I'm back in New Hampshire for Christmas, but will post a few photos I took this weekend in Paris. Here are some gorgeous Buche de Noel on the Rue de Bretagne. The line to purchase them was out the door.
I can't help but comparing the prices of things between France and the USA. In particular, I'm shocked by the prices for mobile phone plans and internet/tv/telephone, but for different reasons.
Mobile phones: The mobile phone prices here are really high! Surprisingly so considering how everyone has one, and seems to have had one for much longer than we have in the US. For example, the cheapest plan at Bouygues Telecom is 22 euros per month for a 2-year contract and gives you ... 1 HOUR (yes, 60 minutes) of talking time per MONTH. On the upside, all incoming mobile calls are free, so you only pay for calls that you make. Then there are all these terms about calling other mobiles versus calling landlines ... on the plan I mention above you get free calling to all landline phones from 8pm to midnight. But how much are people calling landline phones from their mobiles? I had a very cheap plan at Verizon in the US, for $35/month I got 400 minutes, plus unlimited nights & weekends plus free calls to all other Verizon members (which was all of my family). And Verizon is one of the more expensive providers (per # of minutes) in the US.
On the flip side...
TV/Internet/Telephone: These 3-in-1 packages are ridiculously cheap here in France. It's absolutely amazing to me. For 30 euros a month you get a digital cable package with a ton of channels, high speed internet AND a landline phone with unlimited calling to other landlines AND (in many cases) to the US and Canada. 30 euros!!! In the US to get internet, phone and digital cable would cost about $130/month (in Washington, DC at least). I guess the cheap cable costs can help you justify the super-high price of buying a TV set here.
An interesting and extensive blog post from Amerloque on French Holiday Traditions.
During my walk on Saturday night down the rue de Bretagne, I came across this shop selling chickens (correction, according to a french coworker, these are not chickens, rather they are Chapons, which are something special for Noel?)... with feathers on their heads and tails! I guess it's a special holiday thing. How does that work exactly? Do you cook the chicken with the feathers so your guests can see them? (I'm guessing not, I don't think the feathers would survive the heat). Do you pluck off the feathers and then do something with them as garnish? If your guests can't see the feathers, then what is the point of leaving them on the bird???
Then, this morning while I was uploading this photo I noticed one other interesting element. The round blue sticker on the right of each bird says "Vu a la TV". Does that mean "As Seen On TV"??? Are these infomercial chickens?? I think I'll have to go back to that shop and talk to someone behind the counter to get the scoop!
Last night I had one of those aha! moments that happen every so often when living in a new city. Every time I leave my apartment, I always turn left. My office is left, the shopping areas I knew were left, I always just walked left. Occasionally I would look right, but it didn't look too interesting, and I haven't taken the time to explore. Well. I was in for a treat last night.
I was heading to a friend's place in le Marais for dinner. Our apartments aren't that far apart, but it had been taking me forever to get there. I was intent on finding a new route. So I pulled out my trusty Paris Poche map, and found a new route to get there. One that involved me turning Right.
So I set off, not really expecting to see anything other than residential streets and voila! I stumble into Rue de Bretagne, which was buzzing with activity. There was an outdoor Christmas market going on, plus several great food stores (the patisserie, shown above, as well as a fromagerie, coffee bean shop and great meat store), and to top it off, an outdoor fruit & vegetable market!
All this time I've been trekking down to rue Montorgueil for a market, when there was one just a couple of blocks from my house. I just love moments like this - when I think I have everything figured out, and then I get a surprise. Ok, usually the surprises are bad ones (like, I didn't put the sticker on my mailbox right so of course I'm not getting any mail) - but little moments like this make it worthwhile.
Discovering this new street last night made me think about how quickly our lives naturally gravitate towards routines. I guess it's for a sense of normalcy and comfort, but within just a couple of months, I already have regular places to shop, regular lunch haunts, a regular route I walk to work, etc... I believe it's good to break your routine once in awhile to just expose yourself to something new, stay fresh, get inspired and maybe meet some new people. So perhaps for one of my New Years resolutions I'll try to avoid a routine for awhile, until I've really explored what my options are (although exploring options in Paris could probably go on forever...).
In a follow up to yesterday's post about my errant mailbox sticker, when I came downstairs this morning someone had removed my name sticker, and created a new one, on a nameplate in the "proper" location on the mailbox. Hmmmm... I have a feeling that my slowness in moving the sticker myself after getting that lecture made me an enemy in the building. We shall see!
I finally fell victim to the cold that seems to be going around Paris. Everyone is sick. My coworkers, friends I had dinner with last weekend, the lady coughing next to me on the Metro. Ugh. So I've managed to "attraper un rhume" (catch a cold).
Before coming to Paris I bought a couple boxes of each of my favorite US medications, thinking that if I was really sick, I might not want to worry about finding the French equivalent. Well, apparently I forgot the Sudafed, because there was none to be found this morning while rummaging around my private drugstore (aka, the bottom drawer in my bathroom).
I love French pharmacies, but I've never been sick here before and needed a real medication (usually I just frequent pharamacies for various beauty products).
