In the pantry: dry pasta, rice, onion, Krisprolls, breakfast bars, instant mac and cheese my Mom sent from the States, microwave popcorn my mom sent but I don't have a microwave, canned white beans, canned peas and carrots, dry black beans, cocoa powder, Nutella
Fridge: pasta sauce, guacamole sauce, hot sauce, salsa, blueberry jam, vegan margarine, half of old tomato
Freezer: fries, frozen spinach
mercredi 27 février 2008
mercredi 20 février 2008
English for Secretaries
Person 1: Hello.
Person 2: Hello, this is Carine. I would like to make an appointment because I saw your advertisement for secretary work in the newspaper.
Person 1: Please hold on. I'm calling the director.
Person 1: Hello, this is Ingrid. Ms. Carine would like to make an appointment for the secretary job.
Person 3: Ok, give her an appointment during the week.
Person 1: Ok, no problem.
Person 1: Hello, Ms. Carine, when are you available?
Person 2: I'm available Wednesday afternoon.
Person 1: Ok, I'm checking the timetable. Wednesday, February 22nd at 3:00 p.m. Is that ok?
Person 2: Yes, thank you.
Person 1: Bye. See you Wednesday.
Person 2: Oui, shut the fuck up.
As conceived and performed by students in my Secretarial Studies class. I take full responsibility for any grammatical accuracy.
Person 2: Hello, this is Carine. I would like to make an appointment because I saw your advertisement for secretary work in the newspaper.
Person 1: Please hold on. I'm calling the director.
Person 1: Hello, this is Ingrid. Ms. Carine would like to make an appointment for the secretary job.
Person 3: Ok, give her an appointment during the week.
Person 1: Ok, no problem.
Person 1: Hello, Ms. Carine, when are you available?
Person 2: I'm available Wednesday afternoon.
Person 1: Ok, I'm checking the timetable. Wednesday, February 22nd at 3:00 p.m. Is that ok?
Person 2: Yes, thank you.
Person 1: Bye. See you Wednesday.
Person 2: Oui, shut the fuck up.
As conceived and performed by students in my Secretarial Studies class. I take full responsibility for any grammatical accuracy.
mardi 19 février 2008
This week in history
Ideal Schedule For The Week of Feb. 18 - Feb. 24
Monday: Work - discuss films with students (check, even if they were jerks and didn't speak English)
2001: Space Odyssey at Cinéma Le Grand Action (check, excellent)
Tuesday: Work - films again (check, much better this time)
Clean room because repair people are going to see it tomorrow (shit)
Watch Arrested Development with Jessi
Eat dinner at the American Diner
Wednesday: Work- films again
Buy ticket for Jens Lekman
Correspondence (hopefully)
Centre Pompidou Modern Art Museum free for people under 26 every Wed. evening (long overdue)
Thursday: Work - talk about films or play drawing game
Bake cookies (chocolate chip)
Go out and celebrate Winter Break (2 weeks off)
Friday: Read, play with new guitalele
Make doctor's appointment or be a walk-in to discuss my swollen thyroid gland
Pick up mail at old apartment
Saturday: Correspondence after not doing it on Wednesday
Sunday: Rejoice not having to make a lesson plan for Monday
Write something
If I say I'm going to do it and post it in my blog, then it will have to happen, I think.
Yih.
Monday: Work - discuss films with students (check, even if they were jerks and didn't speak English)
2001: Space Odyssey at Cinéma Le Grand Action (check, excellent)
Tuesday: Work - films again (check, much better this time)
Clean room because repair people are going to see it tomorrow (shit)
Watch Arrested Development with Jessi
Eat dinner at the American Diner
Wednesday: Work- films again
Buy ticket for Jens Lekman
Correspondence (hopefully)
Centre Pompidou Modern Art Museum free for people under 26 every Wed. evening (long overdue)
Thursday: Work - talk about films or play drawing game
Bake cookies (chocolate chip)
Go out and celebrate Winter Break (2 weeks off)
Friday: Read, play with new guitalele
Make doctor's appointment or be a walk-in to discuss my swollen thyroid gland
Pick up mail at old apartment
Saturday: Correspondence after not doing it on Wednesday
Sunday: Rejoice not having to make a lesson plan for Monday
Write something
If I say I'm going to do it and post it in my blog, then it will have to happen, I think.
Yih.
mardi 29 janvier 2008
CHRIST THANKS GIVE IT
After 4 months here, I think I have the hang of holidays in France. What happens is the other foreigners and I gather at someone's house, eat our foods, and discuss holidays back in the "old country." Oh no no, we're not immigrants, just ex-pats. It all started 3 months ago with my first major holiday here: Thanksgiving 2007. Thanksgiving in France was strangely reminiscent of the real thing. Though of course, we gathered on a Saturday, paid more for the food, and partied independently of the rest of the country. There was no prayer, no thanks to God, no pilgrim pageants, just food and people.
Not many have attempted to draw up an account of Thanksgiving '07 in France. Therefore, since I myself am an eyewitness of all the events from the beginning, I will introduce a brief orderly account. In the eleventh month of the year 2007, the day after real Thanksgiving and the day before fake Saturday Thanksgiving in Nemours, we met Scott. He was the only person who talked to our friend Sarah at the Créteil English assistants orientation in September. Sarah therefore saw it fit to invite him to her fête de Thanksgiving in November. Sarah and Jessi had arranged for a turkey at the American grocery store in Paris to be picked up in the morning on the day of the dinner. Reasoning that two people carrying a turkey from Paris to Sarah's apartment in the suburbs would be better than one, they solicited friends to assist Jessi in carrying out the operation. Scott volunteered to lend a hand and was thus scheduled to stay the night in Jessi's studio apartment so the turkey could easily be retrieved early the next morning.
To counterbalance the awkwardness of receiving a stranger in her tiny apartment for the night, which is very much comparable to a blind date in that each party hopes for maximum compatibility and minimum discomfort in a moment of exceptional trust, Jessi invited me to eat dinner with the two of them on the evening of his arrival. Scott waited for me at the metro station so I could direct him to Jessi's apartment. The first indication of trouble was our failure to find each other at the station. We talked on our cell phones.
"Scott, wait for me in front of the McDonald's. I'm across the street, where are you?"
"I only see a KFC."
"Cross, you're on the wrong side of the circle."
"Oh, ok, the McDonald's is there. I think I see you in the street." Click.
I crossed my fingers. Please let this guy be cool. I'll know it when I see him.
"Hi, nice to meet you." There was no way of knowing it at the time, but not being cool was actually the least of his problems. Scott was tall and plain. He wore a black coat like the rest of Paris, but void of any stylish insinuations. Black fleece sporting gloves warmed his hands and his jeans were an awkward shade of blue, neither dark nor particularly pale.
Back at the apartment, Jessi and I were unwillingly enrolled in an unexpected crash course in Scott 101. It was like listening to the radio with the tuner fixed on Scott FM, proud to bring you all Scott, all the time. Scott hailed from a small town in Iowa and was presently residing in a small town in France an hour and a half outside of Paris. He shared with us the joys of small town France life. In Provins, everybody identifies him as the town American. He plays rugby once a week with a local group, the bartenders refer to him by name, the students at the local high school scribble his name with hearts on the chalkboard, even the principle succumbed to the love of Scott by inviting him to join a school field trip to London in April. All this without speaking any French. The boy is a walking America, forcefully clearing his path of all things French, then tossing them aside like dead fallen trees only to erect a tower of English in their wake, this as a glowing example of American governance. I was certain that the space within a 6 foot radius of him was legally no longer France, but an American hybrid with laws and norms of its own in which everyone else was a passport-carrying visitor. All foreigners must present themselves to the Scott Embassy for further instruction.
The dinner table was square, one side against the wall, Scott at the opposite end, and Jessi and I seated across from each other. Eager to discern Jessi's opinion of our special dinner guest, I dispatched several telepathic messages disguised as insistent stares and peculiar grins. However, the three feet of cheap Ikea folding table between us proved an impenetrable boundary and no indication of her feelings could be deciphered from my end. What if she actually LIKES this crazed Iowan? We could no longer be friends.
"So Sarah tells us you're an ex-Marine?" Jessi politely inquired at the dinner table. Next came a story about his enrollment in the military and subsequent drop out following an incident of brutality. After being struck one day by one of his superiors, Scott simply decided to never go back. We simply could not wrap our minds around this notion of just up and leaving the military when you felt like it. Scott took no formal action; he just never showed up again at training. Such audacity was both remarkable and dangerous. I glanced at the time on the computer and patiently waited for the FBI to shoot down Jessi's door and slam Scott's face into his mashed potatoes. Jessi and I would stand idly by, stricken with equal parts fear and relief, as the feds patted him down and violently threw cuffs around his wrists. Suddenly we were harboring a fugitive.
Scott was a treasure trove of tales. He once smuggled pee into a doctor's office in order to cheat a urine test. He almost roughed up a kid that cheated him out of money in Provins. He didn't strike me as a liar, but his declarations were muddled and steeped in untruth. One minute, he was a big drinker and the next, he didn't really drink that much. Then the very next, he was casually stepping out to buy pot.
"Where, how?" we questioned. "Oh, you just ask any black guy on the street," he assured us. "Oh...okay." And off he disappeared into the night, sans winter gear, wearing only his blue and white plaid button-down summer shirt over a white long sleeve that I imagined to have debuted in Billabong's 1997 winter collection.
"AHH, I hate this guy!"
Oh, thank god.
We scurried into the bathroom for fear of being overheard from the corridor. On the rug between the shower and the sink, through hushed exclamations and cries of laughter and distress, we frantically emptied out of all the frustration and amazement that Scott had vigorously crammed into our existence. Jessi begged me not to leave her alone with this maniac. Naturally, I would stay. Or we'd just shut off all the lights and lock the door. No, I would stay.
Once back inside, Scott set to work crafting a bong from a can of Orangina. A few puffs later, he was back on the street, this time in search of vodka, which he found at the little grocer on the main street.
Jessi's fold out bed couldn't perfectly accommodate the 3 of us. I was fine, but Scott insisted that we sleep diagonally. Jessi disappeared into the bathroom to prepare for bed as Scott declared "cuddle time" the solution to our discomfort. "Oh god!" I winced in horror and inched closer to the bed's periphery. Unfortunately, the darkness did not break Scott's spirit. He rattled on as I prayed to god or the FBI to take him away.
