Dinner in photographs

My friends Trevor and Mark Anthony have become a bit obsessed with elaborate French meals. For the past week, they have made for themselves five and six course meals, complete with three courses of desserts. (Technically, Mark Anthony does the cooking. Trevor eats and does the dishes. Haha.) When I learned of this, I sort of invited myself to their apartment for dinner, and they graciously hosted me.

The courses: First, appetizers and apéritifs.
Toast with tomato sauce and melted chèvre. I don't usually like goat cheese, but these were delicious.


Second course: Cream of mushroom chicken with fresh mushrooms, broccoli, and white rice. That was mmm mmm good.


(Mark Anthony, the happy chef)

The third course was salad, which I neglected to photograph. But y'all know what salad looks like.

Number four: Cheese! (and bread and mangoes)


(Emmental (my favorite), Comté (my second favorite), Roquefort, and Chèvre.)

Finally, dessert!
Part one: chocolate mousse with berries.



Part two: galette de roi! (Galette de roi, or "cake of the king," is a traditional French cake that comes out on the 6th of January and stays around for as long as the bakers decide to make more. Each cake is baked with a fève (a little trinket) inside. Whoever gets the slice with the fève is the king or queen for the day, and has to wear a crown.) I'm sort of obsessed with galette de roi, so MA and Trevor got me a cake for dessert. I got the fève, so I got the crown.


(For some reason, the fève said "Psycho Duck." Strange.)

Finally, Mark Anthony's signature hot chocolate with pain au chocolat, an orange slice, and a chocolate marshmallow bear.



We dipped the pain au chocolat in the hot chocolate. It was pretty spectacular. It also has the effect of causing a chocolate-induced food coma. After we finished this last course, we wanted to pass out. Chocolate is definitely a game-stopper.



Dinner took us about three hours to eat. After which, I peeled myself off of the couch and ran to catch the metro home before the grève (strike) started. We got a four day weekend this week because there was a massive strike in Paris of all the public transportation workers, so we couldn't really get to school. Hooray for socialism! And hooray for delicious dinners.

Mark Anthony, Me and my fève and my crown, Trevor.

Nutella is [not] a food group

I was so enthralled by all of the oranges and fennel and cabbage and broccoli and seven varieties of lettuce and some strange thing that I had never seen before but that looked like a burnt sweet potato with a wrinkly skin that I didn't realize that it was my turn to place my order.

"Bonjour, mademoiselle!"

I put on an air of confidence, pointed to what I wanted, and in my best French accent, said, "Un kilo, s'il vous plaît."

Internally, I was crossing my fingers, unsure of how much a kilo is in relation to a pound, and wondering if I had just ordered a truckload of spinach or merely a leaf or two.

The vendor then asked me, "Et avec ça?"

I piled on the order until I had everything I wanted, then said, "C'est tout."

He told me the bill. I paid, and said, "Bonne journée." (Have a good day.)

"Et vous aussi, mademoiselle." (You too.)

Et voilà. Groceries!

I moved to the next stand and repeated the process.

In an effort to include those food groups other than baguettes and Nutella in our diets, my roommate and I went to the market this morning. Well, actually I went to the market on both of our behalves. There is one right around the corner from our apartment that has fruits and vegetables, meats and fish, nuts, and even clothes and shoes. One of the things I love about France are the markets. Everyday, in some part of town, there is a fresh food market.

I would have taken pictures, but my arms were too weighed down by the ridiculous amounts of fruits and veggies I purchased...apples, oranges, cherries, spinach, carrots, and much more. In addition to discovering lots of yummy fruits, I also discovered the secret to finding nice Parisiens: go to the market! Everyone there was friendly, even the passersby. It is an unfair generalization, I realize, to judge an entire country based on encounters with just a few unfriendly people. But still, I was glad to run into some smiling faces at my local marché.

The market here was a much welcomed change from the lovely Haymarket at Government Center in Boston. By lovely, I of course mean rude, sanitarily questionable (don't know if that's a word, but the point comes across) faux farmer's market that is really ultra-cheap grocery store left-overs. Here, the vendors were friendly to their customers. Like those at Haymarket, the vendors here handle the fruit themselves. However, unlike Haymarket, they don't choose your fruit because they are afraid you will notice that some of it is rotten. Rather, it's just part of the service.