What a great experience though! You just walk in, and one of the friendly (friendly?!) women behind the counter will ask you what your symptoms are (cold with a stuffy nose), and then she asks some follow up questions (ok, do you have a headache? A fever? What medications are you on?) and voila! a medication is selected from the shelves behind the counter. And then she proceeds to tell you how to use it, and even offers some other health tips (like I should be irrigating my nose with saline or something ... not sure about that one). 4 euros later I was out the door and feeling quite happy about the whole transaction. This experience was definitely better than standing in the immense "cold and flu" section at Target, and trying to decipher active ingredients and brands, and match them to your symptoms when you're feeling under the weather!
Progress! Today two big things happened:
1) I received my first piece of mail, addressed to me, at my apartment. This is very reassuring that the little sticker with my name on it on my mailbox is "official" enough for La Poste to deliver mail to me!
2) I had my immigration medical exam and got my carte de sejour (or at least the temporary one, the real one is coming in the mail).
Excellent. I finally feel like I live in France.
Now, a few interesting details. I have read on other moving to France blogs about major problems with La Poste. Specifically how a random name sticker on a mailbox isn't official enough to actually receive mail. Apparently it's official enough for my mailperson (although I was a bit concerned because I recently ordered a new mobile phone, and while the website said "delivered", it was actually delivered to the wrong zip code and a different town all together! Still battling with that one.).
BUT, apparently my name sticker is not "proper" enough for the other tenants in my building. I was in the elevator the other day with another tenant. We were going to the same floor, so she said (all in French, but I'll summarize): "Oh, are you Mme X, the new tenant?" To which I said yes, and I think she heard my charming American accent "And you're the one who put that sticker on the mailbox?" Yes. "Well, Madame, you may not know this but we just got new mailboxes so that they would look nice and not have stickers on them. Would you be so kind as to move your sticker to a different location on the mailbox?"
I'm sure she thought - Ah, an American! Of course she would do something so improper as putting her name on the front of the mailbox, not with a proper nameplate but with a (gasp!) sticker!!!
I think that was my first run-in with snooty neighbors. Everyone else has been quite friendly and even tries to speak a little English (not that they need to, but it's a nice gesture.)
Now, one point about the medical exam, and I'm sure I'll go into much more details the first time I have a real doctor's appointment. But there are no gowns... you just take off your shirt and your bra, and wait around in this little room for them to call you, and then you follow them around, naked from the waist up, while the xray tech is tinkering around and talking to you, and finally takes your xray. I'm not too weird about nudity, but I have never been just wandering around a medical office topless before. From what I've heard from other expats, it gets much worse than this, so I can't wait for my first physical!
This post by La Belette Rouge about her own "baby step" preparations getting ready for a move to France, got me thinking about how I prepared myself.
I had about 6 months advance notice to get myself ready for the big move. Some things that I did:
- Took a french conversation & grammar class at L'alliance Francaise in Washington, DC.
- Joined French Meetup
- Subscribed to every francophile blog I could find. A few of which are listed in the links on the side of this blog.
- Filled my iPod with podcasts in french to work on my comprehension. Some of my favorites are "BFM Gouts de Luxe" and "RFI Journal Francais Facile", both of which you can find for free on the iTunes music store.
- Listened to all of the back episodes of the Katia & KylieMac podcast to get a bit of a feel for being an expat in France. (Listening to all of the episodes is a bit more of a challenge now that they've hit episode 100, congrats girls!)
- Read a big stack of books on France, the French, and being a young expat. Some were more helpful than others.
- Started reading French news sites daily like Le Monde and 20 Minutes.
- I looked weekly on online classified and apartment hunting sites to get familiar with what was available: Craigslist, FUSAC, Particular a Particular
- Answered a lot of my questions on banking, taxes, living in France etc by reading Expatica.com
In my own preparations I was most concerned about improving my level of French (since that is so key to being able to function in daily life here) and then some navel-gazing to make sure I was mentally ready for all of the changes ahead. (Really trying to get through my head the fact that I will feel foreign, frustrated, overwhelmed, and sometimes lonely, and that it is normal and okay!)
Oh, and speaking of working on your french, I recently came across MangoLanguages.com, and really enjoyed using their free online language course. This site is better for beginners, so I was using it for Spanish & Portuguese, but I did some of their French lessons just for kicks and they were good too.
A very odd (but gorgeous) Paris sky this afternoon when it suddenly went from sunny to extremely cloudy and ominous...
I'm mildly in love with Brazil. I won't say "completely obsessed", as that is a designation solely for France at this point, but I'm definitely feeling a strong draw south of the equator. I went to Brazil twice this year for business. And ever since then, I've been seeing Brazilian culture appearing more and more frequently. In fact, when I arrived in Paris, Brazil was everywhere! My landlord had been to Brazil and had a huge collection of Brazilian music (Bebel Gilberto, ahhh.) and art in the apartment. There is a popular club here in Paris called Favela Chic. And everyday I walk by this store (pictured above), filled with Brazilian clothes, accessories and the ubiquitous Havaianas flip flops.
