room 481

"My Favorite Artistic Advice" Tales Of Mere Existence

2011-06-03T00:59:00.000+02:00

Back to My Future

2011-06-03T00:55:00.004+02:00

I started this blog as a curriculum sharing site and an online community for likeminded educators (think NYCORE- New York Collaboration of Radical Educators!) to share with and inspire each other. Then I met my husband and moved to Chile and Paris and now that we're finally back in New York and life is almost back to normal, I feel like it's time to go back to using this forum for its original intent.

There are so many amazing blogs out there. I have been incredibly inspired by how rich the blogosphere is- and how many people who have actual jobs and also put hours into sharing content online. So I will switch gears and this summer as I prepare to get back to what I love to do- teaching art; I will try to refocus the lens a bit and document getting back to teaching.

I think teaching is really fascinating especially in New York there are so many interesting lenses through which to look at education in urban communities that are both privileged and low-income. The politics of education are my passion, policy reform, stakeholders and Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein make for some very interesting conversation threads.

Reflection

2011-03-31T21:40:00.003+02:00

Today I had two or three interesting conversations with work friends.

The first conversation was with a fellow wisconsinite. She got married almost a year ago and told me the story of how her "maid of honor/best friend" sabotaged her wedding day because she wanted to see Mood Fabrics to take pictures to show her mom as she was a fan of project runway and later making her late to her own reception. And how her parents were so selfish they had her running around new york showing them the "sights" until after midnight the night of her wedding. I had to change the wording of this synopsis a couple times because I wrote it in a way that implied she had no way of saying, "no", which obviously she did. She never put her foot down or left her friend of family to put herself first (although her dad did abandon her and her maid of honor at Mood Fabrics).

Then I had a conversation with my friend Morenike whom I asked for advice about an issue I'm having with the apartment I'm moving into tomorrow. The woman I'm subletting from wont allow me to receive mail there... which I feel entitled to do. Morenike told me, I ought not to feel entitled... If you lay out the arrangement- I'm subletting for 3 months from this woman, the only mail I have is Netflix, so... Whats the big deal? I've sublet 5 or 6 apartments in New York not to mention france and chile and I've always been welcome to receive mail... Moreover I've sublet my own apartment to others for years and everyone was always welcome to receive mail... not to do so, seems unnecessarily uptight and paranoid. Nonetheless, as Morenike points out, in this lifetime, I am not entitled to anything, and I best keep that in mind.

Later I talked to a man at work whom I want to know better, but whom I generally only see in passing... In hoping to know him better I asked if he is a lifer in the profession of teaching... He said, well, he whispered, No. He told me he intended to live his life consciously and direct his life to the extent that he made conscious choices driving life changes and experiences. I wanted to know this teacher better because he reminds me of my best colleague (work version of best friend- not the same status as best friend, but best work friend) Thomas, who moved to Chicago at the same time I left for Chile. I miss Thomas and something about this teacher reminds me of something in Thomas. When I left for Chile I was at a point where it felt like I needed to take the wheel and step off the plan- make something happen, making a conscious choice for something else. New York was comfortable, I had a job at a school I liked, but I felt myself slipping into frustrating dramas and living my life in a way that felt automatic. He said, most people like that, they work hard when they're young to achieve all this "stuff" and then stop and put their feet up. There is this idea (that a lot of people accept) that people ought to put their head down and muddle through, they work for 20 years maybe, and then they plan on enjoying life in retirement. He said, well, I certainly don't plan on having social security around to rely on upon retirement. I won't have a pension working for a charter school... Its important to me that I live my life, now. I don't think he was talking about moving to Chile, but making memories, doing things, having events to look back at in regular intervals to prove he had not wasted this lifetime.

I'm blessed to have these moments in my life when people remind you what not to take for granted. Without feeling pity for my fellow wisconsinite, I'm glad I am not afraid to say "No" when people take advantage, that at times I can put myself first and not feel guilty. Because I don't want my memories of my wedding or any other important day be about how my best friend thought it was more important to take photos of bolts of fabric than celebrate my big day. I'm lucky to have Morenike who always tells it like it is, no matter how right you might be, Morenike isn't going to tell you what you want to hear, she's going to tell you how it is- most of us aren't looking for that in a friend even if we often say we do, but I recognize as hard as it is to hear what she has to say sometimes, life never comes down to whose in the right. We are always this close to being swept up in getting a little too comfortable. Sylvain and I are cat sitting for a friend whose home (for us) is like staying at a 5 star hotel. For ten days we get to relax and enjoy this amazing space that feels even more special because it's our friends' space. There are moments where all I can aspire to is having my own 2bd/2bth in the city, but in order to have a home we would need to set roots down. I can't imagine us doing that in any real way. We move around to better know ourselves, to take on challenges and to know about more than just our needs and desires. I can't imagine a day when we will have more than just enough to get by on, but I imagine we will always have friends somewhere who leave town and need someone to feed their cat, or a visit from mom and a delicious meal out.

Meditation Workshop

2011-01-29T23:21:00.002+01:00

In so many ways it feels like America is falling apart at it's seems, the ways that we are tied together as a community of Americans sharing the same soil and air space, but bitterness and resentment is all we feel for our neighbors who see the world through a different lens. And yet, I find that at least in some pockets of this country there are folks who really let all that stuff go. The spiritual folks who may adhere strongly to their beliefs but those who leave space and find a way to love those neighbors who have different ideas about which way is up.

Thursday was a snow day here, and I grabbed my new yoga mat and headed to yoga class. My teacher, Mary, was one I've never had before, and she was a gem. I didn't practice yoga much in Paris, I didn't really feel connected to the community and the style and it was super pricey, so I just shelved it. Whenever you're away from whatever is your 'center", your "home" you return and you feel a little guilt and awkwardness coming back. I was feeling a little of that, I was out of shape and I knew that I might struggle a little to feel the flow, maybe a little intimidated by the class regulars whose poses didn't need a bit of adjustment but Mary made it feel like a welcome home party. She didn't have us do endless cycles of downward dog and she was always using these great phrases that put smiles on my face. I can't wait to go back. That's what I dig about the states, everywhere I've ever taken a yoga class it's been welcoming, joyful and positive. I think it speaks volumes that a place like the states with our culture of fast food and vitriolic politics and general dumping and abuse on the environment that we can get this so right.

Mary announced at the beginning of her class that she was having a meditation workshop Saturday and I decided I was going to attend. Sylvain started talking about meditation when we moved to Chile, he's not a yoga kind of guy but he has a really open mind and so I asked him to come and we made it a date. In Chile I got some instruction from my cousin Ken and tried doing some meditation there but it wasn't a hugely successful attempt. For a week or so I made it work but I didn't really know how to get into, to find my own style. Sitting on a cushion was relaxing and I like to have some time to let go of the worldly stuff, but I wasn't feeling drawn to it. Later I realized with a little help from my friend Shirley that meditation doesn't have to just be sitting on a cushion, she told me to go take a walk, move.

But I wanted to get comfortable with the cushion too and I had a feeling Mary would be a big help, because I sort of felt lost doing it on my own. One of the reasons I like going to yoga classes is that sort of vibration of likeminded folks all working together, in college the fusion of energy in the art studio was really inspiring and today was no different, 15 or 16 folks in a circle all trying to achieve something alone together sitting on a cushion and sharing with each other the humility of that struggle. I just think American's do this so well, we are eager and non-judgemental about this kind of stuff, sharing intimate stories, being vulnerable and kind with one another.

Kettle of F-bomb

2011-01-24T01:38:00.003+01:00

Last year Sylvain and I came back to NYC just before Christmas, we caught one of the last games of the season at the Packer bar in NYC Kettle of Fish. It was a great game, full of Packer fan's, kind, warm, celebratory. We had such a good time, it felt a little sad to be headed to Paris for who knows how long when we could be watching the Packers play at Kettle of FIsh eating brats and drinking beers. So it should come as no surprise that at noon today we headed downtown to catch todays playoff game even if it meant spending 30 minutes freezing our toes off standing in line outside the bar with about a hundred other Packer fans. We were pretty far back in line outside a manicure and pedicure store and the two guys behind us with a 414 area code started cracking gay jokes because there was a guy inside the spa salon. I didn't think I'd be using my French very often in the states because Sylvain and I have always spoke English, but I find that we've had plenty of opportunities to speak French here- whenever we come across rude annoying Americans. It's 2011, does a man getting a massage or a manicure really necessitate gay snickering? This is New York after all, not redneck Wisconsin.

Inside we sat down in front of the TV by the fireplace. RIght away three women sitting on the couch poked us on the shoulder and told us the waitress would be telling us we couldn't sit there "Just so YOU know" they said. We laughed because that is always where we've sat at KofF. The waitress never asked us to move, but several more packer fans sat around us.

We spent the entire game listening to these three girls use the most fowl language I've ever heard in my life, it was angry, and ugly and ruined our enjoyment of the game. The f-bomb generally doesn't phase me, but when it's non-stop and used in such a violent negative way it becomes distracting. I wanted the Packers to beat the Bears as much as anyone in that bar today, but it wasn't fun watching while the folks behind us spewed hate. We won't be watching the Superbowl at Kettle of Fish.

Stateside

2011-01-20T18:45:00.002+01:00

By the time Christmas rolled around moving back to the states seemed less and less appealing. I didn't want to be a nanny anymore and I was happy to even trade that job for the equally mind-numbing and frustrating position of substitute teacher, even if just for the change of pace.

I'm back now and I've had a couple weeks to adjust. I have an overwhelming feeling of "been there done that". Our sublet is directly behind my former morningside heights apartment, I'm back at work subbing for the school I used to teach art at. The only thing that has changed is my perspective. Living in France was no dream, but like everywhere you grow to appreciate things, and you grow accustom to and accept a different base point.

Not to pick on Americans for their weight problems, but after living in France where most people are very thin and the non-very thin people are not overweight- the extra weight Americans carry seems down-right cartoonish. We were flying from Appleton to Milwaukee and the man next to us could not fit his seat belt around him and told Sylvain he had recently gained 60 lbs after quitting smoking. This seat to body ratio thing is also noticed on the subway, molded seats run along the sides and when there are 10 seats often no more than 6 or 7 people can wedge their way into a seat.

Sylvain has often remarked on how many friends I have here who are vegetarian- something I never saw in France- we just spent a week skiing in the Alps with some of the hippiest earth loving people I have ever met, all of them, hearty meat-eaters. The US has had a longterm movement of people who adhere to organic diets, who are gym fanatics, and who are simply health conscious, and yet in France where it's almost impossible to come across a gym, or someone who exercises with any regularity or eats as consciously as many Americans do, we're the one's that can't fit in our seats.

Are we thinking too much about food and health? Do we have these problems because the food that is accessible is so bad for us, filled with preservatives and chemicals? Is our food industry regulated in such a way the that the foods available and affordable are those that are superficially maintained by our government?

One of the main differences I see is a cultural acceptance in America- and a personal will power or determination in France that stops people from becoming overweight. A little voice that says, this is too much and it's not ok for me. There are definitely attitudes in France that place too much importance on being thin, but not nearly as extreme as some of the ways these extreme attitudes towards food has manifested itself in anorexia and bulimia epidemics in the US. What worries me most is that even when someone places a superficial value on being thin as you sometimes find in France, these attitudes hardly end up costing lives, the biggest loser and heavy shows just how many Americans have lost their lives-I mean the acts of living - that comprise a life.

Food is hugely important in France, but it has never become a weapon against ourselves. It has added to the living, not chipped away at it.

Skiing in the Alps

2011-01-03T18:32:00.004+01:00

Sylvain and I started the tradition of instead of buying things for holidays and birthdays we would do stuff, go somewhere, make some memories. Last Christmas we left Chile and on our way out we went to Pucon, what great memories we have of doing hydrospeed and capping off the adventure that was Chile. For my 30th he brought me to Bruges and this Christmas I really wanted to finish our chapter in France with a ski trip in the Alps. It helped that Sylvain's lovely friend Fabien has a chalet there. We were joined by another friend Guillaume and his 3 year old son Rafael and two guys that were friends of Fabien's girlfriend Chloe.

I grew up having a cottage we went to more weekend's then we ever went to church. We played a lot of cards a lot of scrabble, and a lot of trivial pursuit. The week at the chalet did not disappoint and reminded me a lot of those nights around the dining room table both as a child trying to sleep but kept awake listening to the adults in the main room getting loud while drinking beers and playing cards, and also as a high school student being invited to join the adult fun myself.

I was worried that with that many people meals would be a disaster and cleaning up even worse, however, the dishwasher saved us from any trouble on that count, and the meals were some of the best I've had in France. We played cards, got loud, with Rafael we found an old game of Connect 4 (puissance 4) and young and old became obsessed with getting 4 chips in line for hours on end. We ate traditional Savoyen meals, the weather was perfect, and Rafael was the perfect edition to our group as he was a sweet natured kid and a social butterfly.

I learned to ski from my aunt and her family when they invited me along on their skiing holidays 16 years ago. Her sons have both worked in Colorado for the ski season as ski patrol and it's hard to catch up with their family without hearing about some skiing adventure the boys were on. During the week I learned to ski, I remember my uncle telling me how serious the hills were in Colorado, that the mountains took 30 minutes to get down, and the chair lifts were three times as long. I've never been to Colorado skiing, but I can confirm this for the French Alps.

Pure Food

2011-01-03T16:53:00.003+01:00

I really like the neighborhood I live in in Paris' 18eme, I found the most delicious pastry here called a Bichon au Citron, a sort of lemon chasson au pomme. It's one of the best things I've ever tasted sweets wise, and one weekend when Sylvain went out to get our saturday pastries he went to a different boulangerie and I had a minor tantrum when he didn't bring one home. It's not that I am prone to tantrums but for 30 minutes while he was doing errands and getting the pastries I had literally been imagining the first bite, the disappointment was bitter.

I'd say raclette has been my favorite "meal" discovery and we live near Abesses where there is a great Savoyen restaurant on the corner somewhere along Rue de Trois Freres, about a month ago we went with another couple and ordered the raclette, I literally inhaled it, I don't remember coming up for air except to ask for more cornichons. Raclette is totally brainless, if you buy raclette grill and raclette cheese all you do is add potatoes and charcuterie, I need a jar of cornichons to myself and generally you start with a salad and drink a dry white. I really don't think anyone could fail at raclette and it's fun and easy to do with a dinner party.

Sauce au poivre I ate off of Sylvain's plate and then went straight home and found a recipe how to make it, I generally put it over pork chops but it goes over red meat more traditionally I think. I make potatoes as a side because they soak up the extra sauce. This is a sauce I could easily lick the plate over, but since I know better I refrain.

We just went skiing in Savoy between Christmas and New Years and we ate well, raclette, tartiflette and fondue are traditional meals in this region and all were amazingly satisfying after a day on the pistes. Ive never been a HUGE fan of pasta, it's okay, but give me potatoes and yum. Tartiflette for me is the number one comfort food. I'd eat this on a cold winters day or on any of those days that just beat you down and you need to eat your way out. Tartiflette is like carmalized onions, potatoes, lardons (bacon), and cream with roblochon fromage. Again it's a white wine meal and it's wasy to forget about calories with food that tastes this good.

One thing you can never go wrong with in france is a planche with cheese charchuterie and if it's offered, get the ones with pate, usually it will come with some salad and cornichons, and of course, baguette, all you need is a bottle of wine.

France doesn't do a menu carte the same way we do in the states, good restaurants generally have a chalkboard menu that you choose a prix fix of starter, main, dessert or a combination of two like starter and main. I like my sweets after a meal, but I find that generally the starters are the best things on the menu and as far as french desserts go, you've already tasted most of them because they've crossed the Atlantic and although they'll be good, you won't taste anything new or surprising. I also feel that by the time I get to dessert I have two bites and don't finish it, the starter is where it's at.

In other food news, skip the chinese in France, it reminds me of what you would get if school cafeterias offered a chinese menu. One interesting food experience I had here was when we ordered a pizza here a couple weeks ago- we got creme fraiche on it and it was a winning experience, unlike some other creative offerings I've seen, like chicken, and corn in the UK. For my money, macaroons are totally overrated and overpriced and a pain au suisse kicks up a regular old pain au chocolate up a notch. After watching the Julie and Julia movie and reading Julia's book just before arriving I dropped a small fortune on trying Sole Meuniere because Julia has a Meg Ryan experience eating it in the movie, a bit of a waste of money if you ask my palette, it didn't hold it's own. I'd say ditto for the Beef Bourguignon. My two cents on the whole Julia Child cookbook thing, is it's about as useless as it is pretty. People don't eat the same today as they did 50 years ago anywhere, our tastes have changed somewhat and so has the alimentation available. I'm not advocating McDonalds eating, just that today's chefs have amped up or reinterpreted older recipes with new life, and a simple google search will reveal great recipe options without the hulk of that brick.

Anytime you have friends over or are invited your bound to experience the Apero, this is the drink and snack portion of the experience almost similar to the Brits tradition of having tea. French wine glass are very small and so it truly is just a bit of alcohol like a pastis, a kir, whisky and coke, anything you like actually, and some bar snacks, nuts, cheese, olives. I've found as much as the food, the way of eating is as enjoyable as the food itself.

Language

2010-12-24T17:20:00.002+01:00

Lately I've been feeling a little self-conscious about speaking English with Sylvain in French settings. We met through a French friend that left us on our our own for a few hours while we sat at a bar nursing Southern Comfort, we hardly knew each other and Sylvain's English was barely conversational, so I resorted to drawing pictures on cocktail napkins to help get my point across. We celebrated our second anniversary this past weekend and I asked him what his first impression was that night, his response: I thought you were good at drawing stuff...

We've talked to a lot of bilingual couples like ourselves many of whom have relocated to France, all of them say it's impossible to switch languages- meaning, if you initially spoke English, it's impossible to switch to French. Of course in our case my French isn't nearly as good as Sylvain's English is now, but I've noticed despite my French having improved significantly, I still switch to English when speaking with Sylvain even in French situations. Apparently this is the general case for bilingual couples, a friend of mine would love to switch to English with her boyfriend, but it just doesn't work because they started in French, and even when I consciously try to practice my French with Sylvain he responds in English out of habit, even if two seconds earlier I reminded him to speak French.

Still it reminds me of when I was younger and bilingual folks would speak their language amongst each other while we who spoke only English knew naught of what was being said. That feeling that they are talking about you in front of you instead of behind your back, or simply of being excluded. Why didn't they speak English in front of you when they knew how to. What were they saying to each other that you didn't understand. This never really made me feel too uncomfortable, but I know for some it does. Having lived in a foreign language country for a year it was sometimes nice to be able tune it all out, not to have to listen to the conversation next to me because it was being conducted in a foreign language it was easy to do so.

I have an Indian cousin who speaks her native language with her children, but she has very good reason to, she wants them to be bilingual and they aren't going to be if they aren't exposed to the language. Living in an English speaking country, this is crucial to their language development and appreciation. Moreover it's pretty obvious when the conversation includes me that I'm included and it's conducted in English, if on the other hand she's telling her son to put on his seatbelt, I'm not really missing much and I trust that what she's saying is for their ears and would be rather dull: tie your shoes, stop running around, it's your bedtime... Trust me sometimes I think we're better off not understanding, after being a nanny for a year I would get so bored of telling A to sit down in her chair or she'd get hurt and for S to stop talking and start eating if there were other's in the room who didn't speak English they'd have been lucky not to have understood the same banal commands over and over.

Language is a really complex thing, the way we express our desires needs and feelings with each other is often done through the spoken word. However in can be exclusive and hurtful too. In some situations it's a basic need. When I speak with Sylvain who is my other half I want to be understood in the clearest terms possible, for us that is in English. People often develop close relationships with other's because they feel that the other person understands them best. There are various other forms of communication; art, body language, but when it comes down to it, we connect to others based on shared ideas which are more often than not transmitted through the spoken language.

Not Smart

2010-12-11T10:37:00.003+01:00

A few months ago we saw a lawyer to advice us on how to get married. This week she finally emailed us back... I guess that's what you can expect when you use legal aid.

It takes a flow chart to consider our future... Ultimately our first choice is to settle in London, when we get married if Sylvain gains employment there, this will (according to our information and the freedom of movement EU law, this is possible) allow me to work in the UK too.

From now until then our plans are rather bizarre... I'm not sure anything would have changed if we knew then what we know now but we are headed back to the states for something like 8 months... Why? Well, the only really solid reason is that Sylvain's internship ends at the end of the month, thus he has the choice of trying to get a job or trying to get an internship in the states: a job would keep us here for 2 or 3 years and an internship in the states although potentially really difficult to get, will give his resume more diversity and a move back to the states will allow me to try and work in my field even if that means being a substitute teacher.

We did a fairly decent job on the research end of getting married in France, the carte de sejours and the rest, when we looked into getting married in the states, we for some reason neglected to look into the greencard issue and only looked into the actual getting married... So, of course, it seemed cheaper and easier to get married in the states... From our current understanding of the situation, a carte de sejour and getting married in France might end up costing about 500 euros- according to a friend who just went through the process this year, and as far as we can tell if I enter with a longterm visa because we plan to marry I can get my papers in within a few months (although or American friend who just got married is still waiting so who knows), or at least have a titre de sejour which should allow me to work while I wait for my carte de sejour... France is notoriously finicky about these things, often one clerk will say one thing and another something entirely different regarding paperwork, and filing processes, so this is in part why getting married in France seemed like the headache of all headaches.

However after consulting the greencard process, we're looking at spending 4-6k dollars and Sylvain wouldn't be able to work during the filing process which our estimate gleaned from the internet would be 7-12 months... Since we want to live in Europe, we just figured, why bother with the greencard, its expensive and the economy is awful.

So I'm not sure any of our grand plans would have changed in the long run, but it feels a little stupid to have neglected to research the greencard more extensively in a post 9-11 America...

Winter Wonderland

2010-12-04T13:29:00.003+01:00

It's been really cold this week and neither our heat nor the heat where I work is sufficient. I'm happy to wear layers inside, but this week I've been leaving my hat and scarf on inside, which, I think, is a bit much... Yesterday however the temp went up a little and my little charge and I had to go to Picard to get some frozen meatballs, which are, her favorite... On our way home we ran into the concierge at her apartment and this woman, whom I like, but generally shares her opinion more often then necessary. She is a typical concierge: she makes it her business to know everything about everyone who passes through her front door. For the most part, this keeps everyone safer and I can see no harm, however there are days... One day she brought the plombier up to inspect a leak, she followed him around while he worked, which in some ways, is fine, however she made it her concern that the dryer was hot and that whoever put the clothes in for an hour was crazy, totalement fou! and it needed to be turned off toute suite! See, in France, clothes get dried on low-heat and when they're almost dry, they're dry... It's great for the environment (although not as great as a clothes line would be) but it's obviously not American... (other things that are American but not European: anti-biotics).

Anyway, yesterday the concierge asked if my wee one was wearing collants (leggings) due to the cold (the same woman who was just sweeping the sidewalk without a coat). She was upset because A had on some flannel pants and they weren't (and I had to agree with her) seemingly very warm. But of course she wasn't wearing collants, and neither was I she complained, and I heard a three minute lecture about how Americans were crazy, JUST CRAZY... I left this tete a tete annoyed, but by the time we reached the 3rd floor I remembered that as a child I wore tights everyday during the winter, even my cousin Joey who was my daily companion and a dude wore his older sisters old tights under his pants... And my annoyance melted away at this memory, because we were awesome in our cable-knit balling and fuzzy tights.

Other news this week- I gave my months notice! Yay, for la fin de ce chapitre de ma vie!

Thanksgiving Abroad

2010-11-25T19:01:00.003+01:00

In the last 10 years I've spent 5 of them abroad, 3 in London, last year we were in Chile, and this year, Paris. I don't remember what I ate that first year in London, but I remember my roommate Annie, who was studying abroad with me had tacos. In a way it was a pretty American homage because mexican food doesn't really happen in London. I know she invited me to share her American meal and I remember declining having already eaten. The last year I was in London friends made a big meal for me and another American friend and I had delicious parsnips for the first time.

It's really hard to give a shit when you are without all the cultural connections. I'm from Green Bay Wisconsin and football is sort of a big deal where I grew up. But it's next to impossible to watch these games abroad unless you're willing to stay up past your bedtime, which isn't an especially good idea when you have to work the next day because it's not a holiday wherever you're living. Plus who cares, if no one else cares- I'm not going to shout at the boob tube at 3 am by myself in my jammies half awake wondering how Joe Buck still has a job- where's the fun in that? I've lived in New York for a while but I have never been to the parade, nonetheless the hype surrounding it is enough; plus when you're in NYC during Thanksgiving you are hyper aware of avoiding the tourist scene so as not to lose your time and patience so in a way, by going out of your way to avoid it at all costs you were still a part of it.

It's not impossible, but it is pretty hard to find or at least afford traditional Thanksgiving food stuffs while abroad- you can get oreo's and peanut butter, even cream cheese is available on the shelves in both Chile, London and Paris, but cranberries and turkey's aren't exactly standard fare. Today I spent more than 20 bucks on a chicken that is thankfully without hormones, and thus about half the size of an American chicken. With a bottle of wine and a couple of sides, we could have had a decent meal out, but American's who dine out on Thanksgiving seemed to be missing the point, and I remember feeling so much pity for a school friend of mine whose family did this...

A couple days ago Sylvain and I started talking about what traditions we want to start or share when we start our own family. We were making crepes on Saturday night and decided this would be a genius meal to make routine, which apparently is something his family did every Sunday night anyway... Crepes are fun for the whole family, like dessert and a meal, salty this round, sweet the next... Our kids are going to love it. Wherever we end up, I hope we will find a way to create a hybrid Thanksgiving with expats or whomever likes to eat and drink well. Definitely going to have to take that day and maybe the next off of work though...

Tis the season

2010-11-06T14:29:00.002+01:00

Last weekend my friend Dave visited from London. We went golfing, had brunch, enjoyed the view at Butte Chaumont and generally had a full but relaxing weekend... and the clocks changed...Somehow this kicked off the holiday season for me. Waking up when it's already light, and finishing work just as the night sky is setting in. It's changed my mood entirely...

We have about 2 months left in Paris, this week were going to London to get my passport stamped, the following weekend we have up to 3 thanksgiving celebrations planned, then we'll spend the next weekend in Lyon for our nieces birthday, that leaves a few free weekends in December before Christmas where we're going to celebrate in Lyon and then spend 3 days snowboarding... It will go fast, but I hope time slows just enough to take it all in. I'm excited for the next chapter, back to NYC but I am anxious not to hurry things along. I love this season, playing Christmas music during the day with the girls, making christmas sweets and planning a thanksgiving menu, the coziness of fall, leaves floating and even that scent in the air at Bois de Boulogne. I half hate myself for enjoying the commercial aspects of Christmas shopping, but something about picking out the perfect gift for loved ones sucks me in every year... We have next to no money, and the money we do have we have tightly clenched in our fists in case everything falls apart when we get to NYC but we've got a secret santa 20 euro budget for his family.

Something about NYC and the states right now seems very fragile... there is a bug bed epidemic in NYC- I survived one in London and New York already, but I'd rather not fight that battle again. The political situation in New York is angry and vitriolic, and it's a battle that seems like it's really just getting started. The job crisis is still entrenched and no matter how capable either of us are, if the opportunities aren't there... well...

