"Ici, on parle football!"

French because we watched an Arsenal game that took place in Paris last night, and I have just made plans to go to Paris! For those of you who are familiar with Arsenal football (soccer) club, I watched the European Cup final last night between Barcelona and Arsenal. It was heartbreaking, as Arsenal played most of the game one man short. They lost the goalie to a red card early on in the first half, after a slide tackle that was quite obviously intended to take out the man rather than retrieve the ball. I did comment at the time that I'd never seen a ref take away the advantage before (Barcelona scored, only to have the goal disallowed by the ref who had blown his whistle on the goalie and Barcelona then missed the free kick)...however, it did not end up being much a blow to Barcelona who went on to score two goals in the second half. Arsenal played their hearts out, but pretty much were run all over the field with only a substitute goalie and 9 men playing.

I have now puchased tickets to go back to Paris for the first time in...hmm, lord knows how many years. Probably since we were living in Italy. My friend Jo and I will be taking the Eurostar (yay!) and may try to check out some of the Da Vinci code irregularities. We will definitely take in the Louvre. This will happen the weekend of June 24, which means the week of June 26, I will only be working 1 day! (Will take the Monday off, and then will be on a training course Wed-Fri). And then I'm gone for two weeks, back to the States! Midge has been laughing at me for the way I've been arranging my travel plans to break up what has turned out to be a very slow-paced rotation. Speaking of Midge, though we tried, we won't get to meet up, as she didn't get her visa delivered until Tuesday, and has various family plans until she leaves. It's a shame, but then again, we've had some great phone calls last week and this one.