Mind the Gap (between posts)--almost done with Paris

Looking back on previous years' work in the Peregrinator I marvel that I was so dedicated about regular updates.  What the heck was I thinking?  Am I really getting that old and decrepit?  Probably.  Perhaps I am doing what the ballplayers do--grinding it out (although in the past tense they often comically say, "we just grinded and grinded," which I love)--but the more likely explanation is that there are enough other distractions in my life that an hour every couple of days on the blog seems like more than I can afford.  I guess it's oxymoronic (or just moronic) to say that I am working hard to conserve my energy, but I have found myself frequently just tucking back in and returning to my digs or being alone instead of opting for more socializing or touristing.

After the Oxford trip we had a weekend, yes, but a lot of that was spent either marking the papers or procrastinating about marking papers.  I found it well-nigh impossible to work much in my airlessness even when the temperature at ground level was low, so I was off in cafes much of the time.  A highlight was matching up with New Zealand nephew Kieran and his girlfriend Michelle for lunch at a Filipino place in the Fitzrovia section, near SoHo not far from the dorm.

We left London on a Monday morning, having had a meeting downstairs the night before where Dana and I impressed upon the ducklings that we were now embarking on the hard part of the trip, in so many respects.  As usual, David Sedaris' wonderful Picka Pocketoni provides a perfect humorous introduction to Paris Metro etiquette ("We are not going to be those American tourists, people...") but also had to get serious about catcalls, feel-ups and general safety.  It's sort of a military operation moving 31 people out of one place (turning in keys and transport cards) and getting them to the train station (12 minute roll for me, but not at Student Pace--even though if they took the Tube they would walk farther with more stairs for the one stop) and assembled outside the enormous Eurostar line to receive their tickets and pass through.  We didn't tried to do it all in one go, but instead stationed me back at the dorm and Dana at St Pancras, both of us counting ducklings and checking off lists.  As expected, one of them breezed in late for the evening meeting--and then asked stupid questions later.

The transfer from Gare du Nord onto the RER B and down to Luxembourg was straightforward enough, and it only took, oh, two hours to get them settled into their digs at the Maison des Mines dormitory on a narrow neck of the rue St Jacques.  Much of the management is different from last time (this is a good thing: last year Victor's group encountered ghastliness and bailed to a hotel, thus ruining the budget) so the rooms were (mostly) clean (one room had a spectacular ceiling full of black mold, but there was a spare)--but some of the night staff are a bit too much modeling their behavior after Chadian prison-guard for my taste (yesterday evening I had to muster my best Clint voice and say, "No, you have to let me finish.  There is no need to be impolite with these two students about making sure the door is latched, just because some other students screwed up.  They didn't even come through this door!") but this may be the last time we use this residence, even if it is cheap and close in.

Part of the problem is the way this year's calendar fell: arrive on a Monday and do a walkaround after everyone is settled; Tuesday class but then look at the weather, gonna rain so we move the Versailles trip to Thursday.  Do the Seine boat ride on Tuesday evening, with picnic in the parklet below the Pont Neuf.  

But the Americans in Paris people don't get back to me in time for me to get tickets for them.  So we do it anyway.  Cloudy but not rainy.  Wednesday class and track down Versailles stuff, can't do Versailles on B-Day of course so it goes on the Thursday BUT there's a complication with the supplementaire RER C tickets that get us the last few stops out to the Chateau station.  Typical French bullshit they want you to get off in Vivoflay (limit of central passes) and then re-enter with the supplements (thereby forcing you to wait for the next train).  But it turns out that Versailles station has given up taking tickets and just have open turnstiles with signs saying "Welcome," so when I went out at the crack of dawn to check the system I had to wrestle with the question, "Do I try to tell them to blow off the intermediary stop?"

All this because I absolutely hate the idea of doing the follow-the-umbrella style Guided Tour With Bus Driver style of excursion that I paid for in 2009 and 10.  I did, however, enjoy several delicious croissants while I waited for it to get more reasonable to hie myself to the Chateau, and then immediately realized that I hadn't been Absolutely Clear Enough that I actually meant for them to get out of the dorm in time to be there at the line as close to 9 as possible.  We had a nice enough visit but I spent most of the morning in the inner courtyard as people dribbled in, and I joined them for the Trianons and the gardens and the Hameau....    All this also meant that I couldn't have an actual class after Versailles, which is when I usually do my essay on it, so this time I did an honor-system take-home version, due Saturday evening (giving them a couple of days to allocate two hours in amongst the distractions of Bastille Day yesterday and Eurodisney (for a surprising number) today.