Shopping at the market takes a bit of patience. At each stand I visited, I had to wait my turn while the vendor took the orders of those before me. The shoppers, mostly middle-aged and older women (I have yet to run into the yuppie, foodie crowd of which I am a part), seemed to order everything the vendor had to offer.

Perhaps as my French improves, I'll venture over to the meat stand. I don't yet know how to say "Your best cut of lamb, s'il vous plaît."

Haha. Like I know how to cook a lamb.

A drink before noon? (and lots of pictures)

BU is down with that. On Friday, we had our French Gastronomy class.

(The following is long, but tasty - for the most part.)

We walked into Salle A and were greeted by our professors with plastic glasses and bottles of rose wine to start us off on our French food lesson. My tasting just happened to be at 11 am because they arranged us alphabetically. But it's still kind of amusing to note that BU offered us l'alcool before noon.

Set before us was an array of mouth-watering French food, ranging from meats to cheeses to pastries. The wine was just to hold us over, for before we could taste the goodies, we had to listen to a short presentation about the history of French Gastronomy. Elisabeth walked us through the ins and outs of French cuisine, including the ambiance of the eating experience, the geographical origins of the food and wine, and the actual food itself. We were all finished with our goût (drop or taste) of wine and ready to eat.

First course, this:


It's salami, which the French call saucisson sec (dry sausage). It's a bit tough on the edges, but the middle has a more tender, flavorful taste.

Next, we moved to this:


Rillettes. According to Wikipedia: Originally made with pork, the meat is cubed or chopped, salted heavily and cooked slowly in fat until it is tender enough to be easily shredded, and then cooled with enough of the fat to form a paste.
Sounds healthy, huh? It was pretty darn good. Much better than what's next:

Looks harmless, eh? I learned the contents of the sausage just as I had put the last two-thirds of the cracker into my mouth.

The French call it Boudin Noir. The British call it black pudding.

Straight-up no frills translation: that stuff is PIG'S BLOOD SAUSAGE. Made from CONGEALED P I G ' S B L O O D.

I promptly spit the two-thirds that I had just tasted out into my napkin, and that was the end of that.

We moved through the cheese course with no drama. Cheese is pretty straight forward. (I think. If it's not, I'd rather not know at this point.) We learned that cheese courses are supposed to have at least five different cheeses of varying firmnesses, and that you taste from mild to strong. We had Comte, Camembert (the good kind and the cheap kind for comparison), Chèvre (goat cheese), and Fourme d'Ambert (kind of like blue cheese). All of this with lots of yummy red wine.

Finally, we got to the carbs: bread and dessert. If I come home ten pounds heavier, it will be because of these things. We tried everything: croissants, pain au chocolat (essentially a chocolate-filled croissant that tastes pretty much like heaven), chausson aux pommes (a pastry filled with what tastes like apple sauce but fresher than that stuff from a jar that you get in a grocery store), and palmiers. The professor asked someone to name the different pastries on the table. I must admit, I knew every single one of them. I've been quite adventurous when it comes to trying new treats at the boulangerie.

Desserts: opéra (tastes a bit like tirimisu), profiteroles (sweet pastry stuffed with chocolate or sometimes ice cream), éclaires (chocolate and coffee), and one other thing, the name of which I can't remember, but that I would eat in a heartbeat if given another chance. All of this with a generous serving of Côte du Rhône white wine from the Rhône Valley region of France. (NOTE: by the time we got to desserts, I was so consumed with eating that I forgot to take pictures. My bad.)

The teacher walked around the room with a bottle of wine and a tray of food trying to get us to finish them both before the class was over. We all complied happily.

And that is how I started my Friday. Ça, c'est bon!

The Gray City in photographs

When the rain clears, we get beautiful skies like this one. Check out those cumulonimbuses next to the Eiffel Tower. Ridiculous.


(I took a meteorology class way back when I was a little kid. Otherwise I would have just written "clouds.")

Also, the Statue of Liberty lives pretty close to my house. I found her while walking to some place or another earlier in the week. This is one of several mini-versions located throughout Paris.


My hands were either gloved or bare and shivering, which is why these pictures are a tad blurry. Or I just took a careless photograph. I prefer to blame the weather, though.