The next day, Jessi, Scott, Elizabeth, and I boarded the train to Nemours. We had no objections when Scott chose to sit with some guys on the lower level while the rest of us sat up top. However, it was only a matter of time before we heard the singing. Loud, passionate singing drifting in from an adjacent train car. We dismissed the voice as that of a stranger, most likely someone drunk or mentally ill. Little did we know, this undiscovered talent was none other than France's American sweetheart, Scott from Iowa, making his regional train debut.
Dinner did not bring any surprises. Scott ate plenty of food and had his fill of alcohol that he did not pay for.
----
Thankfully, Christmas bore no resemblance to the Scott-filled Thanksgiving. I'd always wondered how I would approach the holidays once I was no longer obliged to celebrate them. Would I do away with Christmas altogether? Would I surrender to the forces of excessive consumerism and celebrate to the fullest? What better way to find out than Christmas in Paris a thousand miles away from anyone of blood relation.
I spent 2 hours Christmas Eve morning in a rich French family's swanky 16th arrondissement apartment giving private English lessons to 3 insanely lovable children. The oldest, Lancelot, was home on holiday from the boarding school he attends in England. The other two couldn't speak English to save their lives, but were polite and sweet as pie nonetheless.
After the lesson, Stephanie, Madison, and I headed over to the Monoprix in Boulogne in search of provisions for Christmas Eve dinner. We didn't even know what to make, let alone what raw materials to purchase. One thing about Stephanie is that she has no reservations when it comes to her lack of cooking skills. She has come to terms with it and accepts it gracefully. I, on the other hand, choose to deceive myself and everyone around me, feigning knowledge of food and food preparation while hardly knowing how to bake a potato or how not to melt a spatula. In the end, everyone suffers.
Fortunately we had Madison. Food-loving Madison. In essence, our savior. All the pain in the ass things that make Stephanie and I cringe and reach for another drink only make Madison love food more. Drawing inspiration from holidays spent back home with our families, we somehow came up with a sort of Christmas Eve menu. We picked up a bottle of Bailey's from the Nicolas liquor store and called it an afternoon.
Madison lives a few blocks away from me in a stunning and palatial apartment on the other side of Porte de Saint Cloud. While in my tiny lil' baby apartment, there is scarcely enough room to extend a finger without risk of injury, you could do cartwheels and somersaults in Madison's apartment, unburdened by fear of sharp corners or looming walls. The kitchen is immaculate and a perfect workspace for a mad chef to experiment with various concoctions and serums.
Lunch consisted of bread, avocado, and a cheese herb spread followed by 3 different sorts of ravioli. After lunch, sprawled out on the couches in the living room, food and drink slowly digesting in our bellies, it hardly seemed worth it to prepare the kind of decadent dinner originally intended for the occasion. After a very long pause, another trip to Nicolas for more Bailey's, and an incomplete viewing of The Royal Tenenbaums, the spirit somehow moved us to our feet and back into the kitchen, beckoning the 3 of us to bring to fruition a decent holiday meal, even if the clock already read 8:30 in the evening. It was Christmas damnit. We needed to get it right.
I don't even know how this happened, all hope and energy had been lost. This was our Christmas miracle. Not, like, miraculous, just cool. It must have been around midnight when we finally sat down to our feast. Everything felt warm--the mashed potatoes as well as the feeling in the air and in my body. The cause: undoubtedly a melange of friendship, celebration, and Bailey's. Stephanie and Madison were still chatting away when I stretched out on the carpet and closed my eyes.
The next day, Christmas day, our makeshift family of 3 trekked out to the suburbs, Bailey's and waldorf salad in tow, to join our fake relatives for a holiday gathering. Amin, a schoolmate of Steph and Madison, welcomed us into his home with open arms and holiday decorations galore. Soft lighting met red, gold, and green streamers, a Christmas tree, and a little nativity scene set up on the half-wall that led into the living room. My parents' house never looked so festive. Amin's roommates felt like estranged aunts and uncles of mine, just the kind that are white and don't speak English.
Amin was host extraordinaire and had some crazy philosophy about letting his guests be lazy and not do any work. He wined and dined us to the max, and we offered up our waldorf salad, which was a big hit at the table. Oh we just carried on as though the night would never end. However, unlike everyone else, I really wanted it to end. I had English lessons scheduled early the following morning. Sleep happened eventually, but not more than 3 hours passed before we had to drag ourselves out of bed and back into the cold toward Paris.
So we made special. Sometimes I actually like tradition.
Piña Colada
Christmas Eve dinner
'Burbs
Not many have attempted to draw up an account of Thanksgiving '07 in France. Therefore, since I myself am an eyewitness of all the events from the beginning, I will introduce a brief orderly account. In the eleventh month of the year 2007, the day after real Thanksgiving and the day before fake Saturday Thanksgiving in Nemours, we met Scott. He was the only person who talked to our friend Sarah at the Créteil English assistants orientation in September. Sarah therefore saw it fit to invite him to her fête de Thanksgiving in November. Sarah and Jessi had arranged for a turkey at the American grocery store in Paris to be picked up in the morning on the day of the dinner. Reasoning that two people carrying a turkey from Paris to Sarah's apartment in the suburbs would be better than one, they solicited friends to assist Jessi in carrying out the operation. Scott volunteered to lend a hand and was thus scheduled to stay the night in Jessi's studio apartment so the turkey could easily be retrieved early the next morning.
