The most obvious reason for this recent development is my lack of Monday classes.  It’s a beautiful thing to be able to enjoy Sundays without the dread of homework or the thought of waking up early the next day.  Another reason is because Paris becomes mine again on Mondays.  A lot of weekend tourists have exited the city, and it is significantly less crowded.  The supermarket is relatively calm, the streets are not swarming with as many tourists, and I don’t have to fight anyone for a late-afternoon seat in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

After food shopping this morning, I edited and uploaded the rest of my photos to Facebook…I have passed the 400 mark for pictures here in Paris, and that’s only counting the best of the best, the ones I edited, and not duplicates.  I have easily taken over 2,000 pictures since January 17, but I only put up the good ones so that people don’t get bored looking through them.  I mean, no one really wants to see the same 230,987 pictures of the Eiffel Tower, right?

I also worked on my thesis proposal…scary.  Thesis means senior year.  Which means graduation.  Which means real world.  Which means…crap.  Okay, I’m not going into that.

By the time 5 o’clock rolled around (or should I say seventeen o’clock?), I was ready to get some Vitamin D.  I grabbed my sunglasses and my book and walked over to the Jardin du Luxembourg.  I got lucky and managed to snag a chair right by the central fountain, perfect for people watching.  I sank into my comfy, green chair and basked in the sun for a bit.  I eventually cracked open my latest read, Atonement by Ian McEwan.  I haven’t read much, but I’m enjoying what I have read so far.  I really liked the movie, and I’ve heard the book is even better, so I’m looking forward to doing some more reading over the next few days.  Having spare time to read is unheard of for me, so I’ve really been enjoying these little breaks here and there.

After a couple of hours, my hunger alarm was going off, so I wandered into a nearby boulangerie to pick up a baguette to go with dinner.  Back at the apartment, I decided to make lemon-pepper shrimp with linguine, which I have made before and enjoyed.  I threw on my cutesy apron and turned up the R&B playlist that I have been obsessed with lately.  I boogied my way through dinner preparations, and before I knew it, was sitting at the table with a  steaming plate of pasta and shrimp.  Yum.

And now here I sit, on my red couch, catching up with my blog.  Why is it that I can never seem to stay up to date?!  I guess that’s a good sign, one that indicates that I have a life and have been out and about rather than sitting behind a computer all day.  After all, one needs to get out and to do things in order to have things to blog about.

And just a bit of a newsy piece: an Iranian cleric blamed ‘promiscuous women’ for the recent earthquakes that have been shaking the planet.  It makes me sad that sexism is still running rampant in Iranian society, and that women are blamed for such unpreventable occurrences.  The reasoning that people have used for centuries to explain natural disasters also intrigues me because it proves that most humans can’t accept that they have no real control over nature.  It’s hard to accept the idea that if an earthquake is going to happen, it’s going to happen.  Same goes for tornadoes and tsunamis.  Because they cannot grapple with such uncontrollable events, they find scapegoats in society to blame for them, which have historically been women and lower classes.  Anyways, that’s my little rant/thought of the day.  Click here to read the article for yourself.

And before I head out, I just want to proclaim the sadness I feel for not being in Boston for Marathon Monday.  I miss it dearly, and I hope those of you who were there had a blast.

Bon soirée!

I was sitting on the big, comfy couch today, watching our femme de ménage (maid) vacuum the floors, scrub the bathroom, and clean the kitchen.  Then I proceeded to look around at my actual apartment, in all of its splendor and Parisian (and Buddhist?) beauty.  And then I got to thinking about the fact that I’m living in Paris, one of the greatest cities in the world, and it’s amazing that I have the ability to travel to so many different cities, and to see and do so many amazing things that most people don’t get the chance to do.

So, here comes the realization.

There is little to no way that I’m going to be able to live like this again until I’m an old, wrinkly, and hopefully well-off retired person.  I’m not going to be able to justify paying for a maid until I’m much older (if ever).  I’m not going to be able to live in an apartment this big, nice, or well-located until I’m most likely middle-aged.  I’m also probably not going to have the ability to be this carefree ever again, because once I graduate college…hello, real world.

Wow, so that was kind of depressing…?

But on a lighter note!  A few more BC girls are staying with us this weekend!  Dani (who I will be running Relay For Life with next year), Cecily (who I know from several International Studies classes), and Katie (who I just met) got here earlier today, and then set out to see Notre Dame and Montmartre.  I actually sent them to the fondue place I went to with Nadia and the girls last weekend, so I think they’ll have a good time there.

I think we’re all going to go to Footsie tonight, which is known as the stock market bar.  I’ll tell you allll about it tomorrow…let’s just hope they have Bulmer’s, and that it’s looow on the market.