Greetings from the gray city

Whoever said Paris is the City of Lights must not have been here during the winter. This place is dreary. The ten-day forecast: clouds and light rain, highs in the mid 40s. For the next ten days! There are bursts of sunshine every now and then for a few minutes at a time, but for the most part, it's just a steady, cold precipitation. My umbrella almost inverted several times today, so I eventually just gave up and got a little damp. However, the rain is not a strong enough deterrent to keep me from my pain au chocolat. I'll venture out in any weather to obtain one of those edible treasures.

This week has drained me of energy. Classes started on Monday, and there is a lot more work in this first week than I anticipated. I have seven and a half hours of class on Mondays alone. I start at 9:00 am, and don't finish until 5:30 pm. That is three, two and a half hour classes, back to back with just a half hour break in between each. Academic suicide, anyone? I guess I shouldn't complain, though, because the French education system is apparently pretty hard core, with kids going to school from 8 to 5:30 as early as elementary school.

My first class is called the Economic Development of Europe (or something along those lines....is it a bad thing that I don't remember the exact name of the class?). It has the potential to be extremely interesting. Alas, it is not. My limited background in economics is compounded by the fact that the class is in French. I spend half of the time passively listening to the French syllables float into my ears, and the other half trying to comprehend the economic principles the professor is discussing. The French part is okay. I understand the basic ideas, if not every single word. But the details escape me. The professor talks rather quickly, and though she slows down every now and then, she quickly works her way back up to native-French speaker who forgets that she is not speaking to other native-French speakers but to American kids speed.

There's this dichotomy, you see, between the real world, and my world. In the real world, I have to ask the attendant at the train station to repeat himself when he tells me where to purchase my métro ticket. In my world, my professors, my host mother, and everyone affiliated with BU speaks nice and slowly. It's a trick. I understand my world perfectly, so I go out into the real world with confidence, only to find myself saying, "Pas si vite, s'il vous plaît." (Talk a little slower, please.) It's coming along. I went to the movies today with Trevor and Mark Anthony, and I understood without a problem. I go through waves of perfect comprehension and nearly perfect French, but then there are times when I can't wrap my tongue around the nasally syllables. Overall, though, I've improved quite a bit, both in conversation and comprehension.

Strangely enough, my favorite class is actually French. The professor has a great sense of humor that puts the class at ease. It will be a challenging course that will require me to polish my grammar, but I think I'll enjoy it. The same professor who teaches the French course also teaches the theatre half of my "Paris Aujourd'hui" class. (The class is divided into two sections. The first is a French theatre section, the second is dedicated to French cinema and music. It's perfect.)

In other news, I'm eating well. Tonight's dinner: roasted pork chops with a delicious gravy, pommes de terre (literal translation: apples of the earth, actual meaning: potatoes) and pommes de something (roasted apples with some sort of savory compote....it was pretty much a fête in my mouth), bread, salad with chèvre (goat cheese), and for dessert, chocolate mousse and homemade palmiers (it's a pretzel-shaped cookie topped with butter, sugar, and some other things). A couple days ago, my roommate and I bought some cheese and nutella, and ate it with baguettes and wine (cheese and nutella separate, of course). Our host mother said our dinner was très Parisien. I have yet to order something that doesn't taste good, with the exception of a tartine I had from a mediocre café.

My 30-minute walk to and from school each day (or most days, I should say) offsets the ridiculous amounts of carbs, cheese, and chocolate I have consumed in the past two weeks or so. Though it may be gray, Paris is certainly a walker's paradise. And though it may be gray, I must admit that I do like it here. I just wish the sun would show its face more often.

This time we'll take it slow

My housemate and I went out to dinner last night with two other girls. We left at about 7:30, and returned at about 9:00. We took our time, ordered dinner and dessert, and had some good conversation. I thought we had done a good job entertaining ourselves. However, when we returned home, our host mother tapped her watch and said, "Vous êtes très tôt." She wasn't expecting us back so early.

I was a bit confused, as we had just spent an hour and a half dining. Then I remembered that I am in France, and a long time for them is an eternity for us. "Nous sommes Americaines," I responded jokingly. "Nous mangeons tres vite!" (We eat fast.) It never occured to me that by French standards, we had rushed our dinner.

Taking it slowly is a new concept for me, and one that will take some getting used to. It may be a while before I am able to calm my hyperproductive personality and just.....chill. There's always something else to do, some fact to look up, some homework to catch up on, something.

But for now, I'll start with nice long meals. I think I can handle spending a little extra time at the dinner table.

