Miscellaneous

Monday the 23rd I had my monthly checkup at the hospital. When the midwife measured my uterus, it turned out that it had grown little in the month since my last checkup, at most 1cm. However, and yet more proof to the power of cognitive dissonance, people keep insisting when they see me that I'm getting bigger and bigger!

I may not be getting exorbitantly bigger at any significant pace, but our third and final ultrasound this Monday showed that BT4 is right on track. Current weight is estimated at just over 2 kilos which should make for a birth weight of around 3.4 kilos, or about 7 pounds. Thank you, Giraud influence. No monster Tromble baby for me! During the ultrasound, the baby had one hand up touching the side of its face and with the other hand it was grabbing for a foot. We got to see its fingers moving.

Wednesday the 25th I took the train to Brest for the annual conference of the French American Studies Association. Brest is the westernmost city in France and just about as far away as you can get from Marseille and still be in France. It takes pretty much all day to get there by train and includes switching trains and train stations in Paris. Walking around in my free time, I learned from various historical signs that Brest was the most important American port in Europe during WWI. There's a tower monument to sailors who perished in WWI that is still maintained by the US. There's also a "Rue de Denver" in Brest. This is because Brest was the first French (or maybe even European, I don't quite remember) city to have a US sister city, which happened to be Denver. During my three-day stay I enjoyed the greener landscapes, the increased hours of daylight, the salty sea air, the port, ramparts and castle, and crêpes with caramel au beurre salé for dessert!

My paper went well despite the fact that when it came time for our panel on Saturday afternoon, there was no one in the room to listen to us. The schedule was not very well organized and there were two other literature workshops at the same time as ours. So our little six-person group of the two panel organizers and the four speakers just basically had a round-table discussion amongst ourselves!