First of all – bon anniversaire to my amazing beau-fils! XOXO Love to you today, and every day, Matt!

Home late today because I went to the French Film Club’s (Ciné Club) viewing of the “Yves Saint Laurent” biopic. Sadly, the young star of this film, Gaspard Ulliel, passed away last month in a skiing accident at the age of 37. He was truly brilliant in this film. What a loss.

The movie started with so much sensitivity and beauty, I fell in love immediately. But as most movies from the 1970’s go, it sadly devolved into a drug-filled haze. Personally, I’ve had my fill of movies from that era, because they all tell the same sad tale: vulnerable artistic geniuses easily manipulated — drugs — downward spiral. It’s depressing after seeing so many movies made with this same sad tale. It makes for difficult viewing, for me, personally. Though, as a total movie buff, I always love going to the movies, and “suffered through.”

I like these after school activities!

Otherwise, school is flying by! Today, we learned about texting (textos) en français. Can you decipher these:

J’tm – Je t’aime (I love you)

Tla? – Tu es là? (Are you there?)

Tu vi1 2’m – Tu viens demain? (Are you coming tomorrow?)

JSPR Ktu va bi1 – J’espère que tu vas bien. (I hope you’re ok)

Tricky, non? We read the pros and cons about textos en France, listened to a radio program broadcast on the subject, and finally, read a study that was commissioned to determine the ill effects (if any) on students’ ability to progress with language arts, spelling, etc. Turns out the brightest kids are the ones inventing the texto abbreviations (not surprised), and they’re able to do it so well precisely because they’re good at spelling/language arts. Otherwise, NO ill effects on regular French spelling, grammar rules, etc., so parents got the message that there’s no need to rail against this new SMS language – for education’s sake, anyway.

The sun is rising a little bit later, but still close to 8:00 a.m. It set an almost an hour ago at 6:24 p.m. The days are getting longer, of course, but slowly. Tomorrow, we’ll have a full 3 more minutes of light than we had today.

At this point in the year, when I leave my apartment in the morning, the sun is already up. But I have to be careful because my apartment entrance is precariously close to the staircase. The motion light doesn’t come on until I’m downstairs, and the light is downstairs too. It reflects up —- but you get the idea. I’ve thought each morning about how it’s probably a good thing the stairs spiral — as that left turn could stop me if I ever started to roll. Don’t worry, unlike most Parisians, I really take my time — because I’m not rushing this adventure of mine.