 So.  It has been a circus, not too bizarre but I was ready for an easy day in Paris.  I spent far too much of the morning wrestling with Summer Abroad administrivia, including some accounting stuff with the AggieTravel portal (don’t get me started on the saga involved in securing my travel advance this time) as well as a strange whack-a-mole game I need to play to actually get paid ("Turns out that retirees teaching in summer need to fill out and submit this UBEN 596 form and return it to Benefits as soon as possible.  The Benefits Office has moved, here is the link"--but no e-mail address, and of course the online form doesn't accept my signature, so I end up printing the form, taking a picture, porting that into a document and saving as a pdf, before discovering that there really IS no place indicated to submit electronically.  And of course SA personnel are...traveling or out for the weekend or both).  Got a similar nag from The System about needing to submit a receipt from Wells Fargo for the (accursed) cash advance, and of course that also took a half hour.
We have lucked out with the weather in Paris this year.  We missed the big chaleur of the week before--which culminated in Biblical rains that turned Metro station steps into impressive cascades--and we have had not too warm not too cool conditions.  I am hoping against hope that I don’t have any more blips (yesterday evening I spent an hour and a half of quality time helping to fill out a police report for one of my students whose room was entered (probably while she slept) and 150 euros cash lifted from the money-carrier she’d left on her desk underneath.  Her roommate’s wallet was taken but because it didn’t have any cash it was left over a chair in the hallway—with credit cards still there.  Aiee.  That episode in the 5eme police station down at Maubert Mabillon filled me with a teensy bit of apprehension as I realized that the dude's English was nonexistent AND that if I have to run interference with a similarly monoglot cop in Roma I (and we) will be in deep doo-doo, as my Italian is nowhere near my guerilla French, such as it is.

Personality wise this group is pretty OK but it is only halfway through, and I am loath to predict (since faithful Peregrinators know that I have been burned badly thinking things were good, and then learned that there were seething undercurrents in the reality-TV stew—sorority versus independent, in-group versus perceived out-group, or even lone-wolf weirdness that becomes toxic to the group as a whole.  We don’t have the couple-isolation of 2015, where two folks isolated in their connubial / infatuative bliss, but we have a guy who thinks of himself as worthy of special treatment (“I hate Wicked.  I can skip it and go out with this Danish woman I met last week, right?” or “I’m running a bit late getting to Versailles" [sent at 11 AM when the rendezvous was supposed to be “as close to 10 AM at the audioguides as you can”—he didn’t leave until 11! and then got lost! and then asked Dana, “Will I have my grade docked because I got lost?”  Unreal. And yeah, he was the guy who was late to the pre-Paris meeting too.  I suspect that he voted against Hillary.]
Speaking of competent women, Dana is high-energy and competent.  I hear that my OSC from 2015 forewarned her about my penchant for Paleozoic technology—my laptop is new but my iPhone 4S seems to have a weird problem sending texts to French cell phones under my AT&T international plan—no problem with UK or UC cells, I can receive texts, and I can even voice call French cells, but no texts; one of my plans for today, a tranquil post Bastille Day, is to call the 24 hour help line and see if I can discover whether this is some bizarre forced upgrade situation.  The AT&T equivalent of the French shrug that says, “Yes this eez a problem, m’sieur, but it is, alas, your problem.”

We have worked together pretty effectively, and I realized early in the Paris stay that I had forgotten to tell her that I really did appreciate all she was doing!  At least tonight I will be able (I think) to enjoy a nice dinner with Victor and Michelle and Raquel.  If nothing goes wrong.  Then it's Game On, hoping that I can prepare for the next transfer, the bus trip to Les Houches on Monday (having spent an hour in e-mails with the manager of the hotel, informing him of menu restrictions and miscellaneous other questions)

And in honor of Mr Trump, here's the best argument possible for a strong European Union and not a return to "My Country First" bullshit:

The amazing thing is, the number of same-names... families wiped out.  Now I will head over and pick up some papers.