To counterbalance the awkwardness of receiving a stranger in her tiny apartment for the night, which is very much comparable to a blind date in that each party hopes for maximum compatibility and minimum discomfort in a moment of exceptional trust, Jessi invited me to eat dinner with the two of them on the evening of his arrival. Scott waited for me at the metro station so I could direct him to Jessi's apartment. The first indication of trouble was our failure to find each other at the station. We talked on our cell phones.
"Scott, wait for me in front of the McDonald's. I'm across the street, where are you?"
"I only see a KFC."
"Cross, you're on the wrong side of the circle."
"Oh, ok, the McDonald's is there. I think I see you in the street." Click.
I crossed my fingers. Please let this guy be cool. I'll know it when I see him.
"Hi, nice to meet you." There was no way of knowing it at the time, but not being cool was actually the least of his problems. Scott was tall and plain. He wore a black coat like the rest of Paris, but void of any stylish insinuations. Black fleece sporting gloves warmed his hands and his jeans were an awkward shade of blue, neither dark nor particularly pale.
Back at the apartment, Jessi and I were unwillingly enrolled in an unexpected crash course in Scott 101. It was like listening to the radio with the tuner fixed on Scott FM, proud to bring you all Scott, all the time. Scott hailed from a small town in Iowa and was presently residing in a small town in France an hour and a half outside of Paris. He shared with us the joys of small town France life. In Provins, everybody identifies him as the town American. He plays rugby once a week with a local group, the bartenders refer to him by name, the students at the local high school scribble his name with hearts on the chalkboard, even the principle succumbed to the love of Scott by inviting him to join a school field trip to London in April. All this without speaking any French. The boy is a walking America, forcefully clearing his path of all things French, then tossing them aside like dead fallen trees only to erect a tower of English in their wake, this as a glowing example of American governance. I was certain that the space within a 6 foot radius of him was legally no longer France, but an American hybrid with laws and norms of its own in which everyone else was a passport-carrying visitor. All foreigners must present themselves to the Scott Embassy for further instruction.
The dinner table was square, one side against the wall, Scott at the opposite end, and Jessi and I seated across from each other. Eager to discern Jessi's opinion of our special dinner guest, I dispatched several telepathic messages disguised as insistent stares and peculiar grins. However, the three feet of cheap Ikea folding table between us proved an impenetrable boundary and no indication of her feelings could be deciphered from my end. What if she actually LIKES this crazed Iowan? We could no longer be friends.
"So Sarah tells us you're an ex-Marine?" Jessi politely inquired at the dinner table. Next came a story about his enrollment in the military and subsequent drop out following an incident of brutality. After being struck one day by one of his superiors, Scott simply decided to never go back. We simply could not wrap our minds around this notion of just up and leaving the military when you felt like it. Scott took no formal action; he just never showed up again at training. Such audacity was both remarkable and dangerous. I glanced at the time on the computer and patiently waited for the FBI to shoot down Jessi's door and slam Scott's face into his mashed potatoes. Jessi and I would stand idly by, stricken with equal parts fear and relief, as the feds patted him down and violently threw cuffs around his wrists. Suddenly we were harboring a fugitive.
Scott was a treasure trove of tales. He once smuggled pee into a doctor's office in order to cheat a urine test. He almost roughed up a kid that cheated him out of money in Provins. He didn't strike me as a liar, but his declarations were muddled and steeped in untruth. One minute, he was a big drinker and the next, he didn't really drink that much. Then the very next, he was casually stepping out to buy pot.
"Where, how?" we questioned. "Oh, you just ask any black guy on the street," he assured us. "Oh...okay." And off he disappeared into the night, sans winter gear, wearing only his blue and white plaid button-down summer shirt over a white long sleeve that I imagined to have debuted in Billabong's 1997 winter collection.
"AHH, I hate this guy!"
Oh, thank god.
We scurried into the bathroom for fear of being overheard from the corridor. On the rug between the shower and the sink, through hushed exclamations and cries of laughter and distress, we frantically emptied out of all the frustration and amazement that Scott had vigorously crammed into our existence. Jessi begged me not to leave her alone with this maniac. Naturally, I would stay. Or we'd just shut off all the lights and lock the door. No, I would stay.
Once back inside, Scott set to work crafting a bong from a can of Orangina. A few puffs later, he was back on the street, this time in search of vodka, which he found at the little grocer on the main street.
Jessi's fold out bed couldn't perfectly accommodate the 3 of us. I was fine, but Scott insisted that we sleep diagonally. Jessi disappeared into the bathroom to prepare for bed as Scott declared "cuddle time" the solution to our discomfort. "Oh god!" I winced in horror and inched closer to the bed's periphery. Unfortunately, the darkness did not break Scott's spirit. He rattled on as I prayed to god or the FBI to take him away.
The next day, Jessi, Scott, Elizabeth, and I boarded the train to Nemours. We had no objections when Scott chose to sit with some guys on the lower level while the rest of us sat up top. However, it was only a matter of time before we heard the singing. Loud, passionate singing drifting in from an adjacent train car. We dismissed the voice as that of a stranger, most likely someone drunk or mentally ill. Little did we know, this undiscovered talent was none other than France's American sweetheart, Scott from Iowa, making his regional train debut.
Dinner did not bring any surprises. Scott ate plenty of food and had his fill of alcohol that he did not pay for.