Something I absolutely love about Brazilian culture is their adoration of the curvy female body. This is So Refreshing after growing up in the United States where thinner is better. On my last trip to Brazil, I was watching some television before falling asleep. I know about 20 words of Portuguese, so I didn't really understand much of it, until this infomercial came on: The Brazilian Secret. What is The Brazilian Secret? Well, whereas in the USA we have control top tights, body shapers that slim the body, and push-up bras, in Brazil the idea is to give yourself more curves. Think a padded bra for the bottom. I love it. And in skimpy Brazilian cut underwear style too. Really, click on that link and check it out, what a fantastic concept.
A blogger that I read regularly is living in Brazil and wrote this lovely post about what it means to be gostosa (delicious and fleshy).
And to top it off, TAM airlines has plastered the Paris Metro with advertisements for their new direct flight from Paris to Bahia in an easy (?) 10 hours and 20 minutes. I'm very thankful for my 5 weeks of French vacation right about now...
French life is filled with Champagne.
It's lovely. Actually, I'm not a huge fan of champagne. (Well, ok, I love one glass of champagne. But don't let me have more than that! I've learned my lesson. New Years Eve 2006. Blue* champagne cocktails. Enough said.)
At a housewarming party I went to a few weeks ago, many of the guests brought champagne. My French friends typically have it on hand for gifts and celebrations. I know someone who's family makes champagne. And, at a my first work tradeshow in France, we had champagne at lunch. Every day. This is in stark contrast to the American "just get some chips from the vending machine and scarf them down with a soda while no one is looking so you don't miss one potential client!!" At this tradeshow in France around 1PM everyday, someone would bring out a couple bottles of champagne and a selection of finger sandwiches. All work would stop. After all, it's lunchtime. The champagne would be drunk, sandwiches eaten, a quick coffee, and then work would resume as usual. I could get used to this. La vie est belle.
*I have a rule (one of many): No Blue Drinks. I don't know what came over me that night. Oh wait, it was probably the fact I started talking to this professional hockey player and got distracted. Of course, he stopped talking to me after 15 minutes. And unfortunately, I also remembered another one of my rules: "Don't change drinks mid-evening." et voila! a night of blue champagne cocktails ensued. UGH.
More on food today. I walked home from work last night through the Thursday night marche on rue Montorgueil and was completely inspired to start cooking. When I got home, I made myself a big pot of homemade tomato sauce, most of which I'll freeze for nights when I'm too lazy to cook. Anyway, I've always been a big fan of the food in France, and the quality of the ingredients you can find. Today I picked up rhubarb yogurt (whether this sounds good to you depends on whether you're a rhubarb fan, I guess. I am!), inexpensive but delish camembert and butter with crystals of sea salt.
This butter is amazing. Is it bad if I start eating buttered crackers for dessert? It's this really rich, smooth, creamy butter, studded with big crystals of sea salt. The flavor is amazing. I've always been a fan of French President butter, but this brings butter to a whole new level. Creamy goodness and then a Pop! of salt.
One of my favorite food & Paris bloggers, David Lebovitz, wrote this post about butter in France.
Now that I'm feeling slightly more confident about grocery shopping in Paris, I'm looking forward to trying all of the foods available. The tisanes (herbal teas) in the tea aisle are overwhelming. Tonight I saw a tisane specially formulated for people with jambes lourdes or "heavy legs" (I have never heard of this phenomenon in the USA, but in France they have teas, creams and all sorts of things to cure heavy legs. Hrmmmm.). I love the concept that a food can also be a beauty product. More grocery store discoveries to come!
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will soon learn that there are several things I'm obsessed with:
1) Interesting Doors
2) Beauty Products
3) FOOD! (including and especially, ice cream).
One of my favorite memories from traveling around France & Italy as a university student, was trying everything, especially the gelato and various ice creams.
Recently I was in Crema, Italy, a town outside of Milan. After a nice panini for lunch, I was tempted by a gelateria. The gelato in Italy is amazing. Super smooth and creamy, and oh so gorgeous in it's big presentation case, with every imaginable flavor. I had a cup of gelato with 3 flavors: nutella, tiramisu and crema (not sure what this flavor was, but it tasted like nutmeg). And the best part - it was 2 euros! Compared to a $5+ cup of Ben & Jerrys, this was a deal. YUM.
Just last week I noticed that my apartment (on the 5e etage) doesn't have fire alarms. Having been raised an overly cautious American, I have it ingrained in my head to have fire alarms all around the house and to change the batteries when you change the clocks. Well, after asking my landlord and a couple French colleagues, apparently not having fire alarms is the standard. They just don't think about it, they said. Fire alarms only exist in office buildings.
What?
Well how do you wake up if there is a fire in the middle of the night? To me, that is the huge benefit of fire alarms. They are not for when I'm awake; they're for when I'm sleeping, and I need to be woken up to get out of the building! So, I've been somewhat paranoid about this for a week now, and had been thinking I'd go on a quest to find some battery operated fire alarms to stick on my wall.
