"There's a party for peasants, you should go"

Pictures aren't working out for me now, I'll put some up soon.

You could say I'm master of imprudent footwear decisions. I never anticpated this much walking. You think walking isn't bad but when you can't take off your shoes that are rubbing off new layers of flesh with every step and you are miles from home walking becomes something it wasn't before.

I went to go walk along the Seine today. I like to do that if it's sunny. Somehow I always end up getting there around lunch time. Lunchtime is a bad time to go because you run the risk of being accosted by men on their lunch break. As I walked by a trio of construction workers one called out, "Bonjour mademoiselle, est-ce que vous cherchez travaille?(are you looking for work?)" Um, nope. Theres a whole new element when these things go across languages. I generally say I don't understand which immediately makes them address me in English with things like "I want to know where it is you go, may I walk with you?" "NON!"

While sitting and reading today a road construction crew came to loiter under a bridge and harrass the passing joggers. As one of them approached me I prepared my withering gaze.

"Bonjour mademoiselle, madame, mademoiselle......" and he went off on a long and complex speech that was completely lost on me.

"Je ne parle pas Francais," I said, he replied that he didn't speak English but that everyone should speak French when they came to France. I tried to look like I didn't understand him.

"Je parle Anglais." I said knowing that he didn't. He began to explain that he knew I spoke French because I wasn't a tourist, tourists don't read books on the Seine by themselves, and plus, I had clearly just spoken Fench to him.

"Je suis Americaine" I said hoping to discourage him, "Je ne comprend pas." He offered to help me meet people at bars. As he said this another man came up on a bicycle. Immediately the first man asked him if he spoke English, "Yes", he said "and there is a huge party down that way for all the peasants, they are throwing milk on the ground for all the poor people, it is the place to be." They carried on in this way, talking to me and eachother while I made great efforts to read my book.

"You should not be reading this stupid book, you should go to the party....It is a sin not speak French when in Paris......when you go to America tell everyone you know that we are not stupid, we are nice, we speak English very fast.....I speak English very fast....he wants to know if you want to meet people in bars....'no merci'....anything so that we will leave you with your book, huh?" "Yes." Eventually they wandered far enough away for me to make an escape.

On Sunday I went to an English secondhand bookstore called "Shakespeare and Co.". It's exactly the sort of place that Paris is full of, adorable, quaint, so famous several movie have been made about or in it, stinky and absolutely packed with tourists. It was cool but a little too overrun. I was tempted to buy lots of books but made it out without any thing vowng to get to the library at the earliest possible chance.

As another episode in my 'getting lost in Paris' narrative, allow me to offer a story of greatly missunderstood train routes. I rarely use trains. There are a few reasons why I don't use them but the main reason is that there are less of them and they make less stops and generally are unuseful to me personally. The other reason is that they aren't the metro, therefore they are a mystery I have little desire to solve. Buses, trams and the velo all have this in common with trains. Just to get your bearings: the train is faster and bigger than the metro. It generally stops at metro stops but stops much less allowing it to get from point a to point b much quicker. Paris navi-go cards have three levels, zones 1 through 3. I have a second zone card that allows me to use all the metros. Since trains go over the entire country they have zones so you scan your card before boarding and after exiting. The nearest train station to me, though also a metro stop, does not allow me to board the train. But anyway, because I don't use them, I don't really know how to use them. But some people, especially those living further out in the suburbs, use them alot. Even though all metros run on a grid, trains don't and so rather than having directions or names or anything sensible they have endings. Each train goes to an ending but be careful, some trains go in circles and most run on a track that forks several times. And also, some times the trains, though stopping in the same place as the metro, have a different name for their stop. So, to get on with my story, I was out with a friend of mine, Hannah, who is also American and who lives in the suburbs of Paris. She seemed to have some insight into the mystical interworkings of the Paris train system and even though I had misgivings about our direction we hopped onto the train. One other thing about trains, they have lots of far apart stops but sometimes they don't stop at all of them so you have to look at hte list of stops to make sure it will stop at your stop. As soon as the train picked up speed I was pretty sure we were not heading deeper into Paris but towards the outskirts. Once it was evident that we were not going the right direction it also became evident that we were now no where near Paris. We zoomed by stop after stop through trees and by lakes. Anxiously we joked that we had accdentally boarded a direct to Nice. It was kind of funny but also not. Finally we stopped and managed to turn around going straight back to Chatelet. The train we got on to go back was a stopping train, it stopped about fifteen times before we reached our destination. I don't think I'll be using trains much more.

