There are festivals involving music and fire here; I like it.

Saturday was the Fête de la Musique. I have to admit that I was disappointed. On the other hand, it was far too hot to go anywhere else. For most of the day I sat around listening to bad covers of bad American/British music. In sum, the event was really like a bad bar: drunken fools throwing beer bottles while listening to a bad cover band. It was a bit amusing to walk down the street and be completely surrounded by sound on all sides.

One highlight was an orchestra playing covers. The most amusing was Muse's Starlight. This song includes words like "live" and "blackhole". These gave the singer a hard time. Oddly, they chose to have a female singer...who pronounced these words as "leave" and "blah-hole". No one around me understood why I was laughing at that. The best part of their set was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which they played without words.

Yesterday was equally boring as it was far too hot to move. I regretted walking into town almost immediately after I walked out of the apartment building. I took some pictures of buildings, which I'm guessing are boring to everyone other than me. I went in the Museum of Old Aix which is in a building near my school. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was still nifty. It's in an old hôtel particulier that is much better preserved than the one that my school is in. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure photographs weren't allowed. There were a lot of dolls and dishes from the nineteenth century. There are also these nativity sets, santons, that were prominantly featured. The amusing part of all of this is that most of these things were from Marseille, and not Aix. Close enough?

After that, it was far too hot to walk back to the apartment, so I sat in the cathedral for somewhere around two hours listening to choirs practice for a concert that night.

Later I had a conversation with an old lady who told me it was nearly 40°C (over 100°F). She then proceeded to ask if it gets that hot where I live in the United States. I confirmed this. She then assumed I was from the west coast.

Again, today it was far too hot to do anything, yet I proceeded to eat outside and spend money, my two favorite things here. I am quite excited because I finally went into the fabric store in town. There are some distinct patterns in the south of France, and I haven't purchased anything in them because nothing aside from the fabric itself caught my attention. I found the fabric and got some of that today. I have no idea what I'm going to make out of it. Probably an apron.

Tonight there is going to be a giant fire in the center of town for the Festival of Saint Jean. You can count on pictures of that one.

I get to go to work with my host after school tomorrow to see how he makes soap out of olives!

My Google Homepage indicates that the temperatures in Paris are to be about 10°C cooler some days this week (that's nearly 20°F different). That makes me wish I were there already. That doesn't happen until Saturday.