So fast-forward to this morning: I'm sleeping and for some reason I wake up, and all I smell is smoke! First, I think maybe one of the wall heater units has overheated, but when I check those, I don't see anything out of the ordinary. So then I check my kitchen - no smoke there. I must be imagining things. So I go back to bed. But as I lay there, I really smell smoke, I can't just be making this up. So I go out to my balcony ... still don't see anything ... then I look up over the building - and there is lots of thick black smoke!
AAAH! So I proceed to Officially Freak Out. There are no fire alarms - how do I know if the smoke is from my building or another one? How would anyone contact me to let me know? How do you know if you should evacuate or what? So I grab my coat and figure I'll just go outside and see (thinking that if I stayed in my apartment and had my breakfast, and there really WAS a fire in the building, I would be eternally kicking myself.).
So I go outside, and find a whole bunch of firetrucks across the street behind my apartment, and lots of smoke pouring out of the roof of that building, and some people on their balconies in their pajamas not seeming to know if the fire was in their building or not.
At this point, I think I have the right to be paranoid about this whole fire alarm situation. If you have any insight into this phenomenon, or how one is alerted about fires in France, please let me know! This also reminds me that I need to look up all of the emergency phone numbers here, because my instinct of 'Call 911' is not going to be of much help in a crisis.
This weekend I went to my first Expat event in Paris, which I learned about through Meetup.com. I highly recommend checking out Meetup.com for your local area. It's a free site that has Meetup groups on a huge variety of subjects, in locations all over the world. While living in Washington, DC I participated in the French Meetup Group which had a bunch of social events and language discussions in French & English. Anyway, so when I found out I was moving to Paris I immediately joined some meetups in Paris to start meeting people.
On Saturday night I went to an Expat meetup event between the American, English and Canadian expat meetup groups. It was a scavenger hunt around Paris organized by a company called RavenChase (If you like scavenger hunts, definitely check into having RavenChase plan your next one - I've done more than a few hunts in my life and this one was quite good! They organize hunts all over the US and just started in Europe.)
I'm still in the honeymoon phase with Paris, so almost everything here seems interesting or charming to me. I realize this will change in a year or so, but I'm just trying to enjoy it now, and not annoy everyone else with my lovestruck ramblings about the city. The best thing about the event was running all over the center of Paris - we went to Les Halles, Notre Dame, Hotel de Ville, Ile de la Cite, all at night, all illuminated - beautiful!
I had a realization though. I haven't met a ton of people here yet, but the moments I've enjoyed most are when I've been invited to parties at people's homes with mostly French people (even though those events are not relaxing, and are even somewhat stressful, and I'm a bit of a curiosity with my accent and all...). So, I was standing around this bar after the scavenger hunt, and it was just like being back in America - you could speak English freely, there was American music - it just so happened that we were in Paris. And I realized that as a personal goal, I want to spend the next 3-6 months or so trying to meet French people and integrate into the culture (as much as possible, which I realize will never happen fully.). But these expat events are a great resource for when I start feeling homesick and just need to spend an evening gabbing in English.
On Saturday, I took a trip to the amazing department store BHV (they really seem to sell everything I could conceivably need for my apartment). Among other random things, I bought myself this shopping caddy. Life in Paris revolves around walking, so going on a shopping trip and carrying all of your purchases can get quite tiring. (Although I suppose I could have also seen it as a money-saving strategy...but alas, I just realized that now). Anyway, while out and about you see everyone with these little shopping caddies - not just the older ladies, I swear! I found this shopping caddy particularly attractive, and it folds up into a sort-of shoulder bag (or so it says) for easier carrying before shopping. Can't wait for my first trip to the market to try it out!
Part of the fun (fun?) of adjusting to a new country is learning where to shop. Finding your own set of bonnes adresses. So what I want to know is - where oh where can I find the French equivalent of Target?? Tar-jay. My monthly stop for all household supplies. One of the rare reasons I ever drove my car in Washington, DC. In particular, I want to stock up* on beauty supplies. Shampoo! Conditioner! Big bottles of body lotion! Nail Polish!
I've tried the grocery stores here, but the selection is pitiful. Then I went to the pharamcie (or even better, a parapharmacie). Great selection, but Oh the prices! So I finally settled on Monoprix which is slightly more expensive than a normal grocery store, but has a better selection. There are a lot of the same brands I'm familiar with in the US: Dove, Pantene, Neutrogena ... but the bottles are half the size! And the prices are more expensive! If I'm going to pay this much for beauty products, I might as well buy everything at Sephora (aka, The Best Store Ever. But also very damaging to my budget.) Beauty products are a huge obsession for me. Anyone have any tips on where to find them even slightly cheaper here in France?? And what about other household products like plastic wrap, ziploc bags, toilet paper etc. Am I destined to buy the small, expensive quantities at the corner market forever? Help!
*I fear "stocking up" is an American thing that I'm going to have to get over in France. They apparently Just Don't Do It.
I am finally back in France and recovering from jet lag yet again. Last week I was in the US to take care of a few things at the French consulate in Boston, an appointment which coincided nicely with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wasn't the only thing that kept me in the States last week though ... last Friday night was also my 10 year high school reunion... and was shut down early for misbehavior.
