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I just returned last night from Paris for the second time this month. Booorrrrrring! The Eiffel tower doesn?t make my blood race anymore and the Louvre quite simply fails to rouse me the way it once did. I had less patience with the snooty shopkeepers and the French milieu proved quite lackluster this time around. I?m going to Prague and Amsterdam the next two upcoming weekends and this trip made me weep for the future.

Oh mon dieu! I imm juste keeedinng! I?ve been in Paris these last four days (11/18 ? 11/21) with my architecture class, having the time of my life. I went with about thirty kids (two of whom I knew, my flatmates: Molly and Tom) from class and we were led around by our eccentric and endlessly entertaining architecture teacher, Norman Reuter. He took us to all of the ?not-for-tourist? exclusive sites all the while gabbing about his mystery surprise event extraordinaire which ended up being a trip to Cirque d?Hiver, an exquisite French circus featuring, of all things, a tennis-pro-turned-freak-show who did astounding tricks with tennis balls and tennis rackets all in a v-neck polo sweater and arrestingly tight tennis shorts—right up my alley … the tennis part … not the shorts part. Incidentally, the architect of the building (see photo below), Jacques Ignace Hittorff, was also the architect of our train station, Gare du Nord.

Additional trip highlights include Versailles (haven?t been there since I was thirteen … Mme Norvich, you know who you are!), Savoye?s le Corbusier house, Musée d?Orsay (which has an impossibly tremendous collection of impressionist art—Van Gogh forever!), Les Invalides (where Napoleon is buried) and sipping coffee in a café that featured a small pen in the corner with farm animals (Zoe, I thought only of you!): a goose, a rabbit and a sizeable goat. We went to and from Paris by way of the Eurostar Chunnel and stayed in the lovely Hotel Victoria for the three requisite nights—I ended up with my flatmate Tom by pure coincidence. The trip was a completely relaxing excursion with ample free time and fascinating sites. It?s hard to get back into the humdrum of my London design career but I?m managing.

To recap the last week or so, I saw the Woman in Black and Sweeney Todd for my theater class. We had a lecturer on intellectual copyright law (in both the EU and in the US) and had a visiting actor from one of the plays we say (I was made an example of for a diaphragm exercise). I saw the Lord Mayor?s Procession (where I was trampled by an errant horse—I swear to God) and went to the very top of St. Paul?s Cathedral with my architecture class. It was completely amazing because all traffic was stopped for the Procession and looking down on the streets was quite similar to when Tom Cruise was running through a vacant Time Square in Vanilla Sky. These next couple of weeks (in addition to the two trips I mentioned in my preamble) I will be returning to the Barbican art gallery with my art history class and going to see the new play Blood Brothers. I will let you all know how everything goes.

And lastly, I have the following unfinished assignments due by term?s end:

Academics
2000-Word Essay on Sir Christopher Wren
Rewrite of Two Theater Critiques for Submission
2500-Word Essay on a Design Movement
Involved Companion Timeline for Above Paper
Annotation and Clarification of my Visual Diary

Design
Updating Royal Mail Postal Service Campaign
Completion of my Traveling Companion: Landing Gear
Edgy Redesign of British Magazine English Gardens
Fourth Unknown Project (from Conception to Completion)

If I?m not posting things in the near future, it is because I?m trapped under a rather heavy computer and/or laser printer. Call for help.

Take care everyone,

Lamma

PS There is a new picture gallery to accompany this post; do check it out.