A Day of Entertainment!

Today Ben and I headed to Tuillerie to read some stories. It's a long walk, but I figure it's pretty much the only exercise I'm getting, so why not.

Ben wanted to sit near the fountain, so we did. But it was cold, so he sat on my lap and snuggled up to my neck. He said he didn't want gloves on, so I had him cross his arms and put his left hand in my right sweatshirt sleeve and his right in my left.

A gypsy came up and asked if I spoke English, I was reading to Ben, so I said, "Nope" without looking up. She went away.

I read him several stories and then we went into the tree area and collected leaves, sticks and nuts to make a collage. We stopped on the way home to buy art supplies and then made a collage, and then Beth came home.

The end.

Or, it would have been had I posted this just after lunch like I had planned.

After Ben's nap, we headed out to do some shopping. We ran smack dab into a parade.

I'd say protest parade, but the bill became law yesterday, so there really isn't much to protest. I say history making parade, but again, it's already law, and even though it was a very, very long parade (4 lane road, full of people, marching the whole length of Haussman up to the Arc, from 3 to about 6:30. That's a lot of people.), I don't think it really will have any effect on the country of France. (Though I admittedly don't know how French politics work)

So, I guess it was just a parade without clowns or floats. But it was loud and colorful and there were riot police everywhere, so it was still interesting.

We kind of ignored the parade and did our shopping then headed home.

It looked like it was dying down at that point, so when I headed out to the grocery store I almost didn't take my camera, but Beth told me to take it just in case. Good thing! That's when I got all these pictures.

And!

As a bonus, at the grocery store, as I was on my way to the checkout line, 2 teenage girls came running down the aisle next to me. I thought, that's odd, there's no runn... and my thought was interrupted by 3 more girls running after them. One of the latter girls caught one of the former girls by the hair and an all-out cat fight proceeded. I didn't think I had time to get my camera out, but since no one was doing anything about it, I put my groceries down, got out my camera and took a few shots. There was just hair pulling, so I couldn't help but smile at the silliness of the situation.

One of the girls saw me (as you can see by the second picture) and (I think) told me to stop taking pictures. I dunno though, she ran out of the store with her two friends.

I paid and went out of the store, only to find the three girls waiting for me.

They came up to me and the taller black girl (about 5'10", 115 lbs) got up in my face and said something about video. I said, je ne parle pas Francais (I don't speak French), with a big smile on my face. I almost laughed out loud. My hands were full of groceries, I had a backpack on full of soda, and all three of those girls couldn't have even knocked me over if they had attacked me all at once. I believe these are the kids from the sandbox, twelve years later.

I started to walk away and the girl tried to get in front of me. Her friend, having some sense (maybe, not sure of any of their thought processes), held her back, as if not for her, the black girl would have torn me to pieces. Honest, I nearly lost it as I walked away. People must have thought I was nuts the way I was smiling.

I got back to the parade to find that it had finished and a parade of street sweepers, garbage trucks and bulldozers carrying garbage were cleaning the street.

Now that's a day!