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| In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This isn't the actual picture I took, but we did see it lit up on the train home last night. |
A funny thing happened. I was at a college information event at the girls’ school (that’s not the funny part). I met this nice woman whom I had only spoken to briefly on the phone several months before. She kindly gives me a ride home and we’re doing the usual debriefing of each other’s lives. When I tell her where I live in the US, she says she has a friend who lives in my town, and she casually mentions the name. It turns out that we have a common friendship with a fabulous woman named Kathy. Kathy is the one who bet me a bottle of very good champagne that we won’t return to the US after one year.
Everyone swears to us that our kids will be begging us to
stay. This slice of pretend
life we’re living is fun, and our girls seem (dare I say it) happier with each
passing week. Still, I’m not convinced
they will want to prolong our adventure.
Last week, a daughter declared, “we should go to London for
Thanksgiving!” I’m so taken aback by
this statement, naively thinking she is embracing our travel
opportunities. Then she says, “they have
a Whole Foods there.” So Kathy, if you’re reading this, make sure the Veuve Clicquot you buy has
that cute little ice jacket on it.
Of course, this next statement may cause the French
government to immediately rescind my Visa: I don’t really love the Louvre. Last year, we visited with the girls and did
a drive-by (think of that scene in National Lampoons Vacation when the
Griswalds visit the Grand Canyon, but substitute The Burns Family and the Mona
Lisa). As I’ve mentioned in prior posts,
we prefer the smaller museums.
Regardless, Jim and I are determined to explore the Louvre thoroughly
over the next year, and we started today.
We focused on the Egyptian and Greek Antiquities, and Islamic
Art. An hour in, and we’re drowsy. By the time we wander over to the Greek
statues, we’re ignoring our headsets and making up our own stories. Jim calls the one pictured below: early ancient pole dancer (obviously it’s a
guy, but maybe men were the original pole dancers?). We departed the Louvre after that. Fortunately, we’ve got nine months left to
see the rest of it.
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| Early Man - Pole Dancer |
During the month of September, the Journées Européennes du
Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) takes place. For two days a year in Paris and the rest of
France, thousands of monuments, government buildings, etc., open their doors to
areas generally not accessible to the public.
We didn’t do this.
Instead, Jim, Allie and I ventured over
to what I later learned is the “hipster” part of Paris. We went to a street food festival at Point
Ephémère in the 10th arrondissement, next to the Canal
Saint-Martin. This area was an artists’
squat for a while and now it’s a venue for local art exhibitions and
independent music concerts. The area
feels very Berlin-esque (or what I imagine Berlin to look like), as there’s
lots of graffiti covering the concrete walls.
The day we visited, the Street Food Bistronomique was happening. Local DJs were providing the music and about
a dozen really good restaurants were selling their food. We mingled with the locals, and ate some
great food (BBQ pork for Jim and vegan cake for Allie).
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| Point Ephémère |
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| Canal St. Martin |
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| Bistronomique! |
We also stumbled upon a dog march. The activists were from dogfidelity, which
defines itself as “the first social network of the canine community”. They were chanting something to the effect
of “chiens vivent dans la ville trop (dogs live in the city too)!” This reminded me of home and my friend
Cassandra, who is always working tirelessly for our pups with Marin
County DOG. She would have approved of
the French equivalent.
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| Dogfidelity! |
Katie did not accompany us that day, as
she had just returned from a cross-country meet in The Hague and was bogged
down with homework. It turns out that
the junior year workload is brutal no matter which country you live in. Because this school offers the International Baccalaureate
diploma, she is able to take several IB classes. Jim and I are blown away by how hard she’s
working – compared to us at that age.
I’m embarrassed by what a slacker I was.
My only real accomplishment in
high school was to acquire a prom date.
Allie had a teacher in middle school
a couple years ago, who liked the phrase “productive struggle”.
I’ll have to send her a thank you note.
All of Allie’s teachers here seem to instruct based on this premise, but
she seems well positioned to handle it.
Dance, on the other hand, is a little different. If, by the age of about ten here,
you’ve not committed yourself as a professional dancer, you’re relegated to a
larger class with “mixed” skill levels.
So, suffice it to say, my dancer girl is a bit frustrated at the
moment. C'est la danse. Additional material for the future college essay.