There is still so much to enjoy about being in Paris, and we will not move back to Paris even if we do end up back in France or Europe. Dinner parties in French, Bichon au citron, Sylvain's family, and of course, the calm before the storm...

I think we needed this

2010-11-06T14:23:00.001+01:00

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

Cleanse

2010-10-28T22:19:00.005+02:00

Two years ago I drove to Cambridge to visit my friend Schuy and to plan our hike up Mt Kilimanjaro, when I arrived he had just finished a juice detox cleanse. I think the NYT did an article about cleanses and featured the one he did, it was premade juice meals delivered to your house with idiot proof labels for 200 bucks or so. The description of his poo that week was fascinating. For a while now I've been feeling like I need my own cleanse. At the beginning of September I was taking the 82 bus back to Neuilly from the American Library, my seatmate noticed my babysittee sitting in the seat in front of us, was a whiz at her Leapfrog - at first I didn't know what she was talking about because I have a misplaced memory of this handheld thing being called a "whipit" and so it took me a minute to make the connection. We got to talking, she too was American and she told me she was an energy healer. At the time, I thought cool, and I asked her how regularly the French utilized her services as frankly, I'm coming to feel like Parisians live like they are wearing a stick up their asses, and having sought out yoga here I haven't found a very enthusiastic community of yogis, so I figured other, potentially more spiritual avenues wouldn't really get much of a following. She assured me it was an underground thing.

I've basically had it up to hear with Parisians. A few days a week I take the girls on long scooter rides in the neighborhood or the Bois de Boulogne- I've started playing this game with myself where I say Bonjour to everyone we pass, and generally tally how many people return my friendliness. It's roughly about 50%.

In August I spent 3 weeks in the states where it was midwestern manners no matter where I went. Hello, Goodbye, excuse me, no, you first. I had clearly been in Paris too long, this neighborly friendliness among strangers literally disoriented me. It all felt so foreign that I regularly commented on the unfamiliarity of kind words and niceties.

I wouldn't give up this year in Paris for anything, but I wouldn't come back to live here for anything either (this is not intended to slag off all of France, just Paris). It has gotten to me. The other night I totally bitched Sylvain out for using the last of the toilet paper and leaving me stranded. I'd argue that's kind of a good reason to get upset but he did have a cold so he was using it for tissue and I got out the crazy a little. But where is the joy here? Everyone is suspicious and instead of giving anyone the benefit of the doubt they give you the evil eye. I get pushed around on the metro all the time, this weekend at Centre Pompidou an old lady actually pushed me, old men tell me where to go and what to do with my bag if they find me or it in the way, old ladies refuse to say Bonjour in the park. I don't want to live with so much negativity around me all the time, and I'd run to see that energy healer if I had gotten her card.

I cant wait to get back to NYC, but part of me feels I will need to exorcise this negative energy I've got building up inside me. It's rubbing off on me, I hate being a nanny, and I am bored all day long starring at puzzles and feeling like each day from 9-6 I'm storing up anger and resentment for having to do something so dull and mindless, each day the same as the last but beholden to the whims of a 4 year old bully. A month ago I tried to tackle the problem with a couple earnest trips to a yoga class that offered what was actually a decent Zen garden courtyard, but the class was a dud and the instructor kept trying to get me to make noise breathing through my nose, when I didn't get loud enough right away she didn't give up on me like I wanted her to. I mean, that's great if you're learning to read, or to do equations but if you're at yoga and you're trying to breath loud the more effort you put into something like that, the more likely you are to embarrass yourself with undesirable ejections in this cold and flu season - and frankly you don't want to hold up the class with your insufficient breathing- yoga isn't for the judgmental, but if you can't get the breathing right, during the first 5 seconds of class, your basically exposing yourself as a yoga fraud. Yeah sure you've been doing this for years... After I gave up on yoga at 20 euros an hour I decided to give Haagen Dazs a try, and for a week I consumed ice cream with every meal. Unsurprisingly, it cleansed nothing but added 5 pounds onto my frame.

I'm sure a juice cleanse is not what I need, but I am sure there is something that needs to be ingested or purged to rediscover my former self... Maybe I just need someone to hold me while incanting Your Welcome! thank you! Good Morning! Excuse me! No You Sit! in a thick midwestern accent.

October

2010-10-23T20:26:00.003+02:00

I was rudely awoken by my cat flying across the room around 9:30am... After yelling at my sick boyfriend who had launched Manny off the bed after he had attempted to scratch Sylvain's eyes out as he is won't to do after being attracted to fluttering eyelids, I went to the kitchen to give Manny the love and attention he sought and after a reactionary but altogether unnecessary flight, I felt he deserved...

When I returned to bed Sylvain acknowledged that what he had done had been out of line with the assault that had taken place on his face. Having experienced the attempt at gauging out my eyes, I know it can be very disarming, but flinging him across the room, was wrong.

After acknowledging the mauvais temps dehors, we decided to grab crepes at the place literally next door to our building, I was getting anxious about going because usually the place is packed, it's a neighborhood place and I figured with the weather, maybe it would be impossible to find a table, since there were only four. I had needlessly worried however when we entered, it was just the owners and their dog Nino. As long as a dog is not miniature, or jumpy, I am immediately best friends with it. There are a lot of dogs in Neuilly where I work and I spend a lot of time pointing them out to the two girls I nanny for, presenting them more as if they were a great work of architecture or the eiffel tower, than just golden retrievers and beagles. As per usual Sylvain ordered with more insight then I, and I made him share, and then finish my crepe, all the while petting Nino and asking him if he wanted to trade places with Manny, as Nino was chill and less likely to attack in the wee hours of the morning.

We had briefly considered going to the Jean Michel Basquiat show, but I just wasn't feeling the outing, our apartment is always cold, and I knew that being wet and cold was not the way I wanted to spend my day. I suggested instead we go to monoprix and get food. We did and god knows how we spent the next few hours, but I ended up reading a New York Times article about the show the Millionaire Matchmaker- the shows "host" I had seen on Oprah once but otherwise I'd not seen the show... Of course I searched for episodes on surf the channel and Sylvain and I dug in... This season takes place in NYC, and of course, I'm in.

I've been missing the creature comforts of home of late, especially Netflix and Barnes and Nobles. Today, if I had had my way, I would have spent the rainy afternoon with an overpriced starbucks green tea nursing the latest issues of my favorite magazines at my local Barnes and Nobles.

The Greve

2010-10-22T22:03:00.003+02:00

I'm a little confused about this greve situation in france. The last week here in Paris has been business as usual as far as I can tell. However on Thursday my boss sent me an email that the US embassy security update- warning Americans to avoid demonstrations, a general tourist warning and of course a notice that if you were planning on renting a car you might have a problem finding petrol... As a side note, I'm not entirely sure why my boss sent me this, 1, I work everyday and renting a car here is out of the question- and, they have a car and haven't seemed to have the slightest problem with getting gas, 2, as my boss sees about as much of Paris as I do on a typical day he must have noticed that things aren't the least bit different from the week before or last month, perhaps he thinks I care about whether the French get one more year of retirement and that I'd be willing to use my personal time to fight the power... I don't think the demonstrators have just cause for their anti-reform stance, and even if I did, it's starting to get cold here and I'd rather be downloading the season finale of MadMen.

Still, it's a little alarming that I keep reading in American news media that France is a scary place full of rioters. Sylvain works everyday in Nanterre where there have been isolated incidences apparently- he has not noticed anything. Sylvain is from Lyon, his parents haven't reported anything worth mentioning. Have their been rioters? There must have been, but it seems to me that America today is a far scarier place to live... especially if you're Muslim.

We are a couple weeks away from an election that could paralyze governance even more than it already is. Sarah Palin is getting out her misinformed vote, Christine O'Donnell is spreading her crazy, Alaska is in the news again (remember when Alaska was an afterthought, totally forgettable, ah, I miss those glory days) and Tennessee and New York are battling it out for who can be angrier and stupider. On top of that NPR is getting heat because they fired Juan WIlliams because he is a bigot and he is supposed to be a neutral reporter- firing sounds about right to me...

What happened to my country? I miss the days when crazy and stupid was isolated to the President and his cabinet.

The only answer I can think of is Fox News.

Legal Aid in Paris

2010-10-17T18:26:00.002+02:00

Sylvain and I went to see a lawyer last week, the offices of the french version of legal aid were as dilapidated as the school I taught in in the Bronx, but as we followed our lawyer into her office we were full of hope for answers that we anxiously awaited. Unfortunately we literally got no answers, our lawyer "was used to working with Africans" and literally couldn't tell us once and for all what documents we would need to get PAC'ed. After asking our list of questions, without receiving even a flicker of "wait I know this one!" Sylvain asked for her email address and said he'd email our questions so she could do some research...

We left knowing this- PAC wasn't going to work if for no other reason then by the time we did get definitive answers we'd already be gone- we are moving back to the states in January and filing for PAC's can take a month or two. So, nevermind. Marriage it is then, perhaps we'll have to hire a lawyer in New York when we get there to sort our situation out to some extent. Even post 9-11 it seems that the states cuts through the bullshit and makes marrying a European a more or less straightforward affair. Court house weddings in New York require a license and a passport, check, check. Still our major concern when we got the ball rolling on all of this is where we could live (and work) post marriage... we're hoping Montreal works out...

Alliance Francaise

2010-10-16T20:47:00.002+02:00

I feel obliged to post my mauvaise experience at Alliance Francaise Paris. I chose AF because I had an amazing AF experience at the New York location, but after two months and two awful teachers I am taking my hard earned money elsewhere. The classes are really expensive, the two teachers I've had have been polar opposites of the spectrum- one was seasoned but regularly called our Sri Lankan classmate Pakistani, which should not have been hard to remember considering at that time there were only 5 of us, and she was uncomfortable teaching us modern French, as in, the French that people speak as opposed to the French people spoke 50 years ago. Her methods were old school, she didn't use technology and stuck to the curriculum she'd been teaching for the last 30 years. The latest teacher must be new because she has been a basket case, lost. I check my watch at least every few minutes, and while I have always loved learning, I find that I fake bathroom breaks and walk around the halls to waste time- in 20 years of education I have never done that before.

My class is the highest section currently offered of Oral French right now (although in theory there are several higher levels), which is frustrating, there aren't any other sections offered on alternative days and the class size keeps swelling as more students add. My classmates and other friends I've met here feel the same about Alliance Francaise, when my course ends next week I will be looking for language exchange opportunities, or to pay a tutor; for anyone looking these offers are easy to find...

Marriage PAC's, Lawyers

2010-09-28T22:13:00.004+02:00

It's always a little strange in a relationship when you start seeing each other, and you know that if you like each other, getting serious means you have to get married. It's frustrating. I love an adventure, but this adventure is complicated, and confusing, and involves lawyers. If we had done it right, if we had planned ahead in the Type A way neither of us are, maybe, if were at different stages in our lives, this would have been a lot easier. But we are who we are, and we have been living in a sort of pay as you go, a la carte, figuring it out as we go way.

We've been serious for a long time, or at least it feels like a long time. Although I guess it would if you've lived in 3 countries on three continents in less than a years time. I've sacrificed a lot, and I've no regrets, but the time has come to figure out how to stop sacrificing and start moving forward.

I'm excited about the moving forward part, not because it involves babies, or weddings, but because I'm anxious to get a real job in the field I love, I'm anxious for Sylvain to get a real job, and I'm excited for us to not have to live in limbo constantly deciding whose going to end up with the short end of the stick. I hate putting him in a position where he has to sacrifice opportunities and I hate feeling like I'm sacrificing my opportunities. Making "us" official will finally put an end to all of this sacrifice, and the anger and resentment that would soon be rearing its ugly head if we put it off any longer.

Living in France was at first deemed a trial for me- if we were going to be a franco-american couple we wanted to make sure that we were both capable of adjusting to the culture and living conditions of our respective homelands, I needed to work on my French and work out what the reality of French life would be. Since we met and lived in New York for 9 months, Sylvain already knew what to expect, but I wasn't sure what the limitations and advantages of living in france would be until I jumped in and gave it a trial run. The trial run was supposed to last 6-9 months, but after 6 months I realized I wanted to finish out the year as I didn't know if I'd have any teaching options to come home to in NYC. After moving into our new non-studio apartment, I'm wary about leaving again- we actually only have this apartment for 4 months, so even if we decided to stay, we still might end up having to move again but NY in January seems even more daunting...

It's this question, the million dollar question, do we stay or do we go, that I finally pushed forward with the legality of our status. We have looked into PAC when we moved here, but somehow, it didn't seem like it would work for us, we'd been living together for a year already, but not in France, and in France we had no contract, or bills to prove that we lived together so how would we qualify? Moreover, when you're researching anything that involves paperwork in France it is a flow chart of confusion in a foreign language, that at least for me, actually was a foreign language.

I recently had my mother send my birth certificate only to discover the birth certificate can't be older than 3 or 6 months depending on various websites. I also need to have a certificate verifying that I'm not already married, and then have that along with 10 other papers translated.

In the end it doesn't look like PAC's would do us any good, and it seems like even more work than getting married in France. We had originally decided to get married at the court house in New York City, but after all this research and confusion, we are seeking out legal help. Nothing is as clear as it seems it should be. As clear as, I love this person and want to spend the rest of my life with this person building a family and a life together, where do we sign?

I've said it before, I'll say it again; falling in love with an etranger is a pain in the ass, there is nothing remotely romantic about it, I don't even understand how France has this romantic reputation, with all their bloody bureaucracy, it's a wonder anyone ever fell in love here.

Looking for an Apartment

2010-09-05T18:24:00.002+02:00

Sylvain and I were really lucky to have the opportunity to live in our friends apartment for the first 9 months of our lives in Paris. There is nothing as stressful as moving to a city and having nowhere to stay and feeling desperate to find something while at the same time trying to maintain a sense that life is fair- because put in that circumstance, desperation makes you ripe for those who would take advantage. You could end up paying much more for the monthly rent than the apartment is worth, but you could also be completely screwed over, you could trustingly give your money to someone who has no intention to handing over keys, or who is renting you the apartment without having any right to, leaving you susceptible to being robbed of your worldly possessions, your life savings and your trust in humanity.

Looking for an apartment in Paris is a sketchy experience, we used craigslist and vivastreet almost exclusively and for every ten emails we sent out begging to get a chance to just "look" at an apartment, we might get one response. We had all the typical rental experiences: showing up to find no one to let us in, showing up to discover prostitutes on every corner, showing up and having the place be awful, showing up and having it be a scam to steal your three months up front in cash while the owner is in Morocco.

It's hard to imagine not being a renter (as opposed to an owner), my life has not led to growing many roots anywhere, but at times it seems like a delicious taste of freedom that makes settling down almost worth it. We finally found a place about a week before we had to be out of our old place, we paid more than 4,000 euros in cash upfront for the 4 months we are renting it. I love our new space, it's perfect in every way our budget could expect, but the stress that built into a fever pitch leading up to finding it makes me long for the day when I am no longer living in a owners market in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Give me some outdoor space and an oven already.

2010-08-29T19:30:00.004+02:00

Sleep

2010-08-27T18:11:00.004+02:00

Wednesday evening I went to yoga class and took off a very important necklace in order to preform downward dog without chipping a tooth. After class I absentmindedly left it on the floor next to where my mat was, and an hour later at dinner I realized as I went to touch said necklace which I imagined hanging around my neck, the oversight. I saw the yoga teacher pack up and leave the building so I knew I wouldn't be able to retrieve it and anxiously tried to push it out of my head as I was engaged in an evening of comedy at the Skyline Comedy Club in Appleton where my cousin removed once, possibly twice was preforming. Here I discovered laughter is the best medicine to keep anxiety as well as perhaps sadness and other ailments away. Unfortunately by the time I got home, my anxiety had settled in for the night and prepared to keep me awake until morning when I could call and email and and call again to see if anyone had discovered my necklace and whether I would be able to retrieve it before noon when I left for Paris.

Keeping me awake was the thought that perhaps someone in class had found and desired my necklace and thus decided to keep it, since this was a yoga class I was attending, where everyone seemed to be regulars and also yoga teachers themselves, I considered this an unlikely scenario, but I left it play out in my thoughts a handful of times.

I also considered the possibility that a cleaning crew came in at night to sweep, discovered it and decided to take it to beef up what is surely a meager wage for cleaning a rather desolate downtown building. This also seemed fairly unlikely but had more potential than the first scenario.

Finally I considered that maybe someone had found the necklace, but that no yoga classes were scheduled and that I would not be able to reclaim the necklace before my flight. This scenario was especially scary because this is a necklace I wear on loan from my mother, admitting to her this oversight would result in a grave amount of guilt and punishment. I know my mother isn't particularly fond of the necklace or it wouldn't have been in my possession for the last 5 years, but it is quite valuable and there would inevitably be a fallout. I'm sure it's insured, but I could already feel the disappointment I would bear; my own as much as hers,

Mostly I just lay awake anxious for 8am to roll around so I could wake up and find a phone number or email to call to inquire.

Turns out they found my necklace, and I could pick it up before my flight, and alls well that ends well.

Unfortunately, I barely got any sleep, and I would have a long day of flying with a four hour layover in Chicago. Like a very tired or crazy person I found an empty corner lay down on the floor and tried to get some rest, unfortunately the flight leaving before mine at the gate was canceled and due to regular gargling updates but agents at the desk I kept worrying that it was actually my flight being canceled and then my gate changed and there was no longer any space to be a resting person anyway. Once on board I watched a movie ate my dinner and prepared to sleep, but I found sleep evasive so I resorted to taking a tylenol PM.

Once I arrived at customs they tried to keep me out of the country because my passport has been laundered and looks like it, I only have one page left free for stamps and the cover is starting to fall off. I said I promised to get a new one as soon as they let me in their fine country, and they gave me the look that said, ok but only because you're not a terrorist and obviously need to learn the lesson that passports are sacred and ought to be stored in safe places that dont end up in the spin cycle.

The problem though with taking tylenol PM is that even if you bite it in half and take a small dose, like I did , if you dont get a restful 8-10 hours of sleep you end up with a tylenol PM hangover similar to a regular hangover but without the vomiting and headache. It's like a fuzz that settles into your brain, an inability for synapse firing, the total shut down of brain function. Math would be difficult, and French or probably any other language, nearly impossible.

So when I went to take my Alliance Francaise placement test, it was disappointing but hardly surprising that even after 8 months of living in France, I did not graduate out of level B1. I tried not to make excuses for my lack of success, it wasn't and isn't because I am not able to speak or understand French, it's mostly because I fait beaucoup de fautes. I make a lot of mistakes, anyone can understand me, I just use all the wrong genders, and have been too lazy to learn to speak in complex ways using anything other than the past, present and future.

But I'm okay with not being a pro, after all I'm here to learn and everyone has to start somewhere. I've learned a lot in the last 8 months, I just didn't learn how to put it to use correctly, and so as the fuzz brain hangover fades away let the complex sentence structures seep in.

Alliance Francaise Paris

2010-07-31T12:22:00.003+02:00

I took two semesters of Alliance Francaise classes my last winter and spring in New York, I had an amazing teacher similar to my amazing French teacher from DePaul when I was a freshman in college. In short it was a great experience where I met very interesting people and came home Tuesday and Thursday nights inspired and eager to practice French with Sylvain. When I first got to Paris I had planned on taking French lessons, but I had to first secure a job, and second to save enough money to feel comfortable spending money on something that I could in some ways get for free. I improved my French watching French TV, talking with our French friends and to some extent, reading in French... But Sylvain and I don't speak French together, we communicate in English. Of course this is dumb on our part, I would be far more fluent in French than I currently am, if only we spent some of our time together conversing in French. We don't though, occasionally I implore him to at least speak to me in French, but he forgets and although he is eager for me to gain proficiency, he isn't eager enough to speak French to me, unless he's mad at me, then he will shout at me in French and watch- amusingly, I'm sure- as I slowly unravel what it is he just said to me, 2 minutes later when I've sorted it out he thinks I'm breaking his balls (this phrase I have down by now) the argument is over due to the time lapse, nerves having calmed.

I just signed up for 10 weeks of Alliance Francaise classes here in Paris, although this time I'll just be taking oral conversation. I've spent 8 years of my schooling taking French and learning all that grammar was great, but in reality, I use so little of it when actually living my life in France where in conversation I rely heavily upon the past and the present verb conjugation.

Living in Paris has been a really positive experience despite how difficult it has sometimes been adjusting, but the reason I came here, or rather the reason it was important I come here was to learn French. My life is tied to a French persons, whose family and whose friends are French speaking and who I want to be able to understand and communicate with on a deeper level than weather, eager for the day I can make and understand jokes.

Jardin des Plantes

2010-07-25T17:43:00.002+02:00

Friday I took the girls to the Jardin de Tuileries, and we walked back some towards the champs elysee in a garden space called Proust something, a perfect place to have a picnic, which we did. A has this thing about taking off her shoes, she wants them off in the library, in any park and pretty much everywhere else, she has a fetish for having her feet held, I see no point in stopping her anymore. Picking your fights with a two year old with a typical case of the terrible twos, well I can't blame her if she relishes in grass underfoot, in the confines of the city, its a rare treat. We rode the ferris wheel in Tuileries and although three revolutions cost a pricey 8 euros, it was offset by the stunning views of the city and the fact that my employers covered the cost. Despite a little rain shower- as S says, the clouds are crying- we had a nice picnic and walking back to the metro we sang Oh Champs Elysee while dodging annoying tourists.

Saturday my friend from High school came to spend the night and after a coffee we put together our snacks and headed to the Jardin des Plantes, the parks here are insanely groomed- it is definitely not my preference, but they do tend to be beautiful in a look but don't touch way. All parks in Paris are full of benches and chairs to watch the beauty of nature, but from a safe distance lest you trample the nature that has been so acutely tamed and organized. Stroll along the sandy stone paths, rest on a perfectly placed bench, but don't even think about entering into the mise en scene and "experiencing" nature, it's only there to look at lest a human touch spoil the aesthete. You can be part of the tableau, but never lose yourself, escaping the demands of the city feeling the touch of wet green grass or the shade of a tree, lying on your back and examining the shapes of the clouds. Certainly nothing as reckless as a game of frisbee.

Afterwards Sylvain and Florian met us and we headed to la Seine for some boteillon and watched the tourist boats go by with a view of the derriere de Notre Dame. Near us a man was burning incense and alternating between playing the accordion and finger cymbals. A woman in a typical garishly white wedding dress posed with her new mate for photos. Florian was waiting for a text to see if his Satan Poem was good enough to gain him entry into the Fete de Satan and we teased him to recite his poem for us slam style.

We headed home after some terrible sushi and finished our bottle of wine and some more beers with our entertaining friend Nat. Ending the night after our neighbor told us around 2:30am to use our quiet voices after Nat gave us his impression of a Judo master.

Americans in Paris part deux

2010-07-20T21:26:00.003+02:00

This summer my employers are hosting their niece who is 16. She is textbook teenager and for the first few hours of our time spent together she said about 4 words to me- all one word responses to my questions, until she confessed to me that after 3 hours in Paris she was having withdrawal symptoms from her cell phone... Ben oui... Her aunt and uncle admitted to me that she was comatose most of the time around them and they decided to talk to her about how she spends her time here since this month in Paris was their 16th birthday present for her. No more sleeping until 11, clean up after yourself (I am not her nanny after all) and get out and do something, at minimum step up her interaction with her two young cousins.

Two weeks later, she's starting to come out of her shell, a little (she has yet to ask me a single personal question- am I just hired help for her? probably). But, she is painstakingly American in her... let's say perspective... She has already raised concerns over the French penchant for eating raw meat (hello! are we not over cooking our meat until it's well done? I mean sushi has been around long enough by now hasn't it?) she is concerned about the European tradition of not refrigerating milk or eggs at the grocery store, the smoking, or course... But today, it hit a fever pitch, we went to the local pool. This pool is located in Neuilly, it's not your typical YMCA affair, there are 4 pools, two water slides, bubbling areas, outside areas, picnic areas and it's all really, really... nice. We met my girls' best friends and their mother there but this girl stood outside the pool not sullen, but as if a brooding teenager for a good 30 minutes before resigning to join us inside the pool. I thought at first this might be because everyone in Paris is...tight, perk, lean, and she is sort of rocking the overweight teenager look. But no, that wouldn't explain her general disengagement, besides I didn't notice any boys her age and mostly the pool was full of older woman, mothers or young children.

Then the reveal. When her aunt came home from work tonight she asked how she liked the pool. I DIDN'T, IT WAS TERRIBLE!!! In my head, is a big question mark ? does she just not like sun and swimming? Some people don't I get that, but then why not say so, I mean, she didn't actually have to join us- it's not a requirement to spend a 91 degree day at the pool. THERE WERE NAKED PEOPLE! Here my brain starts scanning through the people I saw poolside- it's true French woman take their bikini tops (why would you wear a one piece if you have a perfect body after all? and tie the part that goes around their necks, around their backs thus making a sort of haphazard bandeau top- but I had not noticed anyone topless and although you could very occasionally see the hint of a nipple slipping out, it was hardly shocking considering, well, if you take the children under 10 out of the equation, 99% of the people at the pool were female, and second most French woman have boobs the size of most 12 year old girl boobs. Can the hint of a boob that doesn't fill out a training bra, nipple or not really color your experience to such an extent?

Much like I am writing this, I am certain that this will be the highlight of her Paris experience thus far and that tonight her emails home will reinforce the "naked beach" stereotype about the French.

"The Year of No New Clothes"

2010-07-14T19:08:00.004+02:00

I've written about how I gave up buying new clothes for a year before on this blog, and I'm happy to say I'm a little over a month away from the end of that "Lent Period". Up until about two weeks ago, I had no remorse, or regret, but then a couple weeks ago something changed. September 1st a year ago I moved to Chile, I had with me a knapsack full of clothes for 4 months, I brought mostly crap, but a few things I liked, a lot of which were items Sylvain hated, which sort of defeated the purpose really. A month into my time in Chile I asked Sylvain to cut my hair. Learn this lesson from me, unless your boyfriend is also a gay stylist, don't hand him a pair of scissors and ask him to cut anything off of you. It's not that he did a bad job, its that it was I had a stupid idea... So for the next 4 months, I basically lived like someone whose camping, I did not care what I looked like. This can be liberating for like a week, and then it gets depressing. I'm a pretty au natural kind of girl, but putting even a little effort into how you look can have big returns in the self-esteem and confidence department.

When I packed for Paris I figured, take anything that's black and lets wear out all that H&M crap I made the mistake of buying (note to self, stop buying clothes from H&M as soon as you graduate from college or at least as soon as you earn a paycheck). Six months later, and I feel a little bit like I've been punishing myself forcing myself to look a little bit stupid everyday. This was confirmed by Sylvain's late night confession that we had become less sexy...Yesterday I was anxious to go out because I didn't have to work today but I stopped myself from calling Sylvain to try and make plans with our friends, I was wearing a hideous orange skirt, with a top that could have landed me on one of those makeover TV shows. I am someone who started reading Vogue at age 12, I got the Coco Chanel award in the 6th grade, probably the only 11 year old to know what kind of honor that was. So why was I dressing like a lunatic?