Ugh. I hated High School.
If my reunion had been last year, I probably wouldn't have attended. After 10 years, most of my classmates are married, with kids and houses and pets and very Settled Down. I have none of those things. Fortunately, this reunion fell on The Most Exciting Year of my Life to date ... the year I moved to Paris! So although I had no pictures of cute kids in Halloween costumes, I was able to say "Well, I'm living in Paris...", which elicited a pretty good reaction from people. Or at least made me feel like I was actually doing something, even though I didn't have a wallet-full of pictures to prove it.
In the rational part of my brain I realize this is all stupid - I never see these people, I probably won't see them again for 10 more years, I didn't even LIKE High School - so why do I care what they think of my life?! But I definitely got an unhealthy sense of satisfaction by being able to say that I'm finally living in France, when so many people are already feeling "stuck" in their lives. (Yes, this is a toxic, unhealthy, unhelpful, self-absorbed feeling, I know. That's why it's good this reunion stuff only happens every 10 years!).
On a positive note, it was great to catch up with people I hadn't seen since graduation. Some people hadn't changed at all, and others were completely different, either in appearance or attitude or whatever. But, apparently some of my former classmates didn't change much at all. A group of classmates crashed the reunion just after dinner. Not only did they show up without tickets, but they brought their own alcohol, a big no-no (actually illegal, I think) at many restaurants. The bartender figured it out pretty quickly and had all of us kicked out. Fantastic. The funniest thing is, that if you had asked me to guess who would be likely to do that, purely based on their high school behavior, I would've guessed those people. You would think 10 years would change some things, but unfortunately not...
Anyway, I'm back in Paris, ready to resume working, blogging, exploring and massive amounts of Christmas shopping. I've never been in France for Christmas before. If anyone has any must-see holiday related things in Paris, please leave them in the comments!
I just love these big, lush feather dusters on display in a shop window in the 2e. Makes me want to get a French maid costume and start cleaning!
Tonight at midnight, the first bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau will be opened. This will be the first time that I'll be in France for this event. In Washington, DC, the francophile crowd would go crazy about Beaujolais Nouveau every year. French restaurants would run out of dinner reservations weeks in advance, and people would crowd into the bar, waiting for midnight when the wine would be opened. I assumed things would be equally as festive here in France, although while trying to rally support from my French coworkers to go out with me tonight, I was met with mediocre enthusiasm.
The typical Beaujolais Nouveau we get in the US is rouge (red). But, according to this article (in French), there will be a rose for the first time ever in France, and the blanc (white) will not be produced this year. I'll have to try to get my hands on a bottle of the Beaujolais Nouveau rose.
The other news today is la greve! Like in October, the train employees will be going on strike to protest possible changes to their retirement plans. This strike is supposed to be much worse than the last, with an indefinite duration. I'm returning to the US on Friday for Thanksgiving week ... and I have a feeling I'm going to be taking a 50 euro taxi ride to the airport instead of the 8 euro metro!
Just came across this post on StyleBites called "A French Woman's Guide to Beauty". I definitely agree about the simple makeup routine. Most women I run across in Paris look very natural and polished, but not at all made up. I'm hoping to discover a few of my own French beauty secrets in the next couple of months, and will be sure to share them!
Speaking with actual French people in French is much different than speaking with your fellow Anglophone classmates in a French class. The real, spoken French language is not the stuff you learn in textbooks. And is infinitely more interesting and colorful than the phrases your classmates put together. And the gestures - Oh! The gestures! It's not as much as in Italy, but watching people speak is completely entertaining. When you combine it all, it makes the French that many of us learn very very far from anything that could be perceived as normal, conversational French.
In my excited preparations for moving to Paris, I bought a couple of books that I thought might help me pickup some phrases. In reality, I looked at the books once, but never learned much from them. Learing slang, I'm realizing, is best done over drinks in a bar, listening to people tell their stories.
I had one of the slang books "Merde! The Real French You Were Never Taught at School." on my desk (yeah, real professional, I know. Thought it might be a good conversation starter though.) One of my French colleagues picked it up and was immediately fascinated by all of the catchy English phrases like "I have a frog in my throat" (the French say "I have a cat in my throat"), and "to kick the bucket". So she's borrowing the book for awhile, and we're going to get lunch and teach each other some choice slang. Should be very educational!
I'm blissfully in a lunch rut. This is not new for me. In Washington, DC, I was obsessed with bento boxes at Teaism. It seems like in Paris, I will be obsessed with the boulangerie around the corner from my office. This little boulangerie (officially translates to "bakery", but this one is so much more!) has the obligatory racks of baguettes and other tasty breads, an extensive case of pastries, and a very diverse selection of sandwiches and salads. And not just the typical baguette sandwiches (although they have those too, and I do love them), but these yummy sandwiches called "Pavés". A pavé is a big sandwich on almost cibatta-like bread, filled with a variety of things. My favorite is jambon gruyere. This is basically ham and "swiss cheese", with delicious French mayonnaise (not like the stuff in the jar!), tomatoes, eggs (the French love eggs in their sandwiches, it seems) and lettuce. Oh, I am getting hungry just thinking about it. And the best part: the sandwich is only 3.5 euros! For a huge sandwich! Coming from DC where a sandwich was in the $7 range, this is amazing to me. (Ok, let's put the exchange rate to the side for a minute...).
