My parents came to visit! They were here for five days, arriving Friday night and leaving on the airport shuttle at 6:15 this morning. We had a really great time.

We went to Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower on Saturday, then to the Louvre on Sunday. My mother was suitably impressed with the Louvre. I enjoyed the fact that they are currently running an exhibit called "Counterpoint," which involves contemporary sculptors' responses to older pieces. My favorite was in the French sculpture room, and involved white scupltures of a group of people all holding clocks. I didn't get to see who the artist was, because we were kind of done with the Louvre by the time we got to that point. We moved very efficiently through the Louvre, which was good.

On Monday we traveled to Lisieux and the the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. Lisieux was the home of Saint Therese of the Little Flower (more officially known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus). Everyone asked us if we were there on a pilgrimage, to which I kept saying yes. We took the train and got there very early in the morning. We walked to Les Buissonets, Therese's childhood home, which is set up with a fascinating tour. The first woman we met there put on the English recording for us, and kept telling me that I spoke really excellent French, and then she wanted to talk about Jansenism and I said something about Pascal and she was super impressed with me for knowing about Jansenism. Then she sent us upstairs, where there were nuns, who both spoke good English and closed the doors behind us. The nun in the gift shop area also complimented my French, so I told her I had spent a year in Angers as an undergraduate and now I was in Paris for the year. My mother wanted to buy relics, and the nun was horrified that she would speak of buying relics. She told us to go to the Carmelite convent, and they would give us relics there. We had already passed by there, and it's closed for renovations until 2008. But Sister had told us to go to the "accueil," or front desk. So we made our way back, and asked for directions in the Pilgrimage Center. The woman there told me to ring the doorbell at the convent. So that's what we did, and this nice lady asked us if we were on a pilgrimage and gave us relics. Then we went up to the Basilica of Saint Therese, which is enormous and very colorfully decorated. And my parents bought a bunch of stuff in the Basilica gift shop.

Then we took the train to Bayeux, and we had time for lunch (but not for the Tapestry) before the 2:40 bus to the American Cemetery. So we found this creperie, and had some very nice crepes. Everyone on the bus was American, but once we got to the cemetery, there were some Europeans (lots of Italians, and quite a few French students). The American Cemetery is building a new "Interpretation Center," and the construction makes it very confusing to find the entrance. But find it we did. The cemetery is very much designed to make Americans feel patriotic pride and a sorrowful sense of loss. I got a little weepy. The most interesting thing to me was that the sea of crosses includes a fairly large number of Stars of David, which you don't really notice in iconic D-Day imagery. (To be fair, I think most of my iconic D-Day imagery comes from the Charlie Brown special about his visit to Normandy, which I believe is entitled "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown...and Don't Come Back!") The whole experience made me wonder if George Bush and his ilk have ever visited that place, and if such a visit would make them understand the gravity of war. But I think they would be more invested in the national pride part of the equation than in gratitude or sorrow for anyone's sacrifice.

On Tuesday we went out to lunch with Laura at Le Zeyer, a restaurant that Laura and I walk by all the time and had never gone into before. (Also, we thought it was called Le Zever, because of the font on top of the awning.) The waiter there said to me, "Votre francais est impeccable" ("Your French is impeccable.") And at that point I decided people were just telling me this in front of my parents to make my parents feel proud of me. (Then again, my parents couldn't understand them...)

Tuesday evening I had rehearsal, and I sent my parents to see "Spider-Man 3" with L. and P. and K. Rehearsal was annoying, but really interesting. I'm playing the butler, and we were doing the scene where I serve tea. It was the first time we had the actual props. Everyone kept correcting me on how I was serving the tea. And at first, I was thinking it was because we hadn't really choreographed the tea service, and maybe we should take some time to do that. But when the one girl with the actual aristocratic last name said "You're going to be a pro at this" for the third or fourth time, I remembered where I was. And it dawned on me that these kids (who attend one of France's Grandes Ecoles) have all had butlers serve them tea, or at least watched butlers serve tea to their parents.

Yesterday we went to Versailles. When we bought our RER tickets, I noticed a sign that said we could buy day passes to Versailles, so I asked the guy about that. It turns out it was cheaper to do that, and we didn't have to stand in line to buy tickets when we got there. The line to get into the palace was almost as long as the ticket line, so we decided to tour the gardens and the "Domain of Marie Antoinette" before we did the castle. Which proved to be a brilliant decision.