I have had a very busy couple of weeks. After returning from Zurich, I took a sudden trip to Philadelphia to see my grandfather, who is not doing so well. We had a nice visit, but the trip there and back was sort of awful. I had to connect in Detroit, and it was problematic at both ends. I got into Philadelphia at 1:00 AM, after several hours of delays. But the way back was much worse. My flight to Detroit sat on a runway in Philadelphia for two and a half hours. When we landed in Detroit, I had missed my connection to Paris by four minutes. So had four other people. The airline was unconcerned, and wasn't going to pay for hotel rooms because the delay was due to weather. So I found flights to London and Frankfurt, and asked about those. There were no seats on the Frankfurt flight. They couldn't get me from London to Paris. I decided to just go to London and take the Chunnel, which turned out to be the right decision. They told me my bag would go to Paris, but never told me I had to file a claim when I landed in London. It seemed illogical to me to file a lost luggage report with British Airways, since they had probably never touched my bag. But that's what I eventually did. It's been a week, and I still don't have my bag. If I never get it, I will only really miss my dress shoes. In any case, I will never fly Northwest again, unless my final destination is Detroit.

On the bright side, I did get to spend a lovely afternoon in London. I went to the exhibit at Shakespeare's Globe, and the price of admission included a tour of the archeological site of the Rose theatre. Our guide had pink hair and a fascinating ideological perspective: Shakespeare's company was better than Henslowe's because it was an artistic collective, rather than a top-down business model.

Laura left last Friday. I miss her. But now Jesse is here visiting. We have been going non-stop since she got here. I have managed to spend some time in the library, though.

I turned in my Paris Program report and got a nice email back from the program administrator, thanking me for my "great" report and saying that it sounded like I had had a wonderful year. Which is true, and it's also a very supportive and encouraging thing to say. Sometimes it is nice to get some encouragement.

I had a cold all last week, so I watched a lot of television, including two pretty fascinating movies. One was a really interesting documentary called "51 Birch Street," about the filmmaker's parents' marriage. The scenes where he interviewed his father were really uncomfortable, because it seemed like his father wasn't really into answering the questions he was asking. But my favorite part was when he talked to this young rabbi about having found his mother's diary and whether or not he should read it. And the rabbi said, "Well, I know I would read it." It was amusing. The other film was "Vixen!" directed by Russell Mayer. It was genius.

This weekend I went to Zurich to visit my friend Angela from high school. We had a really fun time. She has a great group of friends there. She has been there for three years. On Saturday we went to the Christopher Street Day parade, which is what they call the Gay Pride parade. It was smaller than Chicago's, and kind of subdued because the weather was not great. That night we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant/bar, with a rotating social circle. We stayed for five hours! At the end, paying the bill was interesting. In Switzerland, separate checks are never an issue. The waiter just checked off each item that each person wanted to pay for.

On Sunday we went out to brunch at a restaurant called Iroquois. I had the blueberry pancakes. They were excellent. They probably seemed more excellent than they actually were because I haven't had blueberry pancakes in a very long time. After brunch we went to the Buhrle museum, which was a private collection. The collector enjoyed Impressionism and medieval sculpture. There was some really great stuff there, including van Gogh's reinterpretation of a Millet painting of peasant women. From the museum we went to the Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada. We had a few drinks there. I ordered a pastis, because I could see the bottle of Ricard. The bartender was oddly impressed with me. (This happened again at another bar. Clearly pastis is not as popular in Switzerland as it is in France. Also, they serve it with less water.)

On Monday Angela had to work, so I showed myself around Zurich. It was very relaxing. I saw two churches. I took the tram to the cemetery where James Joyce is buried. I rode on a boat along the river and across Lake Zurich. It was very hot on the boat. There was an American couple behind me, and we all noticed a naked guy sitting on his paddleboat. Our boat dropped me off right by the China Garden, which was beautiful and serene. Then I went to the Botanical Gardens. In the evening we went to the movies. We saw "Pirates of the Carribbean 3" (in English, with subtitles in both French and German). There was an intermission, which was cool.

And now I'm back in Paris. Last night Laura and I went out on the town with Josh and some of his friends. We had a great time, and I didn't get home until 6 AM.