Getting to know your arrondisement

1. We love our neighborhood. (So use a pooper-scooper.) 2. 16th arrondisement. 3. descending Sacré Couer (reminded me of San Francisco) 4. more of the 16th. 5. the Eiffel Tower, duh! 6. another angle 7. busy intersection near the center of town 8. my favorite street so far 9. pretty neighborhood my roommate and I stumbled upon 10. a puddle

Bonne promenade

Lazy Sunday afternoons are best spent walking aimlessly around the city. My roommate and I left our house this afternoon with no plans in mind, other than to explore our arrondisement a bit more. Two hours later, we found ourselves somewhere on the other side of Paris. It was raining when we left, but it cleared up into a beautiful afternoon just a few minutes into our walk.

I had become a bit skeptical about Paris being this big beautiful city that I was supposed to fall in love with, but this afternoon, I was reassured. To be frank, the city can be quite drab sometimes, especially when it is rainy and gray and damp. Granted, it is winter, and I have been here for only one week. But still, I was expecting Paris, not Seattle (no offense).

After today, I can see why Paris is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. My roommate and I started in the 16th, and walked around some parks in our area. We passed several elderly couples taking strolls along the pathways that circle the arrondisement. I decided that when I am old, I want to take lazy strolls on Sunday afternoons with my boo. :-) We worked our way north (ish) to Trocadéro, which is, in my opinion, one of the best places from which to view the Eiffel Tower. After that, we followed the Seine along the Right Bank until we reached the end (or beginning, depending on your perspective) of the Champs Elysées, opposite l'Arc de Triomphe.

We walked a bit further, and found a café on the border of the 6th and 7th arrondisements, and warmed up with some café au lait before heading home. It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and a great way to get to know the neighborhood.

Tomorrow, classes! I have class from 9 to 5:30 with only half hour breaks in between each class.

However, I only have a full day of class twice a week, with one two-hour class on Thursday, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

A boulangerie to call my own

I have a goal. By the end of the semester, I want the man or woman at my boulangerie to know my name, and greet me in the morning when I order my baguette. This gives me a more immediate goal: find a boulangerie that I like, and become a regular. Ready, Go.

La confiance

During my placement interview this afternoon, the professors determined that I need more confiance--confidence. The setup of the interview was kind of intimidating, though the actual interview itself was very relaxed. It was three on one. It reminded me of an interrogation room. Three professors sat behind a long table, and the single chair facing them was for the lowly student. But the questions were simple: Why France? Is this your first time? What classes do you want?

Though I originally opted for Level I of the program, after looking at my placement test results and listening to me answer their questions, they placed me in Level II. Now, instead of taking one elective and two French classes, I get to take two electives and one French class. I was not too confident in my ability to excel in French class, which is why I chose Level I. I don't really like taking French, which is why I haven't taken a class in over a year. I figured Paris would be a much better classroom than BU, and much more efficient, too. In just a week, I've already gotten better. But I must admit I was happy that I passed into Level II. It means that I can now take a French culture and cinema class that is restricted to Level II students. However, it also means that I’ll have to put in the extra work to fill in some gaps in my education. "J'avais peur," I explained to them. (I was afraid I was not prepared for Level II.) The professors assured me that I would be okay, and that I could handle the more advanced material, so I feel better.

It’s the silly grammar, you see. I’m convinced that prepositions are entirely unknowable. You jouer à baseball (play baseball), but jouer de piano (play the piano); téléphoner à (call someone), but avoir besoin de (have need of). Finir (to finish) is followed by de, but commencer (to begin) is followed by à. Plenty more of these curious phrases exist in the French language. Thankfully, I brought my old textbooks along with me to refresh.

Orientation has been going well. It’s nice to ease into things before starting classes. The director of our program is a lively American woman and BU grad who moved to France after falling in love with her beau during her time in Grenoble as a study abroad student way back when. The professors introduced themselves and their classes today. They all seem like nice, reasonable people.

