Monday

I don't know why but I am sooooo tired. Every opportunity I can find, I'm climbing up the stairs to my room, shaking off my shoes and crawling under the covers to fall into a deep sleep. Is this jetlag or am I just getting old?

We have fresh flowers in every room. Wendy from Australia picked them from the garden and arranged them. And Honey sets the table for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We had a full day in the studio today with our model Rosza, a sweet, graceful beautiful lady from Hungary, who has lived in Paris for many years working as an artist and teacher. This is the third year Rosza has posed for my class at La Bonne Etoile, so she knew exactly what we were looking for. Today she posed in black stockings in a Degas-esque boudoir scene. We were up in the studio at 9:30 in the morning, broke for a long French lunch on the patio, which included several courses, wine and the ubiquitous cheese plate. We resumed working I can't remember when, and worked until 5:30, with the intention of going back up to the studio after dinner. Dinner at 8:30, intense and lively conversation about books we've read, narcissists we've known, reincarnation, cheese... It's almost midnight and the table has just been cleared. Needless to say, we won't make it into the studio tonight. I hear several of the students say the'll go up there early in the morning. I won't be surprised to find some hard at work when I get up there at 9:30. Rosa poses again.

Wednesday we take a half day off and take a Kippy-led excursion.

Thunderstorm here tonight, so Kippy has turned the Internet connection off. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow of works-in-progress. There's some nice stuff happening in the studio.