Christmas squirrels, naked Shakespeare and a mustard manifestation. And cowboys. Again.

I guess it's only appropriate that after our French surrealism-induced stressful week, we had an action packed and fairly ridiculous Friday and Saturday.

Friday included the most delicious bread ever (from Lily's Bread by the Bon Marche where I will definitely be returning as much as humanly possible), a jar of Nutella that cost 43 euros because it was HUGE, and a Christmas squirrel. That's what I said.

Ellen, Kristin and I are innocently browsing the Christmas section of Bon Marche (like Galleries Lafayette, only more expensive if you can believe it) which is jam-packed with elegantly decorated Christmas trees, all the ornaments (mostly of the ball variety) you could ever want, garlands, stick-on star and snowflake wall decorations, shiny lights and more. When what to our wondering eyes should appear, but a not-so-small (or subtle) white squirrel with a feathery tail and an acorn between its two front paws, clipped onto the branch of one of the trees. I felt like David Sedaris trying to identify "What one does" on certain French holidays--does one clip little doves and lovebirds onto one's tree in an attempt to make it prettier? Yes, one might do that. Does one clip a SQUIRREL onto one's tree for no apparent reason? Yes, apparently in France one might do that as well. Naturally upon seeing this phenomenon of French culture our immediate reaction was to clip it into my hair and take a million photos with Ellen's phone. Words cannot express how amazed I am that we didn't get thrown out. But actually the cashier was American, so maybe I'm not that surprised. Her mind was probably still boggling over the aforementioned squirrel as well.

We had tickets for Midsummer Night's Dream (in French!) that night at some theatre in the 17e, so after Bon Marche and Lily's Bread Kristin and I met up with Hannah at my house. We decided to head up to rue Mouffetard to find something to eat before the show, the only problem being that we'd have to make it quick because seating was not assigned and we wanted to not get trapped behind some million foot tall French guy with a big head (like we always do when we go to the theatre with our class). So we (stupidly) chose an Indian place because we were all craving it and it was relatively empty, it being the beginning of the night (no self-respecting French people go out to dinner before 8h00). It turned out that the people at this restaurant, despite the fact that they had been able to convey to us that they were in fact open and we should eat there, did not understand our French. Or, for that matter, our English. In fact, they did not understand any languages that were not Indian, which none of us speak. We thought about having Kristin try Chinese, but I figured it would be futile. They brought us things we hadn't ordered (twice!) only to realize after a painful period of confusion that they belonged to the table next to us. Whcih was the only other occupied table in the restaurant. Uh, okay. After all that the food wasn't that great and they kept not understanding our request for the bill because we had to leave like yesterday.

When we finally got out of there we got a call from Sky saying that he had gone to the wrong theatre and would be late. Awesome, because we had hoped that he was already there saving us seats. This didn't seem like a huge problem as French people are never early and rarely on time for anything. It became a problem, however, when we realized the ridiculous metro route we would have to take to get there. It became a HUGE problem when we ended up waiting more than 10 minutes for our last connection (on which we had like 9 stops), and it became slightly hilarious (in a depressing way) when the train was packed to bursting with people. Not all of whom wear deoderant. And all of whom are taller than me. You can guess how that went.

When we got out of the metro we RAN to the theatre, getting there like 2 minutes after the start of the show and having to wait for like 20 more minutes before they let us in. When they did let us in it was between scenes and we had to walk DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STAGE. Fortunately there were a lot of other people with us, but it was still probably the most embarassing thing ever. I will never be late again, EVER.

But once we sat down and got to finally watch the play it was all worth it. Out in the lobby of the theatre we'd been sort-of watching it on a tiny TV screen, and it hadn't looked so great. First of all, it was in a black box theatre (who does Midsummer Night's Dream, of all things, in a black box?) and there didn't seem to be much (read as: any) decor. Yuck. But we came in on Bottom's first scene and he was absolutely hilarious (and quite reminiscent of our Phonetics teacher). Then, for whatever reason, there appeared a man in a fuschia fairy costume with glitter and sequins, suspended from the ceiling, flailing around. Then he sang some of his lines to a rock and roll song, and I knew that all our suffering had not been in vain.

The play was really very good with a ton of original ideas I'd never seen before. My favorite was that in a couple of scenes Helena followed Demetrius around with a video camera which they projected onto the huge screen that made the backdrop. Another weird thing was that they occasionally switched phrases into English--"keeng of zee faeriez," and in the scene where Puck scares the shit out of the Mechanicals, "we are haunted..." Also during that scene they projected Puck's face onto the huge screen and flashed all these crazy colors, which was super creepy. ALSO, they used the same actors for Oberon and Titania for the Duke and Hippolyta, which was really cool. They actually sat up from behind a platform as Oberon and Titania and started changing their clothes into the costumes of the Duke and Hippolyta, which was the coolest thing ever. Although I think maybe it was just an excuse for the actress to get naked, which she had already done in the scene where Titania falls in love with Bottom. Awkward to the max, thanks France.


Saturday was our excursion to Dijon just for the day, which was good because that was all the group madness I could handle after 4 1/2 hours of sleep. We were all excited to have a guide that wasn't Laurent, but it turned out that she was actually even more irritating. Yes, I know it's her job to drone on about the art history, but I don't really get why Hamilton employs people specifically for that subject. I'd be fine with just the general history and random trivia, I don't need to know who made the door-frame on the church, especially when he was nobody I've ever heard of. Anyway, we had lunch as a group, which consisted of pumpkin flan (wasn't as good as you might think), salmon in mustardy sauce with mashed potatoes, and pears with vanilla ice cream, red wine sauce and gingerbread. I wasn't a fan of the dessert, but I did like the salmon and potatoes.

After lunch we followed the useless guide around for awhile, visited the home of Colby's Dijon director (which is ancient and gorgeous), and bought a lot of gingerbread which turned out to be kind of gross.

Then I met up with Sarah Hirsch! It was fun to see someone I knew, and more importantly someone who is having ocean withdrawals like me. We saw some guy playing a kazoo, had hot chocolate, and watched cowboys square dancing. Yes, that's what I said. COWBOYS. Square dancing. In France. FOR THE SECOND TIME. I don't think it was the same people we saw in Avignon, which makes it all the more hilarious.

When we got back from Dijon a bunch of us headed over to Breakfast in America, a diner on rue des Ecoles which serves (you guessed it) breakfast, as one might find in America. There are also burgers--most remarkably BACON CHEESEBURGERS WITH PICKLES AND ONIONS AND FRENCHFRIES and a chocolate milkshake, which is exactly what I had. I know I'm in the land of tasty and delicious food, but seriously, that was the most satifsying meal I've had in quite some time. It made up for the fact that we had to wait FOREVER while the French people at the only big table ordered more food, fed it to eachother slowly and disgustingly, and made out really obnoxiously.

Then Emily and I walked home in the freezing cold and tried not to get pnuemonia. Why do all stories end like that?