It was kind of funny listening to Emmanuelle explain how she trained our French professors to be nice when grading our work. (Emmanuelle is sort of our guardian. Her technical title is "academic coordinator." She's a French woman who has taught in America, and who helps bridge the gap between cultures.) Apparently, the French education system is too tough for us friendly folks from les Etats-Unis. French teachers don’t understand constructive criticism. They forget the constructive part, and focus solely on the criticism. They have no concept of the student as customer. The professor is the dictator, and the students will conform. Or go on a grève. They enjoy that sort of thing here. The grading system is out of 20 instead of 100, and in France, a C is a something to celebrate. Everyone’s eyes got sort of wide, and we all held our collective breath when we heard this. French teachers do not have to answer to students when questioned about grades, but Emmanuelle has trained our professors to provide sound logic behind the grades they pass out. Essentially, Emmanuelle’s got our back, and our professors are cool people who know to be gentle with us, but who will still stick it to us if we screw up. They know that it’s okay to give A’s and B’s, and we shouldn’t worry. Too much. (Hehe.)

Tonight is dinner with my host mother and her nephew, then maybe exploring a bit with some girls from my program. Nothing too extravagant—we’ve got another day of orientation in the morning.

Enchantée

Charmed. That’s what my host mother said when she introduced herself yesterday. She lives in a spacious apartment on the Right Bank, not too far from the Eiffel Tower, which we can see from our living room window. The place is old, but clean and well-kept, with wooden floors that creak if you walk on the wrong side of the hallway. The wallpaper is yellowed and peeling in places, the white paint on parts of the wooden trim along the floors chipped. Worn books about religion and travel and philosophy line the shelves in the living room from floor to ceiling, and freshly painted watercolor flowers and portraits are drying up against the wall, a burst of something new in an otherwise comfy old house. (My host mother had her weekly drawing class this afternoon. She is quite the artist.) An old tapestry takes up the entire wall opposite the dining room table, adding some color to the place. Various little trinkets—perhaps gifts from past students like me—fill empty places on the shelves that were too narrow to fit another book, but too wide to just leave empty. My St. Louis Cardinals calendar has been added to the ranks of student gifts, and now adorns the shelf next to the computer (we have wi-fi! pronounced "le wee-fee"). It doesn’t exactly fit with the rest of the Parisien décor, but hey, now I’ve planted a little bit of myself here, at least for the 2009 calendar year. Love them Cards.

Character. That’s what you’d say about a place like this. It’s got character. Things are small here, but not too small. According to my friend Henry, I’m “living big” in what is supposedly the rich arrondisement. I have a room to myself, and a bathroom (with shower and toilet in the same room!) that I share with another BU student, who took the room next door to mine. It’s a good size spread. Not a sprawling layout, but not the European closet I thought it would be. Previous students were gracious enough to leave their old books and French dictionaries here, which will be a great help once classes start.

It’s weird, making a temporary home in a place with so much history. Twenty-four other students have passed through here over the years on their study abroad trips. The cynical part of me thinks my roommate and I are just numbers added to the list of eager Americans looking for a romantic Parisien adventure. But the optimistic part of me tells me to take a deep breath, and strike up a conversation about nothing in particular with my host mother, both to learn more about her life, and to improve my French.

She has been incredibly gracious so far. Yesterday, she gave us a tour of our arrondisement, and then prepared a dinner of chicken, rice, broccoli, bread, and wine. Tomorrow we will eat dinner with her nephew. He’s a film major, so he and I should get along well. My French is already improving, so I think I might actually be able to carry on a conversation with him.

Speaking of conversations, I enjoyed another victory today: I purchased a phone….in FRENCH….all by myself! I walked into the store, explained what I wanted, and voilà! Un mobile! I was so proud of myself. The man at the counter said I speak very good French. He was also kind of flirting, I think, but whatever. J’ai un mobile, et je peux parler français. Ça, c’est bon!

Je parle juste un peu francais

The language barrier is a beast. I’ve taken French since high school, but years of preparation have only left me able to conjugate with the best of them, but unable to communicate on the fly. That's actually a bit of an exaggeration. I can get by okay. But still.