----
Thankfully, Christmas bore no resemblance to the Scott-filled Thanksgiving. I'd always wondered how I would approach the holidays once I was no longer obliged to celebrate them. Would I do away with Christmas altogether? Would I surrender to the forces of excessive consumerism and celebrate to the fullest? What better way to find out than Christmas in Paris a thousand miles away from anyone of blood relation.
I spent 2 hours Christmas Eve morning in a rich French family's swanky 16th arrondissement apartment giving private English lessons to 3 insanely lovable children. The oldest, Lancelot, was home on holiday from the boarding school he attends in England. The other two couldn't speak English to save their lives, but were polite and sweet as pie nonetheless.
After the lesson, Stephanie, Madison, and I headed over to the Monoprix in Boulogne in search of provisions for Christmas Eve dinner. We didn't even know what to make, let alone what raw materials to purchase. One thing about Stephanie is that she has no reservations when it comes to her lack of cooking skills. She has come to terms with it and accepts it gracefully. I, on the other hand, choose to deceive myself and everyone around me, feigning knowledge of food and food preparation while hardly knowing how to bake a potato or how not to melt a spatula. In the end, everyone suffers.
Fortunately we had Madison. Food-loving Madison. In essence, our savior. All the pain in the ass things that make Stephanie and I cringe and reach for another drink only make Madison love food more. Drawing inspiration from holidays spent back home with our families, we somehow came up with a sort of Christmas Eve menu. We picked up a bottle of Bailey's from the Nicolas liquor store and called it an afternoon.
Madison lives a few blocks away from me in a stunning and palatial apartment on the other side of Porte de Saint Cloud. While in my tiny lil' baby apartment, there is scarcely enough room to extend a finger without risk of injury, you could do cartwheels and somersaults in Madison's apartment, unburdened by fear of sharp corners or looming walls. The kitchen is immaculate and a perfect workspace for a mad chef to experiment with various concoctions and serums.
Lunch consisted of bread, avocado, and a cheese herb spread followed by 3 different sorts of ravioli. After lunch, sprawled out on the couches in the living room, food and drink slowly digesting in our bellies, it hardly seemed worth it to prepare the kind of decadent dinner originally intended for the occasion. After a very long pause, another trip to Nicolas for more Bailey's, and an incomplete viewing of The Royal Tenenbaums, the spirit somehow moved us to our feet and back into the kitchen, beckoning the 3 of us to bring to fruition a decent holiday meal, even if the clock already read 8:30 in the evening. It was Christmas damnit. We needed to get it right.
I don't even know how this happened, all hope and energy had been lost. This was our Christmas miracle. Not, like, miraculous, just cool. It must have been around midnight when we finally sat down to our feast. Everything felt warm--the mashed potatoes as well as the feeling in the air and in my body. The cause: undoubtedly a melange of friendship, celebration, and Bailey's. Stephanie and Madison were still chatting away when I stretched out on the carpet and closed my eyes.
The next day, Christmas day, our makeshift family of 3 trekked out to the suburbs, Bailey's and waldorf salad in tow, to join our fake relatives for a holiday gathering. Amin, a schoolmate of Steph and Madison, welcomed us into his home with open arms and holiday decorations galore. Soft lighting met red, gold, and green streamers, a Christmas tree, and a little nativity scene set up on the half-wall that led into the living room. My parents' house never looked so festive. Amin's roommates felt like estranged aunts and uncles of mine, just the kind that are white and don't speak English.
Amin was host extraordinaire and had some crazy philosophy about letting his guests be lazy and not do any work. He wined and dined us to the max, and we offered up our waldorf salad, which was a big hit at the table. Oh we just carried on as though the night would never end. However, unlike everyone else, I really wanted it to end. I had English lessons scheduled early the following morning. Sleep happened eventually, but not more than 3 hours passed before we had to drag ourselves out of bed and back into the cold toward Paris.
So we made special. Sometimes I actually like tradition.
Piña Colada
Christmas Eve dinner
'Burbs
mardi 27 novembre 2007
Hugs And Misses
The past few weeks have found me no longer in my hour of enchantment; rather, I've passed through some quite different phases that approach disillusionment and often result in discouragement. Of course, this is all to be expected. There is nothing that I describe here that hasn't already been researched and documented in a study or a guide somewhere; I'm ultimately just another statistic. Everyone hates everything sometimes when living in a foreign country. I'd be a fool not to.
Supplementary to my teaching job, I am now au pair. Despite its French etymology, the term au pair also exists for us in English. I speculate that its usage originates from the old French circa 1100 when the Normans were beating up the English and changing their language in the North, at which time au pair most likely denoted an Anglophone who took shit from French people for a living. Some odd centuries later, I am a live-in childcare provider who is thrust to the brink of sanity by unruly French children who recognize me as their au pair. Coincidence, I think not.
In short, these children drive me nuts. I'm simply not cut out for a life of cooking and cleaning and taking responsibility for small, needy people 5 plus days a week. My experience as a babysitter, teacher, and daycare employee in the States has evidently failed to prepare me for the love of au pairship. Lord knows I need the money, but my sanity has not gone unscathed.
