last potluck; jj party

libby and eric left at 5am to take the metro to the bus to the airport.

the school mom organization had its last potluck lunch today. i made chinese dumplings again. the potluck took place in a fabulous paris house with garden. i arrived at the outer edge of paris, only a few metro stops from home and walked down a street with modern buildings. they looked like they were built in the 60’s. i got to the address, and it didn’t look quite right, but the instructions were to go in and pass through a gate. in fact, the house and garden were hidden, surrounded by modern buildings. the house had probably stood alone on a big property and at some point sold the outer edge to developers. there was also a separate small building which had been converted into a loft-like studio apartment. the house was beautifully decorated. there were at least 4 seating areas in the beautiful garden. apparently, this is a garden district. i used google satellite maps later to confirm, there were many other houses like it in the area. the food at the potluck was excellent and ample, as always. thank you gifts were given out to people who helped with the parent organization throughout the year. this group is truly amazing and it’s been a very fun year (for the parents!).

today was the official last day of school for jj, having finished her internship. she had a very good week and it flew by. after the first day, she got herself to work and back on her own. she felt that her work improved. i hope she can go back and meet the architect sometime (he was away this week).

jj planned an early birthday party, since she knew everybody would scatter to the winds for the summer. she was to have 12 or 13 girls over, but at the last minute she checked with her friends and only her close buddies were still coming. i was proud of her reaction. she was certainly disappointed, especially for their flakiness, but also said, “too bad for them because we’re going to have a lot of fun and it’s their loss.” her best buddies came over – the girl gang of four. they went on their own to “carmine’s”, a good pizza/pasta joint with nice outdoor dining, near the eiffel tower. p and i went out too, and planned on meeting them afterwards. they took velibs around the champs de mars dropping them near the eiffel tower and then we all met at the bottom. jj was very excited with the idea of going up it at night. it had a very different ambiance and we especially enjoyed seeing the sparkling lights while standing on the eiffel tower. it was almost 1am when we got down. jj and the girls wanted to take bikes back to the front of the champs de mars and p and i approved. only after they went racing away to get the bikes did we have second thoughts about whether we were being responsible parents and chaperones for the others, allowing them to run off into the night, so late. we held our breath, holding our faith that paris was mostly safe, and relaxed when we saw them riding by excitedly screaming. they were wildly having fun as they raced each other across the champs de mars. we also noted the attention that this loud gang of girls was receiving from wandering groups of boys. it made us worry about the next year in paris with a teenage girl.

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