26 novembre 2209 (Day 87)
Happy Thanksgiving! No, they do not celebrate this American holiday in France. Therefore I made up my own thanksgiving traditions. I went for a run in rain. It actually wasn’t raining when I left, but it decided to come pouring down once I started hurdling. I told the rain, “Bring it” and kept on running.
I did some homework and then went to the RU for lunch. I had a little “Thanksgiving” dinner there because for lunch there was: a roll, carrots, chicken (close to turkey), and potatoes. If you could call them potatoes, ‘cause they definitely weren’t from Idaho. They were bright yellow from whatever they were cooked in and they left a scarily bright neon yellow liquid on the plate. Luckily the “pie” was delicious. It was a pear something or other that was just fantastic.
For dinner I had some bread and cheese before going off to the symphony with Afton. There were a lot of people (naturally we were the youngest there) to applaud the wonderful performances. The theme for tonight was German, so we heard the amazing Concerto for piano n1 by Brahms and Wagner’s Ouverture de Tannhauser. There was a special performance in between by a local composer. He took 5 poems from a young poet who died tragically (he was a pharmacist who was addicted to drugs like opium). We were excited to hear the “opium poem” that the man told us about. It was funny because the “opium” part of the song was the part that felt fluid. The rest of it felt very disjointed and with the baritone singing in German (or something like that), it wasn’t very fun to listen to, especially compared to Brahms. The concerto was so amazing. It was incredible to listen to the fluidity of the piece and how the piano and orchestra played off of each other and how the orchestra could change the mood of the piano part.
My favorite part (apart from the cute violinist that Afton and I have a crush on) was the conductor. He was this cute older gentleman with white hair and big jowls. It was so great to watch him when he was conducting because his jowls would shake like San Francisco in 1906. He got really into the music and would also grumble along with the parts. He was loud, because we could hear him rumbling along with the violins and it was just great. Bless his heart. He got an extraordinarily long applause (if the French style wasn’t long enough). I love classical music!
I thought I’d make a list of more “random” things that I am thankful for this year, so here goes nothing!
I am thankful for…
Spam filters
Cheese slicers
Toilet seats
Augustus Jackson for inventing ice cream
Scissors
Dental string
Solar rays
large, self-luminous, heavenly bodies