For months I've been watching Sylvain wince as I dress in the morning, and I've opted to let him pick out my outfits when we "go out". Basically my clothes have been fashion suicide, and I'm over it. We are strapped for cash, but last weekend Sylvain urged me to go buy some new clothes, this from a guy who spends money on clothes once a presidential term.

I hope I've learned something from this year of "no new clothes", I think at least I've learned never to shop at J.Crew or H&M again, to seriously consider whether that American Apparel dress is appropriate and that less shopping can mean a lot more traveling. But the bigger lesson has to be that we ought to buy only what we need, I've worn out clothes this year for the first time, maybe ever and it felt so, so good. This year I've learned how much having stuff makes you stuck, how un-"green" it is, how it tethers you to standing still, I think I got it. I sort of hoarded all my favorite clothes, saving them for "when I get back" so I don't need to buy new clothes just yet (except a pair of jeans) but man I'm looking forward to not dressing like a schmuck anymore.

Bastille Day

2010-07-14T15:38:00.003+02:00

I did not have to work today, but heavy showers made "enjoying the day" a little difficult. Sylvain and I live in Paris because we have a great friend who loaned us his apartment until August. We would not be able to afford life in Paris otherwise and we are extremely grateful... Nonetheless the apartment is 25 meters square and our windows open to a brick wall. We live around the corner from the famous flea markets selling crap and sneakers in the immigrant neighborhood of the 18eme. I cannot actually believe anyone would buy this apartment. Two weeks ago we heard the unfamiliar sound of a machine gun slaying someone at the corner of our street. I walk home from the metro passing pharmacies, hair salons for women who heavily process their hair, empty store fronts with strange figurines and tools from decades long past and cheap looking brasseries with expensive prices. I don't feel like we live in Paris, I feel like we live in purgatory, a neither here nor there space.

If moving to Paris, or anywhere, I'd make sure you can find and afford a living space that you feel good about going home to because I hate being in our apartment. So I was bound and determined not to spend my day off alone in our apartment, but the rain gave me few options and the fact that public holidays truly mean public holidays in France, and almost nothing is open. I figured, however, Starbucks would be. I was right and after ordering my tall chai tea latte I nestled in to an oversized chair and opened my e-reader to newly purchased on the metro ride over, Sloane Crosely's new book.

She starts out with a short story about turning 30 and an ill-fated trip to Lisbon. It's weird how she tries to make Lisbon sound like a 3rd world country since it's not but her out-of-sincness feels akin to my experience in Paris, except that I didn't spin a globe and buy a ticket to the place where my finger touched when the globe stopped spinning... I followed my boyfriend here.

I find it increasingly odd that in theory the French and French culture have so much going for them, nonetheless I'd rather live in New York. I have a hard time figuring this one out because I loved living in London, so it can't be the living abroad part, perhaps its the language bit, or the lack of purpose bit, but I guess it's actually a host of factors rather than just one easy villain. I just read a book I enjoyed as a fellow transplant by Debra Ollivier (today I can only remember author names and not book titles) I found her nestled between the pages of Parent magazine, one that my employers subscribe to, and I read. She writes basically about how women in Paris are sexy and Americans are high-strung, neurotic and overweight prudes who don't enjoy sex. If you ask me, she's hit it on the nail. It's easy to bash Americans to some extent, but what she writes also rings true... This morning before leaving I was listening to Teri Gross interview Tom Ford about his movie and fashion career, he said something about fashion now compared to the 90's seems pumped up and severe, like our boobs and our lips, all fake- but if you look at the 70's Farrah Fawcet was touchable, women didn't wear bras, and breast looked and felt natural. France may get picked on for it's au natural body scent, and hair growth, but they just don't see the point of being fake, it's okay to be yourself... is that why Americans are so overweight- because it's not okay to be ourselves and we eat through the pain of rejection? Because the French are not overweight, they are bird-like in their thinness, and they have small tiny blueberry boobs and no one is suggesting that they are unsexy because they can't fill out an A cup. This alone makes me love France, my boobs fit in perfectly- I remember being 12 and checking the mirror each morning for any apparent growth, but by 17 I had realized that the growth period had ended and I figured, why not embrace my humble hilltops, I threw out my padded bras and felt liberated, I figured it was better to be myself than try to be someone I'm not and the French agree.

No matter how much I relish the French, their blase I don't care if you don't like me attitude which is refreshing, the French just seem to understand and appreciate life in ways American's are not connected to- we equate everything with material success and our value is connected to how "hard" we work- our first priority, while the French are busy having love affairs working to live while eating and drinking real food, and not some processed food substitute. But something to me, seems stuck in the past, maybe its just the picture postcard architecture that makes a period piece impossible to transition to contemporary life with internet and Iphones- this goes for most of Europe I'd say. I miss New York, it seems so of this century, or at least close enough.

Sloane Crosely writes about how as an adolescent she couldn't just spin that globe and go wherever her finger landed but her about to be 30 self could... nonetheless our childhood fantasies sometimes remain fantasies for a good reason- they're better that way... I tell a lot of people I'm living the dream, I'm living in Paris! but after 6 months here and a year of living abroad, I'm confused by it all. I can't figure out at all what I want anymore. We want to build these perfect happy lives for ourselves, and we always seem to fall frustratingly short, I don't really have any friends who have it all, either divorce, or money problems or divorce and money problems, or lack of figuring it all out yet plague them all, my parents would describe themselves as happy but they also live on auto-pilot and at 30 you want to believe you'll live keyed into the experience of life...

Ambiguity

2010-07-04T14:24:00.003+02:00

My boss has been watching more SOCCER! this world cup season than he's ever watched before. Still his Americaness does not allow him to reconcile the ambiguity of a draw. It just doesn't happen in America, there is always a decisive winner and loser. Americans live in black and white, right and wrong, love and hate, winners and loses. In France, swallowing ambiguity or shades of gray is, maybe better than the cheese, the wine, and all the pastries. I hate Paris for it's lack of parks and my morning Metro commute, but the nuance in which the French inhabit makes life a lot more interesting.

Sylvain and my relationship was for months, undefinable, I barely told my parents about him before I was moving to Chile to see what might transpire. Something about Sylvain made it unnecessary for me to have a label or to define it. While he sent emails to friends in France about his American girlfriend, for him it just was, and one didn't necessarily have to discuss it the definition wasn't of any grave import as it is for most Americans- at the same time, I wasn't defining anything to anyone- as a girl I didn't want to step into territory I wasn't explicitly given permission to tread so while my friends knew about Sylvain, they probably didn't give it much stock because I never defined it for them, it never got the all important "title". Recently he has said to me yes of course we're engaged, we have been living together for a year and a half.

I have given up a lot of the pomp and circumstance relationships often embody, but in return it has been replaced with a much more mysterious intriguing space. I hope my kids grow up with that nuance, because black and white is not an interesting space to live in, it lacks possibility, it judges.

The Monica Lewinsky debacle is a good example. Americans went nuts over did they or didn't they- in France it was considered a scandal that anyone gave this any time- they first considered it no ones business but their own and I have to agree here, because after all, the not having a definitive answer is what was so exciting in the first place - it's not that the French don't gossip but the nugget of excitement lies in the mystery. They aren't out to judge, I think the French for their own part understand well that life is more fun when we all acknowledge that being good all the time is no fun, and furthermore, no one is good all the time anyway, so lets stop pretending otherwise.

This brings me back to the pomp and circumstance. I am not a girl that hopes for flowers and chocolates on valentines day because it seems contrived and fake. If my boyfriend loves me, chocolates and flowers dont prove anything but lack of creativity. But in America they're like a box you tick to prove something, to show your friends. I have a British friend who proposed to his girlfriend with a specially crafted box, when I told this to a table of co-workers over lunch they all considered it blasphemy. I had thought it was the greatest expression of love I'd ever heard... I sat there silently trying to work it all out in my head after that. I guess for me what it comes down to is if at the end of 90 minutes to teams have a draw, they have a draw, if you have to have a definitive answer, well, you can have your penalty kicks, but isn't that kind of fake, sure, it can give you a black and white answer, but it's not real, it's a decisive decision on penalty kicks, not the game itself. In love you can label and define, and you can follow the pop culture traditions of candy chocolates, and engagement rings, but it doesn't mean love anymore than penalty kicks define a winner. I like a life better when we aren't following some script, when we aren't joking for some position and we can't follow a manual. In black and white we gag all the possibility out of everything. Without an engagement proposal I told my friend, what story would I tell our kids (this is a sensitive topic for me because I was disappointed my parents didn't have a good story to tell, they just got married after my dad graduated from college)? But the truth is I have a far better story than most, the story of our chance meeting in New York, leaving everything for a chance possibility in Chile and then Paris, no engagement story can capture all of that.

Hot in the City

2010-07-01T21:45:00.002+02:00

New York is a cement oven in summer, but then you only have to deal with it on the street, because every time you walk through the threshold of a door you get smacked upside the head with the unescapable sense of walking into a meat locker. For some reason, when I remember this feeling, it's always a Best Buy that I'm walking into; which makes no sense considering I don't shop at Best Buy. Still, it's not easy to dress for a day that will vacillate between breaking a sweat with the mere effort it takes to breath, to the frozen tundra of Wisconsin in January. I am not equip with any kind of personal bodily cooling reflex so I dress for the heat. I am totally totally unfit for heat, simply looking at people wearing pants or god forbid, jeans in any kind of heat sends me into an anxiety attack. These people seem totally fine in 90 degree weather wearing their body constricting jeans but just looking at them sends my body temperature 2 to 3 degrees higher. It's like phantom pains, as I imagine what I would feel like if I had my own pair of tight jeans on.

So moving to Europe, well, I should have remembered what it was like at the Whitehorse in London summer of 2003. I lived above the pub with 10 or so others, I remember we had a fan, maybe two if we were quick enough to take the one from the common room, and we slept in the position of a jumping jack, or as if we were making snow angels. No touching.

Paris went from October weather, to August, overnight, there was no May, no June, no in between, scorching 90 degrees after day upon day of 50 degree rain. A week ago I asked Sylvain if we could get a fan, imagining a fan so big and powerful, he'd never expect me to be the one to lug it home from the store. Tonight the only conversation I've been able to muster has dealt uniquely with my personal hotness and why he doesn't feel as affected as I do. I mentioned the fan again, which he said I could go get whenever I wanted, "but babe" I said, "don't you think you should carry it home, since I already lug the groceries" then he looked at me and made a circular shape with his hands showing me a fan that wouldn't span more than 8 inches in diameter. But that won't be of any use, I say, we need something powerful. My heart is set on the fan's that my employers bought in April, one's that look like big round TV sets, the kind of TV sets rich people have in their bedrooms.

Still this no AC thing, I'm kind of all for it. I don't get for example why stores can't just turn on the AC, why do they have to make it meat locker cold? I mean, it's makes dealing with the heat that much harder to bear when leaving the meat locker space. I know it feels good to have those sweat droplets on the backs of your legs and dripping down your back freeze dried within moments of entering the AC'd space, but it would feel just as nice to walk into a cool space that isn't refrigerated. With all the talk of high energy cost, and environmental damage, AC is a major offense. I respect Europeans for their ability to make a fan work for them. The Metro here has no AC and no one even seems to notice, there are no window AC's it's not even an option that registers for these people. Although if it did, it's be pretty hard to fit into these French windows that open up like doors. In August I'm going to visit my parents for a week, if I come home in summer I pack my winter sweaters and sweatshirts. Wisconsin gets as toasty as anywhere else in summer, but my parents blast the AC to an uncomfortable level, especially considering they live in the country and simply opening the windows would offer the ideal nighttime sleeping, breezy and cool, walking up with the natural morning instead of the climate controlled AC that has me layering another quilt on so I don't catch a cold. In New York I used my fan ever night, over the years I'd used it year round to drown out the noise of rowdy roommates, to keep me cool, to muffle the street noise of New York, I'm gonna put that fan in my room this August close the vents and open the window,

Having Kids and taking care of them

2010-06-23T21:48:00.003+02:00

I think as a nanny I have had to face a lot of "stuff" that I hadn't had too much reason to consider otherwise. I've had tons of mothers I've met at the park acknowledge my job is really hard, these are professional women who have either taken leave to look after their kids before they attend school, or they don't work on Wed, where here in France many mothers get off because the kids don't go to school on Wed.

The first thing I realized was don't become a nanny if you're educated. I have met some professional nannies who want to be nannies, but even though I have an education in education I find the lack of intellectual stimulation, and the daily battle of trying to get two children to eat their food a personal affront. Today I asked S what she eats on the weekend, because I had the sneaking suspicion that it was pizza and chicken nuggets- but her answer- my parents give me whatever I ask for, they never make me eat vegetables- infuriated me. I already assumed she ate crap, but the fact that I am expected to anguish and labor over getting these two kids to ingest vegetables, it's too much. But I take my job seriously, when most the time I can't figure out why- the parents don't back me up with any kind of support- if I say S doesnt get a yoghurt or "treat" unless she eats her vegetables, it is simply ignored on the weekends, and if mom gets home and she asks for one, she gets one. Why do I honestly care if they eat vegetables, I'm not getting a bonus, and their parents aren't losing any sleep over it, but I pull my hair out not just getting them to eat vegetables, but half the time getting them to eat at all. A meal with these two is simply a nightmare.

Second, I realized that if I ever had kids, I want them to be cared for by family. I'm sure there are a lot of amazing nanny's out there, but I doubt most of them are half as invested as I'd want my kids' to be. My aunt babysat me when I was growing up, and she basically ignored us and spent the whole day on the phone or watching televangelists on tv. There was a ton of room for improvement, my aunt was a religious fanatic that made me speak in tongues and pray for our safety when we got in the car, she is a total nut, but my aunt loved me. I take care of these kids for money. The kids often tell me they love me, sometimes I tell them I love them back, but the truth is, I'm their nanny because I get paid to be. I know my mom paid my aunt too, but I was just like her own kid, my mom wasn't paying her to treat me like a princess and dote all her attention on me, I spent hours upon tiring hours languishing in the JcPenny outlet store because my aunt loved to shop and plenty of hours at her nutty church a two hour drive away from home, if we weren't outside or upstairs playing on our own, we were stuck following her around for hours while she shopped at Kmart. I don't exactly advocate for the JcPenny's outlet afternoon, but I believe in having my kid learn from grown ups and if that means going grocery shopping with them, playing on their own while the housework is done or playing with the neighbor kid while a few moms played cards or had coffee, then so be it. The whole idea of a nanny totally freaks me out- I am literally paid to give 9 hours of attention to two kids- 9 hours of personal attention is not what anyone needs.

Finally, I'm getting burnt out on other people's kids, and I resent it. I get paid to spend most of the day with someone else's kids, as an educator I am very well versed in child development, and yet, I get no say, no vote, no opinion (why should I?) but it boils my blood more than anything when the parents make decisions that I find detrimental to the kids, because it's easier for them. I get that they're not my kids, but as an educator you work for a school whose education philosophy mirrors your own, so to work for a family whose values differ from your own, is doing my head in. I have a lot of sway with these kids and I've seen their behavior change for the better, at the beginning there were daily tantrums, I haven't seen a tantrum in months, but every time their parents allow for or disrupt their routine or schedule- I pay for it because the kids fall apart. I may have reigned the kids in some, but believe me, my influence is no where near what their parents have. This isn't like a regular job, no matter what my insight, parent's are considered the experts on their kids- but as a teacher and as a nanny, you'd be shocked at the stuff kids reveal to you, little nuggets that say everything. Parents would do well to ask for some insight from the primary childcare provider and work with them as a team because we see and hear everything from a neutral perspective and like any job we take our role as seriously as our employer does. We aren't parents with all the insecurities that come with that role, we are learning all the time too, but our insight could take years off of the therapy your child may someday seek. I should know, I had the babysitter from a religious nuthouse who mostly ignored our basic needs (attention, hunger, toilet breaks, fatigue), but my issues aren't with my aunt, they're with my parents.

P.S. I am not currently (nor have I ever) sought therapy, as far as I know there is no treatment for having Republican parents...

Food Inc

2010-06-17T19:39:00.002+02:00

For the first time since I started my year as a nanny, while the kids were at school, I turned on the TV. Since then I've had two hours every Tuesday and Thursday which besides a few household chores, I've used to read. Today though, I turned on the tube and tuned into Oprah. I watch her interview Jay Leno whom did not garner any sympathy from me, and then a show about food. Since leaving the states I have given up being a pescatarian for the most part. It was too hard in Chile, where meat isn't so much a staple as there just isn't that much to work with- for variety and because Sylvain's diet was so heavily rooted in meat, it didn't take long for me to cave. In Paris- I believe the culinary goldmine here is just too rich to waste, bring on the pate.

Still a french/Smithie friend of mine and I were riding the metro back from the Shakespeare event and she mentioned that she too was thinking about returning to Chicago- except for the food issue. I was already aware of Abigail's involvement with a farm co-op where she got weekly deliveries of seasonal fruit and veg and how important this food lifestyle was for her. Moreover I had gotten used to paying more for my food here, but something weird happened here, I lost weight. I don't eat less, and my only exercise is our fifth floor walk-up and Saturday swimming- far different from the regular exercise I got in the states. I could be wrong, but I believe that even though I'm eating my way through France, the lack of hormones and antibiotics in the meat here has made a huge difference in my health.

French supermarkets don't often shelve produce, it's there of course, but no one buys it, they get their produce from the weekly farmers markets, and their meat often comes from the butcher. Here you can choose from a much wider variety of meat cuts, but you also have options that Americans just don't have- for one, anti-biotics and hormones are illegal. To some extent factory farming must exist but you can easily buy bio- the French word for organic.

What Abigail said didn't mean much on the train, but as soon as I started watching Oprah, it clicked- I can't buy meat that is hormone and antibiotic free with the same ease and assurance I can here, moreover, lets face it, American's supermarkets stock off season everything, they don't in France. So when you see melon, or berries, you know they are going to be delicious. I am a food lover, but I am not a gardener (yet!) I have no idea when certain things become seasonal except root vegetables (thanks to Thanksgiving) and having grown up in Wisconsin, I know when corn is ready.

This is a pretty big deal for me, I don't eat food with preservatives and I don't have any problem with beefing up my food allowance to make sure I'm getting clean and natural food, without hormones, without antibiotics, without anything messing with it, no thanks, I like my food normal size (you don't realize how obese our produce is until you live in a country where it isn't) and without genetic modification. So as much as the next step of the journey seems to include the US of A, I wonder whether my brief dalliance in meat eating is about to be a memory. I've lived on the coast for so long, I can hardly remember what a drag it is not to have 'fresh" things, fish and fruit de mers will be the hardest to endure, but I know midwest eating lacks the diversity offered elsewhere. Hopefully though, an oven is in the future...

When Paris isn't a Dream

2010-06-09T23:15:00.002+02:00

I had a great talk with a Smithie friend tonight who at least for now is feeling like Paris isn't a dream for her. She's half French but until moving to Paris was living in Chicago (although she grew up in Paris). While washing the wine glass from tonights Smith shakespeare night the dryer asked how I was liking Paris, my answer was ummmmm, and then everyone knew, there are no fireworks. It's been like a mediocre date, not bad, it's still a date, a night out, the food was good, but no sparks. And while everyone laughed because the "umm" was so telling, I shared that I had wondered to Sylvain if our experience would be different if our living environment in a tiny studio apartment/cave in the middle of nowhere in the 18eme had been different. My friend who lives in the 18eme as well, was thinking the same thing. She's ready to move back to the states, probably Chicago for a while, but Chicago is not where she wants to put down roots, and so, who knows...

I told her that before I left New York for Chile I had spent about a year feeling like, I didn't need New York the way that a lot of New Yorkers live off the status of being a New Yorker, the respect you get from the rest of the world or country who see New York as inanely special, thus as a resident, you also must be special too. New York is amazing, but living there doesn't make you any more special than someone who lives elsewhere. Some people don't even notice New York is a hassle to live in, but others stay a few years longer than necessary because they let New York mean more than it is, they can't let go of their identity as a New York resident.

Lately I've had a couple friends who can't wrap their heads around the fact Paris isn't my dream. Paris is an idea for most of the world, an idea that is largely a fantasy, but anyone who lived in our dinky apartment in nowhereville 18eme and went from the job of their dreams to watching other peoples kids... Well, that isn't anyone's dream, no matter where you live and no matter how good the cheese selection is. There are a few Smithies I know here whose visas are about to run out and are scrambling to find work because they want to stay. But I imagine that to an extent they are identifying with the identity that Paris gives them, because Paris is special. They haven't started careers, just moved to Paris to teach English and are probably holding onto some hope that they might meet a Frenchman and live that dream. (Note to anyone holding on to that dream, French people don't marry, and when they do, they definitely don't marry at age 23, so you still won't have any papers to be in the country).

Hiring Season

2010-06-03T22:35:00.002+02:00

Whenever one looks back on the adventures of life, the struggles and trying elements seem to sift out of the memory box and whats left is all the good times. This is convenient in a lot of ways. Already I look back on Valparaiso and what I remember most isn't the boredom of not working, or the kitchen that was always trashed, or the anxiety that I faced in choosing between following Sylvain wherever he was headed next, or going back to New York.

Now we are nearing a crossroads in our Paris leg of the traveling and I'm starting to prepare to return to my life as a teacher. We have decided that I will apply to jobs and if I get one, we'll follow the job. We are limited largely to New York and California, both states I am certified in, but we are most interested in moving (for me) back to Chicago.

I am about 100% sure I will not find work for September, not only is the economy crummy for educators it's a joke for art educators, but even more than that, I'd have a hard time myself hiring someone who wanted to work in Chicago, while they were living in Paris. As savvy as Skype is, I'd have my own reservations about hiring someone to teach young people who I couldn't personally interview. If I weren't in the position I currently find myself in, I'd have a hard time accepting a job at a school I hadn't visited, to teach in a room I haven't seen, and to miss out on the opportunity to talk to people that work there now, to try to glean exactly who I'm working for which would help me assess whether or not I share their teaching philosophy and whether or not they are a good leader.

I'm pretty big on the good leader point. I taught under trying conditions in the Bronx, but I had two amazing women who inspired my teaching and commitment and they listened to me, really listened when I complained about the difficulties I faced in teaching effectively without a sink or classroom, we both knew those circumstances weren't changing anytime soon, but whenever I left our meetings I knew they appreciated I showed up to work everyday and did really good work. I liked the fact that they knew our building was a mess, that it was a space that didn't lend itself to teaching, much less learning in many ways, but they never gave up or gave in or even complained for that matter.

I don't know where my next classroom will be, but I'm excited about my return even if it doesn't happen this fall. This past year I had no idea when I would return to teaching, it felt like a question mark I could not pin down, but lately it feels like things are focusing some, the plan, the timeline, the weirdness of giving up my life and becoming a nanny in Paris is starting to fade some as I gear up for the big return.

A New Beginning

2010-05-31T21:40:00.007+02:00

Today ends easily the happiest year of my life, and by far the most stressful year of my life. Officially the lease of the apartment love of my life (So far) ended and with it the nightmare of 9 months of subletting. I've had my share of issues with sublettors in New York, the crisis hit and I couldn't find a sublettor for more than 2 months, I've had sublettors not pay rent, move out without notice and I had a sublettor hire a lawyer after he failed to pay bills for 6 months and flooded the bathroom- instead of mopping it up, he laid out the weekend edition of the New York Times. I got the money for the bills, but found it too stressful to deal with fighting for the water damage while living in Chile. Last week in New York my neighbor directly below me knocked on the door with the super and complained his ceiling had been about to fall in for... you guessed it, 9 months.

In deciding to move to Chile I had to sublet my own room, with all of my personal things, my paintings, my ultra comfortable bed, and several pieces of furniture I had made myself. I hated leaving, but I had the chance of a lifetime to follow my heart and explore the world. Unfortunately the only person interested in renting my room gave me an immediate bad impression. I had no choice, and even though she was pushy and rude I rented her my room. My rent for my 3 bedroom apartment was 2600 and I rented her my room furnished for 1100- 10% extra for having been furnished. In the 9 months I was gone, rent was never paid by the first despite 3 sublease agreements stipulating this. Bills had become a mess, and although I came home at Christmas to sort out the confusion I was met with hostility and the annoying feeling of having a person you truly found pushy, self-absorbed and unfriendly have intimate contact with all your stuff. Moreover having decided she wanted my file cabinet which had not come with the room, she emptied the contents of what had been a well organized and personal file cabinet into another container so she could use it herself. Thanks for asking...

A couple months later, Sylvain and I decided we weren't interested in living with roommates anymore, we decided to give up the lease on the apartment. Around the same time this girl decided she wasn't going to pay her last months rent despite our sublease agreement specifically dictating the deposit was not to be used for the last months rent. She didn't warn me, or consult me, she just did it. Apparently she had met someone who said I had "stolen" her deposit. I was at a loss for who this could be, as I had never stolen a deposit before. Later I discovered it was someone who moved in for two weeks began classes at Columbia and decided she didn't like her program and moved out. She did not give the required one month notice as stipulated by the sublease agreement, and of course her deposit was forfeited for this reason. Since we had both agreed to these terms I find it rather insane to accuse me of stealing. Put simply, sublettors are a nightmare, you always lose money, and more than anything it is hugely stressful. Last week I was accused of profiting on my apartment because I subletted the room for 10% higher than the rent- this is legal under New York State law. I wonder how this person would have felt if it was his dishes being broken, his things being ruined from never having used a coaster, or spills on microfiber couches. In the end these are just things, and things are not all that important- but one feels a sort of offense when people break, and soil, and take for granted your things.

So when I went home two weeks ago, I just wanted the girl gone, I never cared about the money, she had just been so arrogant and rude, and mean people suck. I just didn't want her in my apartment anymore, which, by the way had not been cleaned since I had left in January, the kitchen had been turned into a recycling center and the shower, oh my god the shower, a black ring of mold around the basin, and it was the orange color of make-up base- needless to say, I didn't shower there until it had been cleaned. When I asked for bill money she refused- saying she always wrote a check to the other roommate- she was apparently afraid I was also a bill stealer, although since the bills were in my name, I do not see the logic in refusing to give a check written out to Con-Ed for all of 18 dollars. In the end I would have happily paid 18 dollars just to see her leave- but she refused and seemed eager to continue arguing over nothing. So I told her to forget the 18 dollars and just, um, leave. She wouldn't and continued to argue for some time, while I sat on my couch and laughed at her. Finally her dad said, but Marina, you're an illegal sublettor so what can she do? And so finally she left. She had been an illegal sublettor, but when she stopped paying rent I told the reality company she was subletting from me, knowing I couldn't trust her and wanting to cover my Parisian ass.

So there it is. My story. An end and a new start. I think I have an unread The Sun to get to... kind of perfect start to this new beginning.

And after Paris?

