Tacoma Girl in Paris

2010-06-17T22:20:00.001+02:00

Tacoma Girl will be back in Paris, in T-4 days. Get ready France!

A little shameless self-promotion

2010-03-04T20:43:00.003+01:00

Just launched the page, so there's not much here yet -- but I promise there will be!

Tacoma Girl on Facebook

Incidentally, I'm also considering a trip back to gay Paree this summer. Thoughts?

Thank you

2010-03-04T04:49:00.003+01:00

Please be patient as I experiment with new designs for Tacoma Girl.

Thanks for checking me out, and be sure to check out Tacoma Girl on the West Side for updates on Tacoma Girl!

New blog

2009-08-20T08:51:00.000+02:00

Check me out at Tacoma Girl on the West Side.

It's been two years, but Tacoma Girl is back and ready to conquer new lands.

I finished my degree just over a year ago, and spent my time since then trying the handle of "newspaperwoman" on for size.

After a year reporting the news from Idaho, the state of citizen militias, Aryan pride and Larry Craig, I'm ready to tackle something truly foreign: the twenty-somethings of Tacoma.

I may have grown up in lovable T-Town, but that doesn't mean I know anything about what it means to be 23 there. My old friends have moved away, my baby brothers have grown up, and I don't even have a good-to-go pass.

Here's hoping 13 months as an Idahoan gave me a fresh perspective on what it truly means to be a gritty Tacoman.

Thanks www.tacomakids.com

2008-05-27T06:33:00.005+02:00

Hello all.

It's been almost a year since I last updated this, so I figured it was time for an update.

For those of you who've just found this site, it's a blog chronicling 11 months that I spent living in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris from August 2006 - July 2007. While I was there I worked as an au pair for a Franco-American family with four children, and lived rent-free in a studio apartment they also owned, while studying political science at l'Institut des Etudes Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.

Since I began writing this I've had so many e-mails from people letting me know that it's been a helpful resource for them. Many of them will be attending Sciences Po, or studying abroad in Europe, or just planning a trip. I never thought anyone would actually find this useful, but I'm so glad it has been! For this reason, I've decided to leave this particular site up as it is. If I embark on any new adventures I think are worth recording, I'll throw a link up here.

I've been back in the United States for 11 months now, finishing up my B.A. at the University of Washington. On June 14th, I graduated with a major in international studies and a minor in French. I was originally a French major, but realized hastily upon returning from studying abroad that I'd need to add a fifth year to complete all the required coursework.

Last fall I did an internship at Seattle Weekly, an alternative newspaper, and I wrote for my school newspaper for the last few months of school.

At the beginning of July I moved to Moscow, Idaho to take a job at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. I'm now a legitimate journalist, being paid to write stories. I even have my own beat (education). So far I love it.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

If anyone's interested....
Seattle Weekly articles
The Daily of the University of Washington articles

2007-08-04T03:30:00.001+02:00

I’ve only been home for a week and I’m already up to my ears in two questions. How was Paris? and Is it weird to be back? For the record, France was good and it’s weird but nice to be back in the states.

These aren’t bad questions – on the contrary. It’s just that they’re, well, very large questions. Paris was friendlier than I’d expected it to be, Paris smelled like urine, Paris’s air was dirty, but its parks and sidewalks were clean. Paris was exhilarating. Paris was hard and scary and amazing. Yeah, Paris was good. What else is there to say?

As for being home, It’s been surprisingly easy to fit back into my Tacoma routine – hanging out with my mom during the day, running with the dog and driving to Seattle to meet friends in the evening. I’ve lived here all my life, so being home is just like being home. The only oddnesses arise when my mind tries to superimpose Parisian life on Tacoman.

Driving through a parking lot in Gig Harbor a few days ago, I was positive I’d seen a young guy wearing a Front National tee shirt. The Front National, for those who already find Paris slipping away from them, is the right-wing extremist party in France, the one whose chef has been called everything from racist to xenophobic to anti-Semitic.

Mom, that guy’s wearing a National Front shirt, go back, go back! After a furtive circle back through the parking lot, with me hanging out the window with my camera, we determined that he was actually wearing a Sherwin-Williams paint shirt. On second glance, it looked nothing like the FN logo, my mind was just compensating for what I’d expected to see.

Then there was the day I realized I’d bought a shirt in the wrong size – the only problem was that I’d bought it on clearance on a second mark-down. I was ready to just throw it away and go buy a new shirt, but my mom stopped me. What are you talking about, of course you can exchange that. I could hardly believe it. In France, I’d thrown away purses and given away a replacement part of a coffee pot that I couldn’t exchange without receipts or because I’d waited too long to do it. In the U.S., you can take anything back, anytime. I remember once in middle school I’d bought a pair of new white Jack Purcell sneakers from Nordstrom, and worn them for two months before they started to disintegrate. My mom sent me back to the store to complain about the fact that they’d only lasted two months, and I walked out with a brand new pair of shoes. I suppose I’ve gotten used to stricter policies.

A few days later, my mom and I took the dog (Scout) for a walk. After winding our way down by Stadium High School, around Wright Park and down 6th Avenue, we stopped at the Corina Cake Bakery for some pie. Scout is a very small dog, and quite enjoys being carried, so without thinking, I bent to scoop him up, asking It’s fine to bring him in if I hold him, right? Judging by the incredulous look on my mom’s face, it apparently wasn’t. They serve food here. Instead I tied him up outside, but right next to the door so he could peek in at us while we snacked. After about five minutes, an employee went outside to move him farther from the door. The no dogs in restaurants rule should be so obvious – I don’t want to eat next to someone else’s pet, but a year of an anything goes attitude on the pet front has conditioned me otherwise.

Aside from these brief moments of confusion, I haven’t yet felt a real explosion of culture shock. The fact that everyone speaks English here seems totally normal, as did the fact that SeaTac airport customs was crowded with high school students in cut-off miniskirts trying to sneak their duty-free alcohol back into the U.S.

It’s more the little things that, while they don’t exactly shock me, definitely remind me that I’m not in Paris anymore. The fact that I’m now carded everywhere I go, but that bars are required to be smoke-free. That chocolate chips go for two dollars a bag, rather than seven euro, and I no longer have to spend half an hour chopping up Nestlé chocolate bars before I can bake cookies. That it’s okay to venture outside in sweatpants – heck, I could even go out to dinner in sweatpants if I was so inclined. Having a real-life boyfriend, and a car to drive. Not being referred to as Anglo-Saxon five times a day.

Rather than a clash of cultures, it’s hundreds of these little things every day that remind me where I am and where I am not, and make it impossible to decide if I’m happy, sad or “weird” to be back.

••• I'm having a bout of indeciciveness, so if you've got the time, check out these new title options and tell me which you like best!

2007-07-27T01:32:00.000+02:00

Anecdotes from Paris: Dernière partie

Airport fiascos

As smoothly as our trip to Israel always seemed to go, Rachael and my flight home was another story altogether. Tuesday morning we left Tel Aviv with more than three hours to spare before our flight left – but a Hebrew/English miscommunication at the train station sent us nearly an hour in the wrong direction. By the time we figured it out (a security guard kicking us off the train at the last stop on the line) and made it back to Ben Gurion International, we had just 50 minutes to spare before our flight was scheduled to leave.

At Seatac Airport this would have been stressful but not a huge problem. The intense degrees of security in all of Israel, however, ensured that there was no possible way we could get through the numerous security checkpoints, have our bags searched, be patted down for weapons and be interrogated about our reasons for traveling to Israel, and still make our 14h30 flight. After being yelled at by airport security for arriving so late, we were informed that there was no possible way we could get on the plane and were sent to the ticketing offices of Malev Hungarian Airlines to try and change our flights home.

Malev was absolutely no help – the earliest flight they could book us wasn’t until Saturday, a full day after R and I were both supposed to be flying home to the U.S. Unable to take that flight, our only option was to buy completely new tickets, so we headed downstairs to the last-minute flight deals counter. There we found an extremely helpful young guy who informed us of what no one else had – that there was an Israeli airport (among other things) strike planned to begin the following morning. If we didn’t make it out of Tel Aviv by midnight Tuesday, we’d be stuck in Israel indefinitely.

With the help of a colleague, our last-minute flight guy found us a last-minute flight. So last minute that we only had a half hour before check-in was scheduled to close. At $450, it was a pricey unexpected expenditure, but far cheaper than any other ticket options (most running upwards of $800). The only problem remaining being that I didn’t have the money – with only 3 days left of my year in Paris I was down to the last centimes of my budget for the year, and definitely hadn’t factored in an emergency plane ticket fund. I ran upstairs to collect-call my parents for a money transfer while R got our names and passport information into the computer.

Once I’d hung up the phone, I raced back downstairs and our last-minute ticket guy finished processing my ticket. Then he took R’s card to swipe and we got some disturbing news – she didn’t have any money either, but with only 10 minutes left before check-in was to close, had no time to rouse her parents at 4h asking for a money transfer that would (because of her bank) take 5 days to process anyway. She ran back upstairs to call and get the number of her dad’s credit card as I ran to check in and tell the Lufthansa people that a second late traveler might be arriving.

By the time I made it to the gate though, having been rushed through back passages by a kind security guard, it was clear that no second traveler was arriving. What could I do? I had to board my flight, and spent the next 12 hours thinking Oh crap, I’ve left Rachael in Israel. What on earth am I going to do? on repeat. Thank goodness for wine on airplanes, eh?

I made it back to Paris at midnight and crashed immediately. R finally appeared around 4pm with wild stories of her own to tell. With no way to get money for a ticket, she’d called the only person she could think of – the Israeli film actor we’d met during our first few days in Tel Aviv. Let me just say that he is one amazing guy. After knowing R for only a few days, he forked over $450 to buy her a plane ticket to Paris (with promises of Western Union payback transfers, of course). She had another stroke of luck when the start of the strike was pushed back to 6h, to allow all travelers time to get out of the airport – her flight left at 5h45.

Bum pizza

R and I had a lot of errands to run today, it being our last day in Paris and all. Some errands were imperative, like closing our bank accounts and canceling our Internet services, while some were of the more frivolous variety (buying the latest Harry Potter book to read on the flight home). We had a lot to accomplish, but they were all handily located in the Saint Germain/ Saint Michel area, so we were able to get a lot done in a limited amount of time.

After picking up our final grades and diplomas from Sciences Po, and before picking up a Western Union money order for Rachael at La Poste, we stopped near église Saint Germain for a pizza lunch. Since it was already nearing 15h, the dining area of our favorite student-y pizza place was closed, so we took our pizzas à emporter and found a bench to eat them on.

What we didn’t notice when we sat down was that we’d chosen a dining seat directly across from three hungry-looking homeless men drinking beers. I was about halfway into my first slice when I glanced up and saw them eyeing us. We couldn’t have picked a more awkward spot to eat. Not only were we weirded out being stared at while we enjoyed our lunches, but we felt like jerks flaunting our delicious pizzas in front of three guys who had probably gone a while since having a good meal.

We ate half of our pizzas, then carefully consolidated the rest into one box and balanced it carefully on the top of a trash can as we left. We’d considered walking over and offering it to them, but decided it might come off as somewhat insulting and demeaning – after all, they hadn’t asked us for any food or money. As we walked away, I glanced back once and saw the men already diving into our pizza.

Saying goodbye…or not

So this is it for me and Paris – my airport shuttle arrives in just under seven hours, and from that moment on, I’ll forsake all my claims on this city. I spent the day wandering around the city and the evening relaxing in R’s apartment. For whatever reason, we didn’t feel any pressure to go out and have a real “last night” in Paris, or do anything in particular “for the last time.” Over the course of a year we’ve had the chance to do most of the things we wanted to do as many times as we wanted to do them. We felt no need to do it up big, and said our goodbyes to Paris by watching Friends and eating ice cream in R’s living room. It wasn’t the most spectacular of evenings, but it was pleasant all the same.

It doesn’t matter anyway: We’ll be back.

2007-07-25T17:59:00.001+02:00

Pictures Pending: Until blogger lets me upload them, check them out here.

Sitting cross-legged on a bed in a kibbutz in northern Israel last Saturday night, squinting and sewing a missing button back onto an Israeli army uniform was definitely one of the more dramatic how did I get here moments of my year. Come to think of it, I’ve had a lot of those moments over the past two weeks.

From spending the night at a free hostel in Jerusalem’s Old City run by Orthodox Jews who kept us up half the night debating Torah; to sitting on the couch next to an Israeli boy whose name I still can’t quite pronounce as he casually flips through TV channels, pausing to say, Oh, that’s my show!; to being cheered at bars for the simple fact of having come to Israel to “hang out” rather than find my heritage: It was a strange and enlightening vacation.

Rachael and I arrived in Tel Aviv on a Thursday and spent our first few days there, hanging out by the beach, exploring Jaffa and going to the Shuk (market) by day and spending our nights with an old friend of R’s who was living in Israel for a few months. He’s apparently friends with a big group of Israeli movie stars, stage actors and musicians, because every time we saw him, whether it was hanging out at the apartment of an actor our age, whose latest movie just went to the Cannes Film Festival, watching the Brazil-Argentina football match or going to the theatre, we were recognizing (with help) people from movies and previews we’d seen back in Paris (and elsewhere).

Through R’s friend, we met an actor named Yoav, who invited us to go see him act in Plonter, a play (in Hebrew with English and Arabic subtitles) about the occupation – so controversial that a couple sitting behind me stood up and stormed out in the middle of a scene of an Israeli soldier harassing a Palestinian boy.

From Tel Aviv, we moved onto Jerusalem, where we spent one night in the clean (though slightly creepy) and free hostel before moving onto the floor of an apartment on the campus of Hebrew University. We spent a day exploring the Old City, another at Yad Vashem. We spent our third day floating in the Dead Sea, and a night seeing an Israeli band (who we’d met at a party in Tel Aviv) perform at a Jerusalem club.

After Jerusalem, we took a bus to Afula to meet another of R’s friends near his kibbutz. We stayed there for a weekend, hanging out with a group of young Israeli-born Americans who had returned to serve their time in the army (their rooms at the kibbutz are paid for by the Israeli army). It was an interesting experience for sure, but I think I might just be too used to my role in capitalist America to appreciate a place where everyone’s incomes go into a shared pot, and each family has a golf cart to drive around to the shared pool and dining hall.

We left the kibbutz Sunday morning to spend a day in Haifa and old Akko before heading back to Tel Aviv for two more nights out and one more glorious day at the beach.

Israel is probably the most westernized of any country in the Middle East – it has an Ace Hardware, for pete’s sake, but even so it’s like a different world. When R and I stopped to ask directions anywhere, the first question we’d get back was are you okay with buses? We weren’t particularly more concerned about being on buses than being anywhere else in Israel – yes they have, in the past, been targets for bombs, but so have coffee shops, restaurants and night clubs. The Tel Aviv beach is swept every night by a huge Zamboni-like machine that sifts through the sand checking for bombs. Still, most people are the wariest of buses – a guy we met in Tel Aviv told us that when he was in middle school he and his friends would insult each other by saying Go take the number five bus. Once on the buses, though, there are constant patrols by security guards, who hop on at one stop, sweep through the bus and disembark at the next stop to sweep the next bus that comes along. There was never a moment when I was seriously concerned about being blown up on a bus.