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| Allie taking the Metro to dance. |
More on our cultural immersion. We now do walking tours a couple times a
month with this group of parents from school.
Our guide, Philippe, explores a different part of the city with us each
time, and then we have a wine infused
lunch. We’re gathering a list of
excellent restaurants and learning a bit too.
That guy holding his own head at Notre Dame? St. Denis.
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| Walking Tour Scenes in Montmartre. |
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| A vineyard in Montmartre. |
We continue on our quest to visit small, unique, museums (sorry
Louvre). Last week was The Musée
Carnavalet (Paris History Museum), and the Musee Cognacq-Jay, both in the
Marais. The Musee Cognacq-Jay houses
the art collection of a wealthy, childless couple (this seems to be a theme), who founded Paris’s first
department store, La Samaritaine. This
is a very cool museum, but still, my mind tends to wander. On one of the walls there is a quote
from Diderot (he was an 18th century French philosopher). It was a complaint about the
Parisian Haberdashers Guild. He called
them “vendors of everything and creators of nothing”. I immediately thought of the Kardashians. See, we're never far from home.
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| St. Paul, in the Marais. We actually went in. And then the rains came. |
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| This store is called "Thanksgiving". It sells all kinds of American processed food. We're sorry France. |
We went for lunch afterwards at Le Petite Marchè. An intimate, locals only, kind of
place. Wonderful food, and walls covered with
sketches of naked women. See photo
below of my content and relaxed husband. Jim seems to be surrounded by naked women without
trying all that hard. Last week, two
mornings in a row, he opened our kitchen blinds to be greeted by a woman
undressing in front of her hotel window across the street (she has since checked out).
We finally started our French classes. A group of us will meet a couple times a week
with our instructor, a lovely French woman named Isabelle. She has assessed us all to determine our
skill levels. The first class, we had
to tell her about ourselves in French. I
proudly declared I was born in 2063. She
looked at me completely seriously and said “ce n’est pas possible (this is not
possible).” Anyway, I’m not called a
beginner, but rather, a “debutante”.
Finally. There are four of us
debutantes, and Jim. I’m not sure what
the male version of debutante is.
We’ve attended a couple of parties. Granted, they were parties we were required
to be invited to, but still. One was an
11th grade parent cocktail party at a very beautiful, posh, Parisian
apartment. The guests were an eclectic
mix of expats from all over the world.
The expat community is huge here, and very welcoming. It’s easy to find your people, if you
want. However, I did have a conversation recently
with an actual French parent. Even
after living here just a short time, I can say that the French rudeness
stereotype is wrong. They aren’t
rude. They are honest and won’t waste
your time with false niceties. The
Jersey girl in me finds it really liberating.
Sometimes I just don’t fucking feel like smiling at random strangers on
the street.
The other cocktail party was hosted by our personal
concierge and was in the Montmartre area .
This has become my favorite neighborhood (it reminds me a little of
NYC’s Greenwich Village). The crowd was
younger, mainly child-free 20-somethings.
They were all very beautiful and interesting, and nice. I noted the following: we met at least three couples where the guy
was French and the woman was American.
It’s true what they say about French women and I now understand that
whole “je ne sais quoi” thing. They are
gorgeous and effortlessly chic, and certainly worthy of their very own blog
post, so stay tuned. Yet, we American women hold our own. Or, in any event, there were at least three
French men at this party that thought so.
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| Montmartre at night. |
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| Le Basilic in Montmartre. The food here was perfectly fine, but we'd go back for the ambiance alone. |
As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, there is a very
relaxed attitude here towards alcohol.
Likewise, there is a more pragmatic view towards sex. As evidence of this, there are vending
machines all over the city, which dispense condoms. They’re usually right outside of the
pharmacies, and also in some metro stations.
I’m told that most of the public high schools also have them.
My very crude research tells me that teen pregnancy rates are way lower
in France than in the US. I love how
this topic is not taboo here and that there is a pro safe sex attitude. Condoms for everyone! All this being said however, I’ve not yet
encouraged my daughters to get the icondom app on their phones (yes, there is
an app for that). I think that must be
the American prude buried deep within me speaking.
à bientôt!
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