2010-05-30T13:34:00.002+02:00

Last night Sylvain came home from Marseille having had to take the TOEFL and present himself to a jury at his University. I did not feel like cooking and so we went out to Timbale, the only place in our neighborhood that is pleasant. We had a nice meal and Sylvain told me we could move back in August if I get a job. I had been pushing somewhat for this, but he had always held fast that we would stay until Xmas. So this came as a bit of a surprise, and I had only applied to one teaching job as a sort of well let's just see. We are open to anywhere but there's a crisis so even if we wanted to move elsewhere, NYC is probably the only place I have a chance at getting a job right now.

A week ago I said an emotional good-bye to NYC, my friends sent me off with a consolatory "You'll be back!" and I thought, I hope, maybe. I know I would be happy again in New York, but part of me wants to see somewhere else, try something new. It's been hard starting over in Valparaiso, and Paris, but mostly due to language and paper issues. I can work in America, I have paperwork! I'm a citizen! But my boyfriend is not. So he needs to be able to find an internship somewhere, which in this climate will be hard. His English is fine, as opposed to my Spanish and French, but still, he's French. All of this is, overwhelming. We have a chance to move back in August if I find a teaching opportunity, this would be amazing for me, finally some brain stimulation and life as I once knew it, adult living! On the other hand if I don't find a job we move at Xmas, with potentially nothing. Sure we could move anywhere, our options are open, but how are we going to live? I could substitute, but the struggle would not be over. On the other hand, Xmas gives us more time to figure out what to do with Sylvain, and how to find him a job or internship... There isn't an actual choice to be made here, if I don't get a job, the choice is made for us, if I do, we move to that job... It's just that one of us is always limited without having paperwork...

Location location location

2010-05-29T14:06:00.002+02:00

I spent two summers in London, and they were two of the sunniest, and pleasing summers of my life, typified by happy people sitting out on the green having picnics and a pitcher of pimms and lemonade. Everyone talks about the bad weather in London, but I'd never seen anything to complain about.

Paris is another story, the weather here, is um, terrible. We have had about 4 random days of nice weather in the last three months, 4. If anything can be called typical London weather, I'd say Paris has got it. It rains most days, when the sky is blue, the temperature is cool and breezy. I was depending on the uplifting nature of sunny weather to get me through the next couple months of nannyhood. Who minds sitting at the playground if basking in the warmth of the sun? The sun would be my salve to the monotony and brainlessness of my job.

A week of rain did not go down well after a beautiful week in New York punctuated by picnics with my lovely friends and long walks in the park, something that's impossible to do in Paris as parks don't exist. We are geared up to stay in Paris until Christmas, but I'm finding my resolve to be shaky. Two months of summer sun would bring me to the last leg of the race which I could pysch myself up for after a glorious summer, but if "summer" is going to be a wash, then I don't know how I'm going to keep the troops' spirits alive for another 6 months.

Forward This

2010-05-28T21:06:00.003+02:00

Do you have people in your life who send you forwards about religious or political junk that is so obviously written by some college drop-out in their parents basement who writes r or u instead of spelling out the whole word, or if we're talking spelling- let's face it, no one's perfect, but that's why Word has the "spellcheck" feature, consider using it when wanting to be taken seriously.

Last week my grandmother who is in her 80's sent me yet another forwarded email about Obama and his muslim faith, and why he is a traitor. Some grandmother's bake cookies, and plant garden's they send you cards or call on your birthday, and they call you sugar and ask you about your beau. My grandmother sends hateful emails about democrats and immigrants. I have responded to these emails from time to time, like the one by a "teacher" in California who complained about "illegal" immigrants who attend her school and vandalize the schools computers. Um, yeah, all high schoolers vandalize school property, that's what being bored in class is all about, it isn't just the Mexican's my friend, and the computer and the desk still work even if it has HELL is carved into it's tough plastic outer shell.

I responded because, I happen to be a teacher (or did) and I worked in the college office of a bilingual school where I helped immigrant kids get into college, we had Chinese immigrants, African immigrants, Polish immigrants, Dominican immigrants, and plenty others. We only had one illegal, I know because I had extensive access to parental finances and tax forms. The one kid who was illegal, was sold to his uncle from China, after working in a factory for 3 years at the age of 16. He arrived in New York and shared an apartment with 10 or so other super poor Chinese immigrants, he worked after school and on weekends to pay his uncle back, and he learned English on his own. He was our valedictorian. All on his own he did this. From age 16. I don't know many American's who could do that, 16 or 35, he wanted a chance. It's hard for me to hate on illegal immigrants because, the ones I know are pretty amazing people. I think I might even be an illegal immigrant, and I know I've got guts and balls enough to get a little respect.

However, not everyone appreciated my- "uplifting" tale of some 16 year old kid who fought and made it, he'd be a hero in a movie but in real life no one wanted to hear how my student worked harder and gave up more in his four years of high school than most Americans I know do for most of their life. So this Obama is a muslim traitor forward, I thought, this is ridiculous, every third word is spelled wrong and as much as you may dislike Obama, you can't have it both ways, either you get the Rev Wright scandal or you get to be stupid and call him a muslim (and even if he was, who cares) or a traitor, so why forward this, it's so obviously half-baked and not true. So I hit reply, and sent my Grandma the link to Factcheck.org thinking, lady rather than disseminate angry racist garbage, why not fact check it first!

Of course, everyone always shoots the messenger, yup, once again, I try to speak a little truth and somehow I get blamed for trying to teach an old dog new tricks. But see, that was never my point, I've worked in the South Bronx, I do not carry around with me a little pinch of idealism in my pocket, I get that an old woman in her 80's who for as long as I've known her has called Black people "darkies" and locked her car doors when driving through black enighborhoods isn't going to stop being racist, she's never going to go Left on us, but I thought, since she's also my Godmother and a faithful Sunday worshipper she might try to seek truth.

Instead she went to complain to my mom. Who then got on my ass. Well, you know what, I'm 30 now, and I ain't changing either. I don't care if your 85 or 150, forwards are lame, especially when they're racist, hateful and negative- unless they're about Jesus when they're just crazy. Forwards aren't news, they're not facts, they don't have authors or footnotes or sources or truth.

America the Beautiful

2010-05-21T18:55:00.003+02:00

During the almost 4 days while my mom was here helping me move she wore at least three different t-shirts with American flags emblazoned across her chest. I hate it when people think the American flag is somehow fashion, but also this low-rent Kmart pride in your country sort of pisses me off. Flag fashion should never be worn outside of international sporting events, and even then you're only really justified wearing it when your an athlete. Anyone that takes stock of what our country is, has more to be ashamed of than proud of. This does not mean I don't love my country, but I recognize that it's got a lot of work to do before I would go around wearing it on my body. In the end it's like animal print, always a bad idea, and never classy.

It's said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but I believe it's important to apply that further, like the unexamined country is not worth being proud of, or unexamined dogmatic faith for example.

I say this because coming back "home" has felt great, and so no matter how critical I am of my country, I am, after all, American, and there are many aspects of American life that charm the pants off of me. Paris, London and Valparaiso may have been experiences of a lifetime, but I'll always be American. It's one of the things I worry about most with my boyfriend. I don't want him to lose his identity as a Frenchman, any more than I want to lose my Americaness. I don't know how international couples manage this.

In other news I got another forward today from my grandmother, that called Obama a muslim, and a traitor and had on average every third word spelled wrong. I think everyone with their head screwed on straight knows Obama is not a muslim, but honestly, why is being a muslim so offensive, most muslims are nice people just going about their business no different than their atheist and Christian counterparts.

Leaving Las Vegas

2010-05-20T16:11:00.003+02:00

There are a lot of people in my life who tell me life/my life in NYC is unsustainable, that it's too hard, too expensive, not healthy, too stressful, impossible to raise kids. Some or all of those things may be true, true for some people, but NYC is full of people who don't make a lot of money and make their lives here, raise their children, workout and eat healthy and most importantly are fulfilled and happy.

I left NYC in August last year ready to take a break from New York, in the meantime I have lived in a small city in Chile, and Paris. When we returned from Valparaiso in December it felt like heaven. This last week here has been equally, if not more blissful because of the summer weather.

NYC feels like my home, my soul home, the place where everything rings in harmony. It was really important for me to leave when I did, I got to look at my life in NYC and take stock, what made it harder than it needed to be (roommates, subletters, and my car for the most part). I love my apartment so much it was hard to move to the next step and seriously look at buying, still I grew up where people lived in houses and had mortgages, so it felt like renting wasn't smart. I don't need a car here, and I no longer need to share my living space with anyone but my boyfriend, but was it just a honeymoon period, this desire to "come home". Normally I'd give a lot of stock to this possibility, but when I came back in January I went back to work, worked out at my gym, and fell back into what was almost my life before I left.

But how do you grow old with NYC, there are several apartments opening up in my building this month as people "go home" to wherever they moved here from. I know that moving back here probably means moving to brooklyn or queens, even if the upper west side and harlem hold a permanent place in my heart. I know that I will never want to lug a baby stroller up any subway stairs, and I know that eventually NYC weighs down on you. But even if that weight eventually gets too heavy to bare, what if until it does it makes you really really happy, what if nowhere else every feels this much like home? What if you never find friends like Jon or Renee or Rob/Cindy or Chris elsewhere?

The American Library in Paris and my Kindle

2010-05-08T11:32:00.002+02:00

I love my Kindle, in my book club new members meet me by asking whether I'm Abigail, or the one with the Kindle.... It's just so light and convenient and perfect for a girl living abroad... But having joined the American Library in Paris I've rekindled the joy of book borrowing. It's been a long time since I belonged to the library and it's a great resource and money saver. What's more is there was a growing list of books I wasn't able or didn't want to get (a French book with maps that I thought I'd frequently want to consult etc) on my Kindle and the American Library of Paris conveniently have them in their collection.

Smoking Section

2010-05-04T21:34:00.002+02:00

This easter my mother sent me an elaborate easter bag filled with candy eggs and chocolate inside were some measuring cups- the same ones she pointed out to me at Christmas that I said no thanks to (but no you don't understand! these collapse for easy storage!). For Sylvain the same elaborate bag with chocolate goodness and chewing gum, a lint brush. On the phone she confessed to me she had no idea what to get him, I said, oh, that's easy: nicorette gum.

So last week another package arrived and inside, nicorette gum and the patch. Sylvain, enjoys smoking, he's French, it's part of the culture, the lifestyle, and frankly there are none of those social stigma's you find in the states that demonize smoking or smokers. So while he was interested in cutting back, he had never talked about quitting. Personally, his smoking doesn't bother me, except for the fact that I shudder at the idea of the health problems he might face as a smoker, he's not a chain smoker and he smokes outside so as long as he's taking it easy I generally don't break his balls. Then Saturday he slapped on a patch, and I thought, what is this? The patch is for people who want to quit, it's serious, so I was quietly excited by this turn of events, but I didn't want to make a big deal about it, or blow it out of proportion, after all one day on non-smoking does not a non-smoker make.

After two days of not smoking, I was getting excited, but on the third day his friend Lucio shows up with some beers and I knew this was a test that Sylvain was unlikely to pass. Drinking and smoking go together like milk and honey, it would be hard to do one without the other. And Sylvain didn't, I pressed him to consider staying on the wagon, but I had come home too late and two beers in, his conviction was muddled.

It's hard to know how to be with someone trying to quit, because Sylvain has to want to quit and to want to quit enough to make it stick, the pamphlet says to get lots of support from friends and family so I want to try to be supportive, but without putting pressure or expectations on him. How do you cheerlead without actually cheerleading? He doesn't need me to get worked up when the social pressure to smoke is too convincing, he's not the type who needs someone to say, you can do it! don't break from the pressure! but instead maybe those fighting addictions, just need someone to say, so you had a cigarette, I still love you and it doesn't make you weak or bad.

I watched an episode of this show called Intervention, in the episode Gabe W was struggling with his addiction to heroin and cocaine. His family were all addicted to God and his father considered his addiction a sin, his lifestyle, a sin; that to save him from his addiction he needed to "get right with God". Thankfully the counselor was like, uh, yeah, that's just you judging him, he doesn't need that, it's nice that you have faith, but his addiction isn't about him being bad, it's about him being sick.

The Sun's Deerhunter

2010-04-25T23:13:00.006+02:00

After the volcanic ash settled a package my mom had sent me weeks earlier finally made arrived. The journey looks to have been a rough one as it was broken and stained and open... Nevertheless almost everything made it in fine shape, most importantly my Sun magazine. I had a day off yesterday from nannying so I ran some errands and grabbed the magazine to read on the metro. I started with the Sunbeams in the back (I always read magazine back to front) but after changing metro lines I opened up to the front and began reading the letters to the editor. They were all discussing an interview of David Peterson "The Good Hunter". I had read this article when I got home from Chile and found it waiting for me at my apt in NYC. My dad is a hunter/fisherman and I am uncomfortable with this lifestyle. I remember growing up when we'd be at the cottage when my grandpa, dad and uncle would get up early to go out hunting in the cold Wisconsin morning, the same place where on summer nights we'd spend on the lake fishing till it got dark. All of the men and some of the women in my dad's family were outdoorsmen; hunting and fishing was a family tradition. I grew up with deer hanging in our garage and my dad plucking birds and duck; fall wind scattering down feathers all around the driveway. I was embarrassed by our basement which my girlfriends called the man room, because it was more or less a taxidermy haven with dead animals stuffed and hung on display. My dad would occasionally take me duck hunting with him after work and when I turned 13 he signed me up for hunter's safety. I scored very well on the test (after all this may have been the only test my father took interest in my passing), but afterwards I shot a target once, and shot at a deer once.

At 13 it was pretty clear that I didn't have my dad's athletic ability nor did I share his interests or his temperament, and it made me feel guilty, I felt certain that he would rather have a kid who wanted to hunt, fish, golf, toss the ball and do yard work with him. But I was an only child book worm who liked big cities, didn't mind a messy room and Vogue magazine.

A couple years ago my father and I went on a photo safari in South Africa, he had the option to hunt and he took it. Clearly, this was a big deal for him, he is a good hunter, always gets his deer (even though it's well known that the these African companies make sure you get a deer when you pay hundreds of dollars to spend a day hunting) and he spent mealtimes posturing with a guy from Ohio who clearly was more casual about his hunting (the both got Impala's in the end). While I had Obama buttons on my bag I spent my meals with a special needs teacher who complained about gay couples who had the gall to adopt children and then be the only parents to show up at parent teacher conferences, and a family that flew to Africa for their daughters jump rope competition. I hated that my dad wanted this trophy, I was uncomfortable with the redneck image of hunting, but our family ate the meat and while growing up I never heard too much hunting as sport talk except the good natured jabbing that goes on between brothers. If he was simply going to hunt for the food and the enjoyment of being outdoors, I couldn't complain, because I definitely had more respect for someone who got their meat if they were going to eat it, locally, organically and certainly not factory farmed. Still the stuffed and mounted decor of our house made me wonder if there weren't a significant element of sport involved if the evidence hung all over our walls.

So when the Sun article arrived, I felt like I often do when I meet people who believe in God but aren't asshole evangelists, gay haters, anti-abortion nut jobs, war supporters and the general hypocrite variety. A breath of fresh air- not really interested in hunting for myself, but I guess if you're going to do it as David Petersen does, "ethically" then I guess, I gotta respect. Well that was the easy reading of it... I didn't think too much about it, I just figured, this guys all right, and hopefully there's a lot more hunter's like him, who can see how the sport hunters out there are a bunch of jackasses, who can look at what he does, question whether he does it ethically, and acknowledge that a lot don't.

The first printed letter to the editor, was someone who 'a cause de' the Sun having printed an interview of David Petersen, was canceling his subscription. Which seemed, well, extreme, hasty... I mean, does he imagine that every writer, photographer and worker for the Sun is a vegetarian? I can see writing in and saying as some people did that David Petersen misled readers about vegan diets and the like, but the one thing I love about the Sun is that I get to read something that I often didn't know about, and then, think... Thinking, self-reflection, debate, all of these things, seem far superior then resting high on your horse with unquestioned faith that yours is the superior way. It's often so easy to look at the guy on the other side of the table and feel superior; generalizing that all those guys over there, are bad. Good for the Sun for printing reader's letters to follow-up, it made me think twice about David Petersen, he may be a hypocrite for eating bacon, but I wonder how many of us have shaky integrity from time to time. I enjoyed the article, it seems that all we ever talk about these days is the environment- pretty overwhelming, and critical to our times, so it was nice to read another thread in the story of our times...

Sorbonne Confidential

2010-04-21T20:35:00.002+02:00

I feel like this book is my life in France. Rejection for my life's work... It's so backward, the states may have a lazy attitude towards learning languages, in fact clearly we see very little need to be bilingual- and it's to our own detriment, we will lose in the long run. But Europe knows that learning English is important if not essential, so it's required, but why does France stock it's English teachers with non-native speakers whose sole qualification is passing a super duper hard test/oral that has absolutely zero reference on whether the taker is fluent in English(or other subjects) or has any aptitude for teaching.

Teaching and education is my downright passion, I get worked up about it like nobody I know. France pisses me off. America's education fails in so SO many ways, but we don't go at it with an ass backward arrogance about language, tradition, and in this case protectionism. If you can't speak English, then you sure as hell, aren't going to be able to teach it...

Did I forget Versailles?

2010-04-20T18:57:00.003+02:00

Well thats because palaces turned tourist hot spots hold about zero interest for me. They reduce a massive housing estate to about 20-30 rooms that have been removed of everything interesting and hoards of -I'm sorry but it's true - (or at least it was in my case last Saturday) Japanese tourists clumping together and snapping useless photos that will never turn out because the rooms are darkened to conserve god knows what since all that remained was a sad chair, decorative wall paper and some uninspiring portraiture paintings. Repeat that 20 times and it's easy to ask why, why these places can charge you 15 euro and barely get what could even be considered exercise after all the bottlenecks created by the jammed up lumps of- sorry, Japanese tourists.

I honestly probably never would have made it to Versailles if my friend from high school hadn't invited me, and we did have a lovely day, I just wish I would have said, lets skip the rotting disintegration of times long past and forgotten and lets slather on some sun cream and take a stroll in the amazingly beautiful gardens on this amazingly beautiful day saving ourselves 8 euros. But no time for regrets, too busy rubbing my sore feet. Who knew walking through probably less that a fifth of this palace would drain so much life from the living...

If you ever find yourself living in Paris, or just on a visit, save yourself the money, the time, and the worry, you're not missing a thing, just head straight to the gardens and hide a picnic somewhere in your bag... Also the fountain show, isn't actually a show, they just turn the water on...

Volcanic Ash

2010-04-19T20:39:00.002+02:00

My friend Mike is in France on a wine tour with his seller. The volcanic ash added and extra week to his itinerary and he's here in Paris. Yesterday I met him at the Jardin de Tuilleries and we walked through them to the Louvre and then had a glass of rose on what was the first or second gorgeous summeresque day in Paris. Sylvain met us then after he finished putting some time in working on his paper. Mike was my first friend to really meet Sylvain when we went and stayed with him in San Francisco on my spring vacation about this time last year. Other's had met him briefly almost in passing but Sylvain and I stayed with Mike for a week, and then Sylvain stayed on with him for another 10 days after I went to Chicago to be a bridesmaid in my best friends wedding. We then headed to Montemarte where we hoped to find a place to take him to dinner- Mike and I originally met in Boston where we had both worked at Sandrine's Bistro in Cambridge. I started spending more time with the waitstaff after hours and Mike and I met at a superbowl party as he had left waiting at Sandrine's I assume because he couldn't stand the sub par food and the behind the scenes drama. Mike has spent most of the time I've known him as a sommelier and offering up some of the most enjoyable meals of my life. I have eaten about 5 meals out here in Paris none of which were places I would necessarily revisit, the problem for me is all restaurants look the same here- how do you know where to go and what's going to be good?

So I was anxious to impress my friend in a city whose food and neighborhoods are recognized as some of the best in the world, still I knew only that I liked the neighborhood Abesses. Having seen most of Paris, Abesses is the only place that charms me. Sylvain likens it's charm to the film Amelie, which isn't surprising as that's nearby where it's meant to have taken place. Last week's date night I took Sylvain to Abesses for a raclette and afterwards we walked home through Sacre Coeur. On the way home I noticed a few places that seemed charming and planned to come back soon to investigate further.

It was here that we ended up with Mike. We had another glass of rose for are apero and then he asked to see a bottle of Blasson d'Isan ordered it to be decanted and we had it with our meal. They had a good prix fix menu so we ordered frog legs to start and Sylvain had an amazing looking filet with sauce au poivre that I want to learn how to make as soon as humanly possible, I had the skate which was delicious but over-portioned and left me uncomfortably stuffed and disappointed there wouldn't be room for tarte tartin. Mike had entrecoute and pomme frites. I will remember this meal for a long time, first because I tried frog legs which don't taste like chicken but do taste something like fish, the wine which was perfect, the sauce au poivre which will probably change my life to some extent, and of course the company. I don't know exactly how to say what I want to say, which is just that meals and sharing food are really important to me, I put a lot of love in cooking for Sylvain, just as I love having brunch with my girlfriends, but whether Mike cooks for us, or just shares a meal, it's always, always an experience that ends up as a great memory.

Coaching

2010-04-11T20:24:00.002+02:00

Today Sylvain and I went to play tennis again, it was a beautiful spring day and without a wet court our game improved, a little. We borrowed what are next to the worst rackets you could imagine without going as far back as the wooden frames of the John McEnroe era. I've played tennis for a long time, taken lessons and still I remain a pretty mediocre player with inconsistent shots and no speed on the court. Still our first time out I decided Sylvain would want to know his shots were dumped in the net because of his flat feet or open stance even if my shots often flew wildly out of court because of my own bad form.

At the end of our play this week I was bored with Sylvain playing his 12 year old boy who needs to "kill" the ball- any sport with a ball, and a boy of any age will decide to try to hit it with bat, club, or racket in an effort to seemingly destroy the ball. Sylvain did this occasionally throughout our game each time usually sending the ball into the net, and at the end I'd had enough "You are not good enough to hit like that!" meaning he didn't have enough control to use his power to accurately hit shots into play. But really he just thought it was fun to try to whack the ball with all his power, it's just that it never went over the net, unless it went so far over the net it also went over my head. Nonetheless, I didn't say what I meant, because what I meant was: stop doing that, I want you to put the ball in play so I can try and hit it back, but of course, that's not what I said, essentially what I said and what he heard was you're not good enough.

After a bit of a row, and some discussion regarding the fact that I am not gifted with his natural athletic ability (his parents are world class runners) he said this: "You are always trying to tell me how to play, and you're not much better yourself."

I made a point of not critiquing his play this week, but obviously our first session had made an impression. At that point I had to laugh because last year just after Sylvain moved to Chile I went home to visit my parents before following him to Chile. I was worried about some unresolved issues that wouldn't be resolved until I got to Chile, so when my parents and I went to play golf, I played terribly. My mother is not a very good golfer, she never keeps her head down and thus never hits the ball solidly so it dribbles here and there. Nonetheless she started giving me unsolicited golf advice and after a while I said, MOM! stop trying to tell me how to golf, when you can't even golf yourself.

The point of course, is that no one likes to feel criticized, and whether you're trying to help, it's rarely seen in that light. When you're preforming poorly for whatever reason, lack of athletic ability, it's a new skill, or you have something else on your mind, unless you ask for support, it's generally not welcome.

J'aime beaucoup ce que vous faites- I love your work

2010-04-10T11:38:00.003+02:00

Yesterday was gorgeous outside and I brought A to the park because her parents had a school function with S. A and S got sand buckets for Easter so we headed straight to the sand box, and there was a mother I recognized from seeing her chase her son Michaelangelo around in front of the Mayors office where I occasionally wait to pick up S from school. Melanie knows her and she introduced me briefly once a couple weeks ago while she was having a gouter with her daughter Isabella after school. She is an interesting woman- she is originally from Florida and it looks as if she has baked herself good and brown- she is the cliche- she wears light blue eyeshadow, she's a natural blond but her hair has additional processing to make it even whiter, she is very thin, wears clothes that wouldn't be called age appropriate, but despite all this, I kind of like her- she's a character. She's lived in Paris for 16 years and married an italian, nonetheless her French is all American- she sounds just like we all did in French class when we were 12 and although she doesn't stumble through any of the pronunciations it's funny to see this 40 something year old woman living in this posh moneyed neighborhood of Neuilly conversing loudly on her phone in English, looking like a leathered California beach bunny. She is just so American, but she told me her husband and her own three places in Le Marais- the soho of Paris and she lived in New York before moving to Paris. I guess the point is- she doesn't give a damn if she hasn't taken on all the French stuff- she learned French, but sounds as foreign as any tourist, she dresses like a teenager with low rent taste, she sits in the park with her pants rolled up and the straps of her low-cut top hanging off her shoulders to avoid tan lines despite the fact her skin is screams skin damage from head to toe and she doesn't hide her Americaness in the least. Good for her.

Afterwork Sylvain told me to meet him at Opera for our date that night. He brought me to un piece de theatre J'aime beaucoup ce que vous faites- translated roughly to I love your work. My french has not improved to the extent that I got any of the jokes- this was a comedic piece- well actually I got two of the easy ones. Watching French TV (American shows helps the most if you can handle hearing french voices replace familiar actors) has helped a lot, just recently I realized I suddenly understand most of what we watch. Even if the comedy washed over my head it was so satisfying to enjoy not being lost in French. Unlike watching TV I couldn't turn to Sylvain and ask for a translation- but I didn't care because there was something more authentic in being able to understand actual people speaking, versus their on screen images. The actress in the piece was a doppelganger for my Aunt Loretta when she was in her late 30's.

English Teaching Assistant

2010-04-08T19:14:00.002+02:00

About 6 months ago my friend Laura from Wisconsin who I met in Chile told me about a program in France that allows you to teach English as an assistant which in return offers minimal pay but a work visa and the opportunity to live in France for 7-9 months. Of course I applied and thought without a doubt, since I am the perfect candidate, I will get one of these positions. The only concern we had was if I would get placed in Paris, or at least somewhere we'd consider living- which was pretty much, Paris, maybe Lyon.

Since moving to Paris in January I've vacillated between not really thinking Paris was that special (as a place to live) to feeling "ok" about it, not really loving it, but being perfectly ok living here, until Tuesday evening after Smith book club when I thought- I'd quite like to live here just one more year.

Wednesday morning that desire was dashed when at 7:45 my IPod alarm went off and I checked my email. My application for the teaching assistantship was rejected. More than anything this news was a shock, in some ways it's disappointing because the opportunity to stay in France no longer exists, but every American I've ever known who lived in Paris got into this program, teachers I've worked with, Smithies Ive met- so why not me? My age is the only discriminating factor- you can't do the program after the age of 30 and I'm about to turn 30- moreover everyone I know who has done it has been about 22.

It's hard to say what's next, back to Brooklyn?

Climbing the walls at MurMur

2010-04-03T17:56:00.005+02:00

Every week Sylvain and I have a date night- each week we trade responsibility for planning it. Sylvain usually plans a dinner date which is sort of perfect every other week, but I'm more keen on doing something out of the ordinary, and today we went to MurMur to do some climbing. I tried it once on a Hyde retreat and Sylvain is really sporty with a lot of upper body strength so I figured he might enjoy it.