Something else that really struck me was the presence of religion – I mean obviously, Israel was created to be a Jewish state, and Jerusalem alone contains the holiest sites for three different religions. I knew the question of religion was a predominant one, I just wasn’t quite prepared for the question of my religion to become so important. At first it was just puzzled people trying to understand what I was doing in Israel. Do you speak any Hebrew? Wait, you’re not Jewish? Why are you traveling to Israel? Do you have friends there? Family? You’re not Jewish? These questions made perfect sense to me. I mean why was I in Israel? The honest truth sounded weird every time I heard it coming out of my mouth. Just hanging out, going to the beach… is definitely not an answer passport control at Ben Gurion International hears often.

Are you Jewish? was obviously the first question posed to me at Heritage House (the free hostel), but once they’d confirmed that I wasn’t, the question never came up again. This was where I’d expected to be the most rigorously interrogated, but the people I seemed to puzzle the most were actually the secular Israelis. Fascinated by the fact that I wasn’t, in fact, Jewish, they became obsessed with trying to figure out what I was. So you’re Christian, then, they’d state confidently, Ehhh, not exactly. I mean I have a Christmas tree every year…but I’m just not really anything. This is where they got really confused. I’m not Jewish, not Christian, obviously not Muslim – so what was I? Okay, so you’re agnostic? I tried my best to explain to each new questioner that while I don’t associate myself with any particular religion, I’m not atheist and not really agnostic.

The honest truth is that I’m just not anything. The best way to classify me would probably be something like apathetic – I just don’t care. Most conversations ended with me saying something along the lines of religion is not a factor in my life, and I think at that point people just got bored, so I was let off the hook. I had imagined my visit to Israel as more of an outsider looking in, but once my plane had landed, my spirituality became fair game. It didn’t bother me at all – I had a lot of interesting discussions, but it was kind of exhausting. I think I probably discussed my “religious background” more in the past two weeks than in the whole of my life so far.

After determining my religion (or lack thereof), the next question was invariably pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. Actually, this was never even a question – hanging out with Israelis, I was assumed to be pro-Israel and was thus included in disturbing conversations about things like the “unsanitary” nature of Arab restaurants. There were a lot of times I wanted to speak up and say no, I don’t agree with this, but as a Westerner just passing through the country I became a pansy in the face of the pro-Israel furor. The way this conflict has boiled down to the people who live in it has become almost a question of Jews vs. Arabs. Obviously it’s more complicated than that, but it’s an easy distinction to make – we were warned not to go near the Arab quarters after dark, people make jokes like, Well if you’re worried, you can take one of the Arab buses… and we were confronted with people like the man staying in our hostel who came right out and said I hate the Arabs, but he also told us he hates Shiksa (non-Jewish women – i.e., me), so he was just bigoted in every direction.

Racial profiling is a disturbing but prevalent reality. R, whose ethnicity is not easily discernable (and could potentially be Arab) was stopped at every security checkpoint and quizzed about her origins, while I breezed right through. I guess these are the disturbing realities of living in a conflict zone.

Overall, the trip was fun, relaxing, and at times disturbing – partially because of conflict-related issues and partially because of the Crocs invasion. Seriously, I’ve never seen so many Crocs at once in my life. One notable quote heard on the street was This is Israel – of course everybody has Crocs!

2007-07-20T16:04:00.001+02:00

Hey all, still alive. Been traipsing through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Afula, etc. hanging out with Israeli movie stars and stage actors...haha, no really. Now we're visiting a friend of R's on a kibbutz before heading back to Tel Aviv on Sunday for two nights and flying back to Paris. Updates to come: I'm alive.

2007-07-13T19:35:00.000+02:00

After 9 painful hours of sitting cramped in an airport in Budapest, I found a small shout-out to home when I was finally called to (crankily) board my flight to Tel Aviv. Above the cabin door was a metal stamp tagged with the words "Boeing, Co., Seattle, WA, U.S.A." Yeah! This airplane and I, we were both Seattle gals, both a long way from home, but both keeping on keeping on.

After 11 more hours waiting for Rachael to land at Ben Gurion International, we finally stepped through the automatic doors and into the sun and heat of Tel Aviv - a welcome change from the rainstormy July that Paris has been enjoying.

We spent Thursday finding our hostel, exploring the beach and eating falafel with our new friend Jonathon, a Dutchman. At night we went out with one of Rachael's friends (who's been living here for the past few months)to an outdoor bar, complete with pillows to sit on as you perch in the trees and a rope swing to play on...or sit, I suppose, and demurely sip your glass of wine.

Today we explored Jaffa, relaxed on the beach and tonight are going to a party at the home of an Israeli movie star (he just returned from the Cannes film festival, where his new movie was premiering).

Tomorrow is beach bum day, and tomorrow night, who knows. What I do know is that Tel Aviv fashion is a far cry from what we left in Paris. I've never seen so many pairs of spandex pants, tube tops, platform sandals and Crocs (!!!) in one small space in my life. It's very...uh...beachy.

Everywhere we go, Jonathon and I are being toasted by Israeli Jews, for the simple fact of being here and not being Jewish. This seemed weird at first, but as R and her friend explained it to us, there aren't a lot of people who come to Israel just to hang out and vacation. Most people passing through are on religious pilgrimages or on birthright trips to see the homeland. When people meet J and I, two non-Jewish tourists, just here to see the sights and hang out, they get really proud that we came to see their home with no ulterior motives.

That's all I've got tonight - we're in Tel Aviv until Monday morning when we're catching a train to Jerusalem, so shalom for now.

2007-07-10T22:07:00.000+02:00

My life in Paris is coming to a close faster than I have the ability to keep up with. I’m writing this from Rachael’s futon in the 11ème arrondissement, where I now live, or am at least crashing until I quitte la belle France in two and a half weeks.

Last Thursday I said goodbye to the nanny family at Gare de Lyon, an experience that was somewhat odd and definitely less emotional (at least on my end) than I’d imagined it would be. This is a family I’ve logged more than 600 hours with since moving into their studio apartment last October. It’s a family whose children I’ve spent six days a week with, playing, reading, giving baths, cooking dinner and watching movies. A huge part of my life in Paris was wrapped up in this family and these kids, and my unexpected detachment when hugging them goodbye is probably rooted in the fact that I haven’t fully come to terms with the fact that Paris is basically done for me.

We were all careful to avoid saying our adieus (literally, at God, or, a very final goodbye) at the train station, opting instead for Make sure you drop by the next time you’re in Paris, and If you guys ever want to see the Pacific Northwest… I left them 10 minutes before their train’s departure and headed home to a very bare apartment. I’d gone, in three days, from a girl in a very settled in Parisian apartment with her boyfriend, her brother and her brother’s best gal friend and a nanny family to a girl in a half-empty apartment completely and utterly alone. I spent the afternoon reorganizing the kitchen cabinets and finishing up packing.

Monday afternoon, I moved out of my little French apartment in the 2ème to crash with Rachael and her russe roommate for a few days (a useful development, as R’s building has a free laundry room). I scrubbed every inch of my apartment, left four U.S.-import Shrek Pez dispensers in the kitchen for the kids to find later on this summer and deposited my keys in the mailbox of the nanny family. That was it – I’m still a girl from Tacoma and I’m still in Paris, but most of my friends have left the city for their families’ homes or vacation, I’m no longer an étudiante at Sciences Po, no longer an au pair and no longer have an address. Weird.

I’m not officially repatriating until July 27th, but tomorrow R and I are boarding a plane to Israel for two weeks (hence the sporadic posting you’ll be seeing for a while) and returning with just two days left to spend in Paris – hopefully at Paris Plage, though this is totally dependant on the notion that the weather is going to improve while we’re gone. We spent yesterday moving me out of my apartment and packing up Rachael’s, and today doing final Paris errands (like stocking up on scarves and Bensimon tennis and paying a visit to the free Fragonard Musée de la Perfumerie).

Vacation has officially begun, but it definitely hasn’t hit me yet. It doesn’t feel like I’m done nannying, like I don’t live in my apartment anymore, like I only have two days left to spend in Paris. Paris feels like it always does, and so do I – but now I’m surrounded by packed overweight suitcases and last-minute souvenirs instead of French books on the crises facing Europe and the odd bits of puzzles and various glow-in-the-dark stars that have somehow found their way into my pockets from P and G's room.

And anyway, tomorrow I’m off to be surrounded by sand and machine guns (and probably some falafel and stars of David too). I won’t be posting much between now and June 24th, except for the random I’m still alive message, so don’t get worried, just check back in two weeks.

Shalom!

*** For those of you who have been asking, I am going to keep writing through the summer and next year – I’ll just go back to regular old Tacoma girl in Tacoma (and then Seattle), and my observations will go from the effortless chicness of Parisian women to something along the lines of Wow, I never realized just how much polar fleece there is in Seattle.

2007-07-09T20:42:00.000+02:00

Anecdotes from Paris: Partie trois

In Europe I get a lot of people asking me where I’m from or trying to guess on their own. I’ve gotten Spanish, Italian and a lot of America? Bush!, but yesterday I was not only pegged for a different nationality, but a different ethnicity as well.

After the race yesterday, I was sitting on a bench in the Arênes de Montmartre next to a French African. Trying to make conversation he asked where I was from, but before I could even open my mouth he continued for me. Algérie? he asked, avec un peu des îles Seychelles? This guy apparently thought I was a beur, a second-generation North African immigrant. The term used to be somewhat pejorative, but it’s made its way into mainstream French and lost the offense in the process.

Non, I said slowly, Je viens des Etats-unis. Apparently unwilling to admit that his conjectures had been wrong, he pressed on. Mais vos parents, ils sont pas Africains? Once I’d finally convinced him that I was not any part African his next question was Do you speak good English, then? This is where I realized that he was just seriously confused – I am as white as they get, and yes, English is my native language.

2007-07-08T16:14:00.000+02:00

Every June since my freshman year of high school I’ve run the Tacoma Sound to Narrows. It’s a 12-kilometer road race through Tacoma’s Ruston neighborhood and Point Defiance Park and this would have been my seventh year in a row. Along with Thanksgiving and my little brother’s high school graduation, the Sound to Narrows was one of the things I was pretty bummed about missing this year, so I decided to find myself a replacement on this side of the pond.

Searching through websites like Active Europe and Courir en France, I was able to find a race in Paris scheduled for the same weekend as the Sound to Narrows back home. La Francilienne was only 10 kilometers long, but with a course that wound through the hills of Montmartre, I had a feeling this race would be able to challenge the S2N’s reputation as having one of the hilliest courses around. I paid and registered through Active Europe and excitedly circled June 10th on my calendar, but on June 9th I began to realize that if this race was indeed going to be my Sound to Narrows, it was going to be the horribly disorganized, very French version.

Looking up directions the night before the run, I found a notice on the sponsor’s website – because of the first round of legislative elections (to take place June 10th as well), the race would be postponed until June 24th. That’s odd, I thought, Isn’t the second round of elections happening on June 24th? Sure enough a few days later a new notice appeared on the website – La Francilienne would in fact not be taking place until July 8th – this morning.

Since my goals for the S2N are usually along the lines of Don’t die and don’t walk, I didn’t do a whole lot of preparation for my French fun run. Rachael and I got home late last night from visiting a Science Po friend at his home near Lyon and had a dinner of sandwiches on the TGV in lieu of the optimal pre-race carb load. I woke up at 8h30 this morning, got dressed in my yoga pants and a tee shirt and grabbed a Balance Bar (mailed from home) to eat on the metro ride up to Porte de la Chappelle.

I had no idea where to go when I exited the metro, so I found a sporty-looking man and followed him to a tiny parking lot next to the Stade des Fillettes. This was apparently the place, though I could hardly believe it. In Tacoma, the S2N is an event. Roads are shut down for the runners, sponsors set up huge tents of giveaways near the start line in Vassault park and upwards of 10,000 people run it every year. In this tiny parking lot were maybe 10 runners milling around two tables. At the first were two women (who seemed to be the only organizers) checking people in for the race and passing out tee shirts. At the other table were neon curly shoelaces on sale for 10 euro a pair (I don’t know why).

In Tacoma all you need to register for the S2N is a check for 25 dollars – in France, you can’t participate in any physical activity without a note from your doctor certifying that you are physically able. Luckily I knew about this rule from taking hip-hop classes at different studios all year, so I was ready to exchange my certificat médical for a race number when asked for it. With the help of four safety pins, I became number 85, though if there were actually 85 runners there, I’ll eat my running shoes.

As the runners who were already there began stretching in anticipation of the 11h départ of the race, more and more extremely fit people in spandex jogged into the parking lot and pinned on their race numbers. There I was in my scrubbiest work-out clothes in the middle of about 30 people wearing various marathons de Paris tee shirts and one apparently homeless man who ran in a trench coat, frantically changing my race goals from Don’t die to Don’t lose, don’t lose, don’t lose.

In a race of thousands (or of any number in the U.S.) I’d generally fit in at the middle of the pack, but as I was surrounded by more and more spandex it hit me once again that this was France. It’s hard enough to find people who like to run here, let alone sign up for races. It made perfect sense that the only people who would even consider running a road race would be the fittest of the fittest Parisians. In the middle of my process of completely psyching myself out, a sweaty man jogged into the parking lot and sat down for a drink of water. He was apparently the winner of the 5k, but for his efforts there was no finish line, no cheers, no nothing. All he had to do was jog back into the parking lot and pick up his trophy (and change race numbers, as he was also scheduled to run the 10k).

Once the rest of the 5k finishers had arrived, we moved out to the sidewalk to wait for our départ. (Keep in mind that this was a group of 40 people at the absolute maximum.) At ten past 11h the third organizer wandered into our midst and asked what time it was. Oh! Il est parti! Allez-y. (Oh, it’s started! Okay you can go). With no arrows to guide us, we started off following a teenager on a bicycle.

I shouldn’t have been so worried about my speed – even in a race of the fittest French people in Paris, I still found myself smack in the middle of the pack with a nice group of evenly-paced people to run with. Once I got over my fear of completely losing the race, I realized we had something else to worry about – the fact that there was nothing anywhere telling us where to run except for three teenagers on bicycles riding back and forth along the line of runners. For the first few kilometers we were fine – everyone was still close enough together that we always had someone to follow, but as the fastest runners began to fade into the distance and the slowest runners began to peel off behind us, we found ourselves with nothing to lead us.

Somewhere around Gare de l’Est, my racing goal changed yet again. Don’t get lost. Once we lost sight of the last runner ahead of us and the nearest cyclist, my group’s new strategy became Ask people sitting in cafés which way the runners had gone at every large intersection. It worked fine because we were all running for fun – if any of us had time goals in mind this might have been a problem, but we had one couple with a pedometer telling us how far we’d gone and plenty of Parisians willing to guide us.

