Woah, long time no see!

I have recently been very poor at updating this blog, and some people, okay, 1 person has been complaining that I haven't written in a while. So, my excuses: 1) I've had lots of essays; 2) I've had friends around who I was the tour guide for, and 3) my internet decided to stop working chez moi this week, to much annoyance. But now I've finished all my essays and my friends have come and gone.

Having two friends here over the weekend was really cool, but very tiring. We did a heck of a lot, but the highlights for me was going to Dans le Noir?, a restaurant where you eat in pitch darkness, so you can experience what it is like to be blind. All the waiters are blind, and the menu is a surprise, so you don't know what you're eating until they tell you at the end. Of course, you can specify the menu to some extent, such as no fish or nuts. But the food was good, and also varied; both the main and the dessert was really an ensemble of several smaller dishes, so there was a range in taste and texture, which made the experience even more interesting. There was definitely something that everyone on the table loved, and something they hated. I'd definitely recommend it; even though it's quite expensive (38€) it's a worthwhile experience, and something I'll remember. There's one in London too.

The other experience I really enjoyed was going inside the Palais Garnier, as I've seen the outside, which is beautiful, but I've never been inside. Going around it definitely makes me want to go to the opera, so afterwards, we decided to plan a trip to the Royal Opera House in London for this summer! And on another note, I mentioned in passing, "I'd like to go to Italy". Within an hour at most, Ali was saying, "So, when we go to Italy...". I told her she'd have to arrange it! Should be fun!

On Wednesday, I went to see an interesting film with Natasha, The Burning Plain, directed by the scriptwriter for Babel, which was a very good film, but unfortunately I lost my bag somewhere that evening. And even more unfortunately, I was borrowing a book from someone, which was in the bag, so I'm going to have to buy another copy. It's very annoying, since I've been really good about not loosing things in Paris, but in the last two/three months I've lost quite a lot of things. Either it's just that things always seem to come in groups, or it's the stress of it being my last semester at uni.

On another note (my last, I promise), on my brother's blog, he talks about Christians who refuse to support non-Christian charities. Thomas expressed his disappointment much more tactfully than I am going to: I think that this is appalling. It's narrow-minded and unbiblical. Christians are called to support justice for everyone, and in everything we do. Social justice isn't a pick-n-mix affair, it should be our way of life. We can't choose to let children be abused in a country which isn't Christian, or not to support a charity because it isn't Christian, we should fight justice where we see it whenever we can. Of course, we can't support every charity in the world, but if there is a situation where we can make a stand, we should, regardless of who we are making a stand with. If his friends said, "I'm not going to support this charity, because it's not Christian, but I'm going to do this instead," then fine. But not doing anything is definitely worse than doing something with non-Christians. Others might be making a stand because of humanist values; Christians should make a stand because we are standing for justice. And as my brother says, our God is a God of justice.