near Hampstead Heath, in case that means anything to you. They just returned from the summer in Greece where they run a restaurant during the high season. They have 3 children (approx ages: 22, 14, and 10?) and usually also let a room out to a foreign student, but for now I am in that room.

Yesterday I went to Bedzed, a zero energy development in south London. Their website doesn't provide much information on their location, which kind of freaked me out -- I wondered if it was even in London. But getting there was actually a breeze. I took the tube to Victoria and then a regional train for about 15 minutes. It's in zone 4 of the public transportation system (I am staying in zone 2, just outside the center). I bought a day pass for 4.40 GBP, only a few pence
more than a day pass for only zones 1 and 2, which makes me think that, if the housing prices decline as you get further from the center, London's public transportation system is creating a perverse incentive to locate further out, ie encouraging sprawl.

This is consistent with my observations about much of England. Maureen (Norwich) and Nick & Morag (near Stanstead Airport) both live deep in the suburbs in completely auto-oriented locations (unless you bike, but they wouldn't consider it, at least, Maureen thought my mother and I were crazy to bike into central Norwich, 6 miles away). Even my London friends all still have cars, but Katriona says she might start leaving hers in Italy bc she lives very close to the center and the congestion charge can be hard to avoid. She said since they implemented the congestion charge, she doesn't even consider driving around town anymore, even at night when the congestion charge is not in effect.

At the station, the attendant knew exactly where Bedzed is (I asked using the wrong name at first, not realizing that everyone calls this place Bedzed). A couple blocks later, the postman (not the usual one for this area) also knew where it was based on my description (he didn't know the name). Bedzed involves a series of buildings with yards and roof decks, plants grow on the roof area. They are highly insulated and the rooms are small for more efficient heating. The south side of each building is comprised of windows to provide heat and light to the units. Obviously, the units are attached, but they have separate roofs. They are equipt with low energy use appliances, shower heads, etc. Much of the building material is reclaimed.

The marketing literature claims that Bedzed is a pedestrian-oriented development, but I found the environment overwhelmed with roads and parking spaces. There were a number of outlets for eletric cars, but none of them were in use and some had been vandalized. I read that there is a carshare pod at Bedzed, but I didn't see it (hopefully bc the carshare cars were in use).

All of the units appear to be occupied, but a few were for sale. The neighborhood has a central park area with benches made of reclaimed wood. I sat on one and ate my lunch, and it got my butt wet. There are live-work units and a few storefronts with offices in them (mostly sustainable development companies involved in the construction of this one). A childcare center is at one end, but I didn't see any activity there. Maybe it was nap time or they haven't started taking students yet. There is a "clubhouse", and I saw flyers for a Friday evening BYOB happy hour. I also saw flyers for book clubs and cooking classes. The game field was wet and therefor closed (fenced off!). I am not sure who is responsible but there is definitely a lot of effort put into building community here. I toured the area before entering the office, taking lots of pictures, only to learn when I entered the office that they ask people not to do that in order to respect the privacy of the residents. Oops! A resident also yelled at me for entering someone's roof garden (oops twice), but I thought this boded well for their community engagement. Jane Jacobs would be pleased.

I did not see a corner store in the immediate vicinity. However there were a few small businesses on the short hike in from the train station. The project provides delivery of organic veggies from a local farm to residents who choose to subscribe to this service, but I wonder if there is a good place to get other food stuffs. I was disappointed by the lack of connectivity between the development and adjacent neighborhoods -- there was a small path leading in from the main road towards the train station, but a fence between Bedzed and the neighborhoods on the other 3 sides and the childcare center yard blocked access to the main road at the other end, so if you were going to/coming from that way you have to take the main road.

I saw Bedzed at midday on a Monday (they told me they do tours on Wednesday and Thursday) and I saw 2 large groups (one from France) and a number of other random visitors meandering around. Odd that this development has attracted so much attention while the rest of the English are driving all around for no apparent reason and not sorting their trash (Bedzed has 4 different bins).

Afterwards I went to the Tate and breezed through their perminant exhibit. We had dinner last night at Linda (Kirsty's mother) and David's.

My plan on Sunday was to see the National Gallery and the British Museum. Silly me -- in 4 hours I made it from 1500 to 1600 in the National Gallery (about 2/5 of the museum). Most of the work was Italian but a few were German or Dutch. The reading materials mentioned that the people in the Italian pieces conform with their ideal of beauty at the time. I concur; the people in the Italian paintings were much better looking than the Dutch and German. That's my deep thought for Sunday.

Afterwards I went to the Transportation Museum shop and bought one of everything.
Sunday night Kirsty had her family over for dinner. I spent most of the evening talking with her Communist Astrologer grandmother Ruth (Linda and Wendy's mom). She moved to England from Hollywood because her husband was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. We spoke mostly about her writing and how easy she finds dialog to write. She was shocked that I had been biking on Friday because I could have been killed given the alignment of the stars. She said I will be moving house
in the next year (my and Kirsty's interpretation: or just spending 6 months abroad), and I should have had a love affair in the past year.
"I haven't met anyone like you in a while." Ruth told me.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean.... You must be upper class." It was very sweet, but I had to laugh.