We spent the last few kilometers of the race running up and down various hills and staircases around Sacre Coeur. At one point we stopped to ask a group of bicyclists if they’d seen any number-wearing runners go by – arms raised immediately to point in about three different directions, so we just chose the least hilly and kept on. At the 9-kilometer mark (provided for us by the pedometer) we spied a group of racers standing halfway up a set of stairs. Il est parti où? (Which direction?) we shouted up to them. After giving us a rather confused look, one of the women pointed up to the top of the stairs. C’est l’arrivée là (That’s the finish line). We stared skeptically up at the lone man with a camera, but jogged up and were greeted with quick congratulations before being sent around the corner to a park for drinks and the race results. I’m not quite sure how we cut an entire kilometer out of our race, but we weren’t fast enough to place anyway so I suppose our inadvertent cheat doesn’t really matter.

In true French fashion, the S2N’s typical fare of orange slices, sliced bread and water from Costco and Roman Meal was replaced by a snack of San Pellegrino sparkling water, apricots, madeleines and brioches. The winners received their trophies, we each received a pile of goodies and all 40 of us headed back down the buttes Montmartres. Being the only American, I was the only one who seemed to notice the total lack of organization, but even I wasn’t really surprised. This is France after all, and what would my experience here be if not baffling and disorganized?

My loot – for a 10 euro entrance fee we each scored two tee shirts, a keychain and a one-strapped backpack. Not bad, eh?

2007-07-04T23:39:00.000+02:00

Every time I’m called upon to make the hour-long trek out to the airport, I become more and more disgusted with Charles de Gaulle International. I honestly think it’s the worst airport I’ve ever been in – it’s dirty, crowded and horribly disorganized. Why couldn’t Paris have something more like the shiny and clean Schipol airport in Amsterdam, where I once spent five hours on a layover from Seattle relaxing in a near-empty lounge, perusing the Dutch art museum (yes, in the airport) and checking my email at the wifi bar?

I was forced to pay a visit to my least favorite spot in Paris yesterday morning, when I brought my brother Ben, his best gal friend Ali and two extra suitcases full of my clothes (yikes, I’m starting to move out) out to Roissy. At a quarter to nine we were wheeling our four bags out to Place de l’Opéra to catch the RoissyBus – a fantastic transportation option that takes you directly from Opéra to your terminal at CDG for the same price as the smelly RER train. Unfortunately, this is where our misadventures began.

We arrived at the bus stop and joined the rain-soaked queue to pay for our tickets and get on our way. After 10 or so minutes, I climbed aboard with my two bags, paid my eight euro fifty and the driver promptly slammed the door. Uhhh monsieur? I asked him, what about the rest of the people in line? This one was already 20 minutes late, apparently, so they’d just have to wait for the next one. I tried to reason with him, telling him that my little brother and sister were in line and we couldn’t be separated, but he held firm. Vingt minutes de retard, mademoiselle, was his answer to everything. After a bit more pleading in my accented French he sighed and opened the door so B could board – but then shut it again before A could get near the bus. Ma soeur, s’il vous plaît. Elle ne parle pas français… (But my sister please. She doesn’t speak French). He sighed again, as if I was inconveniencing him more than I could ever imagine, and let A board the bus.

Once we’d finally made it to the British Airways check-in counter at Charles de Gaulle, we were informed by multi-lingual signs that anyone flying through or to London Heathrow had to check-in using the automated machines. In fact, there weren’t even any agents staffing the counters – everything was supposed to happen by computer. Unfortunately for both British Airways and all its passengers, the computers weren’t working. When A attempted to check-in, the computer informed her that there was no ticket available for her. When B logged in and tried to check them both in, the computer claimed that the two of them were already checked-in, and simply needed to take their printed boarding passes through passport control and board their plane.

The only problem with this was that there were no paper tickets to be found – anywhere. What there were were crowds of confused British travelers, all totally baffled by the automatic check-in machines and all waiting for help from the, wait for it, two British Airways agents who were milling around. We finally got half of B and A’s tickets, and were told they would receive the other half on the other side of passport control when they checked their baggage. Since I’d forgotten my passport and had no boarding pass anyway, this is where I left them – and where their real adventures began.

While I was sneaking onto the RER train to ride back into Paris center, cleaning my apartment, going out to lunch on Boulevard Saint Germain and nannying, B and A were landing at London Heathrow and finding out that all flights had been cancelled. With the entire United Kingdom on a level “Critical” terror alert (which has since been lowered to “severe”), 108 flights out of Heathrow cancelled, and every hotel in any kind of proximity to the airport booked solid, B and A were completely stranded.

Cute, aren't they?

Being only 18 years old and having just spent two weeks away from their families, B and A’s travel delays became the source of much stress on both sides of the Atlantic. With both sets of frantic parents trying to take care of their freshly-graduated teenagers from 4780 miles away, there was bound to be some miscommunication. Should B and A take a cab into London to the only open hotel room that could be found on Expedia, or should they camp out in the airport with the other hundreds of people all trying to get new flights out of Heathrow? Should somebody drive to SeaTac airport and try to find help at the British Airways counter there? What could they eat? Should they be pushy and play up their young ages, or wait in line to be helped?

Finally B and A found a cab to take them to a hotel in London, found by A’s dad, while my mom drove up to SeaTac airport to see what she could do. The British Airways agents actually found them a flight, London-to-Vancouver-to-SeaTac, but in order to be able to board it, B and A had to battle the chaos in London to obtain an FIM (flight interruption manifesto) from the BA ticket agents that would enable them to get their tickets. They made it back to Heathrow early this morning to begin the battle, but weren’t able to find anyone to help them until less than an hour before their flight was scheduled to take off. The FIM situation was aided by the fact that their London-to-Vancouver flight was delayed. Their expected hour-long layover in Vancouver, however, has possibly been obliterated.

Now four harried parents in Tacoma are most likely going to be spending their Fourth of July on a road trip to Canada instead of eating hot dogs and watching fireworks. At least the border crossing should be a piece of cake – I doubt many Americans will be trying to leave the country on Independence Day. Happy Fourth of July everybody – and may all of your airport experiences be smoother than this one.

2007-07-03T00:10:00.000+02:00

On Saturday I got another glimpse into the more extravagant side of Paris life. Living around the corner from the Opéra Garnier and up the street from the Parisian equivalent of Boardwalk on the Monopoly board I get my fair share of exposure to decadence. Picking the nanny kids up from school each Thursday is like watching a fashion show of enfants wearing Bonpoint next to their Gucci-clad mothers or North African nannies.

As a Vogue-addict and serial stalker of fashion week, I have nothing against the big labels – if you can afford Chanel by all means go for it. There’s just something that disturbs me a little about Baby Dior. Babies grow so quickly that their clothing sizes are measured by monthly increments – not to mention the spitting up, the drooling and the lack of toilet training. I just can’t understand paying 130 euro for a pair of 18 month old Armani jeans that are going to be spilled on, peed in and grown out of in a matter of months.

Saturday though, I was wandering along the rue St. Honoré and up the rue Chevalier de Saint George killing some time before I had to nanny when the windows of Tom Tit caught my eye. Sales are regulated by the French government, and although various stores have markdowns year-round there are only two legal and official sale periods in France – winter and summer. Last Wednesday marked the official kick-off of the month-long summer soldes and since then the number of shopping bags has been threatening to overturn the number of people in the city.

I took B, A and C out shopping on Wednesday to experience day one of the madness – the lines winding around the stores, the burly security guards who looked like they’d been lifted from their duties bouncing doors at night clubs and the hostile crowds of frantic shoppers. Between the four of us we managed to buy… two pairs of pants. After that success we just didn’t have the energy to fight through anymore 50% off racks.

By Saturday things had…not really calmed down at all, but as I passed Tom Tit, a luxury children’s boutique, I was enticed by the lack of people inside. Excepting the two salespeople, there was no one. Baby Burberry isn’t really my bag, but I did need to find a new baby present for one of my favorite families in Seattle who are expecting in July. Might as well just look, right?

I strolled through the door wearing my nannying-for-the-day uniform of jeans, a tee-shirt, a cardigan and a scarf to be greeted by two extremely chic salespeople, one a young male, the other a middle-aged female. Feeling rather schlumpy standing in the midst of all the sparkling baby clothing, each article probably costing more than my entire outfit, I was too embarrassed to head straight for the sale racks. Instead I threw my head back and explained to the saleswoman that I was shopping for a baby present – unsure of the translation of newborn, I went for pas encore né (not born yet), and tried to convey an attitude of careless extravagance. Yes, I have enough expendable income to purchase Dolce & Gabbana onsies for a child I’m not even related to.

Apparently my act didn’t convey anything other than “student, lured in by promises of moins 50% sales," because she nodded and smiled and led me directly to the discount racks. I pawed awkwardly through the racks of D&G, Armani, Dior and Burberry, debating whether I could make a quick escape or if I had to just bite it and buy a rhinestoned embroidered sun hat.

After a bit of plotting, I beckoned the saleswoman back over. En fait, I explained, les parents ne veulent pas savoir la sexe du bébé, donc, uhhh… (Actually, the parents don’t want to know the baby’s sex, so, uhhh). I thought this would be my quick escape – I don’t know whether I’m shopping for pink or blue, so I’ll be back after the baby’s born. Not so much – instead I was a fun challenge, providing something for the saleswoman to do. She beamed at me and dove into the racks next to me, pulling out item after item of soit fille, soit garçon (either girl or boy). I searched halfheartedly alongside her, every once in a while stopping to peer at a price tag. Thirty percent off of 170 euro – even on sale and in size 0-3 months I can’t afford Dolce & Gabbana.

While I was sweating and panicking, my French counterpart hit the jackpot. Voila! she said, pulling out a pastel blue 6 mo. sweatshirt. With snaps up the back, a Baby Dior teddy bear on the front and a half-off 62 euro price tag (apparently already marked down, because the same one sells for 105 dollars in the U.S.), this one was actually kind of in my budget. The saleswoman was beaming at me, and though I’m not totally sure I’d dress my own child in Baby Dior if it was gifted to me, I couldn’t resist. I grinned back, wiped my hands on my jeans and somewhat sheepishly handed over my credit card.

2007-06-29T12:53:00.000+02:00

It seems pretty fitting to me that my last experience with Sciences Po was confusing, horribly planned and exasperating. Monday afternoon I had my last final of my junior year of university and my year abroad at Sciences Po– Grands débats de l’Europe en crise.

The European Union by itself is a daunting subject for non-European students – even the exchange students with EU citizenship in my classes are often confused and frustrated. In my EU class fall semester nearly half of the students were Americans – something that amused our German, Dutch and Polish counterparts to no end. But why are you taking this class, they wanted to know – and after a few weeks of class we were asking ourselves the same question.

After studying the European Union for a while, you begin to notice a pattern. Even if you have no idea what to study for a three-hour written final on Europe in crisis, you can bet it’ll come back to one of a few things. As long as you make sure to read a few choice articles about l’élargissement et approfondissement (enlargement and deepening) of the EU, something about the institutional crisis stemming from the rejection of the proposed European constitution and formulate an opinion about the European identity crisis, you’ve got your bases covered.

My final was Monday afternoon, and though our two midterms for the class had been open note I had no idea about the final. A few hours before the test I went to my and Anna’s usual study spot of La Croissanterie on Saint Germain to buy sandwiches and pastries from the waitress who looks like she’s suffering from a severe case of leprosy – as in, weird sores all over her body. By 13h30, the time I needed to leave for my exam, I still had no idea whether we’d be allowed to use notes, so I was carrying all of mine around with me in my giant Nine West bag.

I also had no clue where my final was being held, so the first order of business in the Sciences Po penîche was to consult the bulletin board. All international students were in amphi Emile Boutmy, where at least a hundred students were milling around trying to find their assigned seats. Everyone else seemed to think this was an open-note test, so once seats had been found everyone began stacking piles of notebooks, loose leaf paper and French-langue maternelle dictionaries on their desks.

A few minutes before 14h one of the test proctors took the stage to inform us that the test would, in fact, be closed note. This announcement was met with a wave of groans and protests from students who had based their studying (or non-studying) on the idea that there would be notes to consult for precise dates and figures. One particularly upset girl from Sweden who was in my conférence raised such a stink that one of the proctors went to the Sécretariat to phone the professor. Five minutes after 14h, she was back to announce that we could use our notes, and since we were now five minutes behind, we’d get an additional three minutes at the end of the exam (nobody quite understood how that was supposed to add up).

The next big flurry came around as we each received our exam subjects and began to read. According to this piece of paper, we had three hours to write four essays about four big crises facing Europe. In addition to the expected élargissement and institutional crisis questions, there was one about the budget (a subject I know nothing about) and another about the Franco-German relationship. Realizing that left us about 45 minutes for each essay, the room was again filled with groans and the flustered test proctor ran outside to phone the professor for the second time.

The time was quickly ticking away, so with the exception of the one loud Swede, we all started scribbling frantic outlines for four essays.

Okay, did the past two enlargements toward central and oriental Europe through the EU into crisis? Ummm, no, but the speed of the enlargements did. Talk about the history, the Schuman declaration, the aims of enlargement, then the problems facing the EU today – TURKEY!!!

Next, is the Franco-German couple outdated? Yes, but it’s still important. Talk about the history of the couple’s importance in European construction and integration, don’t forget to mention the specific partnerships between Giscard-d’Estaing and Schmidt and Mitterrand and Kohl.

Right then, the budget. Uhhh, I’ll come back to this one.

Okay can the current crisis facing Europe be resolved solely by reforming its institutions? Ha! This one’s like a trick question – the institutional crisis is just a symptom of much deeper problems. The real crisis comes down to the question of European identity and the future of the EU, not resulting problems with its institutions.

Okay now back to the budget. Uhhhh….

At that moment the proctor returned to inform us that there was a typo on the subject paper – we were actually supposed to treat just three of the four subjects. Phew, there goes the budget. This was again met with groans all around – one fewer essay to write is great, but not if you’ve just wasted half an hour outlining four essays and planning the next two and a half hours around them. Again the Swede was up in arms, but by this time the proctors had had enough. It was time for us to settle down and write our exams, and they’d appease us with ten extra minutes at the end.

I finished my test with three minutes to spare and no time to correct my hasty French, but I’m not complaining. As long as I pass I’m happy – and besides, now I’m officially on summer vacation.

2007-06-24T20:53:00.000+02:00

For weeks I’ve been hearing about the nanny kids’ upcoming fête de l’école (or, school party). At l’école Notre Dame de S.R, and other primary schools throughout France, it’s traditional to throw an end-of-the-year party for the students, parents and neighborhood. What a fête is traditionally comprised of is unclear, but at S.R the kids put on an annual show for their parents and neighbors before everyone sits down together to eat, drink wine and champagne (of course) and celebrate the coming of summer.