For reasons I still don't understand, he thought I was skilled in climbing- that I could show him how. I told him I'd only gone once, but when we got to actually doing it, we had to ask the person next to us to show us how to knot the rope. When I did it at Bath with Hyde we had a belaying device that was sort of idiot proof where even if you were texting on your mobile and your partner fell, he'd live. These were not the same kinds of ropes, but it was super simple after someone shows you once. Nonetheless my initial ignorance made Sylvain uneasy and it took him a few climbs before he felt comfortable with me belaying him. In short, what a great way to determine whether your partner trusts you- every couple should have to do this before committing to anything regarding a marriage contract. Before we met Sylvain broke his leg climbing a wall so he had reason not to want to take it lightly, but still, I was surprised he found it so difficult to trust me/enjoy it at first. I jump into everything, I trust that if it was life threatening or super hard they'd make you inscribe in a class before letting you off on your own.

I like sports and trying anything new although I'm not bothered by achieving any kind of expertise, Sylvain is competitive though, and wanted to do the line climbs where you are only meant to use the red grips, or the white grips and these are labeled with a difficulty level. I just want to get up to the top and am less bothered by following a line or "cheating" with a quick step on a green grip. We did a lot of lines anyway, as it was tempting to try, but when the walls were inclined I was just happy to get up. There were some really incredibly difficult wall courses and it was fun just to watch advanced climbers scramble up or plan their maneuvers - there was one girl climber with some agility which was impressive, all the male climbers were light, but men in general have the kind of upper body strength that makes this kind of work a little easier to manage. What we didn't have was the hand chalk that becomes essential after a couple hours of climbing. The grips can be so tiny and your hands just can't maintain a hold on them without it after a while; this was not included with the equipment rental, but the regulars had their own pouches attached to their climbing belts which I had first imagined were pockets for water bottles.

When we were finished I told Sylvain that one of the things I like about date night is how much we've been able to experience in Paris just because every week we make and effort to get out and do something, already we've done so much more than we ever did in New York I explained, but then he reasoned, if we had started date night in New York, I would have had to host every week as he had been skint and I covered most of our socializing as it was. He had a point.

3 year old's

2010-04-02T22:10:00.002+02:00

I am nannying for 2 girls, the older is tough, her instinctive reaction to anything is a serious tantrum-like episode, but I don't entertain tantrums and she is starting to learn that there is no point in exercising these theatrics with me- that's not to say they've disappeared but, we shut the tear factory down pretty quick. She is about to turn 4 and is adjusting to having left her life in the suburbs of Boston and living in another language and a completely different lifestyle- it's an adjustment. But she is my favorite, when you're teaching you always have your favorites, they're usually not the toughest, but they usually have a sly something or other. S would not normally be my favorite but because she's almost 4 she and I can talk which is a life saver in this kind of job. A is only 2 and it's tough to share ideas, feelings and secrets. S is at that age where almost everything she says is 'why' this is not the part I like, but she does say some pretty funny stuff. The other day she asked me who came out of my mom's belly first, my boyfriend, or me. I'm older than Sylvain, so I said, me, her follow up was- so does he sleep in a crib? I laughed and said, "no" and she wondered, so, is he like 3 or 4?

One day when I was leaving S followed me down the stairs a bit, I asked if she was planning on coming home with me, because I didn't have an extra bed, she suggested she could sleep on top of me. Mais, non.

When I started this job, I started thinking a lot about what I was like around 3, and my memories of my life then, in doing so I started telling S about my life as a kid, mostly because what else do you talk about with an almost 4 year old, she doesnt care about my visa problems, that I think I'm starting to look my age, or how I miss being a teacher. In fact, she doesn't want an art teacher for a babysitter- which is a bit of a point of contention between us- because for my own self-image, I need to still be an art teacher, and for whatever reason she really doesn't want me to be one.

In the grand scheme of things I landed about the best job I could have found as a clandestine in Paris. I'm so lucky, and I know as banal as the daily routine of changing poop filled diapers and scheming to get them to eat- literally standing there and feeling my blood pressure raised while 2 little girls mange their dejeuner hoping that broccoli doesn't get thrown across the table and that the 20 minutes passes without tears that I can learn a lot from this experience. Maybe to become a better teacher, maybe to prepare me to become a mother. Admittedly I was ready to put that dream to bed after my first week, but if I could start motherhood with a 4 year old and take all the bathroom and diaper elements out of it, I think I could manage.

Initiation

2010-03-30T19:00:00.002+02:00

I've moved to 3 different countries and each time figuring out where to buy a hairdryer, setting up a bank account, how to rent an apartment, how bills work, and how to go about finding a job can be overwhelming. Living abroad as a student generally comes with some orientation, and always a few other foreigners who are stuck figuring everything out too, so if nothing else you have someone to make mistakes with, tear your hair out in frustration and feel dumb, lonely and lost with. Sylvain went to Chile early and showed me most of the ropes when I got there, but although he's French, he's not a Parisian and he's not an American without papers. So when I needed a hairdryer after mine blew up, he was dumbstruck- until we asked a female friend who said FNAC and a light bulb went on in his head and he seemed to remember he was French, oh, yeah, FNAC a major french electronics store...

I had a lot of help from Smithie's who had done JYA here or have just been here, and the internet always helps too. Still I feel like it would be nice if everything you ever wanted to know was sort of compiled for easy access. Most people don't leave their jobs and lives to move to Paris while their boyfriend finishes school, so in all likelihood it's not a one size fits all kind of post, but I bet it kills at least two birds with one fly for most.

Finding a yoga place has proved to be an uphill challenge, so far I have gone to three classes in three different centers all which didn't exist, couldn't be found, or were canceled. Still one thing that helped me find a class that did at least exist but was canceled- rather than just googling something like YOGA PARIS was going to the 18ieme arrondissement's Marie's web page- the local mayor's office. Here was a great resource of less expensive and of course less posh yoga classes in my neighborhood. Still the class I went to had nice people, wasn't over-crowded and was quite a clean and comfortable space- sort of dance room at the YMCA. I tend to like my classes a little more hippy dippy incense and OM, but since it's local and not overpriced I have no real complaints- except the class was canceled so who knows if the teacher was any good.

I found a pool right away, but as usual when moving to a new place it took me a while to feel settled before I just went. I was glad when I did, I love swimming, and it's become my saturday morning routine. That's the thing about new places, you have to jump right into what would have been your old routine, the longer you wait the more you feel like a stranger in a strange land who doesn't fit in.

It also helped to join the Smith Alum club here which I've frequently written about. I read today in the NYT that joining one club or activity that meets once a month makes people more happy than extra income. I'm referring to David Brooks piece about Sandra Bullock and her current state of happiness having just won and Oscar that will increase her salary, but having lost her husband to extra marital affairs...

Initiation part deux tomorrow...

Tennis season

2010-03-28T15:17:00.002+02:00

Last week S came with me to watch his daughter at gymnastics, we were talking about missing the states and I said I was eager to return to get my tennis racquets, later that day he got his out of his storage space and said I could borrow his and his wife's. I took them despite his 4 year old daughter's protests that she didn't want me taking anything of theirs. Yesterday we ended up meeting a friend at Chatelet where the metro exists into some god awful mall. I've lived in cities so long mall's haven't really been a problem, but malls exist in Paris which on a Saturday are like suburban malls at Christmas, both mine and Sylvain's idea of hell. We did however run into Go Sport and grab a tube of balls for 10 overpriced dollars. Its been rainy sort of on and off so I didn't think we'd have a chance to play but today Sylvain wanted to go to the track and run and I wanted to go with and hit balls against the wall which he said would annoy him and all the other people on the track running, but as an American who wants to play tennis, I wasn't really bothered about annoying anyone running around in circles. We brought both racquets and 7.50e just in case we could get one of the three courts and because of the dampness and early rain this morning we got one.

A taste of the new season was a spring delight, but I still can't wait to go home and get my own racquet.

French Fashion

2010-03-26T19:34:00.002+01:00

For almost all of my life all I've ever cared about are clothes. Not in the snobby horrible way, but I loved fashion as sort of a artist statement of mixing and matching colors and textures. When other girls were buying YM and Cosmo, I was spending 5 bucks of my babysitting money on Vogue so I could rip out all the haute couture adverts and wallpaper my bedroom with them. I never bought video counsels or CD's or anything but nice clothes and shoes. So in a lot of ways Paris should be a dream. The fashion here - and you wonder why in this age of internet and globe trotting- it's just better.

They have the most stylish garments here, especially the kids- who by far dress better than anyone else- I'm talking 5/7 year olds. The thing I appreciate about Paris fashion is you see very little sects of people dressing a certain way, for the most part you don't see hipsters cutting up curtains and wearing them or non-stop skinny jean from mid-town to park slope. The french women seem to always be wearing high heels, which I no longer want any part of, and more often than anywhere else I've ever seen Black is about the only color you can wear.

The thing is, 6 months ago when I packed up my apartment and had three garbage bags of clothes (to keep) I decided I wouldn't buy anything until I'd worn out all I had. It was pretty easy to do in Chile, there wasnt anything I wanted to buy or wear from there, but a major shift in my thinking happened, and now as much as I appreciate the gorgeous coats that all the woman wear here, I no longer desire. Next time I need a coat I'm going to buy a beautiful one I love- but that desire to shop and try-on and have, it has somehow shriveled up and died. I also have yet to discover where you can buy all these beautiful things- the Parisians have a plethora of clothing stores but all the same ones as in America.

Until then, I'm hooked on Habitat. A better version of Crate and Barrel.

Fear Factor

2010-03-20T12:47:00.002+01:00

The little girl I babysit for is full of fear. Everyday there is something new she finds to be afraid and she looks around at the world seeing it through the lens of fear. This of course is very sad but its also very interesting because although I've met a lot of people like her as adults- I assumed they lived in fear because their parents instilled fear in them being over-protective or whatnot- her parents are pretty average as far as I can tell- careful, but not nutty. So she seems to have been born with this fear because her sister will do or try anything without thinking twice. If the little girl falls - even the big falls- she stands up and goes "I'm okay" the older sister cries over even the smallest tumbles, ones that couldn't hurt even the most fragile of bodies.

The other day we saw a blind person using one of those blind person canes- she asked about the girl and I told her she was blind and like most 3/4 year olds she followed up with "why" (I could write a whole post based on how frequently she asks "why") I answered that either she was born that way or she had had an accident that caused the young woman to lose her eyesight. I did not dramatize the issue but the little girl was immediately driven to a heightened state of anxiety over potentially losing her own eyesight. I guess in a way she personalizes everything: on a daily basis either picking her up from school or on our way to and from the park we see children on their own- usually it's because they have run ahead to the end of the block while their nanny follows some distance behind with the baby carriage, or two sisters are together, or a boy is playing around on his own- the kids can be up to 9 years old but she is stricken with anxiety and says "where is that little boys mom or dad he's too young to be on his own". She is worried for their safety it seems but I think it has more to do with her own fear of being abandoned - although these kids are usually running around carefree or in fits of giggles, her assessment of the situation is fearful. Food is no exception, she is so fearful to try anything new, even if it's a food she likes i.e. chicken nuggets versus broiled chicken breast. I hope she grows out of this fear, but I think it is something she will end up tackling as an adult, because as of now it's really a lens through which she views the world and much work will have to be done before she feels confident enough to step out of the safety that she finds in fear.

French Kids

2010-03-18T19:45:00.002+01:00

I've been a nounou for about two weeks now. Before landing a job with an American family from Boston I was offered a job by a French family whom I did a trial day with. The hours for the French job were 7:30-7:30 and the pay, although good, was a bit less (and taxed), but I've never been too bothered by money- the fact was, the hours were unmanageable. On the trial day I went with the old nanny to pick the two older boys up from school, the nanny brought along a snack of milka chocolate bar (the best!) inside baguette. What a snack! But it's pretty much the cultural norm- every kid was noshing on chocolate bar or nutella and baguette. In Neuilly where I'm working now the playground we go to only belabors the point, the French are crazy skinny and call an afternoon snack bread with a big chunk chocolate bar inside. What were they thinking during the American low-carb craze not so long ago, I imagine they were laughing while they stuffed their faces with warm baguette with chocolate melting inside (the best and original version of this snack)...

But the family I work for, like most upper middle class American families want their kids to eat a balanced diet full of vegetables and fruit. The kids arent really jiving with this, but the dad seems particularly keyed into their diet and exercise regime. The concierge of their building is a bit mad and whenever the kids are coming or going she makes a big deal about them and started the routine of giving them chocolate. This has thrown a real wrench in dad's food pyramid - the kids don't actually have sweets except for yoghurt but this mini sized candy bar leaves dad pulling his hair out. I plan to be the type of hippy dippy mom that gives my kids raisins and granola along with nuts and berries so by no means am I judging him- it's just slightly amusing to be a witness, because he obviously doesn't want to offend Yo-Yo (thats the concierge's name) by telling her no more candy bars- when they first moved to Paris a few months ago, she was a big help in getting them settled as they don't know French.

Still as an American in Paris there it's hard to miss the irony- even the little ones are chicken legs and boney arms against our chunky American baby fat version.

Smith Book Club

2010-03-13T12:09:00.003+01:00

We read The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, not my favorite book; I found the main character pathetic, depressing and difficult to relate to although the book seemed to emulate real life more so than most books that so often wind up culminating in some happy ending or at least where "everything works out for the best". It's about an Ethiopian immigrant who fled to D.C., the book could have also been called failure to launch. I didn't find the writing style very compelling either and I think if the author had developed some of the reasons (survivors guilt?) the main character wasn't able to make a good life for himself, we as readers could have perhaps felt something for him. I didn't like the book but I respected that the author wrote a book that didn't romanticize life- people who get lemons in life, often don't make lemonade, let's face it- as a teacher from the Bronx I see it more than most, but even when we get a fair shake a lot of us waste it.

Anyway we met at Marjorie's house, I talked to Marjorie at the first Smith party and she emailed me to help me find nanny work, she is simply put, a really lovely woman. She obviously has a very nice life in Paris judging by her sweet husband and fancy apartment, but she doesn't seem like many of the Smith alum who are cut off from contact from "real" people like the woman who told me only immigrants ride the subway anymore. She may have naturalized herself as a French citizen, but girlfriend, you're still an immigrant.

There are about 10 people in the Smith Book Club 4 who graduated from Smith in the early 50's and promptly moved to Paris to marry some Frenchman, 3 or 4 who are in their 40's one who went to the olympics for crew and another who got into SciencePo (one of the most distinguished universities in the world) and several who worked as journalists here, then there are the two of us from '02. Everyone wanted to see my Kindle and discover how it worked but in showing it around I promptly spilt red wine all over it, but seemed to have saved it from death. We ate a lovely dinner of chicken potpie and apple crumble with vanilla haagen daaz (for having spent most of their lives in Paris what an American meal!) and had a lively discussion about the book. Next month we are having at Eda's who when I mentioned I didn't have an oven but loved to cook invited me to come over and make the meal at hers because she doesn't cook, fine by me, but boy I better hit a home run- these old girls are tough!

Paris Commuting

2010-03-13T11:42:00.002+01:00

I set two Ipod alarms one at 7:45 and one at 8:14, I wake up at 7:45 and leave the house at 8:15. If Sylvain wakes up with me we take the train together, or he sleeps in and gets up just before I leave. Then in the cold morning we walk to the 12 and with the rest of the commuters wait for the train and either fight for a seat if we get lucky or fight for a space if it's already full. I can't say I've done much train commuting but I've done enough to know that it's awful in Paris. At Concorde I change for the 1 and without fail one must shove themselves on the train leaving everyone except those with seats breathing down each other's necks and poking each other in with elbows and bulk- it's a nightmare, and to start your day like this- struggling to breath and stand (holding on is neither necessary or possible- as one simply surrenders one's dignity to live like a sardine and is thus supported by the masses). The worst part is that each stop the train stays twice as long at the platform because people who don't fit insist on trying to fit thus delaying the train as it's doors cannot shut- this extra wait time can make you up to 20 minutes late. At least once a day there is a shouting match due to the pushing, shoving and tripping that happens.

Going home is worse- if that is even possible. I've had to wait for four trains just to squeeze myself in a car. Normally I find pushing your way on a train when you hardly fit poor form, but then you realize if you don't you'll be here waiting 30 minutes.

I've whined about missing teaching before, but this week of working has made me miss teachers hours- in January I worked at Hyde and used public transportation and found that, unlike driving it was stress free and surprisingly timely- of course I was reverse commuting from Manhattan to the Bronx. But leaving by 7am you miss most of the morning commute and finishing at 4 gives you time to go to the gym or the park or run errands after work without feeling knackered.

Finding your Sport

2010-03-03T14:23:00.003+01:00

I first got into swimming when my suitemate at DePaul invited me to go with her. I said yes and we went every tuesday and thursday to this basement pool from the 60's or 70's with tan and brown tile on the walls. It was the underbelly of something. I tried to pick it up again at Smith but the pool hours were finicky (unlike at DePaul where the pool was open all the time) and this made it crowded and I've never enjoyed sharing lanes with more than another person. Eventually I gave it up and then when I moved to London I started going to the Peckham pool - in London you couldn't buy a monthly pass you had to pay for a membership and then pay again each time you used the facilities, moreover you paid more if you went on peak hours. The peak versus off peak hour thing drives me crazy but its common practice even at Yoga classes to pay more for peak hours.

After London I gave it up again until NYU where the swimming facilities were pretty great, music played in the background although it was a bit difficult to hear but it was something to tune into, and while it was a busy pool it never felt too crowded- although maybe I tended to frequent it on "Off-Peak" hours... It was a great respite in the summer when Manhattan turns into a concrete oven and relief is hard to come by. So after refusing on moral grounds to pay 20 dollars an hour for yoga, and bored by laps at our local track I decided to find a pool. It's 3 euro to go to any public pool in Paris and there were 3 in the 18e where we live, the first one Sylvain found for me online was located in a historical building used in the filming of Amelie. I decided against it after reading the reviews by other swimmers. The second I decided to give a go. It's really gray here these days, it looks more like London than some parts of London and the area this pool is in- about an 10 minute walk from our apartment reminds me of where I lived in Whitechapel.

I handed my 3 euro to the guy at reception and then in an anti-room with benches one removed their shoes. There was one door which inevitably led to the locker room- but only one? Did a second door lead to separate male and female locker rooms? I asked- no, there was just one. Bathrooms at Starbucks and restaurants were often unisex in France (or at least Paris) but sharing a locker room seemed a little strange to me. The locker room perimeter was all changing cubicles and the middle area were four rows of lockers, so actually it wasn't weird at all, it just took out the leisurely naked aspect of locker rooms. So I changed and headed to the shower area where on one side were toilets which I'm guessing no one ever used. It was all sort of wet in this room because of the showers and there were neither toilet seats or toilet paper. So I took my shower and headed to the pool- between the shower room and the pool room was a cesspool of sorts where the floor dipped about 8 inches for about 3 feet now collected with nasty water. The pool was sort of 80's looking but generally nice, 4 or 5 lanes for swimming and I shared with two men; one wall was all window which looked out to a blue sky and a track and soccer fields. In France speedos are required for health and sanitary reasons- I've been told because the kind of men's trunks Americans often wear may also be used in everyday life as shorts and someone may have worn them riding on the bus and picked up some germs. I figure, whatever, who cares, thats why public pools are laden with chemicals, but apparently the French do.

I went back on Friday and when I entered the building I was hit forcefully with the unmistakable smell of pot smoke. It wasn't like when you faintly smell beer on some closet alcoholic at work, it was like the basement from that 70's show. The man at reception seemed not to notice his working space had become a weed den, and while I don't necessarily have a problem with marijuana smoking, it did seem odd to be present at a sort of YMCA space.

Raclette

2010-03-01T14:07:00.002+01:00

Friday evening we set out for Lyon, it was Sylvain's birthday and it was time to meet the parents. On the two hour train trip down we watched the Hangover on our laptop and then a short little man in red, Sylvain's father picked us up for the ten minute ride home. Sylvain asked for a raclette for his birthday dinner, he had been talking about raclette since I met him because apparently his brother ate it everyday. Raclette is a delicious way to put on some weight, a degustation delight. I imagined something similar to fondue but its a little different, although both involved 70's looking appliances that melt cheese. Plates of huge slices of cheese and sliced meats were passed around and bowls of gerkins, pearl onions and potatoes too.

There are these circular warming plates with little cave openings to put your little plate of cheese to melt. Then you dump the melted cheese on your plate and eat with sliced meat, potato and gerkin- or whatever combination your personal palette prefers.

I did indeed put on a cheese belly at Sylvain's parents. Being part of their family dinners was a pleasant departure from the 7 minute meals I so often shared with my parents. It isn't that my family is lame, it's just that there are only 3 of us and one course. We had at least 12 at Sylvain's, his parents his oldest sister her husband and Millie their daughter, his younger sister and her fiance, his brother and his parents including us. They ate in what I imagine is a particularly French style, but it suited me just fine. Starters were a cooked vegetable- then a meat- which I always passed on, but it hardly mattered because after the meat course there was a cheese or yogurt course, followed by a fruit course, and then finally coffee. Meals took at least an hour but every minute was a pleasure.

I had a great time eating at Sylvain's parents house but there was one thing that made me a little uncomfortable. Meals were made far more lively with 12 people around the table, but their house was on the small side for so many inhabitants. I feel more comfortable in my parents largely open plan house with 3 bathrooms and without kids around (Sylvain's parents babysit Millie) no toys to clog up hallways and corners. Moreover without any of us being National Champions for sports or music we needn't find endless shelving space for the dozens of cups, trophies and medals. After the birthday raclette and a chocolate and lemon tart we finished our wine and toasted with champagne so I guess it was no surprise when the next morning Sylvain's 64 year old father finished only 4th in his half marathon- too much partying the night before...

Shakespeare and Co. and the Kindle

2010-02-25T14:41:00.006+01:00

Right on Broadway across from NYU is a bookstore called Shakespeare and Co. I was a regular during my days at NYU because it was indie, conveniently located and because someone who worked there had a collage of actor Gael Garcia Bernal's clippings collaged behind the counter. The Shakespeare and Co. bookstore is a Paris original located just across the street from Notre Dame. It's one of those old cramped bookstores you can barely move in, it's crammed full of bottlenecks, books and Americans and I doubt there's a place in Paris that feels more New York than that space. I arrived to watch a couple older guys taking pictures of the store front and inside a younger guy was asking some basic how do I get around Paris questions - the kind you would, as a tourist only ask a fellow sympathetic compatriot - while Ingrid Michealson played in the background- can you get more New York, I mean really.

I don't think I have any girlfriends who don't relish an hour in a used/new bookstore. Now that I have a kindle, I buy less books in the flesh, but the experience of perusing is still as tactile and comforting. I love my kindle but there are two things I noticed that could be considered flaws- and perhaps I just haven't worked out how to manage them, but here we go, one it doesn't tell you page your on, it tells you what percentage of the book you've read but for book groups and whatnot when you want to refer to a particular passage I havent found a way to go straight to that page/passage- Im sure there might be a way, but it isn't entirely obvious as of yet. And two, every time I read a good book I want to share it with someone. I generally pass on books once and leave them to the new owner to hold on to them or pass them on, so I don't really mind if like the Barnes and Noble e-reader the nook, I was only able to pass it on once, but not being able to pass it on at all, is a bummer. There is also one more thing that bugs me about my kindle, being abroad I have to pay 1.99 more to download them- I could be wrong but that's just 2 more bucks in Amazon's pocket- it can't actually cost $2 more to send it France then to anywhere in the 50 states. I didn't get a kindle to save money on buying hardcover books, I bought it in order to get books in English while living abroad and because I was looking at a foreseeable future of nomadic life it sure did lighten my load. Overall, excellent buy for my lifestyle but I think Kindle is going to have to compete with the nook in allowing you to share your books with at least one other friend, and figure out a way to show how much you've read along with what page your reading...

When it comes to electronics I am not all that interested in e-devices that allow you to take photos, make phone calls access internet and listen to your music. I think that Kindle has got a market hold having been around for a while they are a step ahead at ironing out any kinks and troubleshooting consumer preferences but they have to streamline their product to consumers needs because anything Apple i whatever is going to rake in consumers because of brand loyalty and social stature- Apple is the Nike of electronics. I love my blackberry and would never switch to an IPhone because it meets the needs I want it to meet, but there are plenty of people out there who like flash.

Singing Starbucks Praises

2010-02-24T18:58:00.003+01:00

There is often little to find charming about taking a coffee at Starbucks. Before I left New York I went to Barnes and Nobles to read and often had a coffee to justify my reading books and magazines I had no intention of buying. I noticed that unlike during the surge of Starbucks popularity however many years ago, when their coffee slogs steamed giant vats of skinny milk and pumped serving after serving of espresso grounds into scoops Starbucks baristas were now sticking a cardboard coffee cup on a ledge and pressing a button similar to what they do at McDonald's when you order a medium coke. I also noticed my cardboard coffee cup felt lighter and when I opened the lid to add sugar there was hardly anything in there. Bummer, those expensive coffees were overpriced but at least they were American style super-sized. Today, at least in the States you get a European sized coffee in an oversized cardboard cup.

But not so in Paris. I never dreamed it possible, but in Paris, Starbucks is where you go for cheap, ahem, yes, I said it, I meant it, cheap coffee. Or should I say inexpensive? When Rebecca and I met we had a coffee at Starbucks instead of going to the typical Parisian cafes that sell coffee for 5 euros in a coffee cup the size of a double espresso. At Starbucks you paid the same 2.80e but you got three times as much. And unlike in America, they're still making in the old style fashion by hand- no button pressing which means my cup felt heavy and the foamy milk was pushing out through the drinking whole.

It's not that I want a huge coffee, I don't need a huge coffee, but I value the value- half the price for three times the size. Does it tickle me a little that Starbucks is as popular in Paris as it is in America, well, a little. Remember when I wrote about the American Valentine's cynics- it seems even here the Parisians bear no burden by camping out at Starbucks and enjoying a corporate coffee. The French, ugh, gotta love em.

La Sorbonne

2010-02-23T17:31:00.004+01:00

Since I haven't started working yet, I've given myself the daily task of leaving the house at some point during the day beyond the laundry, the groceries or the laps around the track I jog at near our apartment. It only counts if I take the metro. Yesterday I remembered that I wanted to see La Sorbonne and so I announced to Sylvain that would be my destination for today. I almost studied abroad twice in Paris, once my third trimester at DePaul before transferring and Smith's Paris exchange program was at La Sorbonne. My French teacher at DePaul whose name I always almost remember but never do was formidable, I met my best friend Amanda, there in French class and together we participated in all the French activities the French department sponsored mainly because of Mme so and so, whose American husband was my philosophy professor. I loved French at DePaul almost as much as I lacked motivation for it at Smith. So when it came to studying abroad it was easier to pass by La Sorbonne and move on to Goldsmiths College in London. A decision I most certainly have no regrets about.

University is different here than it is in the states and it's not just because the buildings are imposing and seem imbued with intimidating minds and ideas. Student's don't board in dorms as they do in the states and their are no campus' just serious buildings with historical clout. I take issue with more or less most of the American University System and it's money making (as opposed to mind making) values, but I do think that along with teaching students how to develop original ideas and to think for themselves, college years ought to have some support for social growth as well. It's hard to wrap your head around 4 years of University living in the same room you grew up, having mom do your laundry and even if your parents disregard what time you come home with, or perhaps who you come home with- there is something creepy about both sides of that equation. University should be the first time you live on your own and I support freshman year dorm life.