On the other hand, thanks to the au pair job, I'm now speaking French better than ever. Of course, this assertion means next to nothing, considering that last evening's linguistic proceedings alone resulted in public embarrassment and the subsequent loss of respect that inevitably accompanies such spectacles of social inelegance. In my English-loving mind, a kindly waiter's recommendation to flick a light switch on the wall behind me translated into an invitation to wipe my soggy hands on a stack of clean white placemats hung up outside a restaurant bathroom. Upon the realization that this hand towel was strangely nonabsorbent and coated with plastic, I sensed the weight of my error in the server's polite but irrepressible laughter and the sight of Jessi concealing her face in shame at our table a couple of feet away. If they wanted to, Jessi and the waiter could have bonded together and fashioned a friendship founded on the entertainment that I unwillingly provided. The waiter could have then proposed that they take their friendship elsewhere and escorted Jessi out the front door as she soundlessly mouthed her apologies before treading into the night. There I would sit, hungry and alone, possessing neither friends nor curried lentils in this vacant Indian restaurant in this unsympathetic foreign country. Here was strike 1 million in my quest to live a normal embarrassment-free life in France. Well, it's natural that Parisians would laugh at me. The way I see it, this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with their inability to handle the level of cultural diversity that I bring to the table. I don't need them because I never really had them. Excommunication from Paris's North American element, however, could prove fatal.
The lightswitch/placemat fiasco aside, I do talk prettier now, even if my expanded vocabulary is antagonistic in nature and revolves around things you might have to threaten to tell someone's mother.
Aurèle, Jules, and Octave, ages 2, 6, and 8 respectively. They only appear harmless.
In other news, today marks the beginning of the return to normalcy in Paris's metropolitan transit network after almost 3 weeks of striking. During the strike, on the days where I even made it to work at all, 1 post-school day commute equaled 2 local buses, 1 regional commuter train, and 2 metro lines. Then and only then would I arrive back home where I was free to watch after and prepare dinner for 3 children. Unlike when I reprimand Aurèle at the dinner table for eating with his fingers, I didn't even feign concern over the kids' excessive TV watching; that would require too much energy. As long as they're drooling over cartoons and not porn, I have no objections. I'm only here for a month, so I prefer to leave it to the next au pair to instill good, healthy habits that don't entail hours of inactivity and irreparable optical injury .
So in the end, the syndicalists are back to work, Nicolas Sarkozy is still an asshole, and I no longer have to allot 3 hours to my morning commute. Sarkozy, right-wing president extraordinaire, still has a few enemies across this nation, among them transit, postal, and energy workers, teachers, students, etc. His government's approach to reducing fiscal spending includes pension changes, salary cuts, and plans to open up French universities to more private funding. As a native of the land of capitalism and private property, I see and fear where this may end. Therefore, my sympathies go to the syndicalists and young people who reject the American model in favor of something, anything not so merciless. Afterall, I reject it too.
Typical chaotic Paris metro scene during the strike, this one at Gare du Nord, taken from BBC News.
In closing,
I miss:
-Philly
-friends
-having clothes to wear
-vegetarian food à la Kingdom of Vegetarians
-second-hand stores
-people who get why I would shop at second-hand stores
-pizza
-Netflix
-numbered streets
-PBR
-forming coherent sentences
-Whole Foods
-cheap stuff
-sunshine and shortpants
-hoagies
-the Italian Market
-baking
-house parties (minus the cops)
-familiarity
I have:
-new everything
-Paris
-François
-new buddies
-visits from old buddies
-boulangeries/patisseries
-new apartment
-French language
-French keyboard
-pain au chocolat
-Pop In
-cafés
-Les Deux Mondes
and a newfound appreciation for all the things that I miss.
Supplementary to my teaching job, I am now au pair. Despite its French etymology, the term au pair also exists for us in English. I speculate that its usage originates from the old French circa 1100 when the Normans were beating up the English and changing their language in the North, at which time au pair most likely denoted an Anglophone who took shit from French people for a living. Some odd centuries later, I am a live-in childcare provider who is thrust to the brink of sanity by unruly French children who recognize me as their au pair. Coincidence, I think not.
In short, these children drive me nuts. I'm simply not cut out for a life of cooking and cleaning and taking responsibility for small, needy people 5 plus days a week. My experience as a babysitter, teacher, and daycare employee in the States has evidently failed to prepare me for the love of au pairship. Lord knows I need the money, but my sanity has not gone unscathed.
On the other hand, thanks to the au pair job, I'm now speaking French better than ever. Of course, this assertion means next to nothing, considering that last evening's linguistic proceedings alone resulted in public embarrassment and the subsequent loss of respect that inevitably accompanies such spectacles of social inelegance. In my English-loving mind, a kindly waiter's recommendation to flick a light switch on the wall behind me translated into an invitation to wipe my soggy hands on a stack of clean white placemats hung up outside a restaurant bathroom. Upon the realization that this hand towel was strangely nonabsorbent and coated with plastic, I sensed the weight of my error in the server's polite but irrepressible laughter and the sight of Jessi concealing her face in shame at our table a couple of feet away. If they wanted to, Jessi and the waiter could have bonded together and fashioned a friendship founded on the entertainment that I unwillingly provided. The waiter could have then proposed that they take their friendship elsewhere and escorted Jessi out the front door as she soundlessly mouthed her apologies before treading into the night. There I would sit, hungry and alone, possessing neither friends nor curried lentils in this vacant Indian restaurant in this unsympathetic foreign country. Here was strike 1 million in my quest to live a normal embarrassment-free life in France. Well, it's natural that Parisians would laugh at me. The way I see it, this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with their inability to handle the level of cultural diversity that I bring to the table. I don't need them because I never really had them. Excommunication from Paris's North American element, however, could prove fatal.
