Paris is like a non-stop Lindy Exchange.

I tried the Slow Club tonight (rue de Rivoli - down the street from the Louvre). It swung: enter at ground level, take a two-story spiral staircase down into the ground. The place is a cavern - all rock walls, low arched ceilings, great floor. Tho, it took me a while to find a French follow - Kansas, Arizona, Florida, Sweeden. Eventually, I found a French guy named Patrick. He was good.

www.danse-a-2.com

137 events scheduled in May! 4 different dances each night, means you couldn’t even get all of the regular dances in a month.

Ah! That was why the owner was so worked up. His French was so fast we couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was certianly concerned about something, but we thot it was just Chinese hospitality. Damn clueless Americans.

Paris - city of extravagance. The French leave little room for subtlety, attacking your eyes with exceeding spectalces of architecture and design. Bombardment of such sustained magnitude has left we longing for the simplicity of New Zealand. I walked around the forest of Fontainebleau, very green, very Robin Hood. Short, rocky hills, thick green trees, quiet and peaceful. If you thot it was a nightmare to drive in Manhattan, think about Paris. No grid, more peds, motorbikes and scooters, parking a nightmare. I’m glad to use the metro and trains.

I saw the Bastille neighborhood the other day. Just a tall column in a round-about for a memorial - the prison was destroyed in the Revolution. I also went to the modern art gallery - Pompidou - and saw lots of cool ideas. Some Andy Warhol, Dali, and others. Some weird, stuff, too. Like a urinal on its side, but a new perspective on it. The building reminds of the ITLL building - color-coded pipes, exposed building materials (they used concrete to join the trusses), and very technological looking. The escalators were on the exterior of the building, inside these hamster-tube like passages.

This morning, they tested the air raid sirens, which sound like weary banchees. Very eerie and slightly disturbing.

Tomorrow, I begin my travel back to New Zealand, a 65 hour journey of flying and waiting. This will be intense, but I may get to mess around the city of Hong Kong, as I have 14 hours there in the day.

My position in Japan is all but secured. My brother will be receiving a packet of information about the school I’ve been matched with. Once I get that, my place is absolutely certain. I can’t wait and I hope I’m not too far out froma big city. At least train access. If/When I get placed, I’ll have to change my return ticket to put my in the US (the big C) before July 9th. I’ll have two weeks to put things in order, and then I’ll leave for my school!

I like France, tho. The people are more friendly than I was expecting, and the old stone buildings with dormers are endearing. EVerywhere you walk, you feel the age and weight of this significant city. Old men walk around with their hands folded behind their back; at 5 o’clock, everyone is carrying at least one bagette; cheese and bread for breakfast is nice and fast.

If I return, I’ll prolly spend more time dancing - it is, after all, part of the history of the Lindy Hop. It’s where Lindbergh landed when he hopped over the Atlantic in 1927. I’m going to try dancing tonight, but as there are more than 4 dances every night, I certianly won’t get any proper feel for the dancing and jazz here.