Though I’ve been hearing about this spectacle for weeks, my understanding of it was pieced together from the little bits of information sporadically offered to me by P and E. Last year was so much better, E would complain. I was a dame de la cour. (A lady of the court). This year, P was proud to be a grand prêtre, whatever on earth that was, and E was devastated with her teacher’s choice to dress the entire class as people-sized mushrooms.

As far as I could gather, it was going to be something straight out of The ~~Worst~~ Best Christmas Pageant Ever – a motley assortment of boys in weird feathery hats and like dresses, but for men (P’s description of his own costume), animals and fungi prancing around through the streets of the 1er arrondissement.

On Wednesday there was a meltdown because the mushrooms were all supposed to wear white shoes, and E was going to ruin the show in her palest green Bensimons. There was stomping, door-slamming and coercing of a friend’s mother to call and convince the nanny mom of the necessity of a new pair of white Bensimons, but in the end, green it was.

On Thursday, I was completely befuddled as P sashayed around the kitchen island, giving me a sneak preview of his part in the spectacle. It’s going to be so weird Halley, he told me, swaying back and forth with his face and arms raised toward the ceiling. I’m the grand prêtre, well okay, actually there are two of us, and WE come down the steps first next to Tintin. Then we do this. And he twirled once more around the island, waving his hands spastically above his head.

On Friday I finally looked up grand prêtre, and didn’t become any less confused. A high priest? P is a high priest dancing with Tintin, and E is a mushroom – what on earth kind of show was this going to be? It all became clear later that evening when E finally chanced to mention that the entire spectacle was dedicated to Tintin. Georges Remi, or Hergé, as he was popularly known, was born at the end of May in 1907 – the spectacle wasn’t at all the wildly disorganized grab bag I’d imagined it to be. It was a celebration of the creator of Tintin’s would-be 100th birthday. All of a sudden everything made sense.

On Saturday, P asked me to please come see him dance down the steps of the église as a grand prêtre. Also on Saturday, E asked me to please avoid the neighborhood at all costs – apparently dancing as a giant paper-mâché mushroom is not exactly a ten-year old girl’s dream role. Unfortunately for poor E, I’d been hearing about this spectacle for so long that I couldn’t resist. Rachael and I carefully scheduled our workout group around my date with the schoolchildren of S.R.

Bright and early this morning, C and I found ourselves leaning against a police barrier on the rue St. Honoré, awaiting the end of messe in the church and the beginning of the spectacle. Leaning against the railing next to me was an elderly Parisian lady with a large SLR camera. She gave me a big smile when I arrived and asked, Vous aussi, vous venez chaque année? Vous semblez trop jeune d’avoir un enfant dans le spectacle. (Do you come every year too? You look too young to have a child in the pageant). I explained that no, I’ve only been living here for a year but that I babysit for children in the show. She was delighted with my explanation and assured me that we wouldn’t be disappointed.

By 11h30 the street was packed with parents, priests and neighbors as we all anxiously awaited the appearance of the children. Class after class danced down the church steps, dressed as space explorers, alligators, senioritas, forties ladies, mushrooms, Tintins (there was at least one Tintin for each class) and yes, grand prêtres, before they left to parade through the neighborhood. Turns out P was an Incan priest, in a feathered headdress, a shiny golden robe and piles of bracelets and necklaces. E was indeed a giant dancing mushroom, and green Bensimons or no, I’m quite sure that no one was focused on her feet.

2007-06-22T18:52:00.001+02:00

So on Tuesday, the other boy I’ve been waiting on for five months arrived at Charles de Gaulle – my newly graduated brother Ben, who arrived with his notgirlfriend Ali. My apartment is filled to the brim with four people occupying a living room, kitchen and mezzanine and I’m starting to get an idea of what a task it would be to provide for a family of four.

I never knew how much milk four people will go through in a day, or how many boxes of cereal. I wake up in the morning and along with planning our touristy activities for the day, I have to decide what we’ll be having for dinner and when I’ll be stopping at the grocery store to pick up the extra groceries. It’s not only meals that are constantly occupying my thoughts – I’m so used to my alone in Paris schedule that it’s kind of a shock to suddenly have three people relying on me to entertain them, organize them, show them around, take them out and make sure they’re having a good time.

I love switching into tour guide mode and I love having visitors. I also love when friends have visitors – since I’m always willing to show people around or go play tourist, I end up hanging out with a lot other peoples’ friends. As fun as it is, being a tourist is exhausting – going going going all day long, trying to squeeze in every last Parisian thing, not wanting to miss one single art museum or pain au chocolat. Leading people around I turn into a tourist by default, and after only three days I feel like I need a vacation.

The whole thing is made more complicated by the fact that I’m in the middle of finals at Sciences Po and I still nanny every day. Tuesday afternoon was my four-hour written final for Comportments, attitudes et forces politiques en France et en Europe, so Conner had to haul himself out to the airport to meet B and A. Wednesday morning we got up and headed due North toward Montmartre, with the requisite detour for my favorite pain au chocolate on rue des Martyrs. We met Anna at place du Tertre and spent the day wandering around the 18ème, posing for cancan pictures in front of the Moulin Rouge, exploring the little streets around Sacre Coeur, and finally climbing to the top of the basilique for a dramatic welcome-to-France view of the city. Then I had to babysit, so I left B and A to hang out with Conner and Anna for four hours. After work, I met everyone back at my apartment to make them dinner and get dressed up to go dancing at Favela Chic.

Thursday was more of the same – we left the 2ème arrondissement in the morning for my “posh” tour of Paris, down the rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré, past the Élysée Palace, down the Champs Élysées for a few blocks, then along the swank V of avenue Montaïgne and avenue Georges V. By the time we reached the Palais de Chaillot to check out what I believe is the best view of the Eiffel Tower, it was time for me to leave to babysit, and we split up once again. As it was Fête de la Musique, after I finished babysitting Anna and I took our visitors to the steps of the Institut de France and fed them a picnic of baguettes, salmon spread, saucisson sec, four kinds of cheeses, pears, Orangina, Nutella and rosé wine. We spent the night wandering through the Latin Quarter dancing listening to bands play everything from swing music to Nirvana to the Rolling Stones.

Today I’ve been nannying since 8h – so I had to leave a list of suggestions for B, C and A. I sent them to the Catacombs this morning, the Louvre is free for jeunes under 26 every Friday evening and we’re meeting back up tonight to cook dinner and make plans for tomorrow. We’re hoping to get spots at a cabaret for tomorrow night, Sunday we’re going to check out the Paris jazz festival, Monday I have my last final, and maybe sometime soon I’ll get to take a nap. Visitors are great – but so is sleep.

2007-06-19T21:45:00.000+02:00

Another day, another drama in my building. The last big shocker was the late-night graffiti vandal who surprised us all Friday morning. The latest comes in the form of a series of neighbor-to-neighbor notes left posted in the middle of our mailboxes.

Most university students in Paris right now are finishing up their examens finals and celebrating like there’s no tomorrow. In the spirit of completing their first-year exams, two roommates who live in the poor half of my building decided to throw a little party for their friends and classmates last Saturday night. As is typical in an apartment building, the girls wrote a note to all the neighbors explaining that they’d be having a party that evening, inviting anyone who was interested and apologizing in advance for the noise and bother.

As parties often tend to, this one grew and grew, spilling out of the roommates’ first-floor apartment and into the building’s courtyard and out onto rue Monsigny. Rachael, Conner, Anna and I had spent the night dancing to Hava Nagila at Chez Georges, so C and I were smoky, sweaty and exhausted by the time we’d dragged ourselves back to my building’s front door.

Just as I lifted my hand to punch in the code, the door flew open and three girls ran out, laughing and waving cigarettes. As we entered the courtyard we found maybe 20 young people milling around, smoking, drinking and generally quite enjoying themselves. C and I were waved over to join the group, but we were aching for a place to lay down, so we just waved back and went upstairs to sleep. My apartment’s windows face the courtyard on the other side of the building, so that was the last we heard of the party – until we went to do laundry Sunday morning.

Apparently not everyone in the building was quite so unconcerned by the party as C and I were, because taped to the front of the mailboxes on top of the original note was a page-long letter addressed Chères P et G. The note started out being fairly cordial, but quickly turned a bit sour.

Translated from French:
Chères P et G, congratulations for passing your exams.

This merits a party a bit long and rambunctious, but on the other hand, for your future times of rejoicing if you would stay in your own apartment to vomit, break glass, throw out your cigarette butts, perform realistic imitations of a pig having its throat slit open, and pass out on the ground, we would be much obliged.

If this night had actually been the intimate gathering of friends you told us it would be, perhaps you would have had the courtesy to clean the common areas, at least to show some bit of respect for our building and cleaning man.

We hope you understand that we were shocked to be forced to write this letter, but we will stand firm.

F and A

I did find it rather inconsiderate that the fêtards chose to party in the courtyard, considering that ours is a building of wealthy families who like to keep a serene environment, and many apartments’ windows open onto the courtyard, but the note was a little over the top. The couple who posted it knew exactly whose party it had been, and it would have been just as easy for them to leave the note in the girls’ mailbox, rather than show it off to the entire building, but I think I’m the only one who felt that way.

The rest of the neighbors, in our building’s rather dramatic way, were quite pleased with the note. I passed more than one person nodding and tsking while reading the note, and the few I talked to were all satisfied. They kept me awake until 3h with their screaming! and As a woman alone, I was scared to ask them to keep it down – who knows what they would have done. Now really, two scholarly girls and their university-going friends are not going to harm a neighbor who asks them to quiet down – but no one in this building ever passes up an opportunity to stir up more drama.

2007-06-17T19:46:00.000+02:00

So it’s Father’s Day (anybody ever wonder about that apostrophe placement choice?), in France and in the United States. I was a little confused because of the two-week difference in Mother’s Days between here and the U.S., so when Paul was asking me all week about what color tie I thought his Papa would like, I didn’t realize I should have been thinking about my own father’s neckwear as well.

I guess I don’t usually give much thought to Father’s and Mother’s Days – they just seem like more of those endless days of appreciation. Secretary’s Day, Teacher Appreciation Day, America’s Kid’s Day, and Grandparents Day all fall on the list of days that force us to mindlessly appreciate. Mom and dad, thanks for not leaving me out with the wolves. Grandma and Grandpa, thanks for not leaving my mom out with the wolves. Secretaries, thanks for not leaving those important faxes out with the wolves. Every year the days come around, and every year we take our moms out to brunch or make books of coupons for our dads, promising batches of cookies and foot massages.

It wasn’t until this year that I found myself really thinking about what it means to celebrate my own father (and mother, but this is a Father’s Day tribute). I mean, he’s this guy whose jokes make my brothers and I groan, whose “unconscious” slips into an “Irish” accent make us cringe and whose Black Bean Cassoulet and Carrot-Orange Soup are famed throughout North Tacoma. We love him, of course, and we are grateful not to have ended up as wolf bait – but he’s always been 100 percent there for us. A good thing, of course, but we’ve been conditioned to expect it, and somewhere along the way totally forgot to thank him for making us crêpes, coming to our school band concerts and bragging to all his coworkers about his amazing children.

It happens to everyone, I think, but not everyone has the chance to find herself half a world away and realize how much she has come to rely on that constant presence in her life. I’m 21 years old, living completely on my own in Paris, in an apartment that I earn through nannying – in theory, totally independent from my parents. Except that I’m not, and I’m not sure I ever will or want to be. As long as it takes most kids to admit it, parents are smart – as old and weird as they seem to us growing up, they’ve been around the block and actually have the experience to back up all that advice we hate to receive.

When I return to Seattle at the end of this summer, it will be to start my senior year at the University of Washington. I’m going home to work for a month, look for an apartment and start planning my real life. I’ve started applying for internships for next year and the summer after that will hopefully lead me to the career I’m aiming for (journalism), and I’m at the point where I guess I’ve “left the nest.” The farther away from home I get though, the more I realize that my dad is just dang useful. He helped me through a crisis with the family that employs me, he’s corrected my blog entries, he helped me brainstorm arguments for exposés that I gave at Sciences Po and he helped me update my résumé.

(And loft my bed in my college dorm room)

Last Monday I sent him a frantic email at work saying, Dad, help me!! I don’t know how to write a cover letter!! While I was waiting on his response, I looked up sample cover letters – which is probably what I should have done in the first place, and I did find a very useful website, but I still sat by my computer waiting for an email from my dad before I started writing anything.

I try to picture myself in 10 years, working as a journalist, supporting myself and my own family and giving advice to my own kids (okay, maybe 20 years), but I still can’t picture the day when I’m going to stop wanting advice from my own dad. That’s what he’s there for though – and actually having a dad who is always there, ready and (sometimes far too) willing to give advice is a rarer and much more valuable resource than I ever realized.

So Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there – but especially my own. Thank you. I do appreciate you – though the wolves you deprived of their dinner might not feel quite so fondly.

*** And Grandpa, I appreciate you too!

2007-06-16T15:59:00.000+02:00

Le jardin a été massacré!

Sometime Thursday night between 1h and 7h, a vandal got into my building’s courtyard and tagged all the walls. C and I had to stop and do a double, and then triple-take when we left the building yesterday morning to meet one of my maîtres de conférence for a guided tour of the Sénat. In hot pink and silver spray paint the mailboxes, front doors and walls were covered with graffiti.

Nike ta mere (F*** your mother), Tu va mourir (You’re going to die) and the tag VHR were among the less-than-friendly messages left for our building’s inhabitants. Apparently the earliest-risers also found broken beer bottles scattered around, but they’d been long gone by the time C and I first arrived on the scene.

The vandalism was the talk of rue Monsigny all day long. Neighbors I’ve never met before were stopping me in the courtyard and waiting for the ascenseur to get my take. At first the neighbors were enjoying the drama and pointing fingers at each other. The ex-Nazi in the poor half of the building must have let someone in unknowingly. Or, the business on the third floor has a constant stream of random people going in and out. Even the wife of the third-floor business owner was whispered about, though not out of suspicion. That woman tries to act so cool, like she doesn’t even mind graffiti in our courtyard! What an idiot… Eventually though, everyone came to the same conclusion, the favorite central Paris scapegoat – some jerk from the banlieue must have done it.

The first time I heard someone use gen de la banlieue as a slur I was a bit disturbed. Yeah, some of the banlieues are typically poorer, they have more crime and they were the setting for the 2005 riots, but encouraging the division between the inhabitants of central Paris and the inhabitants of the banlieues seems so unproductive and like it will just increase resentment. When I picked up P(8) and E(10) from school on Thursday, E was in tears. The boys in her class had been teasing her all day, lead by one who’d had an unreciprocated crush on her. He’s just mad, she said, because he knows I’d never like him. He’s just a stupid idiot from the banlieue. I think it’s pretty telling that deuxième arrondissement kids 10 years old are already using de la banlieue as a slur.

It was obvious to all of us that nobody from the banlieue spent 40 minutes on the RER to drink and vandalize a private courtyard in the 2ème arrondissement, but I think it calmed all the neighbors to have someone to blame outside of the building. They’d spent the first half of the day pointing fingers at each other over who were the irresponsible ones who’d not checked to make sure the front door had closed properly, and squabbling over the fact that the nanny mom was the only person in the entire building who had called the propriétaire to tell him what had happened.