Sometimes, in my weaker moments, I also treat myself to a patisserie (while dealing with the stress of moving abroad, it's important to indulge myself sometimes, right??). Flan au chocolat. Eclair au café. Mille feuille. Ahhhhh.
My coworkers went for sushi today, but I had to have my pavé. I've been eating sushi for years. But real French boulangerie sandwiches?? For at least a few more months, the novelty will keep me hooked.
I am paranoid. Sitting in my apartment and writing, I keep seeing motion out of the corner of my eye. A dark spot on the floor - is it a spider? Something on the baseboard - a mouse? Or, my all time favorite, a camel cricket?? I just learned from Wikipedia that camel crickets are also known as "cave crickets", which is quite appropriate as my apartment in Washington DC was in the basement. (Well, I liked to think of it as a "garden apartment", but...). Anyway, my apartment was overrun with camel crickets. There would even be little camel cricket babies in the bathtub in the mornings every few weeks. Ick. I also had 2 infestations of mice, and an unfortunate run-in with a snake. (I'll share that story some other time.).
The building I lived in, in Washington, was built in the 1940s. My building here in Paris is significantly older. I live on the 5th floor now (ok, 5th FRENCH floor, which equates to the 6th American floor. Floor counting here starts with zero, not one.) But, I cannot believe that this very old apartment building is pest-free. And I know that pests are not deterred by having to travel through walls up to the higher floors. So I'm just biding my time, paranoid, waiting until I see what unwanted roomates are going to join me here in Paris...
Learning to speak French on a day to day basis is a challenge. Actually, as I've written about before, I actually cheat quite a bit. There is a big difference between the French you learn in school, and what's actually spoken on the street. Also, there's a big difference between being able to function in a language (ask directions, read menus etc.) and actually express yourself and communicate with someone on a personal level. I'm totally, completely functional in French. But trying to express my personality or have any sort of a sense of humor are impossible. Forget witty comebacks: it takes too long to work out the correct verb conjugation, and then the moment is gone.
I'm still amazed sometimes that I can understand what's going on around me. I'll be going along, functioning fine, and then I have this out-of-body experience where I see myself doing whatever I'm doing, and I just think - "Wow." So, today I was in a meeting with my French colleagues. The meeting started perfectly fine, everyone jabbering in French, and I was following along, even contributing a little bit (a little bit, and very badly, but they got the gist). And then the out of body experience started "Wow, here I am having a meeting all in French! And I know what's going on! Well, sort of. I'm following most of it. Except when they talk over each other. But this is cool. Except I think I screwed up that last sentence I said, but whatever. I bet in a couple of months I'll really know what's going on and..." and then suddenly I hear (in French) "...isn't that right, Amanda?". And deafening silence. Everyone looking at me. Nervous laugh. And, lost in my lala land, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, although it apparently involved me.
Fortunately, I figure I have at least a six-month window where people will attribute any apparently spaceyness to my language skills. So I just said "Pardon? J'ai pas bien compris" ("Sorry? I didn't understand.") and life moved on. Gotta work on my attention span though.
I’m renting a short-term apartment for a few months until I decide where I want to live in Paris. After showing me the apartment upon arrival, the landlord handed me a fistful of keys.
There are 6 keys, just for the apartment:
* One front door electronic key
* One mailbox key
* One inner door key
* One key to the little hall leading to my apartment
* Two keys for my actual apartment door
To add to my amusement, one of them is a skeleton key, straight out of a museum.
I wonder how I’m going to fit these all into a small evening bag when going out at night…
On my recent trip to Bern, Switzerland, I took this picture of the Fall colors. Having grown up in New England, I have a very specific idea of what Fall feels like. Washington, DC never had a real Fall feel for me. In Paris, the air was definitely crisp, and there were some leaves on the ground, but it wasn't until I got to Bern that I was reminded of Autumn in New England.The idea of moving to
One of my rules (apparently I have a lot of rules) that works well in this situation is “You’d better have a REALLY good reason for declining that invitation!”. For a certain period, say, three or six months, I make myself accept almost any social invitation that comes my way…even if it sounds dreadfully boring. You never know where you’ll meet your next friend (or date), so you just have to put yourself out there.
Of course, my coworkers and friends can exploit this rule ... they could invite me to do just about anything, say, helping them move, and I'd have to accept :) Shhhh...
I went out to lunch last week with some colleagues. One lovely thing about
I’m back in
- The
-
- Bourbon in
- Montsouris – Cute French restaurant with actual French staff and delicious country pate
- Teaism – Tea house with tasty bento boxes for lunch
- M St in
- The Waterfront – not the best food, but amazing people watching on warm days. For maximum amusement, pay particular attention to the guys trying to lure girls onto their boats…
- Neyla – Mediterranean restaurant in
- Eighteenth Street Lounge - late-night hangout, great music, in an old townhouse. Don't miss the live jazz on the 3rd floor.