Its equally hard to separate sports being a part of campus life. Although DePaul was a city campus and our basketball games and football games were held beyond the confines of our main campus, I visited our sports facilities a few times every week to swim. Even at Smith without a football team, I found myself either at the gym playing indoor soccer or watching friends compete against the seven sisters. I suppose it isn't a coincidence we're leading the medal count at the Olympics right now. Admittedly we're a little overzealous when it comes to these things, but 4 years at University ought to offer students a well-rounded experience which includes our lives outside of the classroom; bridging our high school lives at home with our parents to our independent lives as adults supported by dorm life which amounts to a lot of live in study buddies and some sports and social clubs.

La Sorbonne would have been amazing to experience, I imagined the classrooms with character and seriousness, similar to those at Smith where education felt important and meaningful. The neighborhood is chalk full of bookstores for the literary minded and just down the street is Ecole de Medicin.

The Metro in Paris

2010-02-22T21:09:00.005+01:00

The Paris metro is great, rarely crowded, fast, reliable, and as far as I can tell no construction issues, delaying lines or necessitating schedule changes. But of course, there is always something... City planning in New York made life easier for it's residents and it's tourists, with everything on a grid and laid out by numbered streets and avenues, it's idiot proof. It makes traveling on the subway a piece of cake if you can remember that after 23rd is north of 14th, and 7th east of 8th. Still if you want to find out the fastest route from one place to another the website hopstop.com makes things really easy, put in your starting point, address, subway stop or location i.e. JFK, and your destination and it maps it out for you, gives you time walking and time in transportation and you can also check how much a taxi would cost you instead of public transport, it's all easy to read and totally straightforward. In Paris they have the RATP, which works 50% of the time which makes it presque inutile- almost useless. You can also put in the address the metro station or the location, but more often than not it tells you more info is needed- sometimes it's just asking for the arrondissement but after putting that in it can still fail to find your location asking for more info but not specifying what kind. Conveniently they website is available in English but sadly I'm not sure what more information I can add once I've entered a standard street address. Moreover the Paris Metro map is insane- it is impossible to read, and the "interactive map" online at RATP is unnecessarily complicated and just plain confusing. If you cut 14 different pieces of string in different colors mashed them up in your hand and then flattened them on a piece of paper you'd have the Paris metro. I'm still a huge fan of the Paris Metro, I'm just saying, get a guy who knows how to make ain idiot proof, facile website, and if you have 6 Rue de Saint Pierre's, it's time to start renaming some streets. I suggest Rue 1, Rue 2, Rue 3 for starters.

Weekends away

2010-02-20T18:11:00.004+01:00

Something has recently come to a point of contention between Sylvain and I. We had planned on going to London for my birthday weekend, having lived in London for a few years I was eager to introduce him to friends, show him around, eat curry, drink lager and visit the Tate Modern. He too was eager to go on a few trips, "Come on Babe, we are YOUNG!" he likes to say. But I spent three years in London where I had plenty of time to travel the continent, a few days in Florence, a few days in Amsterdam, a trip around Germany and Austria, several trips to Spain etc etc. I feel like, as far as Europe goes, all you do is visit a big city and drink and eat, but big cities are all the same, and I've ticked all the major museums. I am sad to say this, but a weekend away in a city I've already been to holds about zero interest for me. If it is to visit friends, I can muster up some zeal, but we could just as easily save 300 euro and have a coffee and a meal out in Paris.

In the last few years my Passport has gotten a serious workout and I've been to Africa twice, Europe, Asia and South America on some pretty big trips. I don't know if it's my age, or the fact that as a teacher I've always felt like I worked hard throughout the semester to deserve a week in Istanbul. Im sorry, but leaving friday night and coming back sunday afternoon for what amounts to a lot of travel time and very little time to experience anything but jet lag and travel exhaustion sounds more like a waste of money than fun. If you gave me a weeks vacation, I wouldn't stay in Paris, I'd definitely leave, but call me a debbie downer if you want, I just can't work myself into any desire to leave the country for a weekend.

It isn't just the short duration and excessive travel time that rubs me the wrong way; the cost is a huge deterrent for me. We're going to Lyon next weekend and my ticket alone is 166 euro. If it wasn't for his birthday and my first opportunity to meet his parents I would think this was simply nutty, but this is just a two hour trip, not even leaving the country. Now if we had to pay for a hostel and all our meals out, as well as the cost of participating in any nightlife activities, and I could probably fly home to New York for the weekend. The truth is, after living your life in the hustle and bustle of city, a weekend away is most attractive when its a respite from the noise and activity. Visiting my parent's and my aunt loretta has always offered me this quiet. No plans, no dates, no expectations. You can cook in a big well-equipped kitchen, borrow a canine companion, you can jog on a path that really is nature, not just a park adjacent to the west side highway, you can sit out on the porch and simply sit back and enjoy. One of our reasons for staying in Europe was how easy it would be to travel abroad, but what I really want now, isn't a weekend in Berlin, it's a weekend in a familiar bed in a quiet town with a well-stocked kitchen.

The young Smithies

2010-02-20T17:41:00.004+01:00

There was a meeting of the 2nd generation Smithies today and I realized how much living in another country necessitates re-learning or re-orientating yourself to even the most basic knowledge one naturally absorbs from simply living. The first Smith Assembly meeting a couple weeks ago, I made sure I asked some basic questions- what exactly does Bio mean on packaging- there is a whole brand in green packaging called Bio, and everyone throws around bio here- does it mean organic, does it mean additive free, does it mean anything, is it just marketing? But learning how the post office works, figuring out how to buy a mobile phone and not get screwed by buying something overpriced or unnecessary simply because you don't understand the options because frankly these things work differently here, renting a flat, getting your metro pass, and finding a job or getting your paperwork to live and work here are all things that most people find they need some support with.

I have found that Sylvain's friends are warm, welcoming and as likable as my own, but there is something to having an American friend, or a girlfriend that can't be adopted from someone else's brood. So while I frankly don't know any of the Smithie girls well enough to unload anything heavy on, they have been a godsend for practicalities- while all our French friends were telling us I could become president, the Smithies here had been here long enough to know how to navigate through the French bullshit and get what I need without getting screwed- and as much as I hate hearing that I can't be a teacher here, it's nice to hear someone tell me the truth- actually no, all those Frenchies telling you you'll find a teaching job are wrong, you're not EU so you can't.

Last night I met one of Sylvain's pals from Lyon, who respectfully challenged me about whether I could work here, I think he was simply worried I would take Sylvain away from France, using this as an excuse, but the truth is France has a very backward system and whenever our French friends discover how silly it is, they assume England would have the same system- they don't and I doubt anyone does, but they acknowledge, that, yes, it doesn't seem in anyone's best interest to carry on doing things this way. It's a blessing to have some American's who have gone through it all themselves, they know where the dead ends are, and instead of telling me to go chasing after the impossible, they offer advice on what is possible.

Making babies

2010-02-19T09:31:00.002+01:00

While I was at NYU I had to do some student teaching, I decided to work with my Professor who worked at Allen Stevenson a private boys school in the Upper East Side. It was, and probably still is the most expensive k-9 boys school in NYC. I had met a woman in one of my classes at NYU who taught at Spence, and her experience there was strikingly similar to some of the student issues I had working in some of the most struggling public schools in the Lower East Side. She dealt mostly with girls who had eating disorders- a problem that was simply an epidemic, while my schools problems often had different symptoms the causes were often quite similar. My students' parents were absentee or working so many jobs that they often couldn't provide the sort of encouragement and support that their children thrived with, and the girls at Spence had parent's who worked long hours and didn't exactly become parents to make dinner and tend to the children, they had important jobs and provided their children with the best of everything but themselves.

So I wanted to compliment my dire public school experience with a window into another world, a world with just as many issue and the only access I had to this milieu was through that of teacher. The teachers at any school like Allen Stevenson all say the same thing- rarely do you find a teacher who has the same background as these kids and therefore when we get treated like hired help it comes as an affront. It's not as simple as the children are spoiled, it's that they grow up believing that we are paid to clean up their messes, that's after all our job. While most would find this an outrage, most of us teachers could see that these boys lacked something that most of us had in some form or other- parent's that were around, that cared, that were present and involved. These boys were picked up by a long line of nannies that arrived at 3:15 to gather their brood. Their nannies fed them a snack, dinner and often bathed them. They brought them to school and generally met their emotional and physical needs. We had parent's who were famous movie directors, singers, fashion designers and their kids spent their school vacations in China and skiing in the Alps, nanny in tow of course. For boys they often did not have the masculine confidence that boys in public school do, in classes of only ten, half of them vied for attention and the other half were sort of weak and sad, they were all geeky and scared. Some had never taken the subway, and many did not leave their neighborhoods, they had the same misconceptions of New York as foreigners did, that beyond the limits of the UES you might get shot, or worse- either way, they knew they were not equipped with the survival skills to survive and prosper outside of their bubble of wealth.

Paris is full of wealthy people but being a nanny is maybe even more of a norm than in the states. Before moving to France I knew that workers got something like 6 weeks of vacation every year. As a teacher this hardly meant much because so do I, but it was a significant shift in American mentality where we often live to work instead of work to live. I pitied Americans whom were such workaholics that they would amass these ridiculous hoards of money, buy lots of "toys" and then when it came to enjoying their wealth they couldn't sit still and relax. They had issues like high blood pressure, problems with their weight, and unlike the French, they don't know how to appreciate a long meal and good conversation. But then I got here and I realized that everyone works massively long hours. Sylvain works from 9-730, thus with his commute he ends up having a 12 hour day. All of the nanny jobs I've applied or interviewed for reflect a similar schedule- so it begs me to ask- how do any of these people know their kids- the only time they'd have a chance to see them is on the weekends and school holidays. I don't care how long your vacation is, I think there is something wonky about not sharing a meal with your kids- after all why did you have them if it was just to offer room and board?

I'm not so idealistic I expect every family to share dinner together every night, but if not dinner, then something. I spent a few hours with a nanny yesterday who said, Oh the mother usually likes to read them their bedtime stories, but she doesn't go in for the cooking, getting them ready, feeding them or their baths and all that stuff. When did motherhood get whittled down to a ten minute bedtime story and a few kisses coming and going?

The French do V-Day

2010-02-16T13:02:00.003+01:00

It may not strike you immediately but over time you would start to notice that everyone in Paris is wearing black. Every season no matter what is happening in fashion, for Paris, black remains the new black. I've always been quite colorful, so colorful in fact that I won the Coco Chanel award back in the 6th grade for my colorful ensembles and I accepted that award with blue tights, a white jean skirt and a multi-colored patterned blouse that together all said "loud". I guess those 6th grade teachers were only relying on Coco Chanel's status in the fashion world and not in her French DNA which adheres to the strict: black is the new black ethos. For the French it seems from what Sylvain has told me, black is classy, it will always be classy and you can never go wrong with being classy and thus wrap yourself in black and get the added benefits of it being slimming.

On valentine's day we were walking to the grocery store to get food as Sylvain was going to make me lunch. I was surprised to see man after man walking around the streets with flowers. With all the sobering black and adherence to classiness I frankly thought France was way too cool for Valentine's Day. I mean, in America is there any holiday that gets more flack for it's cheesiness and general low-rent status? It's corny, it's cliche and apparently the French soak it up. Last year for Valentine's day I got a stuffed bear with a fake plastic rose in a plastic see-through box from a student, the thought was nice, it really was, as a teacher in the Bronx all our gifts are from the dollar store, and it feels great to be remembered but come on, yuck. So after lunch when we were headed to meet up with friends of ours I was shocked to see that handfuls of women were carrying similar items, roses in plastic boxes- the roses were real, but France had let me down. Paris you're cheesy!

It's hard to figure out what to make of it. I guess everyone thinks of France and the French as terribly romantic, and to be honest most French people do seem to be in relationships, but I can't figure out how all these French people bought into all this cliche American garbage. I mean if you want to celebrate Valentine's Day, by all means go crazy, but cheesy red roses in boxes, that's seriously lame. I think the French are like men who secretly love cheesy American romantic comedies. At a party they'll pull out all the intellectual and philosophical stops, they'll impress you with their classy black outfits looking slim and stylish, they'll be well-versed in culture and dirty jokes but when it comes down to it, they relish in the cheese and make no apologies for it. Unlike American's who participate begrudgingly going out of their way to hate on love, girls who host scary movie nights with other single girlfriends, boys who refuse to indulge their girlfriends on principal, and general cynics.

If I've learned one thing from being with a Frenchman it's that American's do it all wrong. From a young age we have all this hype about dating, and thus there is all this pressure built around rejection, the men and boys bear the brunt of this rejection but the girls suffer it's side effect too. It makes for good drama in the movies, but it makes for unrealized high expectations in life. Europeans don't ask each other out, they meet, they hang out together and at the end of the night, whatever happens happens, no pressure, no expectations, and no wondering whose paying for the drinks. I think Americans are messed up about love, there are so many of us that are single and lonely and desperate and if only we lived in a society where we were free to just stop analyzing the what ifs and the what does it all mean, we might just find ourselves spending less time dissecting the minutiae of text messages and facebook posts with whomever will listen and more time checking plus one on our social invitations.

Valentine's Day is overblown, even more than Christmas I think, it has lost the plot. For me, I wanted to do something nice for Sylvain and I wanted him to do something nice for me. I wanted to be good to each other, to appreciate each other. But being cynical about it is sad, feeling like if you're single your a loser is missing the point, having expectations is setting yourself up for disappointment. Someday, one day it'd be great if Sylvain brought some daisies home to brighten our house, but not on Valentine's day, not because "that's what you do", it's so much better to have a surprise, a gift when it's the least expected.

Valentine's Day weekend

2010-02-15T09:57:00.003+01:00

It's been cold here in Paris and yesterday Sylvain and I met up with the couple, Nat and Julie, that introduced us. We met in St. Michel and then found a place to have a drink. On the menu were various coffees, beers and soda. Prices were 4.50 for cappuccino hot chocolate or tea, 4.10 for a 33ml soda and about 4.10 euro for a half pint of beer. Alcohol drinks are taxed almost 20% vs other drinks which get taxed around 5%. I complained to Nat about this who said it was shocking for him too, when he first moved to Paris from Strasbourg where a coffee as around 1 euro, but now he had gotten used to it, and I would too. However, I don't want to get used to paying the same amount for a tiny little coffee or half-pint that I would for about 2500 calories at McDonalds. Starbucks in Paris is the cheapest coffee around, which frankly, is sad. I never eat at McDonald's but there is something inherently wrong here- I could buy two boxes of tea for what it costs to buy a small cup in a Parisian cafe. And let's be real here, I drink tea everyday, but it's hardly more than hot water and electricity costs aren't that high.

Everyone at the table then began to look for clues as to how this was possible- perhaps the rents were so high that they had to charge these rates? There must, after all, be a reason for this kind of violation. I was not buying this flimsy excuse. These are the same people that lived in New York and use this excuse to wrongly proclaim New York more expensive than Paris. Real estate in Manhattan may be higher than in Paris but it depends on several factors. For example if you live in Brooklyn or Queens you'll pay significantly less than in the area of Manhattan we all lived in. My good friend Jenna just left a one bedroom on the upper-west side that she paid $2000 a month for and was a few blocks from the train and the park. Both Nat and Julie's apartment and ours in Paris are priced at about $1000 for a studio. It would be difficult to find a studio apartment for $1000 in Manhattan but you could easily find a 2 bedroom for $2000, and in Queens I have friends who have a larger apartment than I have ever lived in for something like $1500. So maybe real estate in New York is higher, but it depends. Location as always, is everything.

In the end the metro/subway is cheaper although it's much faster in Paris. Eating out is significantly cheaper in New York which is hardly surprising because no one in New York cooks more than they eat out or order in. Moreover because the dollar is so poor against the Euro everything else is cheaper in New York too.

But there are seriously interesting rebates in France, for example we knew that Sylvain could get a 250 euro rebate on any rent he pays as a student, but yesterday Julie and Nat told us he could get more back because I live with him. France gives you money for every kid you have and yesterday at a nanny interview I found out the woman I was interviewing with who was due to give birth in April would have from today Feb 15th until Oct 1st off for maternity leave, this being her 4th child I believe she accrued more time, but still- isn't it 6 weeks in the states?

Deciding where we will eventually live will never come down to what's the best deal, there are way too many more important factors that we have to consider regarding our jobs, our languages and quality of life standards. But as the debate volleys back and forth it gets more interesting every day. Yesterday after the interview I had, we caught the train home when two girls boarded, Sylvain clocked them as American and then asked me why we had such amazingly white teeth. Apparently their perfect teeth gave them away? He theorized perhaps it had something to do with our meat... Someone recently suggested London as neutral territory, which now made me pause- after all the teeth in Britain are a serious deterrent. Around the continent of Europe the British teeth stand alone as crooked and bad. The French, or at least the ones I know have perfectly nice teeth except for the occasional discoloration due to their diet of coffee and cigarettes, but they're all straight and shapely. So I had to ask, if we lived in London could we still get our future kids the dental plan in France? Albeit, no.

Tang Freres, The American Church of Paris and La Tour Eiffel

2010-02-09T18:19:00.003+01:00

I made these petit announces for english tutoring and baby sitting so I was planning on going to the American Church of Paris and the American Library conveniently located a few minutes from each other. The American Church of Paris wanted to charge 25 euro for each announce and so we said forget it you crazy capitalist Church creeps and moved on to the Library where we received a warm welcome and an invitation to post on their bulletin board. Thanks American Library- which by the way charges like 70 euro a year for membership. It's expensive being an American in Paris!

Today was cold, overcast and from time to time snow flakes danced in the air around us. I've mentioned before in past blogs that I've been to Paris a handful of times but today was the first time I really saw La Tour Eiffel and it made an impression. La Tour Eiffel is simply beautiful, I can't believe Parisians didn't take a shine to it at first, it's striking and inspiring and simply comforting. I've never seen a photo or painting that has come near to doing it justice.

After La Tour Eiffel we were on a mission to visit the largest asian food market in Europe. It was in a dull grey part of chinatown but inside I felt like a kid at Christmas, overwhelmed and thrilled. Sylvain had the basket and it took us about 5 minutes to fill it. It was the cheapest shopping trip we've had and then we came home and made chicken teriyaki, spring rolls and tom yum soup...

Fan Prix, Ed, Tang Freres, and Marchet

2010-02-08T12:00:00.001+01:00

My mom is convinced that we have a refrigerator the size most college kids have in their dorm rooms. She has this vision of Europeans that is the downsize version of Americans, small cars, small bodies, small sodas, small coffees, small countries, small refrigerators. We have a supersized country, so everything else we have might as well get supersized too.

But we have a refrigerator that is about 3/4 the size of my parents at home. But then again they have two extra freezers and they are a two person household just like we are a two person household so what's with all the frozen food? They're like two people waiting for the apocalypse so that they can live off of their frozen and canned goods for longer than the rest of us with a 3/4 sized fridge.

She figured our fridge was so small we had to do our shopping everyday. We don't do it everyday but we do do it a lot, but it isn't because our fridge is smaller, it's because there are 3 or 4 places that we buy things at. Almost daily we go to the boulangerie where we buy pain au chocolat for breakfast or baguette. There are boulangeries on almost every corner like bodega's in New York. Fan Prix is our grocery store although there are several in our neighborhood I like Fan Prix the best, grocery stores here are small they have small sections of everything - rice and pasta options taking up a shelf versus an aisle in the states. We get our yogurt, eggs, nuts, milk etc at Fan Prix. At Ed I buy pasta and those kiddie snacks like chocolate pudding because Sylvain likes them. Tang Freres is the Chinese grocery, since we eat a lot of asian dishes we go there for the noodles, curry pastes, ginger and rice. You have to buy your produce at the street market- well I guess you don't have to but it makes the best sense. The market sellers clear out around 2pm so you have to get what you want early.

Appleton in Le Marais

2010-02-06T21:14:00.001+01:00

Before coming to Paris I got in contact with a girl I went to middle and high school with, we were in the band and French class together. She lives about an hour outside of Paris and today she came to the city to spend the day with me in Le Marais. I'd been to Paris a handful of times in my life but I'd always concentrated on the museum circuit, Louvre, Centre Pompidou, Musee D'orsay, Musee Picasso etc. so there are few things I've missed, Le Marais and the Eiffel Tower being two of the more significant boxes I havent ticked. Le Marais is the gay and jewish neighborhood. Before we left for Paris I asked Sylvain if we would be able to find Jews in France because my life in New York was all about the Jews. My two best friends are Jewish welcoming me into their families, I love Jewish holidays, we live on the UWS which is predominantly Jewish, when I worked downtown it was across from Jewish bakeries and the Jewish pickle man and of course, Jon Stewart and Woody Allen make New York what it is today. On the other hand who doesn't love the gays, they dress better than all of us and although not exactly the comedians most of the Jews are, they are just as much fun to be around.

Unfortunately this is still Paris, where everything is over-priced. Still there was a great Jewish deli/bakery where I found sesame bagels and gefilta fish in addition to cheesecake, which is certainly New York, but is it Jewish? At over 5 dollars a square I find myself not really caring, because I wouldn't spend that kind of money on cheesecake anyway. All around Paris there are chocolate shops, bakeries, patisseries and delicious food and drink, with everyone weighing around 120 lbs I want to know whose eating it all?

At the Smith party someone told me all the French girls weigh themselves everyday and if they're 200grams heavy they eat soup for dinner. Add coffee and pile on some cigarettes and I believe you. My friend from high school French class whose lived here 8 years put it this way- in America people are just bigger but if you ask a friend if it seems like you've gained weight they tell you look great and you should stop worrying, on the other hand in France if you've gained a few pounds the French will tell you and then ask you whether you should really be eating that cheese for lunch considering all the weight you've put on. It's like their friends and co-workers are holding them accountable for their eating- they always say you can't shame a person into quitting drinking or smoking, but I think France has proven that you can shame people into thinness.

Le Marais was just like some part of London I can no longer remember the name of and Soho in New York. It was filled with expensive shops and cute places to eat, drink and spend a fortune this shiny veneer that when you step back no matter how cute it is, no matter how pretty the people, it all seemed a bit empty, propped up by nice things with no real character. Nonetheless I enjoyed every minute of exploring it. That's Paris I guess...

Smithies in Paris

2010-02-05T12:11:00.000+01:00

The other night there was a Smith General Assembly meeting. Smith being my alma mater and wanting to find an American community for myself here I attended. I was under the assumption that the Smith College of Paris would be largely comprised of women much older than myself, I don't see a lot of my contemporaries being involved in Smith activities post graduation. Moreover, it's been a while since going on JYA to Paris meant finding a French boyfriend and marrying him. We just don't marry that young anymore, and the French don't marry in general.

The meeting was at L's house, she was a woman with the kind of apartment you see in Interior Design Magazines she was older and prone to senior moments but she looked great, snappy french bob dyed a nice auburn. I felt like snapping photos and bringing them home to show Sylvain. The agenda for the meeting was a review of the lack of anything happening with the Smith Club in the last few years and then "vote" for new board members. I was a lot confused about the structure of voting- people that wanted to be president, secretary and treasurer stood up and said three sentences about themselves- there were about 8 people, and then the current president sort of said, ok L your president, M your treasurer everyone ok with that? It seemed to have been the type of friendly thing that everyone was just ok with because they've been involved in the club for 40 years and no one was about to say anything against anyone anyway, the only reservation I had was that some younger members were interested in participating and this being the first time the club had had a general assembly meeting in 3 or 4 years we were not able to participate in any significant way. Granted most of the 20 somethings in Paris were former JYA students who came back for more but would likely only stay a year or so, but there were 2 of us who were perhaps here indefinitely because of French companions but there was a glaring rift between the old guard and the new. As far as I could tell there were no members in their 30's and the largest majority of members were in their 50-70's and retired. We were all connected by facebook type social networking sites and the others while they participated in email were unlikely to be setting up profiles and uploading recent photos from a weekend away in Amsterdam.

Afterwards we enjoyed champagne and delicious snacks- even a pecan pie. People exchanged cards and email addresses and with all the networking it seemed like we'd see everyone in a couple weeks or so, but of course nothing could be further from the truth, Smith events don't happen more than a few times a year. I came home around 11 having had a wonderful evening and optimistic about finding at least some sort of American network while I'm here. The truth is, I hated Smith while I was there, it was empowering in finding strength as a woman, I found take back the night vigils moving and when you're in a room without men you see women are natural leaders- at wed's meeting woman stood up and voiced disagreement in confident and ballsy ways concerning anything from dues, being cut off while speaking and generally voicing discontent. It's much more common to see women speak up for themselves when it's an all Smith gathering then when it's not. The name Smith has gotten me jobs and helped me in my career, but while I was there I felt cut off from the world, disappointed with much of what I felt was antiquated and unnatural. We were asked to help recruit or interview potential new Smithies, but I felt like in many ways I wouldn't be a great candidate, after all I was more or less unhappy there and I would have a hard time suggesting anyone else go and have a similar experience. Our current president Carrol Christ has been found to be the subject of blanket disapproval from current students, and professors alike. Smith from what I hear is in a state of disrepair losing students, professors, popularity and faculty positions. In this day and age many have never even heard of women's college's and except for lesbians it doesn't offer the social experience like their co-ed counterparts can. Underage drinking, drug use and sex are as prolific as at most other universities, but it all feels like it's taking place at a sequestered insane asylum instead of a house party off campus. Smith straight social life to me has always felt desperate. Maybe things have changed, maybe it was just my experience, but the place was weird. So no matter how good I feel about finding some Smithies in Paris, and appreciative of the jobs the name Smith has helped me get, I just don't feel comfortable sharing my experience with perspective candidates.

Walking around town

2010-02-02T11:46:00.000+01:00

We haven't set out to do any sightseeing as of yet. I've been to Paris enough to have ticked most of the boxes anyway. Still yesterday on our way to get a convertor adaptor for my laptop charger we had to go to the Louvre. The Louvre is the kind of place you have to go once in your life, I.M. Pei's striking entrance still seems eclipsed by the ostentatious palace that Louis XIV thought seemed a little too small and thus had Versaille built. La Jaconde (Mona Lisa) is the size of piece of printer paper and it seems that most people, need to see it in order to belief it's lack of imposing authority. But the Apple store, imposing as ever, is of course, in the Carousel de Louvre, where else would Apple be after all. Still it was about a third as grand and glorious as any of the Apple stores in Manhattan.

We also passed by the Opera House which holds up the standard of ornate French architecture. The other day I was writing about the graffiti that degraded the beauty of the city and after talking to a girl at Maxim's who was telling me how much she loved London and the spirit and energy there it got me thinking about why London can better incorporate it's street art. In general London is much more rugged. It's architecture is austere in comparison, Christopher Wren and his contemporaries were busy crunching numbers and doing geometry trying to compose perfect proportions and perfect seriousness. The buildings are old and English, flat walled facades with greek columns and everything was quite ordered and conservative. I believe it's because of this order and lack of ornament that as time has taken its tole contemporary artists have been able to use it as a somewhat blank canvas. In France ornamentation abounds, building tops, window guards and whatever else might do nicely with a flamboyant flourish got one or two. So even though time has passed as the old saying goes you can't mix patterns and stripes.

