Un coin de ciel bleu

Tuesday, September 25. Not long after I arrived, someone on the street was handing out triangular-shaped postcards with a picture that contained only blue sky and a few white clouds. Then last week, when I went to La Defense, the front of the C.N.I.T. (Center for Industry and Technology) building had a similar looking sign on the front - just a very large triangle with blue sky and clouds. No writing. (The C.N.I.T building, by the way, also known as the Palais de la Defense is a cool building, a huge concrete vault in the shape of an inverted shell.) I figured eventually I would figure out what this was all about, and today I did. One of the big "affiches" in the metro station was an ad for EDF (electric company) and this is what it said:

EDF cree Bleu Ciel pour que chacun ait un coin de ciel bleu.

Plus d'ecologie. Plus d'economies. Plus de bien-etre.

L'avenir est un choix de tous les jours.

Apparently, it's a new marketing campaign, and the blue sky is "a symbol of the industrial and environmental choices of EDF to contribute . . . towards the reduction of CO2 emissions and to tackle climate change." All while making money, of course! The campaign was officially launched last Friday but there were "teasers" leading up to it which explains the postcards. It's amazing what you can learn by reading ads in the Metro!

Factoid: The EDF Group is the leading electricity producer in Europe. In France, it has mainly nuclear and hydraulic production facilities where 95% of the electricity output involves no CO2 emissions.

Oral comprehension. This is my big bug-a-boo, and today this is what we do in class. We listen to two "news reports" and then answer questions about them. This is very hard for me, so I'm taking a dramatic step. I'm going to start watching television! So tonight I watch the news for an hour. It's the only way I can think of to get more (free) exposure to spoken French. In class, we also watch part of the film Paris Je T'Aime and then write a resume about it.

Rain today, although I was lucky enough not to get rained on whilst walking to and from the Metro. And when it stops raining, the sun tries to come out again for a few minutes. Temperature in the mid-60s. Pedometer: 3,604 (not much walking today).