I woke up Saturday morning in Norwich. We stopped off at Nick and Morag's (the people I stayed with one night on my way to Berlin in July) on the way to Stanstead Airport where my mother and Maureen flew to Pisa for a vacation and I took the train (very fast and efficient) to London. The airport is expanding, and the residents are up in arms about all the sprawl in the community as a result. The town of Stanstead is actually incredibly cute. Nick and Morag used to drive to London for work, but now they both work in Cambridge which is a little closer and doesn't have congestion pricing.

Both at Maureen's and Nick and Morag's you have to drive on roads that have only one lane shared by cars going in both directions to get there. My New Deal American roadway expectations were shocked! That would never go over the our traffic engineers.

London is huge, and it seems quite spread out. The place is lousy with parks, which is nice but also makes me feel like things are even more spread out. Everyone I have met complains bitterly about the public transportation system, but I have
never waited for more than 5 minutes for a subway, bus or tram. Even when I have to transfer multiple times, it has never taken more than 30 minutes to get anywhere. I asked Harry, the 14 year old, to explain why the public transportation system is so bad, and he said the bus never comes and when it does there are 3 of them (sound familar, San Franciscans?). While this may be true, it has not been my experience. I can't help but wonder how often these people use public transit anymore. Maybe it has improved since they last used it, but its bad reputation persists.

It's great to talk with native speakers again. I don't worry that they understand the layers of what I am saying or if I am using a word that is too obscure. However, we are also divided by our common language. It took quite some time to ask for dish soap, for example. Not sure what they call it or why my name for it would have been confusing. "Cheers" is another oddity; why do people keep saying it when they don't have a drink in their hand? (It seems to mean something like "Thanks", but its very confusing. Maybe it actually means you have ink on your face. I wish I knew.) "Lovely" is another: they say it all the time. I figure the appropriate reply to "lovely" is "lovely", but half the time I try to say it it comes out "I love you" (always inappropriately).

[Norwich]Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

I must admit, when my mother asked me to come with her to this workshop and I agreed (in my usual way – “let me think about it…. OK, I guess,” which is code for “yes”), I didn’t have any idea what I was getting myself into. I think I imagined something slightly more global. Of course, NVC has been used in Israel, North Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, but in practice it is something you do everyday. “Let us become the change we seek in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi) The personal is, after all, the political. But I experienced a certain initial fear when I walked in the room Saturday morning that the workshop would require we bear all (and in front of my mother!) in order to learn this skill.

To live an ethical life I must bike, walk and ride public transportation to get around, sort my trash into compost and recycling (yes, this has been a struggle), do my shopping at small locally-owned businesses, buy organic, etc., but it hadn’t really occurred to me until now that they way I communicated with my friends and family might in impact, as the proverbial butterfly flaps its wings (sure, I can be a butterfly in my own metaphor, it doesn’t mean I am flighty), the possibility for world peace.

Nonviolent Communication entails “learning a new language” to connect with people from the heart. It involves the following components: observation (without evaluation), feelings, needs, and request (not demand). The premise is that universal human needs (food, fun, fairness, etc.) are never in conflict, but strategies for meeting those needs can be. The most basic human need is to “contribute to life.” Feelings happen in response to needs being met or not met. Another critical component is empathy, because it takes a lot of practice to effectively identify ones own feelings and needs, sometimes people need help. The program includes a comprehensive list of feelings and needs for you to choose among. Feelings are your own, not reflective (used, misunderstood, abandoned) of anything outside yourself; they should also be feelings that are life connecting (hurt, upset, scared) and not disconnected from life (anger, guilt, shame, depression). So, a NVC statement might be “I feel _____ because I need _____. Would you be willing to ____ to help meet that need?” Once feelings and needs are processed on both sides, it becomes time to discuss requests or solutions to meeting those needs.

Once these observations, feelings and needs are expressed and heard, it is only a matter of identifying a strategy to meet those needs that works for all involved. As Marshall Rosenberg (the author of NVC) says “Please only do what I have requested if you can do so with the joy of little children feeding hungry ducks. Please do not do as I have requested if there is the slightest bit of fear, resentment, guilt or shame motivating you – that would be too costly to us both.” But more importantly, do not get too fixated on one solution to meeting your needs, because another one might be acceptable to the others involved.

In practice, people express themselves in four ways based on the combination of head/heart, inward/outward. They call head and heart the jackal and the giraffe. Yes, it is a bit silly, but it can act as a nice code. For example, when I say to my mother “you look like a duck; how cute you are,” and she responds with “why do you always have to be so critical of me,” I believe that I am creatively admiring her, but she is hearing my statement with jackal outward ears. Yes, it is a strange example, but it keeps coming up with her. All four ways of thinking have a role, but you have to move through the heart (giraffe) in order to connect with other people.

That pretty much describes it. Here are a few other notes I took at the workshop:
• “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.”
• Imaginings can trigger feelings – be sure you are responding to something real.
• People can only hear 40 words at a time. When you bring up an issue, use fewer than 40 words before you ask for their response. If you aren’t done yet, continue only after you have received feedback.
• Observations are most effectively expressed in the present tense. Do not talk about how you felt about what happened yesterday, talk about how you feel about it today.

Requests should be:
• Concise
• Specific
• Realistic/doable
• Not a demand, you must be able to accept if the person says no
• In positive language; it is much harder to NOT do something than to do it
• Linked to your need
• Remember: your request is a gift. It can make a person very happy to be able to fulfill your need.

NVC says that people are only really saying 2 things: please and thank you. They just don’t always have the right vocabulary to say it. Everyone just wants you to see how beautiful they are (there is a song). Expressing met needs it just as important as expressing unmet needs. It is called gratitude. On the other hand, positive judgments can be just as damaging as negative ones.

www.cnvc.org

Normally, I would wait to post this, but Alison says she can’t wait for my next entry, and I want to meet her need for fun and connection. She says there is a heat wave in the SF, and I am jealous since today in Norwich was rather cold and overcast. Anyway, more soon….

Mallorca etc.

Tha landscape of Mallorca looks just like southern California. The rocks are scraggly and gray, the earth ranges from warm beige to red, depending on your location. The buildings mirror the earth in color. The land is dry. Their main agricultural product is almonds, and they have wonderful almond deserts as a result, but they also have an abundance of citrus, olive, and pine trees. Now, of course, the main product is tourism.

The Bousseau/Colon house is in Soller, on the north side of the island in the mountains. Like the main city, Palma, Soller is a tradition European city with a pedestrianized (mostly car-free) center. Truly lovely. The Cathedral and a bank along the main square were both designed after Gaudi.

Our days followed a certain pattern with some exceptions. After a light breakfast, we would walk around the town or something. Lunch was long and involved wine. Then we took a siesta until about 5, at which time we headed to the harbor for a swim until 8 when we returned to the house for dinner. The girls (including myself) walked to the port for the swim and took the tram back while the others would drive in a full car. Not a bad life really.

The whole group included Mido and Jean Pierre and their daughter Juliette, her friend Muriel, Mido’s mother, and Juliette’s sister’s 2 children, Axel (4) and Annabelle (2). When I first arrived everyone was sitting down for lunch, but Axel jumped up and threw himself into my arms (I had never met him before). Juliette warned me, “He’s very sticky” by which she meant that he sticks to you, not that he is covered in juice.

Axel became my best French teacher, although it was a little frustrating because he doesn’t yet read. He liked to torcher ants, snuggle, and he is a wiz with puzzles (up to 200 pieces). I read him French story books, and he corrected my pronunciation.

The house is in a citrus grove next to the main road near the town center. There is a train that connects Soller to Palma a few times a day. There is also a tunnel that just openned up about 5 years ago (4 euro for a car to pass through) which shortens the drive from 1 hour to about 10 minutes. As a result, Soller has remained relatively unspoiled by the tourism that has invaded the rest of the island(s).

Fortunately, we were there for the festival of devils (not sure what it is actually called) that happens every year in Soller, where people dress up as devils and run around holding fire works over their heads while others, soaking wet and wearing headscarves, run around beneath the fire. It was really something, and I took some good pictures of it.

We took several excellent hikes through the scrabbly mountain sides, up stairs and paths over to the sea. Except for in the port, the water is incredibly clear and beautiful, and much of the coastline comprised of volcanic rocks. Twice we went to very nice restaurants for elaborate meals which I can’t describe because a different wine came with every course. I know it was good, however.

Part of Mido’s family is actually from Soller. I think it was her great grandfather who used to take the bank deposits from Soller to Palma on foot with a donkey 3 times a week (about 25 km each way) by himself. The port is now lined with European-style shops with apartments above them, but they have pictures from when the only building there was the military base (now closed) and it was just a sandy cove.

I ended up staying 2 days longer than the rest, except JP who was staying to paint the interior of the house. He took great care to show me around, and did not only speak French to me as he had threatened.

Nicely tanned but covered with more than 25 mosquito bites, I’ve been in Paris for about 36 hours and I am headed to London in a few hours (for no apparent reason at this point). Yesterday I visited 4 French language schools and selected one to attend when I return mid-month. Considering the final break up with Kevin, all these new and beautiful things, and so many decisions to be made all the time, my mood swings between despare and elation. I am very pleased to learn that Jane and Calla had their baby girl, Lulu, a few days ago. There is a little more light in the world.

Ladies beware, it turns out Kevin not only hacked my blog to tell all my friends what an evil person I am (which hopefully I deleted before any of you saw it), he has also been reading my email (I changed the password, so it should be OK now). He chose to interpret what he read a certain way, and that determined our destiny (hence believing that I broke up with him when in fact I was very passive in the matter, maybe I should have let one of the 4 other breakups stick a long time ago). I just kept hoping this would turn into something that felt like an adult relationship, and look what I got. In truth, I can only blame myself for participating. Anyway, I mention this in case any of you noticed anything strange in my email over the past month -- that would be the reason.