On my recent trip to
The French TGV (Trains a Grande Vitesse, aka, High Speed Train) are a popular and easy way to travel around
One thing I don’t understand: why do you have to compostez votre billet? Before boarding the train, you have to stick your ticket in a machine to composter. (I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I assure you that while the ticket is biodegradable, you do not in fact “compost” it.) Basically, this machine stamps a date and time on your ticket in really small, subtle writing. What is the point? Don’t they check your ticket on the train anyway? Besides, my ticket is non-refundable once the train departure time has passed. If you have any idea about the purpose of composting, please let me know.
I do vividly remember the consequences of not composting though. During one of my first train trips in college I didn’t composte mon billet, and when a conductor came by to check, I got a loud talking-to in French and a hefty fine. So beware!
Apparently the French do not like shower doors or shower curtains.
This has always baffled me. In my experience, the French prefer a bathtub. This bathtub always has a detachable shower head, so you can rinse yourself. While studying in
Last year I stayed in a hotel in the 8th arrondissment in
In my current rental apartment there is, yet again, no shower curtain or door. It seems to work okay in this case though because it’s a very big tub, so when you shower, as long as you angle the spray towards the wall, things stay relatively dry…
Is this an aesthetic thing? Does anyone know? Actually can be kind of efficient for cleaning because your floor gets cleaned every morning after your shower…
I'm back in Washington, DC for a week. I'm also slightly delirious from all of the travel (spent 3 days in the Netherlands, got back to Paris at 10:30PM Friday night, then packed and flew out on Saturday morning. Whew!). And with my internal clock on Paris time, I woke up at 4AM this morning.
I'm in DC this week to clean out my apartment and Really Move. My apartment here suddenly feels empty and depressing. I've sold almost all of my furniture, so I'm sleeping on an aerobed and sitting on a folding chair. Not exactly relaxing to come home to. (Can I even call this home right now? Not sure anymore.)
I am 100% sure that moving to Paris is the right thing for me to do. In fact, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do right now, than move to Paris. That being said, it is still sad to leave a place where you've lived for many years. This apartment, this neighborhood, my routine, my friends, it was all great for years. Then suddenly, I make a big decision (to move to Paris), and suddenly this isn't my place or my routine anymore. It's very strange. I know I can come back and visit, but it will never be quite the same.
Anyway, I need to stop thinking and start packing!
I’m realizing that every thing I do here reminds me that I am the Other, a Foreigner, the person who just arrived who speaks the language really badly. It’s an interesting position to be in for many reasons. I now have an appreciation for the challenge of moving into a new culture. But also, my awareness of everything is so heightened right now. Everything is a new experience. It makes me appreciate many little things about France and the French, but also, makes me appreciate some things that were so normal about the
It is frustrating at times too. Even the most simple, routine activities become a challenge. For example, this weekend I was grocery shopping. In DC I had a nice grocery shopping routine where I could zip through the store and pick up the essentials, occasionally pausing to check out some new product. In
After almost three years of singledom, I've gotten quite good at dating. At least in the United States. But I'm quickly learning that in France, all of The Rules are different.
Yes, you still meet people in bars, swap phone numbers and go out on dates. BUT...then, everything changes. In the United States, at least in my experience, you can date a guy for a long time without being In A Relationship. In fact, in order to be in a Relationship, you have to have a specific conversation that goes like this:
"So, let's talk about Us. What are you thinking?"
"Well, we have a fun time together. I like hanging out with you."
"Ok, well I really like you too. Do you want to be my Boyfriend?? And not date anyone else?"
"Sure."
"Ok cool."
Yes, it is often that eloquent. No, we don't really say 'Do you want to be my Boyfriend", but you get the idea. You have to be That Explicit. Otherwise (in my experience), it is assumed that you are Just Dating, and therefore, can still be seeing other people at the same time.
However, apparently in France, you can go out once, maybe twice, but if you act like a couple (whatever this means), and especially if you kiss (not the polite cheek kiss but an actual Kiss), then you are Together. And that's it. You're a couple. No discussion. No angsting about "will he think I'm being too obsessive about wanting to commit??". Nada. You're just Together.
This is fine. In fact, both of these paradigms are Just Fine ... but they require different behaviors. I think I need to switch from the All You Can Eat buffet mentality to a "choose very carefully because you only get one scoop of ice cream" mentality. Other Americans out there - have you experienced this too?
I think it's going to be a lot easier to cheat in Paris than I thought.
Cheating? I mean, it will be really easy to speak English. A lot. As a casual tourist to Paris, you'll find that you really do need to speak some French. If nothing else than to start off on the right foot with the Parisians. But once you spend some time exploring, especially if you speak a little French, you'll find a world of English just beneath the surface.
