This morning I am slow to get up. I lie with my face buried in my pillow, the sun trying to pry its way in. As I slowly regain consciousness, I hear a strange sound rising from the street below Justin's apartment. It is not the jackhammer or the backhoe that have been tearing up the concrete for a few days now. What is it? It is music, definitely live music, shrill and reedy. Could it be the band from the school across the street? My mind begins to click back into shape, and I dismiss that possibility — the parts are perfectly in time, and no middle school music group could manage that. What could possibly be outside the window? My desire to solve this mystery overpowers my bed addiction (I think that my five strongest feelings are curiosity, love, horniness, sleepiness, and hunger, perhaps in that order), and, pulling on my pants, I hop to the window. There is no crowd, just the regular pedestrians and construction workers. The music is loud, piercing, and it seems so close that I can't perceive a direction. AH! There he is. It's an organ grinder! I have never seen an organ grinder before, but I recognize him to be one, even without the monkey. He is just standing by the construction, behind a box almost as large as he, stationary except for his winding forearm. It appears that his performance is old hat to everyone else on the street. I only get to watch for a second before he stops. I've got to document this! This may be the coolest thing I've seen yet on my trip, so I dash for my camera. Alas! I get back to the window in time to see him disappear around the corner. It is as if he existed solely to get me out of bed this morning. I wish, oh I dearly wish for an organ grinder alarm clock. That would be utterly fantastic.
Here is a picture of the construction, then, sans organ grinder. He would have been over past the right side of the picture. In the picture with the workers are some suits, who arrived today to inspect the progress. Although I could not hear anything of what they discussed, it looked from above to be ridiculously bureaucratic of them. Justin said that this was very French, both in the excess of bureaucracy, andalso in the distinct outfits — he says that French people "treat their job as a costume", in that they keep a greater separation between their personal and professional life.
In the States, workers worry more about getting along with eachother, being friendly and whatnot, while the French worker's main concern is either being competent or at least projecting an air of competence. Apparently the tradeoff here is in customer service. According to Justin, America:"The Customer Is Always Right"::France:"What Customer?"
Here is a funny story that a cute Australian girl named Jessie related to me on the plane back to Paris from Pisa: An American woman visiting France walks into a cafe (or a patisserie, or a charcuterie, it doesn't really matter) and says to the man behind the counter, "Hello, can I have a slice of cake and a coffee, please?" The man looks apologetic and replies, "Pardon, madame, mais je ne parle pas anglais. Pouvez-vous parler en français, s'il vous plait?" The woman furrows her brow, and speaks a little slower: "I would like some cake... and some coffee, sil voo play?" "Je suis très désolée, Madame, mais je ne peux rien comprendre, parce que je ne sais aucun du mot en anglais. Vous devez parler en français pour moi." The American frowns, huffs in frustration, and pulls out a dictionary from her purse. "Je voodray doo gatoh ay un cafay oh lay, sil voo play?" The man behind the counter smiles slightly and says, "Zere, zat was not so deefeecult, was zat?"
Around noon, Justin and I walked a few blocks, just past Place de la Nation, to a large market. The market consists of just one aisle, with stalls on either side, but the aisle is about a mile long, it seems. I would call it a farmer's market, except that in addition to all of the produce, there were appliances for sale, as well as clothing and various tchotchkes (e.g. Alphabet train sets – each car was a letter. The vendors had, naturally, spelled out a few names as examples. The one in front? "Norbert". I can't wait to see their list of available novelty miniature license plates). We didn't walk very far down the market, only about twenty stall lengths, not nearly far enough to see the end, but Justin said that it just repeats a bunch of times.
There are statues all over this city, and Place de la Nation is no exception. I don't know what is depicted by the statue in the middle of the circle, but it seems nice and dynamic. On the east side of La Place are two Lord-Of-The-Rings-esque columns with statues facing east. At one time, this was an entrance to the city. Justin says that back in the day, they used to have executions right here, and there is a graveyard a few blocks away where they would bury the unfortunates.
Justin and I are sitting at the table around 3pm (15h, en Français), type-type-typing away at our respective computers, when sirens break the silence. Down the street zoom first a few police motorcycles, then a few police cars roll by, then a convoy of police vans amble past, then a flotilla of riot cop RV's rumbles through. Some stop at the intersection below Justin's apartment, some continue on towards Nation, and some turn down various side streets. What the hell is going on? Aha! 
Today Nicolas Sarkozy gets sworn in as President of France — there must be a protest going down at la Place de la Nation. And it promises to be a doozy, given the intimidating show of force by the police. 
Fifteen minutes later, we hear chanting and, a block away, see hordes of people streaming towards Nation. Exciting, exciting! I grab my camera and get ready to be the next guy-who-took-this.
What a disappointment it turned out to be. Hordes, apparently, look larger from a block or two away, 
when you can only see thirty feet of them at a time. There were maybe a thousand of them, 99% my age or younger, milling about, smoking, with the requisite dreadlocked drum circle, a kid with a black anarchy flag, some jokers sitting in the gutter launching into a chant that 
would last a few seconds before it petered out. A few people stood on the back of a flatbed and spoke for a couple minutes into a microphone, but it seemed very disorganized. The gendarmes (riot police), laying in wait a block or two away, must have been more 
disappointed than me: "Well, boys, it looks like we're not going to get to rough up any hippies today." Justin said later he saw someone get arrested (by six gendarmes) for walking down the street, so I guess they were bored.
Tonight I had my second rehearsal with the theatre troupe. It went fine, except that four (of nine) actors did not show up. But the music went okay – not really much more difficult than dealing with unmusical American actors. The biggest hurdle today was putting stresses on the correct syllables. We Americans tend to consolidate the accent onto one syllable, and the French spread it out a little. It makes for slightly peculiar (to me) text-setting. But as long as they're cool with singing it, I'm okay teaching it.
Still, the rehearsal was draining, so I was very happy to go get a burger and a beer down the street. The burger was served on an English muffin! An interesting novelty, but I do prefer a fluffier bun. It was kind of small, too. And it cost 13 euros. France, America's got you beat on this one.
In news completely unrelated to me:
• Humpback whales have been spotted in the Sacramento River, just downstream from Sacramento. Growing up in Davis (maybe in all of Northern California), you learn the story of Humphrey the Humpback Whale, who swam upstream all the way from San Francisco Bay in 1985 and delighted the residents of Sacramento for a a few weeks before he was escorted back to his home. As long as they make it okay, I think that today's news item is pretty cool.
• Not so cool is the media's obsession with all things Anna Nicole. Apparently her diaries were published online today, and apparently that is front page news for CNN.com. AND OF COURSE I CLICKED ON THE LINK. I am ashamed of that. But had I not, I could not have given you this gift, a hilariously eloquent/ridiculous sentence from the article about her diary entries/life: "She was careless with spelling, punctuation, and, too often, with her own well-being." That just completely cracks me up. Completely.
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