"It is necessary that you sit"

Jardin du Luxembourg
Sacre Coeur- Montmartre district(sewing store area)



I've just finished cleaning up my room; organising all my clothes and fabric and papers and all that sort of stuff. I have more paper than anything else. Funny how being here in this foreign country seems to generate a lot of paper. There have been papers to be legal in the country, birth certificates, passport copies and all sorts of things. Then there is the paper from getting a bank account and now from registering for school. I finally got all signed up for class and I'm really excited to start. I enrolled in classes heavy on group discussion becuase I hear French constantly day in and day out but I don't speak hardly any. I had a real sense of accomplishment after taking the placement test, choosing the courses, enrolling and paying all in french. And by the way, I'm sorry if I miss capitalization from time to time, the French never capitalize anything.

I anticipated a sort of mildly bad day today for some reason. The kids, though good natured, can be very difficult at times and often fight and generally wear me out a drive me crazy by not listening. But today was an improvement and I think it is because I'm more comfortable with the authority and can see better what works. I helped all of them with their homework, made them snack, did laundry, played games for a couple of hours with my three plus two girls from downstairs before making dinner and getting them to bed on time. It was very efficient and satisfying.

I'm starting to find some of the places I like and Hillsong church has been a real blessing. On Sunday I went with a couple girls from church to the Jardin de Luxembourg and Les Halles. We also went to Starbucks. I actually haven't made it into any cafes yet. Theres a great boulangerie with the most beautiful culinary creations right around the block but it's always kind of crowded. Maybe I'll take Agathe and let her show me the ropes. Ordering in general goes like this "Moi, je prend un...." For some reason there is a lot of "moi, je" in French dialogue. It doesn't translate to English very well, "me, I like this", "me, I'm an athlete"....There are lots of things that make for awkward translating - like the subjunctive. Subjunctive is fairly rare in English but it is plentiful in French. They are constantly prefacing advice and orders with "Il faut que tu", which means something like "it is necessary that you" although 'faut' is a form of the verb 'faire' which means to do or to make. So constantly people are saying to their children or friends what sounds to me like "it is necessary that you sit", "it is necessary that you wash your hands." It's very odd for me to think of incorporating this into my own dialogue when all I'm inclined to say is "sit", "wash your hands". Not only that, "il faut que" has a very obscene sound to in when spoken in a fluent manner.

So theres a little lecture on the French language, hope you aren't too bored with it.

Maybe I'll have someting more entertaining in the future but I'm usually only entertaining if I'm frustrated and right now I'm pretty peachy.

My typical day

Jade, wating for the bibliotheque to open

Noe, Agathe and Jade
So on a normal day I have it really easy. The kids get up at about 7:30 and bustle around until they leave at about 8:10. I just listen to them whether I've gotten up or not. There is always a lot of running and rushed french and squeaky floors. At this time my shutters are closed but I've already been awakened by the 12x magnified noise of trash cans being drug across uneven concrete. It's magnified because it's right outside my window and down a floor in the courtyard. Like everything else, our building is seven stories high. We live on 'le premiere etage' which means...not the first floor. The first floor is the 'rez de chausee' which means ground level. It's one of those things that if you look at it from our perspective it makes no sense but if you think about it it kind of does make sense in an odd way. To them an 'etage' or story is something that occurs above the ground. But anyway, someone pulls those trashcans, or dustbins as they say over here, across the ground and it becomes like the pigeon - so loud you can't ignore it. This pigeon, in case I haven't mentioned it, lives in the courtyard and coos. Pigeon cooing is no big deal but this thing sounds like a great horned owl, or a pteridactyl or something massive. Anyway, I thought that pigeons had to be either nocturnal or daytimey(whatever the word is for that) but turns out they don't sleep at all, they coo day and night in a relentless clamor that I treat kind of like I treat french, just zone it out. I don't really just zone out but I'm not going to try to break my brain to comprehend everything, you just can't do it. If it's your own language you can semi listen and semi think about other things because you know the words so well that you can anticipate them or even sort of store them without digging in the recesses of your mind trying to find the meaning or catalog a new one.

