Dear Kitty,
              I have had the oddest, most brilliant couple of days.
              MP and Laurent came back a little bit early on Saturday, which was great, and then I did a service on Sunday. I was supposed to go ice skating with Charlotte again in the afternoon, but there was a hockey game on (damn), so we took her friend Perin (who's visiting at the moment) to the Marais again. We walked around for ages, exploring the shops and giggling, and then had falafel for tea. Afterwards, we were so tired that we were just going to go home - and then we decided to get Velibs and cycle to the Eiffel Tower. We all immediately woke up and cycled all down Rue de Rivoli - stopping at the Louvre. There was the most amazing sunset, so we have heaps of photos of all of us playing around the fountains; it really looked stunning, and the light turned the building a beautiful yellow. It was warm, as well, and started raining really lightly - nice rain, all big warm drops, not those horrible icy needles that you usually get. We were going to cycle all the way home, and we got as far as the Eiffel Tower (singing Disney songs really loudly all the way) before the rain became torrential, the thunderstorms started and we had to stop. There were two umbrellas between the three of us, but at this point, the rain was so heavy that they didn't protect us much. Our feet were so wet that we stopped caring and just jumped in puddles all the way up to Trocadero, and we just couldn't stop laughing at each other.
                  Work today was fine. At lunchtime, there was a big misunderstanding - MP asked, after I asked if I could not pick up Etienne for lunch next Friday because Cecily's here, if I could come to Corsica with them. She thought that Cecily was coming this week, and I thought that we were going to Corsica next weekend - so it was very confusing, and I was very upset until Xavier turned up and started talking about Corsica this weekend. 'This weekend?' I said, 'But Cecily's coming next weekend!' MP looked at me and said 'Wait - when you say next weekend, what date do you mean?' 'Well, she arrives on the 31st,' I said. MP threw her head back and laughed. 'Oh!', she said, 'We're going to Corsica THIS weekend, on the 25th!' We both laughed lots - her because she thought it was funny because she aways gets confused with 'this' and 'next', even in French, and me because it was just such a relief after I'd been so upset. I had almost cried - and my eyes go more red when I don't cry than when I do, so MP thought I had been crying. She gave me a hug when we finished laughing and said 'Now you don't need to cry and have red eyes anymore!' She made me a coffee, and I mentioned that she was almost out of yogurts. So she said that she was going to go to Monoprix this afternoon, and then we started talking about supermarkets, and then we ended up looking up Auchans in Paris on the internet - there's one really near to us but neither of us have found it before. We got the directions, and then she invited me out shopping with her, so we spent all afternoon walking around the 'centre commercial' and the supermarket, and just talking and having fun. I don't think that's something you get to do much in other jobs - hang around with your boss. I'm not complaining, though - it was really nice.
Tomorrow, I'm going to Velib it all the way to Chatelet and then buy some new scales. Mine don't work - you can put what you like on them, and they won't say anything except 55.0kg. So I'm going to invest in some for me - I'm being paid extra for the weekend, so it's ok.
Yours,
      Chessie
P.S Corsica means I can't go to Disneyland, but I'm going to go to Versailles soon anyway, and Charlotte and I still have to go up the Tour Eiffel. I'm leaving in five weeks - and there's so much I need to fit in! Also I'm off to Amsterdam and Germany when I leave - Dad says I should go to Hameln, because it's v. picturesque (and also where he grew up).