Quick Write No. 1

I've started a few posts in a desultory sort of way and they've gone nowhere. But I feel like writing, so I decided to offer a question for five minutes of nonstop writing. No more, no less. If you want to play, too, leave a comment with a link.

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If you could get on a plane right now and fly anywhere for a five-day stay, where would you go?

Paris, for sure. I want to go back to the Chapel of the Martyrs, and I want to go back to Notre Dame for a couple of days. I don't know whether I could go to St. Chappelle for another concert, because Vivaldi sounds so off these days that I cannot listen to any of his music. All of Paris would be off, without my Chicago Son who first got me there, but it would also be a place to feel connected to him. I want to go back to the Luxembourg Gardens and remember my younger and happier family walking the deserted paths in the freezing cold, and I want to spend another warm evening on the bank of the Seine. And I want to slip away for an overnight to Chartres, and be reminded of . . . so many things.

I Wanna Be 20! 20 in Paris!

They've been to Versailles. They walked Montmartre and visited Sacre Couer. They've been to St. Chappelle and Notre Dame de Paris. From the blog of The Lovely Daughter, who is in Paris en route to Prague:

On Thursday we were originally going to go to a bunch of museums, but we met two guys from our hostel who were going to Versailles and and decided to go with them. We did not decide this until after we had gotten on the metro, so we hoped off the metro randomly and waited for them. It was a fantastic spontaneous decision and we had a lot of fun.

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Last night was pretty fun at the hostel; we met several guys from all over the U.S. (South Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania). With Kelsey, me, and Dylan who we met the other day (he's from Minnesota) we had a good portion of the U.S. represented. Its funny how you meet people from your own country whom you would never encounter at home when you are abroad. We had a really nice night in...after our long day of walking.

I am experiencing SUCH an intense sense of lost and wasted youth!

European Adventures

The Lovely Daughter's voice bubbled happily across the country via cell phone last night: she's been accepted to both of her study abroad programs for next year, one in Kiel, England for Fall and one in Prague for Spring. It looks like Prague is a for-sure, as her best friend is also planning to go. Kiel is somewhat up in the air, due to course requirements, the added complications of spending a full year away but in two places, and the miserable showing of the dollar as against the pound these days.

I am coming to terms with these new developments (and ignoring the snow outside) by looking at pictures of The Brothers Abroad from a couple of summers ago. Be sure to click on the clock to enlarge; it's extremely cool. And, of course, if you want to know how beer is made... .

Firstborn Son on a visit to the coast while spending time with his French family.

Prague

Secondborn Son pretending to be a Gehry building in Prague. (My boys like to take pictures of each other pretending to be the things they see.)

Amsterdam: Self-explanatory.

Rennes y Taillis

"Have we lost them?" I wondered as I lay in bed, wide awake as usual at 4:00 am the other morning. "How will we ever find them?"

For whatever reason, I had awakened thinking of the family with whom my Windy City University Son had spent his 11th grade year when he was a student in Rennes, France. Our families had spent Christmas together and I had immediately come to love his French mother, who took such good care of the 17-year-old we had sent across the ocean in the immediate wake of 9/11, and the rest of her family. However, our relationship had quickly simmered down to the annual Christmas card, and none had been exchanged this past year. I knew they had already moved once, and I wondered, in the midst of our own holiday business, whether they were still in Vitre.

And then yesterday, a Christmas card in Marithe's familiar handwriting arrived for my son, this time from Taillis. I opened it shamelessly, unable to wait the few days it would take me to forward it to Chicago, and read it aloud to my son, who was able to translate the sections that were a mystery to me. "Our" French family came alive to me again: the cozy apartment and the Christmas Eve feast, the meanderings through Rennes with the French brothers, the kids off to see Lord of the Rings en francais one evening.

I am trying to go to seminary. I have not yet paid for the class I am taking this semester, let alone my library fine. I am trying not to spend money. And so where was I this morning? Online, looking for tickets to Paris. My son will have a short break between his graduation in March and beginning his first real job, the demands of which will preclude travel for him as surely as funding does for me. Hmmm. The prices for spring travel are too high.

I haven't given up, though.