The lightswitch/placemat fiasco aside, I do talk prettier now, even if my expanded vocabulary is antagonistic in nature and revolves around things you might have to threaten to tell someone's mother.
Aurèle, Jules, and Octave, ages 2, 6, and 8 respectively. They only appear harmless.
In other news, today marks the beginning of the return to normalcy in Paris's metropolitan transit network after almost 3 weeks of striking. During the strike, on the days where I even made it to work at all, 1 post-school day commute equaled 2 local buses, 1 regional commuter train, and 2 metro lines. Then and only then would I arrive back home where I was free to watch after and prepare dinner for 3 children. Unlike when I reprimand Aurèle at the dinner table for eating with his fingers, I didn't even feign concern over the kids' excessive TV watching; that would require too much energy. As long as they're drooling over cartoons and not porn, I have no objections. I'm only here for a month, so I prefer to leave it to the next au pair to instill good, healthy habits that don't entail hours of inactivity and irreparable optical injury .
So in the end, the syndicalists are back to work, Nicolas Sarkozy is still an asshole, and I no longer have to allot 3 hours to my morning commute. Sarkozy, right-wing president extraordinaire, still has a few enemies across this nation, among them transit, postal, and energy workers, teachers, students, etc. His government's approach to reducing fiscal spending includes pension changes, salary cuts, and plans to open up French universities to more private funding. As a native of the land of capitalism and private property, I see and fear where this may end. Therefore, my sympathies go to the syndicalists and young people who reject the American model in favor of something, anything not so merciless. Afterall, I reject it too.
Typical chaotic Paris metro scene during the strike, this one at Gare du Nord, taken from BBC News.
In closing,
I miss:
-Philly
-friends
-having clothes to wear
-vegetarian food à la Kingdom of Vegetarians
-second-hand stores
-people who get why I would shop at second-hand stores
-pizza
-Netflix
-numbered streets
-PBR
-forming coherent sentences
-Whole Foods
-cheap stuff
-sunshine and shortpants
-hoagies
-the Italian Market
-baking
-house parties (minus the cops)
-familiarity
I have:
-new everything
-Paris
-François
-new buddies
-visits from old buddies
-boulangeries/patisseries
-new apartment
-French language
-French keyboard
-pain au chocolat
-Pop In
-cafés
-Les Deux Mondes
and a newfound appreciation for all the things that I miss.
samedi 3 novembre 2007
The First Five Weeks
In celebration of the 5 week anniversary of my life in Paris, I propose a blog.
At this very moment, a young hopeful on Channel 1's Star Academy (properly pronounced with a thick French accent) is performing a song entitled "Goodbye, Philadelphia" to an audience full of starry-eyed Avril Lavigne-loving adolescents. What could this French boy complete with fashion haircut and chin piercing possibly know about the supposed city of Sisterly and Brotherly Love that I call home? I'm guessing, just as much as he knows about the crosses broadcast across his white fashionista T-shirt.
More importantly, France is sort of home now and has been for the past 5 weeks. That statement is of course deceiving, considering that I've spent this time living out of travel bags and alternating between hostels and private homes while permanent housing continues to elude me. About 2 weeks ago and hundreds of euros in, I bid adieu to Absolute Paris Hostel and entered into a phase of relative stability living rentlessly in a friend's spacious suburban apartment an hour outside of Paris. Many thanks to Sarah Yoho without whom I am poor and homeless.
The town is Nemours, population 18,000, accessible by Transilien train to and from Paris 76 kilometers to the northwest. Recommended for fans of Far Out France, Small Town Suburb, and Nowhere To Go, the most recent installation in the acclaimed Nothing To Do series. Time moves a little slower here.
On October 1, I officially took up my post as an English language teaching assistant at Lycée Marie Laurencin in the commune of Mennecy. By October 26, I had already assumed the role of French vacationer with enough vacation time at hand to lead me to believe that Jesus had called to pronounce an early Christmas and November the start of a new year. But as it turns out, Jesus doesn't even have a phone, and November 1st is La Toussaint (All Saint's Day). For teachers, appropriate observation requires approximately 2 weeks off from work. Hell yea!
So I spent this past Tuesday and Wednesday night at Danielle's place in Paris. We went out for fancy dessert on rue de la Pompe, caught a movie at a cinema on the swanky Champs-Elysées, and dined on makeshift vegetarian sandwiches on the floor of her au pair room, sitting Indian-style, using tubberware lids as plates, and slicing tomatoes with silverware stolen from the Rutgers dining hall as though it had been christened long ago in a high-powered cafeteria dishwasher for just such a moment as this.
But Nemours was beckoning my return with the promise of a much-needed shower and a big blue futon with my name on it (spelled out in Jessi's nosebleed blood). After exploiting the free wireless Internet at Gare de Lyon and being accosted by an 18-year-old Romanian kid with a penchant for bisous, I heeded the call and took the 16:47 train into Nemours. In accordance with the holiday, there were no buses running. I was thence faced with the dreaded yet all too familiar 2 mile promenade from the station to Sarah's apartment. Seeing as how most boulangeries were closed or "fresh" out of baguettes, I stepped into a little grocer downtown to pick one up for dinner. The man seated behind the counter and I exchanged a customary "Bon soir." He snatched a hunk of bread from the basket to his left with his money-dealing hands to deposit it on the dirty counter between us. All of these health violations were perceived on my part with nothing more than mild fascination with the foreignness of it all. I collected the baguette into my equally dirty Metro hands and was out with a "Merci, au revoir." My enormous plaid totebag, this 2 foot long piece of bread, and a little Caramaieu bag carrying edible souvenirs lifted from a rich Parisian home proved even more problematic to manage when joined by the Milka bar that I nibbled at in an attempt to offset the brisk evening air with a little milk chocolate bliss.
