Thursday night after finishing my final journal entries for Prof RZ, a couple of the other kids from the program and I celebrated. Nishan played his sax for us…some lovely improv.
A girl down the hall had to ask us to be quieter. Oh well. (By the way…I’m done with my third year of college!) We settled down and watched a 1962 French movie, ‘The Pickpocket.’ Stilted language, took itself too seriously, tried to find (moral and social) depths (in pickpocketing) where there are none. Excellent film, all in all. So, that was a late night. I made plans with Sharon to leave at 8.20 am to get to the Center on times for the excursion to Fontainebleu. I was asleep at 2.30 and woke up at 8.15. Didn’t hear my first alarm going off, don’t remember turning it off. Nevertheless, I was showered and out the door with Sharon, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, spic-n-span at 8.30. She was impressed. At the chateau, Prof RZ let us wander generally at our own pace, but we stopped as a class in the reception room
(doesn’t it seem a bit too narrow to be a reception/assembly hall?), the staircase that had previously been the bedchamber of a mistress of one of the French kings 
(there was a rivalry between the mistress and the artist…the mistress didn’t like the artist and tried her best to keep the king from giving the artist money…sorry I don’t remember the names), and the ballroom 
(that has recently been restored). I really enjoyed seeing the chateau, but I would have liked to know generally its timeline and who lived there (other than Francis I and Henri and Catherine de Medici). I don’t feel like I was able to put rooms to faces and events. Prof RZ’s lecture, though, on the frescos in the reception room was probably the best she gave all quarter (maybe because Fontainebleu is one of her specalities? :P). She knows so much! Also, though frescos put my (previously-thought-be-extensive-or-at-least-pretty-good) knowledge of Greek mythology to shame! Apparently, Francis I wanted it that way: for example, in this fresco, the swan-like figure seems to call to mind the story of Leto’s seduction by Zues “The Swan.” 
Francis would wait for someone to say “OH! I know what that is showing! It is Leto and the Swan!” and then he would come up and say “Ah-ha, but that ‘swan’ is actually a snake! See its neck? And how the woman is riding the donkey! This is showing the story of how humans lost their eternal youth! By entrusting it to the donkey [Eternal Youth is the allegorical woman riding the donkey] who then lost it to the snake.” Francis liked to show off. And I didn’t even know that there was a myth about how humans lost their eternal youth. Then we had lunch. A very. delicious. lunch. Shrimp and avocado and endive salad garnished with slices of mandarin orange and pink grapefruit. Bread. AMAZING chicken in some kind of cheesy-winey-somethingy sauce, the best cheese and potato soufflé I’ve ever had and some veg on the side. Finished with flourless chocolate cake that was heavily encrusted in cocoa powder. I was the only one at my table to finish off the cake, I’m proud to say. Others were impressed as well. There was some talk at lunch about starting/organizing an academic comic/feminism conference at Chicago, which I might want to help out with. ☺ A long walk around the chateau’s gardens after lunch.
Then back to Paris. I went to Nadia’s and we went to see the Da Vinci Code. But, silly us, we forgot to check to make sure that the theater we went to was showing it in version orginale. When Paul Bettany said the opening line, I thought, “why is he speaking in French? Oh NO! It is SUBBED!” So I watched the Da Vinci Code on my last night, in Paris, in French. Amusing. Nadia and I made it back to Lila around 12 and then I gave her some of my kitchen things that she could use and then she left. Sad! I decided to stay up, since I would have to leave at 6.45 am to get a cab with two other girls to get to the airport.
This morning: Got to the airport. Flight: cancelled! Every EasyJet flight for today and tomorrow was sold out! Panic! I’m supposed to meet Gerry! Ended up buying one of the only two tickets that British Airways had for today (or tomorrow for that matter) for 500 euros. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Then I realized after I had checked in and gone through security that I actually could have waited until later next week…or even the week after if it came to that. Paris is less expensive than London and I could have seen a lot of stuff that I wasn’t able to see. But I got on the flight and am now in London with Gerry. The Piccadilly line from Heathrow was out of service, so I had to go from the Piccadilly to the District to the Central to the Victoria. Crazy. Finally got to the British Library only about an hour later than was the latest estimate that Gerry and I had planned for. I got my British Library Reader’s card and now can read and research in the BL. Go me. More tomorrow or later in the week.
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