On top of the rich half/poor half building division, there’s also some serious tension between the owners and the renters – mainly that the owners resent the renters, so anyone lacking a property deed experienced their share of gossip. There are a lot of irresponsible renters in this building, or when speculating who could have let the vandal in, there is that renter on the third floor…

The building finally began to calm down around dinnertime, mainly because the gay interior designing couple on the first floor were having a dinner party last night and decided to take cleaning matters into their own hands. Clearly residents of the rich half, the couple employs two full time menservants who were sent down mid-afternoon to scrub the walls. They managed to rid us of the VHR tags and the Tu vas mourir, but faint traces of Nike ta mère remain, as does the graffiti covering our mailboxes and the wall next to them.

The graffiti remnants are really barely noticeable – the nanny parents had guests for dinner who had no idea what they were talking about when they apologized for the graffiti. It seems to have been just a random act of vandalism, but it managed to stir up some pretty entertaining drama in an otherwise sleepy courtyard in Paris centre.

••• I had a real Mary Poppins moment today babysitting Georges. We were playing in the TV room when he pulled out a six-note xylophone, deposited in my lap and demanded, Ollie, play Au clair de la lune! I kind of looked and him and laughed, and said, Sorry pal, I don't know that one. He did not appreciate that answer and started to get feisty in that way that only two and three year olds know how. Finally I said, Okay, okay, sing it for me. So he did. It was a pretty nice rendition, and he sang most of the words correctly. I shrugged, picked up the mallet, and – are you ready? Played Au clair de la lune. Yeah, I'm pretty much French Mary Poppins. Errrr, well I was proud, anyway.

2007-06-14T22:47:00.000+02:00

On Tuesday morning the boy I’ve been missing for five months finally made it to Gare du Nord. I’ve been looking forward to his arrival since I returned to Paris in January, and I’ve been counting down the days since there were more than 150 left to go.

Somewhere around the middle of last week, though, I started to get really scared. Five months is a long time to go without seeing, kicking or hugging the person you’re supposedly in a relationship with. A lot can change in five months. What if I didn’t even like this guy anymore once I saw him? What if the three weeks drag on and on and I end up starting a countdown to his departure?

In addition to the fears, there was a bit of wistfulness. Yes I was excited to once again have a real-life boyfriend instead of some pretend one I only talk to over Skype, but Tuesday was bringing with it the end of an era. No more am I virtually single in Paris, free to go out when I want, come home (or not) when I want, dance with whomever I want and still come home to talk to someone who really likes me. As hard as long distance is, we had a pretty good rhythm going.

Not only is my entire faux single gal routine completely down the toilet, but so is my I’m a nanny, frolicking around Paris, buying baguettes and studying political science thing. Conner arrived Tuesday. Classes at Sciences Po ended Wednesday. My brother and a friend arrive next Tuesday. Finals end the following Friday. I say goodbye to the nanny family two days after my brother leaves and then I’m on vacation. Goodbye Parisian routine.

As apprehensive as I was about the reunion, I still woke up two hours early on Tuesday and couldn’t get back to sleep or eat breakfast. I brought my iPod to chill me out on the way to the train station and as I waited for his train to arrive from Ashford (there was something complicated about his ticket, and he ended up flying in and out of Gatwick Airport in England) I felt like I’d just graduated from the I miss my boyfriend club to the I’m about to finally see my boyfriend club.

Leaning against the railing next to me was another girl my age, also of medium-length brown hair and wearing a black Zara cardigan that matched my grey one. She was also holding a twin iPod to mine, right down to the black skin. Curious, I peeked over to see what she was listening to, and by some bizarre coincidence we were both listening to “Fidelity” by Regina Spektor. Apparently cardigans and a soundtrack of Regina Spektor are the standard for girls meeting their long lost boyfriends at Parisian train stations.

When the train finally arrived and my twin en attente and I had both leapt into our respective boyfriends’ arms, everything was finally okay. I wasn’t suddenly repulsed by this tall boy from Seattle, and the thrill of actual physical contact was enough to banish any nostalgia for my pseudo-single life in Paris. Plus, he brought me the new Vogue américaine, and though my initial response was Did my mom send this with you? he gets all the points.

With a living, breathing boyfriend and the latest Vogue, my life should have been complete – except for the itty bitty fact of the inevitable cosmic collision that is bound to happen when one’s French exes and current copain are all flung into the same not-quite-big-enough city centre. I’ve lived blissfully free of awkward ex encounters for months, but apparently having your current boyfriend visit is just a magnet for all the old ones to start reappearing.

Last night was Ladies night at Le Queen, so Rachael, Anna, Marie and I got ourselves completely swanked out to avoid any trouble with the bouncers for arriving with a guy. We dressed C all in black, styled his hair into a euro fauxhawk and gave him cigarettes to smoke in line. We figured euro-ed out and clad in hot pants and high heels, slinky silver dresses, leather pants and satin blouses we’d have no trouble getting in as a group.

The bouncers were unusually friendly and we hurried to check our bags and make a high-heeled dash for the dance floor. The five of us were happily dancing in the fog and flashing lights to Britney Spears’ “Hit me baby one more time,” when somebody grabbed me from behind. Anyone remember Rubens? I can honestly say that I haven’t had many more awkward moments than being spun around during a Britney dance session and kissed by a guy I used to date in front of the one I’m currently dating. Rachael was alarmed, Conner was disturbed and I was beet red. I left poor C to dance with the girls and went to settle things with Ru. Apparently he’d been a bit more invested in “us” than I had, and was carrying around a bitter tirade for the day we saw each other again. I no longer have your number. I deleted you from my mobile. It was all I could do to keep from rolling my eyes – seriously? This is not the kind of conversation I expect to have with anyone past the age of thirteen. I guess that’s what I get for fraternizing with boys who wear tighter jeans than I do – how thankful am I to be back on the arm of my baggy-panted Seattle boyfriend.

2007-06-10T22:08:00.001+02:00

Yesterday for the first time I started to feel a few shreds of panic about leaving Paris. As of today I have exactly one month left in the city before R and I head to Israel. We’ll be back in Paris the 24th of July to spend two days doing laundry and eating a few last pain au chocolats before officially repatriating. Suddenly a year seems so short, and the idea of coming back here to work after graduating from the University of Washington is sounding more and more appealing.

I first started to feel the time slipping away from me yesterday at the Paris Bloggers’ Picnic in the parc des Buttes Chaumont. I have to admit I was feeling a little apprehensive about participating. I always feel a bit uncomfortable with the tag of “blogger,” as I alternate between feeling like a huge dork and completely self-obsessed when I mention it to people for the first time. All week I had this nervous energy building as I imagined meeting a group of self-important writers suffering from I’m a blohhhhgger complexes.

Nevertheless, I asked nanny mom for Saturday afternoon off, made a special trip to the bar à tee shirt on boulevard Poissonnière to pick up my Tacoma Girl tee shirt, slept with my fingers crossed for no rain, and woke up early Saturday morning to bake chocolate chip cookies – I mean seriously, what else would a girl from Tacoma contribute to a picnic in Paris?

I shouldn’t have worried. I’m not sure where I got my notion of bloggers as total jerks (particularly odd since I guess I am one), but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Everybody was fun and tipsy and down-to-earth and fully appreciated my cookies (or at least pretended to) and it was just an all-around great afternoon – with the only exception being the part when I had to brave the free toilets. It’s not for nothing that friends call me “Soccer Mom,” so I was at least prepared with a bag of baby wipes that I gladly shared around once we’d escaped the smelly urine den.

Everything was great until I left the picnic – and immediately started to feel completely panicked. There’s nothing better than meeting a new group of fantastic people – unless you only have a month left on the same continent as them. I’ll do my best to squeeze in as much as I can in these next few weeks (Ladies Night at Le Queen this Wednesday for anyone who’ll be around!), but the fact remains that I’m not going to be in Paris for the next blog picnic.

I returned to my apartment with email addresses, blogs to read and plans to go out this Wednesday, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I don’t have enough time left in Paris. The weird lump in my chest only grew bigger after going to my hip-hop stage this afternoon. The second stress bomb of the weekend hit me when Flo announced she was forming a performing hip-hop company for next year and would like to invite certain of us whose dancing she knew well to join without an audition. The company would do a lot of what we’ve been doing this year – dancing at clubs, bars and artists’ spaces but with more performances in more venues. It sounds amazing – and how cool would I feel being part of a gritty hip-hop troupe? What can I do, though – there’s no way to change the fact that I’m not going to live in Paris anymore, beginning at the end of July.

All year I’ve felt like I’m missing life in the Puget Sound. I’ve never met my best friend’s boyfriend of five months, my little brother just graduated from high school without me and my family has a new dog who I’ve never petted or taken for a walk. I can’t wait to get home to meet Scout and Peter (guess which one is the dog) and inspect Ben’s diploma, but for the first time I’m starting to get a real glimpse of the life that’s going to keep on going without me here in Paris – and I’m not feeling ready to leave it.

2007-06-06T23:27:00.000+02:00

It’s June 6th, the sun is shining, the metros are oppressively hot and the city is crawling with tourists. Staging romantic kisses in the middle of the Pont Alexandre III, posing for pictures with the sculptures in the jardin des Tuileries and boosting the French economy buying anything that sparkles with an Eiffel Tower on it. Since tourist season is pretty much year-round most Parisians have learned to co-exist with the constant influx of tour busses and Eiffel Tower print ponchos – either by avoiding the most popular destinations or ignoring the people visiting them. Anyone who actually gets annoyed by the constant stream of tourists is probably relatively new to the city himself.

It’s what follows the tourists that is the problem. Panhandlers and Gypsies from Eastern Europe know non-francophones to be easy marks, and using roughly the same tourist-spotting criteria as I do, their numbers tend to increase proportionally to the number of tourists in the city. During most of the year I know who and what to avoid. The Sénègalese immigrants who lurk around the steps up to Sacre Coeur can have matching string bracelets tied onto the wrists of an unsuspecting tourist couple before they even realize what’s happening. Once the bracelet is on, payment is demanded. These guys are not afraid to get in people’s faces, so it’s generally a better idea to keep an eye on your wrists than to try to refuse them their few euros.

If you’re ever approached by any scruffy or desperate-looking woman asking Speak English?, give a firm NO and head in the opposite direction. Most of these ladies lurk around major tourist destinations, beneath the Tour Eiffel, up and down the Champs Elysées and around the Arc de Triomphe. When some hapless American answers yes, the woman shoves a piece of paper into their hands, usually detailing a sad story about the person’s family back in Eastern Europe or a sick child without access to proper medical care. Once you’re holding the paper, there’s no escaping – at least not without a severe moral beating. R was approached by one of these women a few days after we arrived last August. When she apologized to the woman for having no cash on her, invoked quite the lecture. If I had known you were not a good person, I would not have shared my family’s story with you. I do know there is no place for you in Heaven. Being Jewish, I don’t think she was too concerned, but it was a pretty obnoxious way to treat someone you’re attempting to extract pity from.

There’s a never-ending supply of buskers on the metro, but the worst are found on the RER train lines heading North – especially heading toward Charles de Gaulle airport. When I rode the RER B to the airport to fly home for Christmas, there was a father and son Eastern European busking team. The dad played Christmas music on his fiddle while the son climbed over suitcases and between legs in a sleeves-too-short jacket and a limp and dirty Santa Claus hat collecting coins. The boy was probably 8 or 9 and it was a Friday morning – smack in the middle of the school day. I think most of the travelers were torn between not wanting to support a guy who would take his son out school to demean himself in a Santa hat and wanting to help the kid get a winter coat that fit. I didn’t give money. I had the feeling that even with everyone in the car’s donation the boy wouldn’t have gotten a new jacket – the heartstring-plucking aspect of his forearms poking too far out of the sleeves was just too valuable to give up.

Of all the bizarre scam-money-from-tourists schemes I’ve only really fallen for one. By now I’ve seen this one so many times that I cringe when I see some unsuspecting person about to get suckered. One morning in February I was walking to Sciences Po, listening to music on my iPod and completely in my own world when an older man grabbed my elbow. When I turned toward him, he was brandishing a massive golden ring, so I pulled off my headphones to hear what he had to say. C’est à vous, mademoiselle? (Is this yours?) I shook my head but he pressed on. You didn’t drop it? I just found it on the sidewalk here, it must be yours. I shook my head again but this time he grabbed my right hand and slid the ring onto my finger. For you, mademoiselle, he told me. At this point I still had no clue that I was being played and just gave him a confused look.

Then he asked me for 15 euro. Just to eat, mademoiselle, s’il vous plait. I told him to sell the ring, but he refused to take it back and just got more persistent. I finally managed to shove the ring back into his hand and told him I had no cash (I always have cash, I just don’t hand it out to people who accost me on the street). He was pretty irritated by this so I offered him a pack of Lu cookies I hadn’t opened yet. At this he just shook his head and stomped away, muttering about euros.

I didn’t realize how easily I’d fallen into the trap until I saw the same ploy used again by another panhandler in another part of the city. Always the same clunky golden ring that some impoverished person just happens to find laying at the feet of a well-to-do non-Parisian. Just this afternoon on my way to Sciences Po I saw it twice – once in the jardin des Tuileries and once on the Pont Royal. I didn’t really pay any attention the first time – just kind of chuckled and continued on my way. The second time though, a young woman pulled the trick a middle-aged American couple that looked absolutely lost. The husband was clutching his camera and a guidebook and the wife was poring over a map with a passport pouch dangling around her neck.

When I saw her approach them, I almost went over to intervene. It’s not theirs! They don’t want it!, I envisioned myself yelling. But as touristy as they looked, I wanted to give them a little more credit. The husband will figure it out, I reasoned, so I kept on my way. Once across the street, though, I turned back to look at them and saw the wife holding the ring back toward the woman as the husband fumbled around in his traveler’s money wallet. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of tourist-saving opportunities in the next two months.

Recent Google searches:
• where did paris find jesus
• rachel running tacoma
• tacoma erotica stores
• the kind of tonsil

2007-06-05T23:01:00.001+02:00

With only 6 school days remaining of spring semester at Sciences Po, my workload of the past few weeks is finally winding down. I’ve completed all my exposés, débats and dissertations, and with the exception of a one-page note de travail due on Thursday, all I have left to look forward to are completing three finals and the freedom of Paris without classes getting in the way of my fun.

The past few days have been particularly busy, as 10h this morning was the deadline for my final 15-page Urban Governance paper. To earn a francophone dîplome from Sciences Po, you can take up to one elective in a language other than French, but everything else must be strictly français. This is lucky for me, because it saved me from having to register for a French finance class when I was missing 5 credits in my schedule at the beginning of the semester.

I signed up for “Urban Governance: Steering the complex city” with absolutely no clue what I was getting myself into – all I knew was that whatever it was, it would be better than finance in French (or in English, for that matter). After the first class I still had no idea what the course was going to be about, but the instructor was a visiting professor from Germany and was super tall and one of the nicest people I’ve encountered at Sciences Po.