But anyway, once I get up for real, which is anytime between six and nine, I usually shower, check my email and generally bum around before tidying up the visible portion of my space. One thing the kids do do is make their beds. Therefore my bed must never be unmade. But my stuff is sort of messily spread about. I don't have much stuff but I also don't have much space. After breakfast I do whatever I want until 3:55 pm at which time I take a brisk walk down to the kids school, fight my way through the nannies and au pairs and moms and baguettes(seriously, they pick them up before they get their kids, they are dangerous weapons baguettes) and strollers and finally locate my kids. Then I half lead half follow them home listening to their constant french chatter. We have snack, do homework and then play until shower time. I kind of yell and bustle around makng sure they are ACTUALLY taking their showers at the same time as making a dinner. After dinner we clean up and I'm off(8:00). Then I go to my room and watch Doctor Who at painfully low quality and eat peanut butter out of the jar and drink Earl Grey with milk and honey.

When stressed or unhappy or out of routine or experiencing lack of mexican food or tired or just eating less, I lose weight. Once, worried that I had skipped lunch (which I most definitley hadn't, skipping meals isn't really possible for me), Anne said "I don't want to send you home to your parents and they find you skinnier than before." I kind of laughed but then the next day I put on my dress. This dress was really, really tight last time I wore it and I was swimming in it the other day. So I feel like I did when I got back from Thailand, skinny but kind of out of a wardrobe. The only difference is that when I got back from Thailand I was home so I had all my clothes at hand. Here my wardrobe is limited. So again today I put on a skirt, too big. Well, that sewing machine will come in handy I suppose.

But I did make some salsa! And it was really good. And tomorrow we have fajitas...or something along those lines.

So anyway, in that vast portion of the day where I can do whatever I want I had great plans today. I planned first to go the France-Langue and take my french assessment and then go up to Sacre Cour in Montmartre (a famous landmark from the movie Amelie, which, incidentally, Anne worked on the marketing of), buy some wool or suiting at Marche Saint-Pierre and then go down and walk along the Seine near Notre Dame. Well, my first problem that I noticed while passing Place de Bagatelle was that I didn't have my navi-go pass. Fortunately I had some tickets but I was really annoyed with myself. Then I realized I didn't have my trusty red cardigan that was kind of like insurance; I wanted it just in case I needed it but if I didn't need it it would turn into an annoying burden. Fortunately I didn't need it. Then almost to the metro I realized I was missing all the necessary peices of identification and money and references and regstration papers and pretty much just my whole stack of important stuff so I couldn't go to the school to take my test. Finally after boarding the metro at lunch hour, stuffed between suits and heels and fighting to grasp the pole, I decided to just go the Seine and enjoy the day.

I love the Seine, I love the boats and the water and the bridges and the quiet walk ways beneath the road, the dogs and the lunchers. I just love it all. The buildings aren't so bad themselves.

I had a belated birthday cake with candles this evening. The kids are hilarious sometimes...and definitely sometimes not too.

Hey Look! It's The Sartorialist and Garance Dore!

Yep. The blogs of these two are at the top of my bookmarks. I visit both of their sites roughly everyday( I don't do RSS feed...I don't like the layout). Dana saw the update first on The Sartorialist about the book signing. Of course I was totally excited. It's one of those times that it pays off to be in a big city. I didn't know that Garance Dore would be there. Aren't they a cute couple?

After mentioning that I'd recently arrived in Paris to stay for a year he asked where I was from. I told him Kansas City. "Kansas City....Nebraska?" Uuh, yeah, something like that. It's not his geography that we love him for.

And the book is wonderful.

As a side note: I'm not much of a peanut butter eater at home but Paris has really brought that side of me out. I ate a jar that is something like 10 oz (I'm still pretty lousy with conversions. "It's going to be 26 degrees today." Me: "Oh my gosh! Your kidding!......wait, celsius, yeah") in only one week. I did this with the help of no one, not even bread. I kind of might maybe like to eat it by itslef when I'm trying to watch Doctor Who with an internet speed of es cargo (also known as 13 mb/s).

So on that happy thought, have a lovely day, or whatever time it is for you guys.

Getting Lost in Paris: Fun? I think not.

