The Die is Cast

Monday, March 31. Today I mail all the forms back to World Teach (Conditions of Participation, which is basically a contract of sorts, and Medical Self-Evaluation form). To post office off of Boulevard Sebastopol. Nice lady gives me sturdy envelope (like Fedex envelope but smaller) to mail forms in. It's postage-paid so I just have to put the forms inside and address the front. Very easy: 2 euros 85 for the envelope and the postage.

Visit (again) the church of Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles which is basically next door to the post office. The loss of the food market at Les Halles really devastated the population of some of these churches. While I'm sitting in the back row of chairs reading info about the church, a man testing the sound system asks me if I can hear well in the back. Turns out this is his "metier" - setting up sound systems in churches is his specialty. I say it must be very satisfying work. He agrees. So sweet. When I get up to leave, he says "good-bye" to me en anglais. Everyone is so eager to try out their few words of English.

Stop in Le Comptoir du Terroir on rue Etienne Marcel, a shop that sells fine foods and wine. Buy raspberry jam for Eleanor. Note to self: go back here; great stuff.

I think I may be getting slightly (with emphasis on the slightly) better at understanding French TV. Watched "Vie Prive, Vie Publique." Great debate about internet, video surveillance cameras, tabloids, etc etc. There's a town in Brittany whose mayor has installed 63 surveillance cameras; the town has only about nine thousand people! Also an interview with the singer Salvatore Adamo and his son.

News item about Jean Nouvel, French architect, winning the Pritzker 2008. Second time a French architect has won. I'll have to track down some of his buildings in Paris. I know he did the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Musee du Quai Branly, neither of which I have seen.