Oxford, version 5

I'm about to go downstairs to the basement lounge and conduct my pre-Paris briefing, having once again walked the route from this University of London dorm to St Pancras International in advance of our Eurostar departure tomorrow, trying to leave nothing to chance: what if there is road construction, what if the route isn't exactly as I remember it, etc.  But I want to seize the moment and update the blog even briefly, since I can't get psyched to mark more of the in-class essays they wrote on Thursday.

It was a little disconcerting to have every student show up at the suggested-but-not-required time to walk with me to the Russell Square tube station and head to Marble Arch for the bus to Oxford. Usually we are in at least two clumps, but evidently a fair number of them hadn't bothered to bring the handout I'd made, and were counting on following the crowd. So the poor driver had to sit there and deal with a bunch of £20s making £6 change for every student day return (and for my Senior day return, says the newly minted sexagenarian). But we got underway eventually, blasted up the M40-A40 and into the City of Spires. I have to say the Oriel experience was less wonderful than it was the first couple of years--I'm not sure why but the librarian doesn't seem keen on letting a group of reverent American undergraduates into the Senior Library... But as it turned out, we were shown into Hall ("A miniature version of Hogwarts' dining hall, one said again--and I pointed out that Christ Church, aka Slytherin, was the place where they filmed some of the banquet scenes, aided by CGI magic) and then into the Chapel, where again I think they were slightly blown away by the idea of so many centuries of continuous worship in the same location. Oriel is attempting to fund-raise for its Campaign 2026 target, celebrating 700 years of incorporation as an institution of higher learning (well, let's not get too technical about the distinction between drinking clubs and medieval halls back in the day). I decided not to try to lead this group in a round (I'd been able to persuade my 2015 cohort to have a bash at Jubilate Deo just for fun) but I did do my extremely idiosyncratic whistling demonstration that was such a sensation two years ago. It's pretty amazing acoustics in there.

Then it was time for a bit of lunch after some quick walking around (showing them where I lived my first year, with the window that received beer mugs flung from yobbos carousing at the Bear Inn a few doors down), and then a 28-duckling walk up through colleges and the University Parks to the leafy suburb of North Oxford and the Cherwell Boathouse (we were 28 and not 29 because a student was sick with some sort of flu back at the ranch).

This group had a bit more trouble than some previous ones, I'm not sure, and I actually switched boats at least three times to rescue people from willows and demonstrate, up close and personal, that I really did mean it when I said, "Stand well back in the stern, propel the boat with the pole close to the side of the boat, and then leave it all in the water, off the very back, and steer straight before trying to pole again."  These are the magic words I guess, and I have to be actually in the boat for them to be heard.  This person had a terrible time at first (on the way upriver) and then got the hang of it on the way down: "I do so much better after you teach me.  Thank you Professor."  We had sun on the way up, overcast on the way back, meaning less sunburn.  Everyone seemed to enjoy their pint of shandy (most of them followed my lead) at the Victoria Arms just below Marston, and many were suitably effusive in praising this unusual way to spend a day.  I think after the amped-up pace of London, Oxford is just the antidote, and punting caps that aspect.  There was, alas, one "incident" where a boat moved right into the path of another of our boats and got T-boned, sending the pole-er into the drink.  Problem was, there was laughter before the compassion, and the whole thing could have been prevented if someone had fended off.  But the swimmer ironically enough had a friend studying for the summer in Oxford and was able to borrow dry clothes within an hour.  No harm no foul I hope, though I will raise this issue at the briefing in a few minutes.

I want to finish this entry by mentioning that before I left I made my ritual pilgrimage to the All Souls' gate adjacent to the Radcliffe Camera, the reading room I spent so many hours pinned to case-hardened oak chairs.  It was here, back in the summer of 1978 when I was visiting with a long-ago girlfriend before I started my Semester Abroad program, that I had a late-evening epiphany, quite momentous really, when I just felt this overwhelming sense that I wanted to study here, I would tap into this ridiculously powerful tradition of learning, and would do actual graduate study here.  Very few times in my life I can point to as truly life-changing in that way.

There you go.