Translation: "Have you found my guitar? Call me." Sorry buddy.

Over the past few days I've been fairly busy working or doing various activities. Everything was running smoothly, I wasn't getting too homesick or overwhelmed by the idea of being here for a year. Then yesterday happened. It started bad and got worse. The thing is, it really wasn't much different than any other day. I had the whole day off so I was going to go by the school, enroll, walk around a little, maybe shop, and then head over to Montmartre, pick up some sewing supplies, etc. The first hitch was lack of internet. Just so you know, in a foreign country you MUST have internet to know what to do; you need some peanut butter, you map the buses to the nearest peanut butter location(the nearest is in the US in case you were wondering); you want to go the museum, you find the stop on the map and the metro stop online; you want a movie, you go crazy because they are three times the price. But here's the thing, I wanted internet so I spent a whole lot of time just trying to find the hotspots. When I finally figured out how to get to the school I ended up walking most of the way there after being repeatedly denied access to the metro by the navigue pass scanner. Once I had walked far beyond the correct street(and carrying my laptop in hopes of finding one of these hotspots) and nearly ended up crossing the river a second time, I found the school. The moment I walked in they told me I did not need to be there until the 10th. Okay, thank you for answering the phone one of the twelve times I called.

So then I went to find the hotspot. It turned out to be a McDonalds. Not wanting to commit travel suicide I avoided it, walking to the next hotspot which turned out to be a little bar. Bars are not something I really have a lot of experience in, especially in France....and I'm still not 21. As I'm walking along I notice something familiar about the street. I had been lost there on Monday...oh dear. So I finally reconciled myself to the mcDonalds. It was jam packed and after forcing my way in I found that the only way to order was to say "Beeg Mahk". Turns out they did have internet but no outlet. So after a little while I decided to go to Montmartre where the tourists are heavy(who wears a shirt that says "I heart Paris" when they are actually IN Paris?) and the patience light.

I find that when you know the words in French they like to pretend you were speaking in English, but when you don't know and really need their help they just kind of look at you blankly.

I bought a few things at a notions store. One of my purchases, an average size spool of cream colored thread---10 euros. Ten euros, thats sixteen dollars. Honestly I have never paid more than three or four. I was about to have a fit, "Dix euro? Ce qoui!" The girl looked at me coldly as if to say "what? you don't have ten euros?" Yeah, I have ten euros but I'm going to buy five sweaters made in China and support a third world family for a month on it. Geez people, since when did sewing become like golf, a hobby of the rich and privileged.

Next I stopped to find some patterns. "Le Simplicity sept trois un zero" I said, in perfectly understandable French. "What size?" she responded, in less understandible English. "Thirty-eight" I replied, defeatedly. "Thats size 10, American" she added patronisingly, "I know." Give me some credit. When someone speaks English to me I don't go and try to respond in French on them.

When I went to a Wednesday night meeting with some people for church I made some grave bus navigating mistakes and ended up walking a mile or so to get there. Fortunately it was well worth it and someone drove me home. So I'm really looking forward to church on Sunday. At church there's no sign of the French rudeness that really gets on my nerves. Everyone is happy to see you and interested in how you are doing. It's really wonderful.

One last thing on French culture. I had this idea that an American might get along without the bisou(kiss on both cheeks), that it may not be entirely obligatory. Well I was wrong. You walk in a room and if you don't kiss every single person in the room as hello you've committed a little social crime. You leave, you kiss everyone again. Sometimes when you first meet someone you don't do it, you can shake hands. But last night someone came right up and kissed me before I had even met them. It's one of those personal space things. The bisou is opposite of American culture. We like our personal space, invasion is disliked and unconfortable. I mean, when we stand in lne we give the person in front a good two to ten feet of room. Here it's like everyone is breathing down your neck. That was the first thing I noticed getting in line to get on the plane to Paris. Some French guy came up and sat right on the back of my seat. Maybe it's because I'm from the midwest and not a big city but I say "excuse me" when I bump someone or pass close by them. Here it's eyes straight in front and no acknowledgement. But with the bisou, it's not like shaking hands, it's not semi optional, it's constant. It's still a little weird to me when it's two guys. They walk up to eachother to say hello and it's not a hug or a hand shake but a kiss on both cheeks. But it's cool....I still don't really initiate it.