I continued up the cobblestone sidewalk, scrambling to recuperate a fallen Milka wrapper before stepping down into the street. As I neared the local church, bells sounded from above. Although the resultant echo captured only a brief moment's worth of night sky, my brain was struck with a persistent signal encrypted with the message: "Hey, you're in France!" Medieval church, cobblestone streets, baguette bread, bells...it all made sense.
I rounded the corner that leads to the east side of the river. On the opposite bank behind the church stands an old château gleaming with the combination of artificial ground light and feudal history. This modestly sized castle features 12th century origins and all of the period architecture to show for it. It now serves as a museum and one of the most obvious Nemourian relics of the former medieval city. Travel back to 1100 something or another and the château would be there just as it is today. My mind melts into glue at mere contemplation.
So it's real. I'm in France.
The castle in Nemours.
At this very moment, a young hopeful on Channel 1's Star Academy (properly pronounced with a thick French accent) is performing a song entitled "Goodbye, Philadelphia" to an audience full of starry-eyed Avril Lavigne-loving adolescents. What could this French boy complete with fashion haircut and chin piercing possibly know about the supposed city of Sisterly and Brotherly Love that I call home? I'm guessing, just as much as he knows about the crosses broadcast across his white fashionista T-shirt.
More importantly, France is sort of home now and has been for the past 5 weeks. That statement is of course deceiving, considering that I've spent this time living out of travel bags and alternating between hostels and private homes while permanent housing continues to elude me. About 2 weeks ago and hundreds of euros in, I bid adieu to Absolute Paris Hostel and entered into a phase of relative stability living rentlessly in a friend's spacious suburban apartment an hour outside of Paris. Many thanks to Sarah Yoho without whom I am poor and homeless.
The town is Nemours, population 18,000, accessible by Transilien train to and from Paris 76 kilometers to the northwest. Recommended for fans of Far Out France, Small Town Suburb, and Nowhere To Go, the most recent installation in the acclaimed Nothing To Do series. Time moves a little slower here.
On October 1, I officially took up my post as an English language teaching assistant at Lycée Marie Laurencin in the commune of Mennecy. By October 26, I had already assumed the role of French vacationer with enough vacation time at hand to lead me to believe that Jesus had called to pronounce an early Christmas and November the start of a new year. But as it turns out, Jesus doesn't even have a phone, and November 1st is La Toussaint (All Saint's Day). For teachers, appropriate observation requires approximately 2 weeks off from work. Hell yea!
So I spent this past Tuesday and Wednesday night at Danielle's place in Paris. We went out for fancy dessert on rue de la Pompe, caught a movie at a cinema on the swanky Champs-Elysées, and dined on makeshift vegetarian sandwiches on the floor of her au pair room, sitting Indian-style, using tubberware lids as plates, and slicing tomatoes with silverware stolen from the Rutgers dining hall as though it had been christened long ago in a high-powered cafeteria dishwasher for just such a moment as this.
But Nemours was beckoning my return with the promise of a much-needed shower and a big blue futon with my name on it (spelled out in Jessi's nosebleed blood). After exploiting the free wireless Internet at Gare de Lyon and being accosted by an 18-year-old Romanian kid with a penchant for bisous, I heeded the call and took the 16:47 train into Nemours. In accordance with the holiday, there were no buses running. I was thence faced with the dreaded yet all too familiar 2 mile promenade from the station to Sarah's apartment. Seeing as how most boulangeries were closed or "fresh" out of baguettes, I stepped into a little grocer downtown to pick one up for dinner. The man seated behind the counter and I exchanged a customary "Bon soir." He snatched a hunk of bread from the basket to his left with his money-dealing hands to deposit it on the dirty counter between us. All of these health violations were perceived on my part with nothing more than mild fascination with the foreignness of it all. I collected the baguette into my equally dirty Metro hands and was out with a "Merci, au revoir." My enormous plaid totebag, this 2 foot long piece of bread, and a little Caramaieu bag carrying edible souvenirs lifted from a rich Parisian home proved even more problematic to manage when joined by the Milka bar that I nibbled at in an attempt to offset the brisk evening air with a little milk chocolate bliss.
I continued up the cobblestone sidewalk, scrambling to recuperate a fallen Milka wrapper before stepping down into the street. As I neared the local church, bells sounded from above. Although the resultant echo captured only a brief moment's worth of night sky, my brain was struck with a persistent signal encrypted with the message: "Hey, you're in France!" Medieval church, cobblestone streets, baguette bread, bells...it all made sense.
I rounded the corner that leads to the east side of the river. On the opposite bank behind the church stands an old château gleaming with the combination of artificial ground light and feudal history. This modestly sized castle features 12th century origins and all of the period architecture to show for it. It now serves as a museum and one of the most obvious Nemourian relics of the former medieval city. Travel back to 1100 something or another and the château would be there just as it is today. My mind melts into glue at mere contemplation.
So it's real. I'm in France.
The castle in Nemours.
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