So, I'm reading this journal and I come across a section where I'm commenting on a slide show some students were projecting onto Le Patheon. There were, apparently, a ton of gendarmes around. I note in my journal that the slide show was anti-socialist and that I'd seen a lot of anti-socialist graffiti when my friend and I escaped the guided tour and explored an open air market instead.
Anyone know what was going on at the time that there was such hostility to socialism in France? 1981?
(Heh. my first experiences speaking a lot of French occured when I had to explain to hotel staff how I blew out the power lights when I used the wrong adapter. Also, I am apparently completely freaked out by the French habit of staring us up and down. Mrs Briggs told us it was because people were curious about us--we looked to so obviously American in demeanor, posture, and dress. Kinda hard to miss the down vests so popular at the time, eh?
My next entries are about my 16th birthday trip to Boston. *snicker* I guess, since I'd gotten a taste of clean European cities were, I used a restroom in the Trolley Subsway station where I taped a piece of paper to a wall and wrote "kelley ___ was here" the date and the message "P.S. Americans, you should keep your subways clean like the French do!"
In the same entry, I'm thrilled to death about getting a copy of the Boston Globe. I was also, apparently, dazzled by M&M ice cream and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. There, I apparently saw, for the first time, a bookstore/coffee shop combo and determined, then and there, that I would someday establish a bookstore/coffeeshop like the "Bookstore Cafe, Inc." LOL! I also planned on being a pilot and joining the air force!
Kelley
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling