Belgium!

Signs may say back to school, but I'm about to go on summer vacation. Finally! Not that staring at an exposed-brick wall in Brooklyn, contemplating the major questions of our age, hasn't been fun. What started as a very productive May (teaching, coursework, and research) turned into a mildly productive June (teaching, 'serious' reading) and July (German class, browsing the racks at Old Navy), and petered out with me congratulating myself for having learned to recognize verbs in German--not really the accomplishment of the century, but miraculous when you factor in the flaneur-to-student ratio of my time spent during last couple weeks in the class. The great achievement was my new inability to form sentences in English that don't come out sounding just a bit... translated. But now, off to Belgium, a place that resembles Park Slope only, thank god, in its commitment to recycling.

Given how delighted the European tourists I see in New York appear with their countless shopping bags, I'm guessing the exchange-rate situation has not improved. Still, I plan on doing a bit of shopping, and by a bit of shopping I mean rolling back to New York on account of pastry consumption. And... a new bookshelf means maybe a few more books. After all, I can now allegedly read two of the three official Belgian languages. And... last May I went to an amazing store in Brussels, filled with clothes that do not exist in New York (I know, hard to imagine, I may have dreamed this), where I saw but did not buy a pleated skirt with zippers holding together the pleats. My restraint was due to the fact that I did buy a dress. I'm thinking one piece of clothing purchased per visit to Belgium is reasonable, that is, until the market decides French grad students are as vital as hedge-fund managers. Alas, it's been over a year, so I'm thinking the skirt is gone, but I will find something similarly avant-garde, that much is for sure.

I will not be online while away. This means no Jezebel, no Sitemeter, no Gmail, and of course no posts here. Whee!