The good and the bad.

2010-02-01T17:22:00.000+01:00

Our apartment and as far as I can tell most apartments in Paris have two access codes to get in the first two doors of entry, after that we use our keys. I like this a lot, it means when you've got two bags of groceries and a purse you don't have to do anything but push a few numbers with your finger, then when you get to your door you can put your bags down and search for your keys. My apartment in New York had two entry doors and then our apartment door, each with a different key and this way I'm not digging out keys and constantly lifting up and putting down bags.

Another thing I like about the apartment buildings here is their effort to save energy, instead of having lights on in all the hallways on all the floors they have timer lights, each floor has it's own and you just press it and the light turns on for a minute or whatever, but when no ones using the hallway it turns off saving energy.

It's illegal to put hormones in your animal products here- I've mentioned Eating Animals about 5 times already in this blog, but what I'm learning is seriously disturbing. I only bought the book because I've read Jonathan Safran Foer's two novels and thought he was a great writer, I didn't have that much interest in the whole animal flesh as food debate because I hardly eat any as it is, but it's easily the best book I've read in the last year or so. Normally I dont eat meat but Sylvain likes it so we sometimes have chicken. In the states once a chicken is slaughtered it goes into a large tank where the chickens take a water bath so their body temperatures cool. Since none of the fecal matter is rinsed off prior to the bath it becomes fecal soup and our chicken's absorb up to 13% or this water since we pay by weight we are actually paying for 13% of just plain water and fecal matter. In countries like Canada and all of Europe this is illegal and instead chickens are cooled in a big refrigerator instead. Moreover it's also satisfying to know the French don't have to worry about the early onset of puberty in young people (in addition to the added weight gain) that studies have linked the hormones we put in chicken feed in the States. So, the chicken you buy here is a lot smaller, but I suddenly feel like 13% extra fecal soup and hormone therapy isn't really a deal anyway.

I've never had to wait more than a minute- even at night, for the metro to come, it is so fast and so efficient. But the subway map is a huge mess that makes no sense.

So I don't love our neighborhood. I don't know what to say except it lacks charm and there aren't any particular conveniences to be had, no parks, no cute cafes or great grocery stores it's a bit grey and dull. Our apartment is kind of the same, last night we were laying there and I said, in our next apartment I really want two rooms- so we have a separate bedroom. Sylvain really wants windows that look out onto something other than a building next to us. It would also be great- if it's not asking to much, to have a kitchen bigger than the handicap stall in public bathrooms.

Getting Settled

2010-01-31T18:41:00.000+01:00

Last night we were back at Max's and there was champagne, so no surprise when we spent this morning sleeping in. We had planned to go see A Serious Man- a movie my friend Jon keeps recommending me- it's the new Coen Brother's flick. However after popping to the grocery store and boulangerie I came home we had breakfast and it was a quiet Sunday at home that appealed to me more than anything else and Sylvain agreed.

We made calls home to our parents and then I went from reading Eating Animals- which gets better day by day to finding a bit of an expat community for me. I found a Yoga center that is very reasonably priced and has Vinyasa classes and a bilingual website. Tomorrow I need to go to Darty and get a new hair dryer, go to the apple store and get a French power adaptor for my MacBook and I found a few interesting "American Groups" online. The Association of American Wives of Europeans is one of them. I'm not a wife, and I have a feeling all the ladies are my grandmothers age, but I found a good website for American women where there are book clubs, events and art exhibits.

The point of me being here wasn't to speak English all the time but I do want to find a community of my own. Mostly I'd just like a yoga class and a few book or art events to be involved in. As nice as all Sylvain's friends are, and they are incredibly warm, none of them are particularly involved in the arts or in education.

Sylvain has this program that we speak French in the morning and English in the afternoon, however, between the two of us we almost always speak English. Occasionally we have 5 minute conversations in French throughout the day but nonetheless I'm finding that unlike watching French TV while we were in Chile, I understand a lot more of what is being said when we have the TV on, and when we hang out with his friend's its all French except when I need translations. He'd like me to register at Alliance Francaise for classes but they're so expensive, and until I find a job, we just can't afford anything like that.

First Impressions

2010-01-30T13:05:00.000+01:00

Sylvain took me to meet his friend Maxim last night. Maxim lives with Bertrand and Bertrand's girlfriend Amandine joined the party as well. Neuilly was a little nicer than our arrondissement, Sarkozy used to be the Mayor of Neuilly. Their apartment had two big bedrooms and a living room- the layout made no sense similar to most of the flats I've seen in London - it seemed like their kitchen was sort of part of the hallway. We listened to Brit pop and drank wine while we nibbled on cheese. Could we have had more of a "french" evening? I think not.

This week I had one job interview, it went well but I ultimately came in #2 (according to dad who interviewed me). Kids don't have school on Wed in France and so this family was looking for someone to look after their two boys in English. They lived in New York for 10 years but the youngest only spent a short time there before moving back to Paris and the father wanted both sons to attend Ecole Bilingue, only the older one had been accepted. In no way was this my dream job- I love being a teacher, but I've never taken to being a babysitter. I could be wrong but the father's tone changed in the interview after money was discussed- he asked how much I'd like to get paid- I said between 20 and 30euro but he had thought 13 euro was appropriate. I didn't mind at all, but the post was listed as an English tutor and until we discussed the position I hadn't realized it would be more than a few hours after school so I was going by the standard rate for English tutoring. I had no idea what babysitters made and so I just stuck with the tutoring rate. I told him 13 would be fine, but I think he thought I was crazy to suggest that kind of money and soured on me.

Some initial blatant generalizations from my first week in Paris:
1. 99% of the women are skinny chicken legged sticks
2. 95% of the men are skinny and chicken legged as well
3. Everything is crazy expensive even as the dollar closes in on the euro: see $10 laundry
4. Paris reminds me distinctly of London except that wine is significantly cheaper
5. The produce markets are just as I imagined they would be
6. Both French Men and Women are far more likely to be attractive than anywhere else I've ever been
7. It's far less stigmatized (blatantly or concealed) to have mixed race friendships or romantic relationships - the sort of "guess whose coming to dinner" awkwardness just wouldn't happen

This photo of Jules Joffrin Metro entrance is one of our two metro stops in the 18th.

Salinger and Zinn

2010-01-29T12:36:00.000+01:00

A few months ago Patrick Swazye died. As a girl I thought Dirty Dancing was about the best movie I'd ever seen, I loved the dancing, I was totally oblivious to the whole abortion thing, but the scene where they practice in the lake- wow. It was sad to hear about Patrick Swazye's death but yesterday two people died who, at least for me, changed me in more significant ways. Last week Sylvain helped me translate my CV into French and under "interests" he had written "reading" and he asked me to include an author that was important to me- I told him Salinger. I dont remember when I first read Salinger but it was sometime in high school, a book I wished had been on our Language Arts reading list because I felt like as much as I loved reading Catcher in the Rye, there were probably things I was missing, depth and nuance that needed more voices to suss the meaning out. Later when I moved to New York I was working as a reading and writing tutor in a class that was reading Catcher. I had reread the book several times in the interim, but I sat back and soaked it all up reconsidering so many details of the story. His short stories were probably my favorite but surely Holden Caufield was my favorite literary character.

Howard Zinn's A People's History I read the summer of 2000 when I did my internship in New York. I remember reading it across the street from my apartment in Union Square in the evening when I could hear rats scuttling back and forth behind me. A People's History was a brick, but it reoriented my ideas about the history I was born out of. At the time I felt like all history textbooks should be burned and replaced by a personal copy of this book. It felt like a bible for me- this was far more important then any Adam and Eve fairytale, this book had real significance in giving me perspective on how we live today and what matters. Zinn was teaching at UW Madison and I felt jealous of all my friends that were there. I lent that book to my friend Ben and he never gave it back hinting that I might want to buy another copy, I wanted to, but it was 20 dollars in paperback and at the time, that seemed like a ton of money to re-spend on a book I'd already read. Naomi Klein has probably usurped Zinn on my bookshelf, but I don't think I ever could have gotten to Naomi if it hadn't been for Zinn.

I recommend the NYT's article about Zinn and of course go out and get a copy of the People's History.

I hate mean people

2010-01-28T16:54:00.000+01:00

Today we went to the laundry- prices at the laundry are simply unbelievable, to do one regular size load of laundry cost us 10 dollars. In New York it's about 3 dollars- sometimes 4. We don't live in a posh neighborhood, and although it's not slummy it seems like one of those places that represent a space in between.

We put our laundry in and Sylvain went to go get a new key made for me, since the first one we had made did not function as a key should, by unlocking the door. While he was away I took out my new Kindle (thanks mom!) and commenced reading Jonathan Safran Foer's new book Eating Animals- already I was ticking off people I needed to pitch this book to- Schuyler, Loretta put it on your reading list...

Then three middle school age kids came in. In the past I have lived and worked in some of the most unsavory neighborhoods in the Bronx, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, as a teacher I have seen young people do cruel and mean things to their peers. It's not that I thought kids were angels- on the contrary. I've seen plenty behaving badly. However, usually in some way real or perceived these kids had been "provoked" to behave badly by their friends, enemies or whomever. So it came as some surprise to me when these jeune francais took the garbage can and shut (chair back lodged under door knob style) the nice owner man who had gone in the back to get some tools as he was fixing a dryer. Two seconds later when he tried to push his way out the boys ran off in hysterical fits of laughter and Sylvain went to help the man out. He had already broken the door off but was still stuck. Call me sensitive but these sort of things break my heart and get me down. I hate mean people young or old. The boys found their trick hilarious, but I didn't. I have almost never been afraid of anyone I've ever run into in New York or for that matter, anywhere else I've lived but from the moment they came in, I was uneasy. First of all, they had no reason to be there, they were simply loitering, plus they were hanging out by our washing and playing with our laundry detergent. As a teacher I have advocated against the criminalization of youth, but instead of kids being kids, this was a situation that struck me deplorable. You see, they had not been provoked in any way by the owner and yet they decided to be cruel to him nonetheless, so, perhaps if Sylvain hadn't been with me, they would have played a trick on me sitting there innocently reading my Kindle. This is ultimately what worries me- the random act of violence. For more information see Happy Slapping...

Jet Lag

2010-01-27T16:45:00.001+01:00

I woke up today at noon. Ask anyone, that's out of character for me, I'm generally up and about around 8. Our first night on our IKEA bed, it was an improvement, but it wasn't bliss. We've always had a queen or king bed and I think the full mattress will take a little getting used to- I noticed I woke up in the exact same position I went to sleep in- I don't think I moved all night long- according to my neck- I didn't. Nevertheless sore or not, I was looking forward to the baguette, creamy cheese and apricot jam I was planning to eat for mon petit dejeuner.

We had a list of things to do today, get Sylvain an adaptor for his laptop (endless problems with Sylvain's Acer Laptop), try and get another convertor for my electronic things, we had keys made for me, but one of them ended up not working so we need to remedy that, and another baguette.

We were going to be walking 2 miles to the store for Sylvain's laptop, I love cities like New York, London, Chicago etc because you can get decent exercise just by running your errands. Still I wish he would have mentioned our itinerary before we left the apartment so I would have worn tennis shoes instead of cowboy boots. On the way we found a chinese grocery which was perfect because he wanted General Tso's which uses a lot of soy sauce and you can buy it in large bottles here. We also picked up some noodles and will probably end up being regulars, we both love asian food and it tends to be cheap to make once you get the basic vinegars and sauce bases.

Whenever I think of Paris I think of the Paris that I've seen as a tourist. As a tourist in New York most people venture very little outside of times square and chinatown with the addition of central park. But Paris is far more sprawling like London. Thus outside of our walk through Montemartre, we've seen very little that strikes your eye as utterly picturesque or beautiful. It's true the architecture here is ornate and pretty, but from having been inside about 5 Parisian apartments, one would start to wonder whether only the rich can afford a Parisian apartment with any room or charm.

Something that strikes me as unexpected here is the graffiti. In Valparaiso there was beautiful street art anywhere there was an empty wall, but it wasn't simple tagging it was generally figurative and done by an artist. In Paris the tag is dominant, and thus far less engaging and there are endless bits of what for me is more along the lines of vandalism oftentimes somewhat vulgar. Paris is well known for it's street artists, but it's also well known for it's angsty outspoken youth (often for good reason, especially along racial lines) so it would appear to me, that unlike New York, London, and Chile, France has some issues it needs to deal with. Obviously New York, London etc have their own issues regarding youth, immigration and a million other things. Paris is meant to be what you measure all other city beauty by, but at least for me, this is a crown that the French have let slip away.

First Stop IKEA

2010-01-26T16:01:00.000+01:00

Last night was rough... Not the worst night of sleep, but I think if I was stuck sleeping on a box spring or the flip and f*&# I would probably last no more than a month here. I've spent a good part of my first 24 hours considering the human comforts I've given up to be here. Before I left I was aware of the luxuries I wouldn't have in Paris, but then you arrive and you are faced with walking up four flights of stairs and not having an oven and instead of the idea you are hit with the reality.

Leave it to IKEA to sort you out... Waking up this morning remedying the sleeping situation seemed like the first critical piece to move forward. Sylvain went out and got baguette and pain au chocolat for breakfast- maybe that was actually the first critical move forward, After our petit dejeuner it was time to head to IKEA. To get there was rather involved two metro trains, a real train and a bus, I was exhausted and cold throughout the trip- jet lag had taken up residence dans mon corps.

We had done some online shopping last night so we made a beeline to our future bed/couch, we lay on the mattress and deemed it suitable. While horizontal I noticed across the room there were some simple tables for 5e and I knew we'd need one of those too. We also needed a garbage can and a bigger pot for my plans to make soup however on the way out I saw about 6 other things I would have bought if Sylvain hadn't reigned me in. As much as I wanted to furnish our lives with a few more IKEA accessories, Sylvain was right, our apartment is not big, and anything else we added to our purchases would take up precious space we didn't have.

We had planned on getting our bed delivered but while standing in line to arrange delivery a taxi man came and offered us a cheaper price to drive us and our loot home in his moving van. Sylvain took 2 minutes to think about it, and accepted. This ended up making life a lot easier, we got a ride, we got our things home with us and Sylvain was able to put the bed together right away while I screwed in the legs of my new bedside table.

The little space we do have went from looking like a disaster to making sense, good riddance box spring mattress, welcome home IKEA couch bed. To cap our day off the hot water returned and so after a warm bath everything finally feels sorted. Home sweet home...

Je suis arrivee

2010-01-25T21:13:00.000+01:00

Sunday was spent wasting hours away cleaning, packing and watching endless episodes of Park and Recreation. I headed to the airport early as I was instructed considering the cat. Air France employees were immediately taken with the petit chat and although I had all my papers out ready to share with them having spent hundreds of dollars and hours obtaining all the proper vaccinations, signatures, and stamps necessary, but no one was interested in reviewing them. I seriously underestimated my cat, he was a champ throughout the whole experience. Once we took off we experienced a lot of turbulence- I have never had problems flying, but I was uncharacteristically worried that the turbulence would stress him out, nonetheless he didn't cry at all.

Having had plenty of opportunity to queue up for hours in customs lines in Chile, the States, Ethiopia etc, I was prepared for a long wait, imagine my surprise when I passing the duane took all of 3 minutes. Sylvain was waiting on the other side and we packed the taxi with my bags and headed home on a gray Paris day. I couldn't help but think London.

Our apartment is...small, especially when we have 3 large suitcases inside. The kitchen is closet size, which for someone who loves cooking is... a bummer, the bathroom is practical and the main room has enough room to have our kitchen table and for now, a box spring twin mattress and what is commonly called a "flip and F@#*. I don't know the original name of those cheap modular chairs that we had in fourth grade silent reading, and sometimes in college dorm rooms flipping it into a makeshift beds when friends came to visit.

Yesterday we walked through Montmartre and had a glass of wine and then walked back to our neighborhood to find a place to eat. We found a place just at the end of our block, I was losing the plot pretty quickly as I'd only managed 3 or 4 hours of sleep and so I soon found myself in dreamland with box springs poking into my sides. Bummer #2. Today is wholeheartedly dedicated to IKEA and finding a better option...

This picture shows Sylvain outside our apartment building...

Far out Queens

2010-01-19T22:56:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I got on a succession of trains, and then a bus to get my Feline Forms stamped allowing me to take Manny to France. Unfortunately 2 hours into the journey to Queens still on the bus, I called their offices to say I would be late for my appointment but should only be about 20 minutes late. Whomever took the appointment overlooked the fact that it being Martin Luther King day, the offices would be closed. So I headed back to Manhattan having wasted four hours of my life in transit to disappointment.

Today I woke up confident that having gone through a dry run the day before, I'd have all the wrinkles of transfers and bus stops worked out. The bus dropped me off in a trucking cargo area, I followed the directions I'd emailed to myself from Hopstop.com hopefully headed towards Rockaway Pkwy, where I should take a left. The parkway had a pedestrian pathway that could not have been used in recent months or maybe years by any human person except perhaps to throw their trash or dump bodies. I could not see anything resembling a future intersection, but by this point I was determined to stay the course.

I reached another cargo trucking area center but this time the large lot had a few office buildings, the USDA was the first one, it took me literally one minute for the nice man who took my original appointment to stamp my papers and collect $35 precious dollars.

An hour later I arrived at the end of the subway line to return to my beloved Manhattan. At the end of the line there are two subway lines the J and the E. I had taken the E to far out Queens but I was thinking of having lunch at a dominican place I liked when working in the Lower East Side and the J would bring me there through Brooklyn, whereas the E would take me straight back to midtown Manhattan. The J train was waiting there and I got on the first empty train car with another couple, I planned to walk through a few cars to get to a more populated train car and I wanted to be in the middle of the train when I exited anyway. On the way towards the internal doors which lead to the next subway car rather than the platform the man that was part of a couple dropped a knife- his girlfriend looked at me an apologized with a smirk, and I carried on until I got to a car with a few more faces. Two minutes later the couple arrived and sat across from me, smiling.

Turns out I will be in the Lower East Side to meet my friend for Chris for a drink on Thursday- I could have dinner at the dominican place on Thursday- mission aborted. I left the train and headed upstairs in time to grab a populated E train car back to Manhattan.

Commitments

2010-01-18T22:54:00.000+01:00

A couple weeks ago I arrived way too early to the movie I was planning on seeing so I decided to go read something across the street at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Nobles. It was Liz Gilbert's Commitment. I read the first two chapters and felt a similar love hate to her earlier book Eat Love Pray. I loved Eat Love Pray, but there was an underlying narcissism that irked me. So then Commitment came out and I was curious but let's face it, I knew I was going to get page after page of sickly sweet Felipe and I are terribly flawed people with a terribly perfect love story, complete with huge romantic hurdles to overcome.

But she and I shared one thing- we both fell for foreigners, and I knew there might be a few things I could learn from her experience. Even if I refuse to pay money for her lessons they arrive at a time when I've found myself particularly introspective about such commitments. For one as a girl it's hard not to think about: as my friends planned their weddings I internally considered how I would do things differently even though when it came down to it, I had one huge strike against officially sealing the deal- it felt innately wrong for me to enjoy the privileges hetero couples have access to that gay couples don't- especially when such vitriolic hate was being spewed against lovely people who just wanted to share their life with someone they love- how is that evil? If this didn't affect someone very close to my heart, then maybe it wouldn't be so important to me, but it does. Either way turns out there's a lot of practical stuff Liz shares- for one to get married and stay in the states the FBI is required to investigate me, which could take months. This is to crack down on mail-order bride/enslavement or forced prostitution type marriages. So plan ahead to have your life combed through, and make no plans until the FBI gives you the green light.

My name means maiden (unmarried) and for most of my life I've had a nagging feeling that I might just end up one. It's not that I've lived a loveless life, but I've rarely met people that impressed me enough to carry on a serious relationship with. So when Sylvain came along, I find myself humbled by the love that grew. Like Liz and Felipe we will have to get married if we insist on pursuing a shared future together. It is my experience that this kind of commitment- marriage- is largely consumed by the act of a wedding and the accoutrements that surround a wedding, rings, dresses, bridesmaids, menu choices etc.

Sylvain and I both see the big white event as antiquated, garish and ostentatious. I have several friends who have had lovely and terribly fun wedding parties, but it feels too important to symbolize with diamonds, bloated guest lists and overpriced venues. After all, as Liz recounts in Commitment marriages based on love have an overwhelming rate of failure. With matters of the heart, vows or not, sometimes hearts change. So isn't there something shameful about throwing a huge party, gloating over a huge rock and then having it all fail? Wouldn't it be better to plan a wedding that acknowledges a wedding is merely one day in a lifetime, hopefully a happy day, but nonetheless a rather easy one considering what surely lies ahead when two people commit to cohabitating for life.

Im not suggesting some sort of amish restraint, but instead that perhaps the cost of wedding ought not to exceed a down payment on a house, and that really we acknowledge that the size of ones diamond engagement ring is not always in proportion to the strength of love or length of marriage.

Still, I think Liz may have something here- while we may all not be as lucky as Liz in Felipe in having found nauseating perfect love- I do believe she proposes an important chapter propped against the tragedy of The Bachelor style romances that I am sometimes afraid have begun to mis-define love in America. She insists that at 25 she was too young and dumb to have thought about any of this her first up to bat and left it's success all up to chance- and so it failed- so she asks her readers to take the time to consider with her, just what some of the right reasons might be and at some points out why bother? It's just due diligence people.

It turns out I like reading Liz's book, it's probably because we share a lot of the same ideas about the framework of a marriage, and of course having your opinions validated by another is rarely an unhappy thing.

Cats flying to France

2010-01-12T02:58:00.001+01:00

This afternoon I brought Manny to the vet for the first time. Manny doesn't like to leave the house and so I knew that both moving to Paris with him, and bringing him to the vet might be traumatic experiences as he has a high shriek that can be alarming in public spaces. I left the house planning on taking the subway due to my limited funds, but as I left the building I realized that a taxi might be a better option, and since there was one right there, we hopped in and rode to 72nd st and Broadway. We arrived and waited an hour to be seen, but he calmed down as soon as I stuck my hand in his carrier and we were no longer mobile. The offices had an old resident golden retriever named Toby and I asked the receptionist the most common animal names they hear, the list included: Coco, Shadow, Buddy, Cookie etc. When we finally saw the Vet, a young woman my age whose last name had "cloud" in it Manny seemed both curious and as well behaved as he's ever been- she must have been a sort of cat whisperer. He had to get two vaccinations and a micro-chip ID. I had to cover my eyes and grimace during his shots but they did not seem to faze Manny in the least as he neither moved or made a peep. The micro-chip had a huge needle and I can't believe it didn't hurt. The vet was as nice as they come and filled out all the paperwork occasionally fudging dates for me where needed. The bill was $242 which hurt, but I think having Manny with me in France will be worth it. Manny had a loud heart murmur which the vet told me I could go see a cardio-specialist about, but frankly my cat is still just a cat, and I am not in any position to spend money on a feline heart specialist or any ensuing bills, procedures or pills that go along with his heart murmur.

In the past I've mentioned my desire to get a dog, but after a visit to a friend with a 1 year old golden and spending an hour with a 6 or 7 dogs at the vet, I may be reconsidering this idea. The vet appointments alone will be a serious burden on my paycheck and although I had my golden as a child, they seemed to have gotten bigger and sturdier- and I hate dogs any smaller than beagles. There were a lot of people at the vet's office who I filed in the 'crazy' folder because every time their dog moved they did the sort of Kathy Lee Gifford 'isn't my kid so cute thing'. I like animals, but I also live in reality and have a life, I guess I feel like having more than one pet at a time might be over-doing it.

NY baggage

2010-01-10T21:31:00.000+01:00

Last night I went to the new Pedro Almodovar movie Broken Embraces. I've seen all Almodovar's movies and Penelope Cruz is his go to leading lady, and he tells a good story. Lincoln square has a Loews or AMC movie theater and an independent one. The independent pulls in an older upper west side crowd and last night was no different. Sitting behind me were 50 something couples and the two women were having a conversation about a recent bus ride.

Lady #1: So this guy was on his cell phone and the bus driver stopped the bus got on the mic and told him to shut off his phone, but there were two people having a conversation and they were even louder than the man on his phone.

Lady #2 Huh, that sounds annoying.

Lady #1 Yeah, I think the bus driver should have told the two women to stop their conversation.

Lady #2 Really?

Lady #1 I think buses should be no talking.

Lady #2 Well I don't.

You know you're old when you advocate for no talking on public transportation.

Today I went to New Jersey and bought a new suitcase. It was buy one get one free- great deal, but a little tricky when taking the Path train to New Jersey and then transferring to the subway in Manhattan. I had taken the Path train before but only with a friend who lived in New Jersey. I didn't really understand how the map worked because it ended up back tracking after visiting Hoboken, and I had to ask someone after I found myself confused with the unexpected stop. After buying my luggage I headed back home and got help from two nice men who helped me lug the bulky baggage up the various flights of stairs. When I got to the subway I was standing next to a older gentleman who had just gone to whole foods and was peeling himself a mandarin. After watching him for a few seconds the smell wafted over to me and I began to realize I was hungry and that a mandarin was just what I wanted. Then I imagined him reaching in his bag and offering me one. When he reached in his bag and said "traveling dehydrates you, here", I accepted the mandarin marveling over how pleasant New Yorkers are.

Sex Ed

2010-01-09T00:06:00.000+01:00

All week long I've been subbing for a teacher whose had some stomach problems and teaching her Non-Fiction classes. Today was no different, but there was one extra class I had to teach. That class was health, and todays subject was sex ed.

I was hoping it would make for a good story. My boss told me I could hold a study hall if I was uncomfortable taking on this matter, but teaching and talking about this subject does not embarrass me in the least. I was looking forward to it.

My good friend Pierre was amused that I would be teaching this and sat in on the class. In New York, teachers are required to give out a Do Now- it is supposed to get the students working right away when they enter the classroom in an effort not to lose precious teaching time. The Do Now for Health class had a diagram of three women and three men passing through the changes puberty brings, filling out in various ways as men and women are bound to do. The students had to describe the changes each gender goes through. The kids didn't know how to spell Vagina or Penis and so I had to spell them on the board- but what was more disturbing was what they wrote. Many of them had frightening descriptions.

For class the health teacher had prepared a Powerpoint and we read first about the changes boys bodies go through, covering erections, testosterone and wet dreams. I was confident going in that this would be an easy class because 12 year olds are riveted by this topic. This is a wealth of information that they are dying to know... Which isn't surprising because from their comments their parents and grandparents are providing with them a host of information often referred to as old wives tales. We got to girls and we talked about menstruation and menopause and saw various diagrams of the reproductive organs.

Last night one of our 9th grade students gave birth to a baby boy that she will keep, but that was made in an act of rape. So I hope that this information is just the beginning. I know that this course will go into sexually transmitted diseases and cover the gauntlet of information regarding sex and issues around sex.