An example. Today, I got lost. Like, for real for real, turned around in circles, take a seat and bust out a map of the world to figure out where you are, lost. (THAT is NOT an exaggeration.) In addition to being lost, though, I was also a bit prideful. You’ll remember that little fear I have of looking like a tourist. Well, that fear means that I cannot ever look lost. So when I passed a nice French man at a café on the corner, and he said “Bonjour, ça va?” instead of saying, “Non, je me suis perdue” (conversational meaning: “I am lost”; word for word translation: "I lost myself." I find that ironically funny.), I simply smiled, said “Ça va,” and kept walking. In the wrong direction. The man stopped me, though, and proceeded to talk to me as if we’ve known each other for years. The thing is, he thought we had. It reminded me of the teacher in Charlie Brown. Womp womp womp womp womp but I had no clue what he was trying to say. After I explained to him that, “Je ne comprends pas. Je parle juste un peu francais” (I don’t understand you. I only speak a little French.), he told me, with plenty of hand gestures, rolled eyes, and sighs, that I looked like someone he knows. “Désolé. Bonne journée,” he said (I’m sorry. Have a good day.).

Another example. After getting my bearings and making my way back to my neck of the woods (Le Paris Pratique is an absolute lifesaver—thanks Henry!), I got a sandwich from a small boulangerie near my hotel. There was a sign outside that said you could get a sandwich and a drink for 5 euros. I asked for a sandwich and a drink, but somewhere along the line, the 5 euro deal got lost in translation, and I ended up paying 6,70. I don’t care too much about the money. It’s the fact that I couldn’t tell the woman who took my order exactly what I wanted. It was a strange trade-off, because she understood that I wanted the sandwich warmed up, and she understood that I wanted a Fanta Orange, but when it came to me explaining the sign outside the window, I just didn't have the right verbs and adjectives to snag that 5 euro deal.

Life is strange, though, because about ten minutes after I left the shop, I had an almost fluent conversation with a woman at a small grocery store. She saw my bag from the boulangerie, and got really excited. Apparently, she’s been looking for this bakery for a long time, and didn’t know there was one so close. I told her where it was located. She told me that the bakeries around here aren’t nearly as good as that one, and copied down the address.

So there you have it. I go from a blundering, lost foreigner who can read French without a problem, but who is unable to order a proper sandwich and drink, to giving directions to a woman in a grocery store, and assuring her that it’s a piece of cake to get to the bakery. (No pun intended, I promise.)

Shortly after the grocery store conversation, I enjoyed another small victory. The concierge finally addressed me in French. I think I’ve figured them out: they only know enough English to check you in. When you start asking more complicated questions, like “Why doesn’t my phone card work?” then they’re forced to revert to their native tongue. So today, I got to explain to the concierge that I followed the directions, but the phone still wouldn’t dial. And she understood me. :-)

I've taken to eavesdropping on conversations in the street and in cafés to try to add to my mental dictionary. My favorite thing to do is listen to little French children, particulary the 3-5 year-old crowd. I figure that out of everyone, they are the closest to my level. And they're the freaking cutest little kids ever. They're all plump and round and rosy-cheeked with big eyes and high pitched French little voices.

I hope my host family has little kids. That would be a blast. Speaking of which, I meet them tomorrow. J'espère qu'ils sont gentils. (I hope they're nice....)

:: Peace ::

Open up your plans and damn, you're free (The promised light at the end of the tunnel)

I keep trying to speak French to the concierge at my hotel, but so far two out of three of them have responded in English. It’s a tad bit annoying, since the main reason I am here is to improve my French. Perhaps they just can’t stand the sound of me butchering their language, so they rob me of the opportunity to speak it. I’m not that bad. In fact, I get most of the words right, it’s just the accent that I occasionally mess up. Perhaps I am reading into this too much. Je ne sais pas.

Anywho, today has been pretty close to perfect. I woke up at about 4am, despite going to bed at midnite. I set my alarm for 9:45, thinking that I would sleep in and rest up, but I guess jet lag got the best of me. I woke up famished. I was so hungry that I felt a bit nauseous, but the best thing I could do at 4am was chug a few cupfuls of water from the bathroom and try to go back to sleep.

I finally got up and moving at about 9am, and went to a boulangerie (bakery) around the corner from my hotel. The city was all smoky and beautiful in the fog of the morning light. I ate un pain du chocolat while I did a test run to the BU Office, where I will go to check in and begin my program on Tuesday. After that, I headed to le Tour Eiffel.

On the taxi ride from the airport on Saturday, I passed le Tour Eiffel; however, by the time we arrived at the monument, I was too convinced that my cab driver was trying to cheat me with wrong turns to boost his tab that I hardly paid attention to the thing. In fact, it looked pretty short to me.