Okay technically after 13 classes, I still have no idea what we were learning all this time – something about case studies, subsidiarity and the L.A. school versus the Chicago school of thought. All I know is that we each chose a city to study for the semester, our own hometowns or any urban area we found particularly interesting. I chose Seattle (surprise, surprise), without any real idea of what I was supposed to focus my essay and research paper on. We were supposed to focus on some political or planning issue in our selected city and prepare both an exposé and an analytic paper on it. I decided that the Alaskan Way Viaduct debate would at least be interesting to research, even if it turned out to be the opposite of what Professor E wanted.

I spent weeks of my semester trekking all over the city looking for some kind of resource to use for my paper. The Sciences Po library actually had a few books that discussed Seattle’s urban government, but the most recent was written in 1968. Not only were they devoid of any mention of the viaduct, but they devoted pages to the “negro and oriental” communities developing around the city. I went to the library at the Pompidou center, the Bibliothèque Nationale and poured over the University of Washington online journal catalogue (thank you jstor). Finally I had scraped together enough information out of books, the website of the Washington State Department of Transporation and the Seattle Times archives to put together a respectable exposé. I thought the subject was interesting, but up until I actually stood in front of the class to talk about the deterioration of the seawall that supports the Seattle waterfront and part of downtown I was terrified that I’d created a presentation that had nothing to do with anything we’d studied in class.

The class seemed riveted, but that was probably due more to the horrifying sequence of slides I’d just shown them of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

As the lights came up, Professor E gave me his feedback. At first I was thinking, earthquakes and bridges, what does that have to do with Urban Governance?. I could feel myself blushing and braced myself for what was coming next. But after a moment it becomes very clear – this is a perfect example of the failures of a city’s politics in… What? He’d liked it? I’d succeeded in giving an exposé that fit perfectly a course that I didn’t even understand? Victory! He gave me a few suggestions for the paper and I went home thrilled and feeling like I might actually know what I was doing.

And just because I love this view:

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

That was three weeks ago. Ever since then, I’ve been working away at my final paper, much more diligently than I’d ever manage to be in an environment with an abundance of useful sources – if I was actually writing about Seattle in Seattle, for instance. I stayed up until 4h the past three nights in a row revising and finishing my paper – I need all the points I can get if this is half of my final grade. I got myself out of bed after 4 hours of sleep this morning and made it down to Sciences Po a half hour before class started to print my paper and highlight State Route 99 and the Seattle Fault Zone on the graphics I was including with the project.

Feeling exhausted but like I was one huge leap closer to summer vacation, I handed in my paper with what I thought was the rest of the class. After counting the stack though, Professor E looked back up at us and wanted to know why he only had seven final papers out of a 15-person class. Two people immediately raised their hands to tell him that they didn’t have printers and that they’d emailed their papers to him this morning. That was fine. One girl raised her hand to say she had believed the deadline to be next week but was almost done with her paper and could email it in that night. That left five people unaccounted for. Poor Professor E looked around the classroom looking very confused. Does anyone have a problem turning in their paper today? he asked.

At that, four people raised their hands. I plan to send you my paper tomorrow evening or Thursday morning, said one French boy who was wearing a dark red velvety blazer, I’ll send it tonight if I can manage, but it’s more likely to be sent tomorrow night. Our professor looked so bewildered by this casual and unapologetic announcement that he couldn’t say anything. Then the next girl spoke up. Yeah, I’m going to need to take a few more days on mine. Professor E couldn’t believe this and neither could I. Being an English elective, the class is full of French students. French students who have to pass an incredibly selective concours to be admitted to Sciences Po. French students who supposedly carry around a grudge toward the international students who have lighter workloads and can get away with much more. French or not, I couldn’t believe that anyone could have such a lack of respect for a professor that they would demand extensions on the papers they’d supposedly been working on all semester without even a please or I’m sorry.

When Professor E, who’d finally regained his voice, began to question the fairness of allowing half the class to turn in late finals for full credit he was pounced on by the two remaining students. According to these girls, it was Professor E’s fault that they hadn’t completed their papers. He’d set a due date of June 12th and been terribly unclear about requirements for the paper. Their arguments made even less sense – if they were true, how did most of the class know when and how to turn in their final papers?

The icing on the cake was when our final classmate arrived panting 45 minutes late. He burst into the classroom, found a seat and quickly pulled out his notebook. Professor E paused the discussion to ask if he had his paper to turn in. Oh sure, was the reply. I can email it to you later.

Professor E was so taken aback by the number of incomplete papers that he merely set the late deadline for Friday afternoon and told us he needed to think about grades. I was so confused by the whole situation that I came straight home and emailed him with the reassurance that the deadline and requirements had been absolutely clear (even if the subject of the class had not been) from the get-go.

Dear Mrs Griffin, [sic, sic, SIC! I am so not married. Yet.]
Thank you very much for your feedback which is very important for me. I was
really confused about the statement that this was not clear.
Kind regards,
Prof E

I’m glad I could make him feel better, but now I feel worse – it seems that half of our class thought they could take advantage of both our prof’s niceness and the fact that he’s a visiting professor and unfamiliar with the Sciences Po system. I kind of want to write him back demanding half-credit for all the jerks who are trying to play him, but I don’t think that’s really my most, uh, mature option.

And a few more odd Google searches:
• temperatures, anecdotes
• cashier had cut on hand hiv risk
• my revenge most embarrassing moment
• SKIPPY peanut butter Light pARIS
• crazy exercises

2007-06-02T12:52:00.000+02:00

As the French (and everyone else) like to joke, les manifestations (protests) are the unofficial national sport. Up until now, I’ve only been a witness. At first I was fascinated, then amused, then irritated, then just plain bored with them. What seemed so interesting because it was so uniquely French is now just a nuisance – I don’t care if they’re protesting for national solidarity or anarchy, I just want the bus 39 to run on time.

They protest everything – it’s their right, and they exercise it. And judging by the coup that almost took place in my L’Europe en crise class, the exchange students at Sciences Po seem to have adapted the same habits.

My maître de conférence for my European Union class is often absent. He’s cancelled three classes out of the 12 we’ve had this semester for various reasons – he works for the Sénat and often has unexpected work emergencies. None of us mind – our conférences are held Friday mornings at 8h, and we’re more than thrilled with the occasional opportunity to sleep in.

The problem is that for every cancelled conférence we’re scheduled a cours de rattrapage (make-up class), and it is not so easy to find another time when an entire class is free to meet. Our quick-thinking maître took the easy route and has scheduled all of our cours de rattrapage for Saturday mornings – when there are no other classes scheduled at Sciences Po. That’s why we made up a class from the beginning of May this morning.

There are strict rules regulating the cours de rattrapage at Sciences Po. Each class is supposed to meet exactly 14 times during the semester, and if a professor or maître needs to cancel a class, he is responsible for finding a time to make it up. Because cancelled classes are considered to be the fault of the teacher, the cours de rattrapage are attendance-optional for students. Professors are not allowed to base any grades on the make-up classes, schedule any tests or have any homework due – if a student can’t (or doesn’t want to) be present for cours de rattrapage, he can not be penalized in any way. That’s why our maître caused a bit of a scandal yesterday when he informed us that we’d be having an hour long galop (like a midterm) during our class this morning.

When he announced the galop he reasoned that he was getting us into the zone for finals with a midterm during the second-to-last week of classes. We all groaned a bit – not only were our Friday night shot by having to wake up for a class, but we’d be spending them studying – but we resigned ourselves to no fun this weekend and retreated to our various arrondissements to study the European crisis.

At around 22h last night, I’d just finished eating dinner and was just gearing myself up for a bit more revision when I received an email from two girls (from Portugal and Poland, respectively) in my conférence.

(Translated from French) Greetings everybody,

We’re writing to you concerning the galop tomorrow morning and to propose a solution. We don’t think any of us had enough time to revise for this galop. It’s neither moral nor legal to give an exam during a make-up class, especially because we just found out about it the day before and normally a galop is announced with at least one week’s notice.

So the solution that we propose is to demand, under the name of everybody in the class, that we don’t proceed with the exam and instead concentrate on the final subjects that we’ll be studying this semester.

Considering that we’re all in the same boat, buried with work and exams, we demand your support tomorrow.

I was thrilled – a coup! A revolution! An excuse not to study out of solidarity with my fellow étudiants intérnationaux! I spent the rest of the night watching old episodes of House on my computer and went to bed far later than I’d intended.

As I climbed the stairs to salle 301 at 10h15, I was excitedly imagining our mini-manifestation. When I walked into the classroom, though, I found everyone sitting docilely with their notes and the prompts for our galop in front of them. Apparently it wasn’t a real galop. We weren’t even being graded – this was just our maître’s way of trying to help us prepare for our final exams. A test test – one that he’d correct and hand back next week to help us recognize our weak points before the final.

No Sciences Po student in their right mind would protest extra help for finals, so just like that, our revolution fizzled. Instead we spent an hour writing our faux galops on the subject of Pensez-vous qu’on puisse résoudre la crise actuelle de l’Union européenne uniquement en réformant ses institutions? (Do you think the current crisis in the European Union can be simply resolved by reforming its institutions?) I answered no, and I’ll find out what our maître thought of it next Friday morning.

So much for my first manifestation participation. I still have two months though, and I can only hope that the Cité universitaire will try to ban males from the women’s dorms again just once before I leave.

And, just because it entertains me so, here are a few of the Google search terms that have led people to this site in the past few weeks:
• hunting locations tacoma
• girl getting dressed in the morning
• ballet tights hypnotized
• girls licking with rubber flip flops
• under the skirt of Segolene Royal

2007-05-30T15:45:00.000+02:00

So I finally did it. I bought tanning pills. I realize that this sounds as ridiculous as it does vain, but this is an experiment in the name of science. I have no delusions about them actually working, but I’ve been making fun of the advertisements for so long that I decided it was time for me to finally test them out for myself.

The French have pills for everything. Cellulite issues? They’ve got a pill. Hair loss? They’ve got a pill. PMS-y crankiness? They’ve got a pill. Tanning? You’d better believe they've got a pill. I’d never even dreamed of a bronzer in pill form before arriving in France last summer – maybe there are some ambitious American companies trying to push tanning pills through late night infomercials, but here it’s nothing like that. For one, every pharmacist in the city sells them – for another, French people actually buy them.

Walking home on the rue des Petits Champs today, I felt like I was being bombarded by ads for capsules de bronzage. The windows of Monoprix are filled with pictures of a tanned woman holding a bottle of pills, the windows of every perfumerie and pharmacie host cardboard cut-outs of similar tanned women with their bottles of pills, and even the bio store was boasting a homeopathic alternative to the pills. Actually, the only place that wasn’t advertising these miracle pills was the Parisian equivalent of the As Seen on TV store at the Tacoma Mall.

I wandered into the Pharmacie mainly out of bored curiosity, but as I stared dumbfounded at the shelves upon shelves of options I was approached by the pharmacist. Unable to resist any longer, I asked him what he would recommend. He asked me a series of questions about my skin type and what I’d like to accomplish with my tanning pills – did I just want to prepare my skin for tanning, or was I also concerned about cellulite? If so, there’s the dual-action pill option – the amazing combination of chemicals and vitamins that claims to make you skinny and tan without any more effort than unscrewing the pill bottle each morning.

After about 10 minutes of skeptical (from my end) but earnest (from his end) conversation, we’d settled on the Oenobiol Solaire Intensif booster d’efficacité. This one will do nothing for my figure, but according to the pharmacist if I take it faithfully each day my skin will be more receptive to sunlight and will block harmful UV rays, my tan will be deeper and longer-lasting, and as a bonus, my eyes will be less sensitive to bright sunlight. Apparently.

This all sounds just completely insane to me, but I’m willing to try it – it’s mostly just vitamins anyway, so if nothing else, I might be a little healthier at the end of the two months. The thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that French pharmaceutical companies are able to manufacture and sell in huge quantities these way too-good-to-be-true “drugs,” but I guess it makes sense. Tanning is a real culture here – everybody does it, from the fashion crows to businessmen to stay-at-home moms to university students. The tanning parlors operate in compliance with European standards, which prohibit minors (teenagers under 18) from tanning, and offer coffee and tea, massages and other spa treatments to clients.

As harmful as extra UV exposure may or may not be, the tanners en cabine are much more likely to be satisfied with a nice dark tan than the pill-poppers – unless they’re one and the same. The pills de bronzage were available throughout the fall and winter, but weren’t as heavily advertised until now – the beginning of bikini season. The thing is, if people are taking these pills at the same time that the weather is becoming steadily warmer, the skies are becoming steadily sunnier, and they’re spending more and more time outdoors in the warm spring weather, how can they tell if the pills are having any effect at all? People get tanner in the summer – it’s just one of those facts of life, and while a pill may make you feel a little tanner, I can’t help but be skeptical of its actual properties.

Listed ingredients (translated from French): Rapeseed oil, modified glucides (coating agents), glycerin (reinforcing agent), tomato extract, carrageenan (gelling agent), colloidal silica (thickener), extract of Dunaliella Salina (a kind of pink micro-algae), vitamin E concentrate, extracts of vegetables rich in xanthophyll, rice flour (diluent), brown iron oxide (dye), disodium phosphate (acidity corrector), red iron oxide, yellow iron oxide, titanium dioxide (dye), selenium, microcristalline cellulose (dilutor), traces of lecithin and soy.

2007-05-28T18:54:00.000+02:00

After three months of facebook poking and emailing lists of questions and answers back and forth, R and I finally managed to meet up in person with the four Sciences Po students heading to UW next year.

Our rendez-vous was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, so at 15h I was waiting in rain boots and a trench coat in the pouring rain outside of métro Odéon. I’d been there for less than a minute when Thomas (one of the Seattle four) came strolling out up the métro stairs with two unrelated French boys. One of them had apparently “visited Seattle once,” but other than that, they had nothing to do with Washington and were just along for the café. A few moments later Marie and Gabrielle (two and three of the SciPo in Seattle group) arrived simultaneously from opposite directions and the six of us decided to move on to les Étages, a student-friendly café on rue de Buci, to shelter from the rain and wait for the rest of our party.

It's been raining a lot here lately:

We sat outside on the covered patio, and as we watched the rain pour off the edge of the roof and waited for R and Leila (number four) to show up, Thomas suggested that we might be getting a good preview of life in Seattle. Just then, Rachael and Leila arrived, and R and I settled into our usual pattern of her railing on the Seattle weather (she’s a California girl, what can you do?) and me defending it as forcefully as you can possible argue the virtue of 240 overcast days per year. It’s really not as bad as everyone says, I told them – Seattle weather is actually pretty pareil with Paris weather. I feel like it rains just as much in Paris as it does in Seattle – and the summers here are not nearly as pleasant.

