Adventures of red bag

A quick update on where Red Bag has taken me so far.

The French final exam yesterday went surprisingly well (for the second half, we could use a dictionary! my thumb got as much of a workout as my brain, because I had to obsessively check the spelling of all the words that I could). The test consisted entirely of making up a news article to match a headline (mine was about a poor old lady who got beat up by a guy in the metro; I almost cringed as I wrote it) and writing a letter from one of our video characters to his Parisian pals. The letter was a multi-step thing, where we had to explain his daughter's trip to the doctor (surprise! she had the same thing as the Mister! come to think of it, why didn't I give her ear problems?), the rumors flying in his village, an amusing anecdote about some Dutch tourists (do you know hard it is to MAKE UP an amusing anecdote about Dutch tourists in an exam situation??? Mine was along the lines of: they ordered pizza! but there wasn't any pizza on the menu! ha ha!), and then convince the friends to come for a visit, making enticing suggestions about what activities they could do. I suggested mushroom hunting and swimming in a lake.

Red bag got complemented at choir, by the girl with whom I have an ongoing weekly conversation (mostly one sided) about how fat she is and how she has to lose weight and how the chips we noshed on at the break were her only "indulgence" for the week and how she has to look good in a bikini for her vacation in two weeks and blahblahblah. The girl is BEAUTIFUL and skinny, at LEAST two sizes smaller than me. How to respond in these situations? I just tell her over and over again that she's not fat, that she looks great, that her vacation will be awesome no matter what she looks like, and so on.

Today Red Bag will be accompanying me to Barcelona, where it is WARM and sunny. Here, it's actually sunny today, but it's due to a cold front that came in after yesterday's pouring rain, leaving the sky blue and the air frigid. I'm actually happy with that, but I'll even be happier when I get to Barcelona and can pretend it's spring.

I won't have a computer with me (although I checked, and YES, my laptop fits in Red Bag!) so I'll be out of touch if anyone's trying to get a hold of me by e-mail. I even considered taking ONLY Red Bag and no suitcase. I've always wanted to fly without luggage! I would feel as light as air! I would prance through the airport! I would feel like a true jetsetter, with her chic sac rouge! I would do it except that I will probably need to bring dirty laundry back to Brussels with me (still leftover from Christmas break; we don't have a washer/dryer there yet and we can't treat M's grandmother like a private laundry lady). It's a kind of weird situation of modern life: carting dirty laundry between two European cities. How NOT jetsettery and cosmopolitan is that?

Still, I vow that someday I'll fly without luggage. You'll see. Just me and Red Bag.