Last night Mom and I went and saw the Paris movie to end all Paris movies, Paris, je t'aime. It's a movie in twenty apparently unrelated segments (one for each arrondissement) each directed by someone new and featuring a new cast.
It was uneven, of course, sort of like a book of short stories, but I loved it. It is in five languages (at least I think) and the tone of each segment is different. I tended to like the episodes with a more straightforward narrative style, but even the section with the tale of two mimes falling in love (which both Mom and I would have initially found terrifying) won me over. (It would probably do nothing for Uncle Bubbles.)
This morning the GrandPs and Dad and Subcontinent arrived. First the GrandPs and then the others, since they opted for a ride through the RER (slowed due to a fire) and then the metro instead of the taxi cab chosen by my older, and apparently wiser, relatives.
Nonetheless, everyone's here. Currently they are all taking naps and I am considering it. Their jetlag is making me tired.

Today Cousin R left, which was very sad. The odd bureaucracy that is Charles de Gaulle Airport sent her through several lines without us so that by the time she got to the end of them we were maybe a quarter of a football field away and waving madly, unable to hug.

Definitely one of the highlights of her stay with us (aside from the naked guy, the guy with the condom on his head, Rocky Horror...PEEEECTURE SHOW, Chez Ma Cousine, and the Harry Potter Train) was the wax museum, where Salvador Dali lurks behind a bust a few feet between Picasso and a very dissipated looking wax Hemingway.

Tomorrow Mom will work on her book and I wll read mine, perhaps with a break to visit the Jardin de Tuilleries, which I love and haven't seen yet this trip.

Then on Friday, Dad and the GrandPs and Subcontinent arrive. Hurray!

Hello to all from Gay Paree!
We (Mom, Cousin R, and I) have already had several excellent and groundbreaking moments. First there was the naked guy in the Palais Royal, then the Neverending Saga of the Demagnetized Carte Oranges and the discovery of the culprit: my pocketbook with its magnet buttons and Cousin R's camera case with similar devices.
Already I've read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and Charming Billy by Alice McDermott and Cousin R has read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Mom, as ever, has read numerous notes, e-mails, her own writing, and illuminated manuscripts at the BN.
We have kissed Oscar Wilde's grave, bought numerous pains au chocolat, indulged in nail polish at Sephora, gone to the Harry Potter train, and watched Amelie, which is great to watch in Paris, when you know all the sights are a train ride away.
Recommended Movies Set in Paris, Part One:
Charade
Amelie
A Very Long Engagement
Diva
The Red Balloon
How to Steal a Million

I've been physicalled and stuck with needles and tested for TB and now I'm all set for college.
After the nurse practitioner stabbed me with a tetanus booster (good for ten years) I nodded, of course, and said thank you and walked out of the hospital, dodging sticky little children and people in wheelchairs, and drove out of the parking garage leisurely.
I've been thinking, though. Where will I be in ten years, when I'll need another tetanus booster? Will I be married? Will I have kids? What will I be working at? What will I be like?
I started having alarmingly precise and dissimilar visions of myself in ten years. (One involved an elephant and a hamster. Don't even ask.) In the end, I decided to just wait and see.

Graduation went amazingly well. My nervousness dissipated the moment I hit the stage and I got quite a few laughs. Here, for those of you who weren't there, is the speech I gave:

So. Here we are. We’ve made it this far and now the time has come. Time for me to impart beautiful, bite-size nuggets of wisdom.
My dad says that all poetry is about sex. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may?” Proof positive. “They Flee From Me” Previous sex. “To His Coy Mistress?” Sex. “The Solitary Reaper?” Sex. “In Flanders Field?” Sex, as it turns out.
After a while spent listening to him, it becomes clear that he doesn’t really believe it. Maybe his overanalyzing—under analyzing?—is the defense mechanism of an English major who never quite hopped on the poetry hayrack ride. Or maybe he was in college and it was the seventies and eeyouknow?
Experiences are what you bring to them, what you expect to get out of them. Walking into Uni your first time I bet you brought with you the desire for a good education, or the desire for friends who were more like you, or just the desire to be gone, fast. And now we’re all gone, or I guess getting gone. No more rolling out of bed for an 8 o’clock class in an overheated room while the sun burns pinpricks in our eyelids and the coffee courses through our bodies. No more panting, near-death fitness experiences. No more wrestling with your locker, which some idiot shut, again. No more sinking into the buxom embrace of the lounge couches. Uni lunches are done. Uni projects are done. Uni homework is done.
And Uni theater is done: the clothes that tear easily, the running around frantically, the smell of foundation, the frankly homoerotic grapplings backstage as cast members help each other during quick changes. I can’t speak to the sports teams, but I imagine it’s a lot of the same.
Experiences are what you bring to them. You all brought a lot to my Uni experience. To indulge in my most blatant cliché of the afternoon, it wouldn’t have been the same without you. Seriously, why are we so amazing? Some of you have run so fast, vaulted so high, dribbled so swiftly, swum so well that you’ve become heroes. Some of you have done such great things, such astonishing acts of goodwill that I’ve been left speechless. Some of you have doodled with the mastery of a great artist. Some of you have waved cheerily at just the right moment. Some of you have sung so beautifully that you’ve brought me near tears. Some of you have written such incredible things that I’ve been jealous, and seriously considered stealing your identity. Some of you have been my best friends, and some of you I haven’t gotten to know as well as I wanted. You’re the ones I’ll miss the most.
Experiences are what you bring to them. You all brought a lot to my Uni experience, but I’m sure that you brought even more to your own.
Experiences are what you expect to get out of them, so whether you’re going to school next year or taking time off, look forward to it. Look forward to something, even if it’s the end of this ceremony.
And if finding something to look forward to means reading Emily Dickinson looking for the naughty bits, go ahead.