I love Seattle:

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

We spent an hour answering questions and giving advice, trying to explain the Greek system (Just watch the movie Animal House, it’ll explain better than we ever could…), lauding the joys of the IMA, and telling them that they simply have to get tickets for the Apple Cup, give us their reviews of the French boulangerie in Pike’s Place Market and make sure they live close enough to campus that they’re still immersed in student life.

When we’d exhausted our list of must-dos in Seattle, we transitioned easily into other topics of conversation. We spent a bizarrely long time discussing the political ability of Arnold Schwarzenegger with the fascinated Victor, before moving onto the ever-important question of “Which Ninja Turtle is the coolest?” (Michelangelo, of course). The Frenchies quizzed us with names of small and obscure towns in the middle of France to find out which we’d heard of or visited. I won quite a few points for having been to Collonges-la-Rouge, a tiny, odd and completely red (hence the rouge) town in Limousin.

After we passed our obscure French towns test, it was only fair that we moved on to the Washington state name pronunciation quiz. Marie found a pen in her purse, I dug out an old envelope, and R and I chuckled evilly as we wrote out our list. Not surprisingly, all six Frenchies tripped over Sequim, Puyallup and Oregon, but they did unexpectedly well with Chehalis, Enumclaw and Tukwila. I forgot to grill them on Hoquiam, but I suppose I can save that one for another day, another coffee.

We finally split up after two and a half hours of talking in rapid-fire French (it was excellent practice) about anything and everything. As we headed for the metro, R and I had the feeling that the two of us might be a little more excited to show the SciPoers around Seattle than they actually are to be shown around Seattle, though that’s probably due more to age than anything.

R and I are here for our third year of university – and as all French Sciences Po students are required to spend their entire third year abroad, you’d think the four future Huskies would be just a year behind us. School in France is arranged a little differently than back home – instead of preparing to spend a year abroad at the age of 20, as R and I did, our new French friends are only 18 years old. As excited as they are to spend the year in the U.S., all four seemed kind of terrified underneath their anticipation – which I completely understand. This year has been hard enough, moving to a foreign country with nothing but an acceptance letter to the university and having to find an apartment, figure out school and learn how to build a life in French – and I’m 21. I don’t think I could have done this three years ago – at least not without a lot more crying.

These kids are brave though, and they’ve been learning English since middle school. They knew when they applied to Sciences Po that they’d be spending their third years abroad, and choosing a program that allowed them to travel was a big plus for most of them. As nervous as they are, I think the hour R and I spent trying to pump them up about Seattle actually worked. Not only are they anxiously awaiting a year of concerts, free movies, interesting classes, the resources of a 50,000-person university, outdoor sports, Starbucks and the best Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and Japanese food that I’ve ever experienced, but Rachael and I are now completely psyched about going back. Especially now that we’ll have four Parisian friends to take camping, ply with lattes and Ivar's, invite to authentic American college parties and practice our French with.

2007-05-27T13:44:00.001+02:00

R and I met early-ish this morning to go for a run before retreating back to the Pompidou library to work on final papers all day long. Running the streets of Paris is pretty much unheard of, but it also turns into a huge pain during tourist season. The sidewalks just aren’t wide enough to support both confused people wandering with maps in their hands and runners trying to keep a steady pace, so we’ve learned to keep to the banks of the river when possible.

As we jogged through the jardin des Tuileries on our way to the Seine, a large white tent caught our eyes. Next to the tent was a stage with speakers and in front of it were four or five small tables with chairs. We didn’t think much of it until I noticed that the maybe 20 people milling around were all wearing matching Vittel shirts. Suddenly I remembered pausing to read an advertisement in the window of the tanning salon on my street as I passed by a few days ago, and came to an excited realization.

As part of some massive advertising campaign, called reVittelisez-vous, the Vittel bottled water company is sponsoring free workout classes in the jardin des Tuileries each Sunday until June 24th.

R and I made a beeline for the Vittel tent, and as soon as we were near enough to hear her, the girl behind the counter asked us which sport we wanted to participate in. We chose Bodyjam from 11h-12h, and once we’d written our names and genders on the class roster, we were each handed a reVittelisez-vous tee shirt and a water bottle.

We actually had no idea what Bodyjam might be, but it was the class that began the soonest, so that became our default. At precisely 11h our Jessica Biel-lookalike instructor jogged up onto the stage wearing a microphone headset and dance music began blasting out of the speakers. Apparently Bodyjam is an aerobic dance class, mixing faux hip-hop, salsa and swing into a bizarre but really fun workout. We learned a series of short routines which were amusing to me but somewhat beyond most people’s ability to keep up with. At our first break (during which we were all urged to reVitteliser) a panting French-Vietnamese woman tapped me on the arm and asked if I’d already learned the steps. When I told her no she just gaped at me and said Mais c’est dur, ça! (But it’s hard!). I didn’t really know what to say, but I tried to reassure her by saying that I dance so I’m used to having to learn choreography and being able to perform it back immediately.

The jardin des Tuileries is usually bustling with people, but not so usually filled with people in matching Vittel tee shirts dancing between statues to hip-hop and swing music. As soon as we started dancing we attracted a crowd, and it wasn’t long before our group had doubled. Just as quickly as it grew though, it began to shrink, as people were put off by having to learn complicated steps. I had a great time, but I’m not so sure that R did. That was fun, but I was so lost, was her impression, and I think it mirrored that of most of our co-bodyjammers.

When Bodyjam was over, we rounded off our workout with half an hour on the stairs that connect Quai François Mitterrand to the banks of the Seine and vowed to return each Sunday until the end of June. We have yet to try the Tai Chi, Gym Suédoise (Swedish gym), and Capoeira classes, so you can bet we’ll be back.

We’re clearly buying into this weird advertising campaign, but I don’t mind. Free is a darn good price for a free workout class, a tee shirt and a water bottle – and how many times in my life am I really going to have the opportunity to Bodyjam in front of the Musée du Louvre?

** If you keep a Paris blog and will be in the city on June 9th, come hang out at parc des Buttes Chaumonts.

*** Happy birthday to my Aunt Penny and Uncle Tom!

2007-05-24T22:19:00.000+02:00

There are few things more French than Bensimon. Sounding like a hoity-toity version of the name Ben Simon, the marque encompasses clothing, home furnishings, accessories and stationary, but it’s the Bahhhn seemawhnn tennis shoes that have become a phenomenon by working their way into French wardrobes of every social and economic class.

My first inkling of understanding the popularity of Bensimon hit me last fall, when I happened to walk by a sale of Kaporal 5 brand copycat tennis (say it like “ten-knees” and don’t bother with the chaussure part). Seeing the large Soldes sign in the window of the boutique, I peeked in to see a mob of teenaged girls fighting and scrambling over each other to find their preferred colors and sizes in the cardboard bins full of some of the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen.

The sale was a buy one, get one free, and even at half off their original price of 20 euro a pair, this seemed like a huge rip-off to me. These shoes, which I’d been seeing on the feet of Parisians since moving to France in August, look like shoes to clean the house in. They’re plain canvas with a flat rubber sole and toe bumper, and come in every color imaginable. You have your choice of the slip-on sneaker variety, the lace-up tennis shoes which look like bowling shoes gone wrong, and a few other subtle variations on the original slip-on.

I couldn’t believe the fuss being made over these bins of overpriced ugly shoes, but I was intrigued by the general chicness of the girls who were frantic for this canvas and rubber footwear, so I made my way to the size 39 bin. In addition to my tendency to conform to anything Parisian girls find cool, I was motivated by a challenge put to me by a friend in Seattle. Knowing that I was going home for winter break, she asked be to bring her some article of clothing that was completely French and that couldn’t be found in the U.S. This task would have probably been much easier just 10 years ago, but thanks to globalization you can find just about any French brand somewhere in the U.S. and vice versa. There isn’t much that is exclusively French anymore – unless it is just too weird for Americans to handle. As I elbowed the other girls away from the bin I was digging through, I found my answer. Bensimon is not going to make it to Tacoma any time soon, because there is just no way that any American teenybopper is going to think these look cool – I certainly didn’t.

Being that it was a buy one, get one free kind of deal, I was, um, forced to buy myself a pair as well. For most of the fall they were strictly laundromat shoes. They were just too odd for normal streetwear. When I presented Kelly with her pair (grey slip-on tennis) at Christmas, I felt the need to add a disclaimer. I know these are ugly, but…they’re very French! Since coming back in January though, I think I’ve become desensitized. Or Frenchified. Or crazy. Because all of a sudden, I like them. Like really really like them. They’re so practical and comfortable. They come in an array of dazzling colors and variations! They’re plain and ugly, but somehow chic, and their weirdness makes them oh so cool.

Now that the weather’s warm again, every other boutique on every boulevard in Paris is advertising Ici! La tennis Bensimon!, and these funky canvas shoes are out on the streets in full force. Everyone wears Bensimon, from the banlieue to the centre, whether you wardrobe yourself at Monoprix or Prada. Every kid in France has at least one pair, and most of their parents do too. Technically…I have three pairs, if you count my bogo Kaporal 5s, and I’m a little anxious at the thought of moving home for good with no way to replace them as they wear out – I’m going to need to stock up before I repatriate.

I can’t believe I now find cool what I once thought was oh so wrong. That’s Paris for you – I’m living in a city where black and brown and navy blue go perfectly together, where trench coats aren’t just for flashers – where anything can become chic with time. If it's something weird, like the Bensimon tennis, you just have to wait enough years for it to become classic and boom, everyone will have a pair. I love this city.

2007-05-22T14:35:00.001+02:00

Schoolchildren in France love the month of May. For their teachers and parents, though, it’s a real cauchemar (nightmare). Of the eight holidays that merit school vacations in France, four of them occur during the month of May. Of the five weeks in the month only one of them – this one – spans a full five days.

Known as jours fériés, or days without work, the French calendar of holidays is surprisingly religious, considering its officially laïque (secular) government. Since French schoolchildren get only July and August for summer vacation, the rest of the year is sliced into two-week vacations and long breaks. The first vacation of the school year is in November – the holiday of Toussaint, or All Saint’s Day. Toussaint is a Catholic holiday celebrating, surprise, surprise, all the saints and is not only a religious holiday, but a national one.

Armistice Day on November 11th gives students and workers a nice long (and non-religiously affiliated) weekend, before the two-week Christmas vacation in December. In the U.S., public schools aren’t allowed to slap Christian names onto the school holidays – the Tacoma School District always called it “Winter Vacation” – but on the official Sciences Po année calendrière 2007-2008 calendar, it’s shamelessly labeled as the Vacances de Noël.

Most of January is spent celebrating l’Epiphanie. The holiday, which celebrates the three kings who followed the star of Bethlehem to find Jesus, officially falls on the first Sunday in January. Though kids don’t get a vacation for this holiday, every boulangerie in France sells the galettes des rois throughout the month, and schools have Epiphany parties to determine the day’s official king. The cakes, which are round and dense, are made from a thick almond paste surrounded by a flaky pastry crust. In each cake the boulanger hides a fêve, and whoever is served the piece with the little token – typically something like a golden coin or a ceramic baby Jesus, wins the cardboard crown and is king for the day. (The galettes are delicious – I’m not sure I would have made it through Sciences Po finals week if it hadn’t fallen at the end of January and smack in the middle of the fête des rois).

Kids typically have two weeks off in February which is just a school break – there aren’t any bank holidays in February – and two more off in April for Pâques (Easter). You know you’re living in a historically Catholic country when the translation for Passover is Pâques juifs, or “Jewish Easter.”

May Day is a completely secular holiday – it’s known as the workers’ holiday because no one has to work, and is celebrated by giving sprigs of muguet (lily of the valley) to friends and family. May Day fell on a Tuesday this year, and though most workers only had the one day off, the nanny kids enjoyed a four-day weekend.

The very next Tuesday was May 8th – a celebration of the victory of 1945 and the end of German occupation in France. This holiday is also completely secular and creates a second four-day weekend in a row.

Falling 40 days after Easter is l’Ascension, which celebrates the ascension of Jesus to Heaven. L’Ascension falls each year on a Thursday, and schools break for a five-day weekend – Wednesday through Sunday. Last weekend was the holiday of Ascension, and its end marked our entry into the single five-day school week in the month of May.

This coming weekend, the fête de Pentecôte (Pentecost), is actually a pretty controversial subject in France. Pentecost had been a jour férié since 1886 – until the French government began to get concerned that there were just too many holidays – particularly religious ones – in May. In 2004 the holiday was renamed the Journée de solidarité envers les personnes âgées et handicappés (day of solidarity for the elderly and handicapped) – a much more secular holiday for an officially secular state. The creation of the new holiday was led by the government of former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, following the heat wave of 2003 that resulted in the deaths of fifteen thousand people in France – mostly the homeless and elderly.

What’s supposed to happen on Pentecost is that everyone in France spends the day working, and all the production of that one day should go to the elderly and the prevention of the risks that would come if another heat wave were to hit Europe (like the one that’s being predicted for this summer, perhaps?) The problem with turning a former day off into a day on is that France is not a country of workaholics. The 35-hour work week is a law, shops close at dinnertime (remember the Oprah in Hermés incident?), and the entire country shuts down for the month of August when everyone takes their vacations. Trying to take away a day off of work from people who have enjoyed it for 118 years is not going to go over well. It basically just didn’t work.

France kept the day of solidarity – but with one modification. It’s now up to every individual business and company to decide whether its employees will enjoy a holiday or will work for the elderly. That’s why Sciences Po students had no idea whether or not we’d be having another three-day weekend until last week. My only class that is really affected by the celebration of Pentecost or solidarity is my French class – and last week not even our teacher knew whether or not we’d be counted absent for taking the holiday. She’d even called the Sécretariat to inquire and got only a “we’ll let you know” in response.

We finally received our answer in the form of an email in the middle of last week.

Conformément aux dispositions de la loi du 30 juin 2004 "relative à la solidarité pour l'autonomie des personnes âgées et des personnes handicapées", nous vous informons que Sciences po sera fermé le lundi 28 mai 2007, lundi de Pentecôte.

In conformity with the law of June 30, 2004, “relating to the solidarity for the autonomy of the elderly and handicapped,” we’re informing you that Sciences Po will be closed on Monday May 28, 2007, the Monday of Pentecost.

We’re so not complaining.

2007-05-20T20:03:00.000+02:00

Paris is a great place to go to the movies. With more than 300 screens in 100 different movie theatres, you can see movies from anywhere in the world in their original languages with French subtitles (version originale, VO) or dubbed into French (version française, VF) on any night of the week. Depending on your mood, you can catch the newest Hollywood blockbuster – Pirates des Caraïbes, for example. I’d have expected American movies to have a delayed release in France, but Pirates actually comes out in Paris two full days before the U.S. release – grâce au fait that French theatres switch their movie schedules every Wednesday rather than Friday.