Sure, as teachers we laugh at the silly things kids have heard and repeat and we relish in debunking these myths, but regarding sex education there are still people that opt their kids out. Kids need to gain confidence around their bodies in order to respect them, and without a strong knowledge base around this subject they won't.

Back at Work

2010-01-05T01:46:00.000+01:00

Today was a great day: I got a call to sub.

I told my old job I was available to sub since I was back in NYC, the staff and the kids welcomed me back with open arms and while I was teaching Morenike came in and we jumped into each other arms like two silly girls and didn't let go forever- the kids thought we were crazy. Seeing Betsy and Pierre and everyone else who wanted to hear about my trip, it felt like coming home. I let the kids ask me 3 questions about Chile before we got started on their work - they wanted to know- did you meet any cute boys, were the Chilean's cute, did you live in a shack or a hut, was the food really good, did you make good art. How can you not love being a teacher!

Hyde is building a High School and after looking at the plans I can't help but be excited- we are housed in such a poor building, where the elementary and middle school would stay, but the new high school looks to the future, it finishes strong...

The kids were hoping I was coming back to teach them art- this always makes me laugh because anytime you replace a teacher the kids always want the old one back, but when I was there, they were happy to complain I gave them too much work.

Travel Styles

2010-01-02T03:47:00.000+01:00

Julia Child and I seem to have more in common than I originally imagined. She writes "Once upon a time I was a contented single woman, but now I couldn't stand it"... With Sylvain in France, I'm missing my built in buddy. But what especially rings true is her relationship with her father and her trip through France and Italy with him. "But this wasn't real travel, as I saw it... in fact, I didn't like traveling first class at all...none of it seemed foreign enough to me."

Of her father she says, "The poor man couldn't wait to return to California, "I'm so happy at home, where I've got my nice house, my friends, and I can talk the language." When we returned to Paris, I fell into Paul's arms and squeezed him tight. It struck me how utterly divorced I had become from old Pop and his type- moneyed, materialistic, not at all introspective- and how profoundly and abysmally stupefyingly apathetic his world view had rendered me."

I haven't done a lot of traveling with my parent's but I've done enough to know we are a very different style traveler; growing up we spent our vacations at the cottage- which was perfection- so it wasn't until I graduated from high school that I really went on a trip with my parents. We went to Seattle and drove to Vancouver, it was a NADA trip and we ate fancy dinners on boats and took a small 6 seater plane to a nearby island for a memorable meal. But at 18 they cramped my style, we both tried to please each other but I don't think it was a hit for either party- they insisted on going up the space needle, I had no interest and tried to sit it out, they insisted so I acquiesced and they tooled around art museums they had no interest in seeing. Two years ago I went to Africa with my dad, going to Africa was a dream of mine for a while and I was lucky to have the first class experience we had on safari, but I was disappointed we didn't get to go to Cape Town and Jo'burg, there was so much cultural history and exploring to do I felt having traveled so far it was a mistake not to take it all in. My parents aren't materialistic but they do like to travel in the style of a tour group.

I'm not sure if my world travels have rubbed off on them but upon returning to the states after hiking Mt Kilimanjaro my dad expressed an interest in going to India. I almost fell off my chair. Years earlier my parents visited me in London- I had never seen more awkward travelers- during their visit we took the Eurostar to Paris for the day- the tickets were outrageous since they hadn't been booked in advance, but my dad reasoned this would be the only time my mother would ever have the chance to go to France. It's not that they wouldn't have the money, or ability, I just don't think my dad felt like there would be any reason to bother.

I want to go on trip with my mom someday. I don't imagine it will be the trip of a lifetime- after all, I've summitted Kili- but my mom travels yearly with her mom, sometimes her excuse is that it will be the last opportunity to travel since my grandma is getting older and isn't as mobile as she used to be... although I wouldn't tell her that.

I'm sure it's my grandmother's lifetime of traveling that inspired me. She went to africa and asia constantly when I was growing up. My mom has not always been so supportive of some of the travels I've taken, "You can't do everything" she'll say; but the thing is, I watched my grandmother go everywhere, so I knew you could- the difference being, my grandmother and I wanted to and so we did/do, I think for the most part, my parents like their house, mom would worry if she couldn't speak the language, and they both worry about catching flights and all the logistic stuff. Today's modern travel is worry free, you just go on Kayak.com and find a cheap deal- then click purchase. Let the adventure begin... love it or hate it, the stories will bubble to the surface, the fleas, the diarrhea, the nights spent freezing in a Madrid subway, the near muggings, new friends and major accomplishments.

I suggested we take a cooking class in Provence... food is always the best way to make a memory.

Taking it all in...

2010-01-02T03:20:00.000+01:00

Being back in New York brings me way back, back to when I first moved here. I'd spent a lot of time in New York before ever having lived here having been a summer gallery intern and NYU summer school and while I was a whiz at getting around and knew a few places to take friends it wasn't the same as paying rent and shlomping through the streets with the rest of the New Yorkers on your way to work or the first day of good weather when hoards of New Yorkers strip down to the essentials and bask in the sun in whatever park is closest.

I was 25 and I'd already lived in London for a few years, I'd just gone through a big break-up and hiked through Inca territory in Peru. Looking back now, well, it seems like a lifetime ago. All the boys I dated, all the parties, the roommates, the apartments... Most people look back at college as the best years of their lives, having gone to a woman's college I can't claim the same, but I look back at New York and I know it's the essential chapter.

I'm about to move to Paris and I don't know if Paris will be the next big chapter in my book or if it will amount to little more than a blip on the radar. I'm thrilled to be going, but not knowing if it will feel like home the way New York does, it's easy to imagine returning to the big apple and going back to a job I love, my yoga classes, and chinese take-out.

Last night was the weirdest New Year's Eve of my lifetime. It involved a conservative Polish man that having asked me if I was a feminist told me I belonged in a concentration camp and hung. He was a colorful character and openly shared his views on things. Normally anyone who might condemn me to death within the first five minutes of meeting them would mark a night of misery, but unlike the views many of my family members share with Andre- Andre's delivery was so outrageous it was often difficult to get to anger through the shock. Andre wasn't all politics, he shared his delight for strippers and dirty innuendoes as well.

As for now, I'm catching up on what I've been missing out on and may not find available in the coming months: spending my days listening to my favorite WNYC programming while sewing and catching up on endless Daily Shows with Jon Stewart I couldn't get in Chile. As pricey as they are, I'm treating myself to a Yoga class here and there, I've never been so careful about every penny I spend, but I love my yoga studio here.

Orangette and MY [future] life in Paris or Fromage Bleu

2009-12-31T03:03:00.000+01:00

Do you know that girl who wrote the blog/book about her dad Burg, thinly veiled with mediocre food talk. She called it Orangette after some chocolate covered orange peel, sounds gross right. Well as I prepare to move to Paris I was thinking I should entitle this chapter of my blog/life Bleu Cheese, or Fromage Bleu.

While we were in Chile, I missed cheese the most, so it was no surprise when Sylvain went to Fairway market that I wrote blue cheese and baguette at the top of his shopping list. He bought a huge chunk and I didn't get through very much of it what with all the dinners out celebrating the holidays and our return with friends. So when I got home tonight I was lucky to find that chunk of blue cheese (and some of my roommates crackers) or I would have starved. Five cheesy cracker later, I discover Im not the only one who enjoys the stink. My cat Manny, who NEVER eats human food, or even tuna or wet cat food, started licking the plate of cheese crumbs.

Speaking of France I asked for and received Julia Childs "My Life in France" for Christmas, and started reading it a few minutes ago. My Aunt Loretta asked for some book recommendations for her cruise down the west coast to Lima and although I didn't have anything concrete, I advised on travel writing. My favorite hands down is Paul Theroux, an old sailor friend gave me The Patagonian Express for my birthday right after I returned from Peru having been living in Boston and having hiked Macchu Pichu (Paul's journey starts and ends in the same places). Afterwards I read almost the collection of his travel writing. Dark Star and Riding the Red Rooster were also good.

So why not read about Julia in France? She and I seem to have a lot in common, we love to eat, we love to cook and we went to Smith College. Were practically leading parallel lives. Having also received her cookbook for Christmas I couldn't help but notice how food fads have changed over the last 40 years or so. Wisconsin never let molded Jello salad recipes die, but I'm pretty sure Aspics have died out world wide- at least I hope they did, because while I'd try anything once, I have a feeling I wouldn't like it.

Wisconsin at Xmas

2009-12-28T16:47:00.000+01:00

Snow covered Wisconsin can be very beautiful. Wisconsin is pretty flat so it isn’t overpowering and majestic as it can be in the east and west, but it’s still serene and its beauty has power too. Last night a blanket of snow fell, and my parents live on 50 acres of land with a tree lined river a hundred yard dash from my bedroom window.

I’ve spent about a week here and the weather has been warm, usually I arrive bitterly complaining of the cold, but this year it has hovered around freezing and therefore the precipitation has vassilated from rain to sleet to snow. What I’ve found is that everyone in Wisconsin rests their conversation on the weather. If it’s the precipitation or lack of precipitation or the cold it’s the foundation of any exchange- gaining traction it might veer off into how the weather is affecting driving, plowing, shoveling, the corn growth in the summers, how the farmers are taking it etc. My parents generally start off with it when they pick up the phone to call me. I’ve blogged about it before when my mom expresses disbelief over unusually warm temperatures and then denies global warming. Well people, it was warm in Wisconsin this year, while during my Christmas home stay I’ve worn nothing more than a hoodie instead of a winter coat, hat, scarves, and ten layers underneath.

My cousin Ken wrote me “I always felt kind of strange when I went back to G.B.- like I was an undercover agent who knew of a world beyond the mountain pass that no one ever wanted to cross. That mountain pass of course being the state border of Wisconsin”

Well put Ken.

My cousin Tom is a teacher, a few Christmas’ ago I came home, we used to be close and I asked him if he’d like to go out for a beer while I was home. He told me of course, but he didn’t know if I’d enjoy it since his friends dropped the N bomb from time to time, and me being an east coast liberal and all… I flew into a fit, “you’re a teacher how can you have friends who use the N word, why don’t you stand up and say something!”. By last Christmas after Obama’s election I had learned to avoid conversations like these- especially when they started talking about how much more prepared to govern the country Sarah Palin was. Tom shot a deer out of my bedroom window this Christmas- so you can see how Sarah Palin would be a family favorite, deer hunter, still looks like a woman, and conservative! Cousin Tom loves his country, but he hasn’t passed the border of Wisconsin, and he doesn’t want to, he acknowledges his students are rednecks and he feels “Anyone living in America who works hard can make it” and “why are there no African American male role models”. My uncle charms in "Tom's not a bigot" but I know anytime you start defending yourself as not racist, its a pretty good indication you are, especially after you make statements like "Obama got elected how can you say racism still exists" I wish Tom could see my kids and their parents, understand their struggles and see that beyond whitewashed Wisconsin, things are not as simple as they seem.

Future Travel

2009-12-21T16:02:00.000+01:00

A few years ago a friend of mine was having some personal life issues and started seeing a therapist. One of the things the therapist asked my friend to do was set goals for herself in different categories of her life, setting a goal for in the next year, and also in five years. I started doing this around the first of every year because I thought it was interesting and fun. The category that was always my favorite was Travel.

I've done a great deal of traveling in the last year, and I even ticked that Mt Kili box that had been showing up in my goal list as a repeat offender year after year. But when you cross one thing off your to-do list, something always takes it's place. This year I ticked Chile and Argentina off and they weren't even close to making it on my list. But while I was there I had a lot of time to think about travel and what kind of traveler I am.

I feel like I'd like to put these big trips on the shelf for a while, the biking across Vietnam can wait, morocco, india, I'll get there someday, but not now... When you're a traveler as I suppose I am, you meet other travelers along the way and you end up reciting your resume of travel, all the boxes you've ticked and the exchange is usually rather lifeless, yeah, been there, done that. I'm about to go live in Paris for a few months and this is a trip I'm very pleased to take. It's a city I think I'll like, a city I've spent a decent amount of time in, but always in long weekend format, and this time I have the opportunity to infiltrate the real Paris.

In Pucon we kept meeting these travelers who were on year-long expeditions alone or with their partners. I couldn't imagine anything I'd like to do less. They never had any money to do the stuff that one does to experience the purpose of said locale, and they cooked all their own food and spent their days in the hostels planning the next leg of their trip. If you ask me, What's the point? I admire their frugality, but after a year of traveling what have you really done? They will always end up having some good stories, or mis-adventures but for me a week or two at a time of being away from real-life is about all I care for. I enjoy travel more when it feels like something I deserve after having worked hard for a few months. Something I have to look forward to.

Having spent months in Valparaiso I can say I understand it much better than had I spent only a few days as I'm sure most travelers do as they pass through on their expeditions living la vida hostel and guidebook. My first impressions of Valparaiso were so different than the ones I left with, they weren't replaced but they were developed.

This year, I'm going to do Paris, and Lyon and possibly if the opportunity presents itself a few other places in France, and I hope thats all I do.

Apple Store UWS

2009-12-19T16:20:00.001+01:00

Merry Xmas me, and welcome back to nyc. Remember the exploding charger that made me laptopless for the last couple weeks in Chile? Having purchased apple care the charger should be covered, so when shopping in soho I stopped in the apple store and they set me up with an appt.

So which store is closest to where you live?

Well I live on the UWS-

Great so the new store at Lincoln Center would work best huh?

New Apple Store on the UWS!

So instead of taking me an hour to get to my appt it only took me 20, and while I arrived on time, they weren't ready for me. But instead of a bench that can comfortably seat 6 people as in the Soho store, this store has huge tables, each outfitted with 4 MacBook Pro's for people to play on while they wait.

No complaints here while I wait... Now if only my dentist, doctor and every other appt I wait for made waiting so convenient.

What to wear

2009-12-17T13:41:00.000+01:00

I've been more than looking forward to being home for a lot of reasons, one being that I didn't really jive with the southern hemisphere situation and missed seasonally appropriate fall and winter, but another reason was because I'd get to change my clothes. For almost 4 months I had the same 4 outfits, almost all of which I donated in Valparaiso. The last few days I had been wearing a gray pair of pants with two holes in the crotch, two buttons missing from the waist tab closure, and a ripped belt loop, it felt satisfying to leave them in Pucon. What I came home with was a pair of black leggings, a black dress to go over the leggings and a cardigan to match, a few t-shirts, my yoga pants and two sun dresses. I couldnt remember exactly what clothes I had left in my apartment but it was a huge ikea bag and I knew I would be like a kid at Christmas tearing through it all.

So when I got home and couldnt find the bag the excitement was even heightened, a melange of Christmas and Easter, I had to hunt for the bag in a tiny NYC apartment. Unfortunately when I finally found it, there were no pants were in the bag. So here I am in New York, it's cold, and for four days, I have a pair of black leggings to wear.

To be completely honest I have one other pair of dress pants hanging in the coat closet. I bought them just before I left when I had been about 10 pounds lighter. I know I could wear these pants, but the idea of trying them on and finding them too tight is not an appealing idea. I know they will be too tight, but they could range anywhere from unzippable to just taut.

So its probably a good thing that Sylvain and I went to the gym last night, we got our workout on, and had a nice walk through Harlem. My contract ended in November but because I wasnt here to officially cancel my membership Ive already paid for December. Sylvain was impressed, I'm a member at Planet Fitness and my Harlem branch just opened last year so almost everything is still fresh and new, its only 20 bucks a month and I can also bring a guest for free. I dont think any city will ever feel as much like home as NY. Its true, Im ready to move on, but there are things like my gym which I wont find in France, at least not for $20 a month. Americans are gym people, we start in school and we keep going, in France they dont have teams in school, and everyone smokes anyway so no one really works out, Sylvain is an exception to the working out aspect of the equation. While there are sure to be gyms in Paris they wont be cheap, and they probably wont come with a free guest pass. In London when I went to the gym, you had to buy a membership and in addition pay a fee between 2 and 4 dollars every time you used it depending on whether you wanted to swim or use the treadmill and whether it was a peak hour or not. I'm going to miss working out at Planet Fitness. I'm also going to miss my blackberry. I will probably have some sort of pay as you go hand me down phone from Sylvain, but I wont have the luxuriousness of email, internet, camera and phone all in one. We have a free but unfurnished apartment lined up in Paris, which is great, but knowing that I have a whole furnished- and nicely furnished apartment here in NYC makes it kind of a bummer, we could live like the adults we are, but in all likelihood we will have a pull-out couch and some random furniture Sylvain might be able to nab from home along with a spare kitchen and none of the art I have here. Frankly though, like Chile its only for a few months, and poor or not, I'll still be living in Paris.

36 hours of traveling

2009-12-17T12:51:00.000+01:00

We popped a Tylenol Pm on the Tur Bus back to Santiago and 12 hours later feeling as rested as anyone could on a sleeper bus, we found ourselves a taxi, or rather a taxi man found us and we headed to the airport where we would have about a 14 hour wait for our flight to New York. We had literally given the taxi man the last of our money,

The second we dropped our bags and sat down I went to go "freshen up" but when I went to the bathroom I realized my dop bad was missing, I was upset. The thing about dop bags is not the makeup, toiletries and assortment of pills they carry but the sheer cost of it all. I almost never wear make-up, but I own it, and I had just purchased a barrage of pills which after all, add up. I estimated the cost to be no less than $200. Since Im skint, and a lot of the items would have to be replaced (like my contacts) it was a serious drag. After about an hour sitting there, with each of us taking turns as luggage watchdog and airport walker Sylvain went to see if we could get wifi somewhere, we could just upstairs and so we gathered our luggage, 7 pieces in all, and low and behold, my dop bag is lodged underneath the pile. Whew.

So we collect ourselves and find a couch set up at Gatsby's the restaurant where we spent the next 10 hours. Having withdrawn some money we were able to eat overpriced and underdelicious food. Within 20 minutes we needed to recharge batteries and so Sylvain moved to another table where there was an outlet. I'll remember those ten hours as some of the dullest in my life.

Whenever people see my passport they either say, washing machine, and I nod and smile, or they act like because its battered and old- I literally have two pages of open space left to stamp- it has somehow lost its potency and I will no longer be able to pass check points. These people irritate me, because usually they have the minimally skilled job of looking at your passport and recognizing its you and possibly that it matches the name on your airline ticket. They are in no position to deny me access to my own country or anyone elses and yet they all seem to need to show it to a colleague and speculate on my chances of passing borders.

Finally making it to the states I passed border control with a guy named Ashford who liked my outfit and stamped my passport without additional small talk, welcome back, thanks, Im glad to be here. And I meant it. I was euphoric to be home. Sylvains "visitor" line was shorter but taking longer so I headed down to baggage claim, we didnt have that much time to make our flight- enough, but not excessive. All 4 bags show up one by one, and I grab a cart, pile everything on and begin to wait. Its been a while, and now Im worried, so I ask the guard and he says he'll watch my bags if I want to go check, I head upstairs and another guard tells me I'll have to wait for a third guard to escort me to the far end of the room where the visitor's pass border. He asks me what Sylvain looks like, I say, my height, brown hair, skinny with a grey sweatshirt. He's not anywhere I can see, and then Ashford is there asking whats wrong, I describe the situation and they ask if he's Chilean I say, no French, so there should be no problem. They take me to the two holding cells, there are a lot of listless dark brown faces, but no white ones. I head back downstairs thinking maybe we missed each other in transit. But no, and then I look for my ipod to check the time and I realize Ive left it on the plane. I have already had to go back for my passport today which immediately after deboarding I realized I left in the seat pocket. I humbly accept that I am an idiot and stress because frankly I use that Ipod a lot and I really cant afford to have to replace it. So I ask the nice guard if there is anything I can do, he says yeah go tell that lady from Delta in the suit over there. I say, what color suit, and he says, well its not a suit, just a vest. Sure. She calls the plane and someones checking. Finally after an hour of waiting, I see Sylvain coming down the escalator. We grab our bags and get in the long snaking customs line and the lady says she'll send the Delta guy with my ipod to the recheck your baggage point, but then passing customs Sylvain is detained. He has to pay a fine to the US for buying one too many cartons of cigarettes at the Duty Free, and he gives Sylvain a severe chiding for smoking. We pay his fine, pass go, and at this point its more than unlikely we'll make it to our gate. I grab my Ipod from the guy who retrieved my passport and give him a hug and my appreciation. The line to pass the xrays is short, but its taking forever, and they're hassling a guy from Japan because they want to search his bag but he doesnt understand and keeps touching his bag, while they say over and over "sir, you cannot touch your bag". We head to A13 because we've already missed our flight and thats where the next flight to LGA leaves from. We get on the waitlist grab a starbucks which I spill all over my hand thus burning it, and we have just enough time to pick up two magazines before we board.

In New York, I dont even mind that I have only leggings on and its cold standing in the long taxi stand. For the first time in my life, I feel so excited about the weird way Americans overdo the whole Christmas thing and how literally everyone is saying hello, thank you, your welcome, oh excuse me, merry christmas, happy holidays and the like. Even Im saying it with extra zeal. I realize this excessive love will wear off with time, but for now, I enjoy it. It's great being home, I love the brisk seasonally appropriate air, I love being back home, all is good.

goodbye pucon, goodbye chile

2009-12-15T00:55:00.000+01:00

We spent about 3 days in Pucon and frankly it capped our chilean experience off perfectly. We enjoyed the therma hot springs and today we did hydrospeed, which is essentially letting the water carry you down a rapid river on what is more or less a large kickboard. It was, not to sound all American or anything, a blast.

Ive met my fifth person from Wisconsin here, I guy from Mequon- he also lived in Lyon for a semester where Sylvain is from, as always when you travel, you discover, as if you didn´t already know, its a small world.

We´ve run into Laura from Wisconsin, a couple we met at a party in Santiago, and a German girl from Sylvains communications theory class, we went hydrospeeding with a couple guys from Toronto and tried to help one of them with advice for his sham marriage to get a US visa.

Glad to go home, but going home on a great note, feeling good about Chile and excited about the future.

Last pages

2009-12-11T21:06:00.000+01:00

Doesnt it feel good to finish something, a book, a test, hiking mt kilimanjaro? Today was all about tying up loose ends. Sylvain got his test scores and learned he passed all his classes, I sold my books and got 20 bucks for them - in New York I would have gotten half that. On the way home from spinning class where Claudio played 3 songs from the Venga Boys because once I had a fit of laughter when during class We Like To Party came on which I hadnt heard since high school, and I dropped off a bag of stuff (including the 6 knives my mom had sent me when I first arrived) to give to Elisa. Yesterday I donated 3 bags of clothing to the YMCA saying Quiero dar esto meaning I want to give this, the woman receiving said bags asked something and I responded por las mujeres - for the women, she looked in the bag and asked what women? to end most of my transactions when I have no idea what else to say because often with the help of fluent friends I prepare a speech, this time I hadnt expected anyone to ask for what women and therefore I was stumped. In this situation I smile for a long time, and eventually someone says gracias. Even with the donated clothes, the bag of books I sold and the shoes Ive worn out and tossed away, my bags are still full, not as full as when I came, but stuffed nonetheless.

Im doing a last load of laundry while Sylvain retrieves his boxing stuff, our bags are packed and we leave for Pucon in 3 hours for on last Chilean adventure. We've both been hopped up on the excitement of leaving, heading home after a long time away, seeing friends, and the holidays ahead

So here pretty much ends the Chilean chapter. Bring on Paris.

Pavarti's vinyasa yoga

2009-12-11T13:52:00.000+01:00

Funny how some things come full circle. When I moved here in september I had been practicing yoga intensely for about 6 months and in the last month or so I had been working out regularly at the gym so I had gotten a lot stronger and my yoga practice felt the benefits. Then I got here and tried a few yoga classes, I spent every other blog writing about the disappointing experience so I wont retrace my steps. About a month ago gringa girl brought me to Hari Kari a vegetarian restaurant that also had yoga classes early in the morning and after 6pm. They were very inexpensive and so I figured I'd give it another shot, something about the place and space sort of resonated with me, it was very indian and that felt comfortable to me.

Of course, I never made it to yoga until last night. The girls and I were back at Hari Kari having lunch last week and we decided to say goodbye yesterday with a yoga class and some drinks afterwards. I picked up gringa girl who lives on the way, she hadnt been to any yoga classes here, and I assured her it was no more than light stretching and eye rolling. When we arrived we found real yoga mats- not just 3 inch foam mattresses, and real blankets. Things were looking up. Pavarti introduced herself, we knew her already, she's the waitress at Hari Kari and since we sup there once a week she was a kind and familiar face. She asked what kind of yoga we practiced and I said vinyasa and hatha- so when class began with the familar melodious chanting I went from low-expectations to spending the yoga practice beating myself up over not coming sooner. I was in a weird heaven hell. Finally I found my yoga class, Pavarti was a sweetheart, the yoga wasnt challenging but the poses and chanting were like salve for the soul, and I was leaving tomorrow. We got our first class free and I felt a surge of emotion, I made gringa girl tell Pavarti that Id spent months looking for a good yoga class here and with her I had finally found it, the day before I left Valpo.

technical difficulties

2009-12-10T20:48:00.000+01:00

My Ipod touch is flickering on and off, since this was my last mode de connection except for Sylvains crazy keyboard french laptop Im feeling pretty psyched that tomorrow we kiss Valpo goodbye and head to Pucon for some... more vacation...

Being in Valpo has been a strange experience, I have no regrets about coming, but I sometimes wonder if I should have stayed so long. The last two weeks have been the best two weeks but they have been seriously marred by technical malfunction, fleas, and mediocre weather. I dont have any desire to look back and spend time weighing the Valpo experience, Ive had plenty of time, in fact, nothing but time to think about things. For a long time now the questions worth considering havent had anything to do with being here; instead, what comes next.

For now Im headed back to the states, frankly thrilled to see snow, to feel seasonal, holiday joy and whatnot because I have not been able to muster any here. While Ive been away Ive been pretty dismayed by the state of things back at home. As a teacher were always going on about setting high standards for our students, the same goes for my country. Eight years of Bush was enough to crush anyones spirits, but while I see the opportunities for change coming to fruition; I dont see anyone taking advantage of them, and thats been more disappointing then when the opportunities didnt exist in the first place. Im tired of fighting with republicans about who is right and who is to blame, what I want to go home to is a place where no matter where you stand on abortion, guns, or healthcare, you do whats right.

Im afraid to move to france, Im afraid that it will mean giving up watching football on sundays, giving up my language, and everything thats familiar, giving up my job and the opportunity to work at a school where my experience and voice matters, where I can work hard and make a difference in kids lives whose experiences I understand because I know their parents work two part time jobs and receive no benefits so their healthcare plan is called waiting all night long in the ER because once again their brothers asthma was acting up, their bedroom is the living room couch, and I understand how and why their lives are like this.

I dont know much about any students in France, I dont know the hierarchy I will find in French schools, or what to expect or how to locate myself within it all. My french is better but nothing is worse than not being able to communicate effectively exactly what you need to say. But what I do know is that the French take care of their own. Politicians are politicians wherever you go, but healthcare is a right to all its citizens and no one is free to carry firearms in the parks or to church. Politicians dont dumb themselves down or instigate fear of intellect.

Right now though, I just want to enjoy being back home.