This weekend I went to this cute restaurant for a big lunch (I love the fact that you can have a 3 course meal for lunch in France and it's Totally Normal. I stumbled across Au Pied du Fouet by accident, and had a full meal with wine and coffee for 20 euros!). Anyway, I was speaking only French with the waitstaff, but of course I still have my Cute American Accent, and pretty soon the waitress was translating everything into English for me, even though I said "Oh no, je parle francais."
Saturday night I went out with some French friends, and I quickly realized that I could speak full-on Franglais and they would still know what I'm talking about. My French teachers would cringe. But it definitely makes it easier to sprinkle in some English when you forget some key vocabulary. We ended the night at a Canadian bar, Moosehead where speaking English was the thing to do (truth be told, perhaps there were more Anglos than usual because it was the night of the Rugby World Cup final). (Let it be noted that I do not, at all, enjoy sports bars. But for some reason I had a great time at this one. Maybe it reminded me of home!) I think I'll have to make a real effort if I want my French to improve. I can already tell my comprehension is getting better, but if I want to feel less like a 5 year old when I speak, I'm going to have to make Personal Rule #284 and Only Speak French for awhile.
For those of you who are not familiar, you should really check out the "Missed Connections" section on Craigslist for your city. The idea is that if you see someone who is interesting, but for some reason you couldn't meet them, you post an "MC" and hopefully they'll see it and contact you. Ohhhh isn't it a romantic concept?? You see someone on a subway going the opposite direction, your eyes lock, but then the trains are off, never to be seen again! Ok, in reality most of the posts are people who just didn't have the courage to say Hello, but the idea is the same...
Regardless, Missed Connections are very entertaining ... and addictive. In Washington, DC, my friends and I would often lament the fact that we weren't "MC'd" when we thought we were out on the town looking particularly good. Although I have never personally received an MC, one of my friends has ... twice! And after seeing a particularly cute guy on my daily commute, I have even been known to post an MC myself.
When I moved to Paris, I was thrilled to see that Craigslist exists here. The apartment listings and "For Sale" ads aren't too bad. But the MC's are so sparse that they barely warrant a monthly click! In DC, the volume of MCs was so high that you had to check at least daily to keep up with them (although with an MC addiction, this easily turned into 10 times per day). But looking at Paris MCs, there are still posts from over a month ago!! How disappointing.
So, I'm wondering about the cause of this pathetic MC'ing. Is craigslist just not popular enough in Paris? Or, in Paris, the city of Light and Love, do people actually talk to others who they find attractive, rather than resorting to random posts in cyberspace... I guess I will find out in the coming months!
On a normal day, I don’t mind taking several flights of stairs in the metro. In fact, I think all of these stairs and walking are a key part to why the French are so slim.
However, for city-dwellers going on a trip, trying to navigate all of these stairs with luggage is a huge pain and quite a workout!
In particular, on my recent trip to
We've all read numerous articles on how rude the French are (supposed to be). This article in the Sydney Morning Herald (which I found via The French Journal) reminded me of a recent experience. This weekend I went to a housewarming party in Paris. Almost all of the attendees were French. I'm guessing that the French don't always talk about Americans at parties, but when I'm present, the conversation almost always turns to something American-related. At this party, the discussion was about how many American tourists assume that everyone in France speaks English. In fact, one Parisian (with whom I was conversing in my preferred melange of French and English, aka, Franglais), told me that when he is approached by an American in English for directions, he first acts like he doesn't understand, and then gives them the wrong directions!!! But if they try to speak a little French first, he is quite helpful.
From my overly-friendly American perspective, I found this kind of shocking actually. And who knows if it's true (I think there is a similar ad on TV right now?? Anyone know?).
This same Parisian later told me that he felt like an American traveler when he went to Switzerland and automatically assumed they would accept Euros...
My job requires me to travel ... a lot. On Thursday I have a meeting in Bern, Switzerland. Normally this would not be a problem. Except that this Thursday in particular is la greve (a strike). All of the train workers are striking in France. Well, not all of them, I was assured by an SNCF employee, but 92% of them. Lovely.
Strikes are very common here, so what a better way to kickoff my business travel experience in France than to be inconvenienced by a train strike?! At least the strikers provide advanced notice. And apparently also provide a minimum level of service. Although judging by the pictures I've seen of previous train strikes, it will still not be pretty.
My solution? Arrive on Wednesday night and stay until Friday. Know any Bern hotspots I should check out while I'm in town??
Enfin, finally, I've arrived in Paris. Temporarily at least. I'm still in the process of moving from Washington, DC. I'm here for a few weeks for work and the (very daunting) apartment hunt.
So what is this blog?? I've been an francophile for my entire life. I studied in Lyon, France briefly during college, but then Real Life happened and I pretty much gave up on the idea of living abroad. I tried to get involved in French things in Washington, DC, but that really just reminded me that I'd prefer to be in actual France, rather than trying to recreate France in DC... And then, one day, voila! an opportunity appeared at my job to move to Paris and I jumped at the chance.
So here I am. My idea with Frenchesque is to share my experiences about living in Paris, being an expat, travels around Europe and generally figuring things out about Life in my late-twenties. Bonjour et Bienvenue.