Well, it looks much more magnificent when taken in outside the confines of a corrupt taxi. I had a field day with photos from all angles and vantage points. My camera has a nifty little flip screen that is perfect for taking self-portraits, and since it was about 9:30am when I arrived, no one was around, so I snuck in a few of myself. Whenever a local passed walking a dog or just strolling with his/her significant other, I’d casually hide my camera—I’m terrified of looking like a tourist. First, I don’t want to annoy the Parisiens and give them an excuse to call me a stupid American. Second, I don’t want to look like easy bait for a pick pocket.

One can only take so many pictures of the Eiffel Tower without going up inside of it, and since I am waiting to take a tour with my BU group, I left and began wandering around the esplanade that runs along the Seine. I was approached by a pickpocket/scammer on one of the bridges to the Right Bank. This girl passed me and bent over to “pick up” something. She tried to offer it to me as if maybe I had dropped something valuable. The way it works is they try to give the item back, and if you don't want it, they try to sell it to you for more than it's worth. Or, they distract you while an accomplice rummages stealthily through your purse. But AH HA! – I had read my travel books, and so I knew to be on the lookout for folks like her. “Non, merci,” and kept walking. Take that! I won’t get got, and that’s a fact.

Today was so perfect because I absolutely love wandering around the city. I had so much fun by myself that I am worried that I may not want to socialize when my program finally starts. Traveling in groups is so difficult, and requires too much coordination and agreement. I love the freedom to turn a corner at a whim and not be responsible to the rest of the group.

I stumbled upon the most wonderful neighborhood this afternoon by doing just that. It’s called La Rue de Cler, and it’s about a block or two long, with shops, grocery stores, boulangeries, patisseries, cafes, and brasseries galore, and all for pretty decent prices. I accidently arrived at le Café du Marche, which I had planned on visiting at a later date, and so I sat down for a bit with my newspaper, Le Monde, and the tiniest café crème I have ever seen in my life. I nursed that sucker like a pro, though, and listened to the musicality of the French language around me.

I left the café and finished my aimless wandering, then headed back to the hotel, where a nap that was supposed to be one hour turned into two.

I’ve got one more day to get lost before I have to start being a college student again, so tomorrow I plan to live it up. Or just chill. That’s a very Parisien thing to do, ya know.

:: Peace ::

less than "bon" voyage

my journey to paris went something like this--
(NOTE: there is a light at the end of this tunnel.)

flight from st. louis to newark, new jersey: delayed one hour and twenty-one minutes.
result: i arrived in new jersey at 6:30pm....for a 6:40pm departure to France

newark, new jersey: ran like hell from terminal A to terminal C in time to learn that the doors to the flight to paris had already been closed.
result: i copped a slight attitude (the distressed traveler who just ran across the airport and is thus sweaty and tired, and whose muscles ache from dragging two suitcases through airport traffic after going to gate 1-2-0 instead of 1-OH-2 kind of attitude) and convinced her to re-open the door to let me on the flight (which didn't end up leaving until an hour after i boarded).

newark, new jersey to paris, france: i arrived at my seat to find someone else reclining in it. devoid of energy, i took the seat behind her and called it a day.

charles de gaule airport, paris, france: cleared customs without any trouble, collected my one checked bag (i am so proud of myself for packing only one checked bag and two carry-ons, and even happier that the checked bag survived the new jersey fiasco), and proceeded to the exit to search for jorge, who was supposed to pick me up from the airport at 8:00am.

paris metro, 8:45ish am: jorge was stuck on a train that had been stopped due to technical difficulties.

9:00ish am: i gave up the search for jorge and took a cab.

9:30am: jorge arrived at the airport.
>> it turns out i unknowingly took a "limo service" taxi, which costs twice as much as a regular taxi.
result: i'm out of 90 euro instead of the original 45-50 that i had budgeted, and jorge is out of 16.80 euro for being kind enough to try and fetch me.

HOWEVER....

despite my less than "bon" voyage, i can already tell that i will be enchanted by this city. there was a light snow covering the ground when i touched down, and despite the frigid air (the high today meandered somewhere around -10 degrees Centigrade), i had a wonderful time walking around and enjoying the sights. below is a picture i took from atop the Sacre Cours, overlooking the city.

i have a few more days to explore on my own before my program begins on tuesday. tomorrow i plan to stroll around the eiffel tower, and perhaps take a trip to the louvre. admission is supposedly gratuite this sunday.

more pleasant posts are sure to come soon.