If you’re in the mood for something a little different, there are a few cinemas that show classic movies – like Orsen Welles’ “Touch of Evil” currently playing at the Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, or the Rocky Horror Picture show, which plays every Friday and Saturday near St. Michel. At the Cinémathèque Française members can check out and watch any film from the institute’s film vault in private viewing rooms. There are films from Nepal, China, Latin America, the U.K., Germany, Sweden and South Africa (among many others) playing at theatres all over the city. In Paris, you don’t have to trek down to the Grand Cinemas or art house theatres to find foreign, independent and documentary films. The six-screen chain theatre Gaumont Opéra just two blocks up the street from my apartment is currently playing Jesus Camp, a 2006 indie documentary from the U.S. about an Evangelical Christian summer camp in North Dakota.

Because people don’t really rent movies in France, the movie-watching culture is more of a cinema culture. There are a few pay-by-the-hour rental stores sprinkled throughout Paris, but for the most part, seeing a movie is a going out event. Because of the rare and inefficient rental options, movies play in theatres for much longer to give more people a chance to see them. Woody Allen’s 2005 film “Match Point” is still playing in two theatres in the city. Going to the movies in France is more like going to an actual theatre – the films are scheduled to begin 20 minutes after the advertised movie time to give moviegoers a chance to skip the commercials and previews to sit and have an espresso or sandwich in the movie theatres’ sit-down cafés.

While full-price movie tickets are always a bit steep, it’s easy to get around the prices. Everyone under 26 gets the discounted student ticket, and people with Navigo or Imagin’R métro passes often get discounts as well. Anyone can buy a movie pass, which gets you into as many movies as you have time to watch for a flat monthly rate – usually around 18 euro. The movie passes work for different groups of theatres, like Gaumont and Pathé or UGC, and as long as you make it to at least two movies a month (or upwards of four, like me), they are a fantastic deal. There are constant promotions and two-for-one tickets and during one weekend in March the French association of theatres sponsored the Printemps du Cinéma (Springtime of Cinema), where every showing was a flat 3,50 euro.

Not only is it easy and inexpensive to see movies in Paris, but the cinema culture is very single-friendly. There are always couples and groups, of course, but every screening is filled with a significant number of individuals. When I caught an afternoon matinee of “Marie Antoinette” last fall, the audience consisted of me, one couple and five single old ladies. At a showing of “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” I was surrounded by teary individual middle-aged men. When R and I saw the new Ninja Turtles movie it was us and a whole bunch of single university-aged guys. At a showing of Jesus Camp a few weeks ago I sat two seats down from a single French girl and we spent the whole movie making shocked faces at each other and left the theatre side-by-side shaking our heads in deep disturbance.

The only downside of seeing movies here is that while the biggest blockbusters open simultaneously across the world – Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman 3, Casino Royale – there are some movies that you just have to wait for. The movie Zodiac opened in France this past Wednesday – and I’ve been waiting for it since its March 2nd release in the U.S. The movie 28 Weeks Later opened a week ago in the U.S., but won’t make it to France until September 19th. I’ll be back in Seattle in September, but by that point I’ll probably have to wait four more months for the dvd release.

At the movies in Paris the singles bond together, the selection of films is amazing, the prices are reasonable and the French movie popcorn is delicious – but the absolute best thing about French cinema is the French audiences. There is nothing more amusing than seeing an American movie in a room full of Parisians. The audiences are so interactive, and love both American movies and laughing at Americans. When R and I saw Borat, we were almost more entertained by the audience than the movie itself. During the scene at the rodeo everyone was laughing so loudly that we could barely hear the dialogue. Jesus Camp was also an interesting experience, though the reactions were more of the “Tsk tsk America” variety than of amusement.

It’s also funny to watch how the French react to the American culture shown in films that they just can’t relate to. Last night a group of us went to see the hip-hop movie “Stomp the Yard” (oddly re-titled “Steppin’” for French audiences), and it was definitely a cultural experience to watch a movie about black fraternity step teams in a theatre full of Parisians. There was confused laughter through the entire fraternity pledge montage, but the scene that got the loudest laughs was a 10-second clip of a curvy girl walking away from the camera. None of us (a group of two Americans, two Canadians and an Australian) could figure out what the laughter was for. Our best guess was that because behinds just generally aren’t that curvy in France, the Parisians couldn’t understand why her hips would swivel that much as she sashayed across the screen.

• A few days ago I watched an American tourist pose for a picture that featured him licking the giant stone vagina of this statue in the jardin des Tuileries. The next day I walked by and found that the poor old girl had not only been molested, but graffitteed as well.

2007-05-14T21:56:00.000+02:00

Friday night I made dinner with Anna and her friend Chris who is visiting from Ottawa. After five days in Paris experiencing European men, C was relating tale after tale of weird comments men had made to her or strange ways in which she’d been hit on. Once she ran out of her own stories, C turned to me and said, “You’ve been here for a year, I bet you have some good weird men stories!”

At first I couldn’t think of anything. I shrugged my shoulders and begged off with a “I guess I’m just so used to it I don’t pay attention anymore.” Hearing this, A started laughing. “What about the bloody eye patch guy? What about that guy on Pont Neuf?” Oh, yeah.

European men are notorious for both their skilled romancing and their completely obnoxious habit of hitting on anything in a skirt. In Barcelona Christina and I were yelled and whistled at wherever we went. After studying in Greece for a quarter, my friend Kelly had countless stories of Greek and Italian men following the girls in her program, whistling and hissing at them. In Paris, my girl friends and I are approached by men on a daily basis – it happens so often that we just start to tune it out. But maybe we shouldn’t – some of the stories are just so funny that they have to be shared.

First there’s the “bloody eye patch guy.” Late one Saturday night on my way home from Rachael’s apartment in the 11ème arondissement, I was waiting for the last metro to come through the Charonne station. The metros run until 2h-2h30 on Saturdays so I was pretty sleepy and the station was pretty empty. Sitting next to me in the orange plastic RATP chair was a bedraggled older man who was clearly planning to sleep there. He was wearing stained and dirty clothing and over one eye was a white medical eye patch that was completely soaked with blood. My attention was momentarily fixed on the eye patch and trying to figure out what kind of injury could possibly make an eye bleed that much. He saw me looking and leaned back in his chair, puffing out his chest. T’aime la forme? (You like my body?) he asked me, as he ran his hands up and down the sides of his potbelly. What could I possibly say? If I said non, that was just an invitation for confrontation. If I said oui, that was an invitation of another kind entirely. Instead I opted to point at my own chest and say loudly “American.” He shook his head, rose slowly from his orange seat and started peeing on a large wall advertisement for the 15th anniversary of Disneyland Paris. I also rose from my seat – and moved to the opposite end of the platform to wait for the train.

Then there’s “that guy on Pont Neuf.” Pont Neuf (new bridge) is actually the oldest bridge in Paris. It was completed 400 years ago this year by Henri IV, and is supposed to be one of the most romantic bridges in Paris – not that any bridges spanning the Seine River are particularly unromantic. Pont Neuf gets its reputation for romance from the benched alcoves that line the sides – perfect for kissing if you’re half of a couple. During daylight hours the alcoves are usually filled with pushy peddlers of light-up Tour Eiffel figurines and cheap metal key chains and self-proclaimed artists hoping to entice a tourist to sit for a quick portrait. One day I was strolling across the bridge while speaking in English on my French cell phone, when a balding sweaty man who’d been lurking in one of the alcoves leapt out in front of me and shouted, “America! You want me to give it to you?” Obviously I did not want him to “give it to me,” but I couldn’t decide whether I was actually being harassed or if he just didn’t know any English and was trying to communicate something else entirely. I just smiled at him, shook my head and kept walking. The nice thing about these French harassers is that they don’t push it beyond the first no. You don’t want it? That’s fine, I’ll just offer it to the next girl who comes along.

While some of the men who hit on us are just confused and creepy, like the bloody eye patch guy and the Pont Neuf guy, some will approach females just to pay them compliments. At first if can be off-putting, especially to a girl who is becoming more and more used to the balding peeing men, but this second breed of men roam the city for the purpose of letting women know that they genuinely appreciate their bodies. Nothing is expected, except maybe a simple merci. They’re not trying to grope you, or get you into bed – they’re just trying to tell you that they like what they see. For example, the young guy who approached me and my mom while we were walking down boulevard St. Germain des Prés on her first day in Paris. He came up from behind me and interrupted our conversation to say, Excusez-moi mademoiselle, je veux juste vous dire que vous avez un trés beau cul. (Excuse me mademoiselle, I just wanted to tell you that you have a very nice ass.) I must have given him an odd look because he grinned, shrugged and said Quoi? Je l’adore! (What? I love it!) before making his way off down rue des Saints-Pères. I couldn’t do much but yell out a feeble, Uhhh merci! as I blushed bright red. I only turned redder as I had to turn to my mom and translate our brief but embarrassing conversation.

There are still the guys who yell from their cars or mopeds or from across the street – but they’re of a slightly different stock than the ones back in U.S. At home girls experience a lot of “Heeeey sexy!” from guys dangling out of their car windows, but in Paris we get ravissante! (ravishing!), chouette! (cute!), charmante! (charming!) and je t’aime! (I love you!). As outraged as the feminist in me probably should be at being hollered at while I’m walking to school or to the park with Georges, I, uh, kind of don’t mind. But really, what girl doesn’t want to be stopped on the street and told she’s charming? It just wouldn’t have the same effect if that cute guy on the moped were to pull over and tell me I look like a really smart and independent woperson. I’ll take ravishing, thank you very much.

2007-05-13T01:14:00.000+02:00

Though I wouldn’t exactly say that our “Free Parisian Exercise Group” has taken off, we have managed to cobble together a pretty cozy little group.

After six workouts we have a few regulars, a few regular drop-ins, a few people who say they’re coming each week and never show, and our routine down pat. Each Wednesday or Thursday R and I send out a group email for our workout list (our specially-created address is parisworkout@yahoo.fr) detailing the where and when of our next rendezvous.

Our group usually consists of me, Rachael, Taki from Japan, Daniel from Portugal and the occasional addition of Vincent from Sciences Po, Stéphanie from Paris, and Patrick from the U.S. Because we posted fliers all over the city and posted ads on Craig’s List and Expatriates, we've formed quite a diverse group – in nationality, age, occupation and fitness level. Rachael and I are students from Seattle, while Taki is a 30-something Japanese non-profit worker and UN volunteer. Daniel is also a 30-something Portuguese in Paris for work, while Vincent is a French student at Sciences Po. Patrick is a dad-aged American ex-pat. The conversation is the typical foreigners-in-Paris meld of French and English and whatever other language is thrown into the mix, depending on who shows up.

We started out holding meetings at 10h Sunday mornings…but when we kept getting apologetic emails from people telling us they just couldn’t get out of bed we pushed them back to 10h30. We also try to mix up the location, partly so we don’t get bored and partly because we have members who live all over the city. After meeting twice at Parc des Buttes Chaumonts, one at the Jardin des Tuileries, once at Parc Monceau and once in the Bois des Vincennes
we chose the Bois de Boulogne as this Sunday’s workout destination.

We always meet at a sortie du métro with the thought that it’s easier to gather our group before entering a large public park, and as I exited the metro this morning Taki was already waiting at the top, bouncing on the balls of his feet and stretching his arms. Since it had been pouring just half an hour earlier, we figured there would probably be a lot of no-shows. We waited for the usual 15 minutes, then headed into the bois (woods) for a two-man jog.

Since we have such a mix of physical abilities in the group – from a 21-year old girl training for a half-marathon to a business man wanting to “get back into shape,” it was at first a little tricky to figure out a workout that would be at the same time demanding enough and forgiving enough for everyone's fitness level. After a month and a half of this, though, we’re all old pros. We start out with a 20 minute warm-up jog around whichever park we happen to be exercising in – we generally stay in a group for this, since we’re here to get exercise, not necessarily to work on honing our running splits. After jogging for a while we find a field or patch of grass, designate an area – Taki’s backpack to that skinny tree, for example, and take turns choosing exercises.

I usually take charge and jump right in with a set of lunges before Rachael assigns us “high knees” or the “football player jumping through tires exercise.” Daniel might choose grapevine runs before we move on to skipping, squatting, more lunging and kickboxing moves (as the only one who has ever taken a kickboxing class, I’m always in charge of teaching this portion). After maybe 20 minutes of exercises we do another 20-30 minute run. Sometimes we run for shorter intervals and do multiple breaks for exercises, and sometimes we just run. Once in a while we’ll email everyone to bring a few euro to the workout and have a group sandwich picnic after we’re done sweating.

Today Taki and I ran, did our exercises, ran some more, and then went out for lunch. It was just the two of us and I had no money, but as he said “You’re a student, I have a job, I should pay anyway,” so we stopped for some Japanese bento lunches on the way home.

Whether or not we’re actually pushing our bodies to their physical limits with our gratuit group d’exercice, we have a great time doing it. Everyone in the group benefits from meeting a group of people who they have no other connection to – how likely is that I, for example, would meet a 30-something Japanese humanitarian while studying abroad in Paris? There’s also something to be said for having so much fun that you can’t stop laughing – even through your third set of lunges.

And, a picture to remind you all that I'm in France:

2007-05-07T20:19:00.000+02:00

It might seem a bit inane to make the point that Paris is a pretty arty city. From the Mona Lisa, to Picasso, to the pont des Arts, to the Opéras Garnier and Bastille, to the Venus de Milo, the Georges Pompidou Center, David, Ingres, Géricault, the Musée du Louvre, the Musée D’Orsay – yeah, we’re pretty steeped in the finer arts over here. Cool to note though, is the fact that the city’s art-rich personality is not limited to its history.

The current mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë is rather famously a patron of the arts, and has used his term to introduce cultural activities to the city, like Nuit Blanche that keep the city’s art scene vibrant and current. The contemporary art scene isn’t limited to local government-funded events, though. If you can move beyond the dazzling must-sees that fill Paris’s most celebrated museums, you’ll find that the city is up to its teeth in galleries, fashion shows, art installations, film festivals and indie music.

One of the coolest examples of the way Parisians work to cultivate their art scene beyond the old school Goliaths like the Louvre, Orsay and the Pompidou is way up North on Quai de Valmy. Nearly on top of the Canal St. Martin, technically in the 10ème arondissement, but really right on the border of the 19ème is Point Éphémère.

The street-level entrance to the dance studio:

Billed as a Centre de Dynamiques Artistiques, Point Éphémère is housed in a former factory/retail site of construction equipment. The center is one of several founded by Usines Éphémères, a group that converts old industrial spaces into temporary art spaces and artists’ residences. The Point opened in 2004 for a projected period of 4 years, during which its four artists’ lofts, dance studio, five music studios and concert hall would be rented out to artists for the cheapest possible prices for six-month time periods.

The building is two stories tall, the upper one hitting Quai de Valmy at street level, and the lower right at canal height. The lower level features an exposition space, a concert hall and a bar-restaurant dont the profits help keep the center running. The upper level is comprised of the various lofts and studios, and it’s the studio de danse where I head each Sunday for two hours of intense hip-hop dance workshops.

Point Éphémère from across the Canal St. Martin:

Point Éphémère is not a place you just stumble across on your own – it survives instead on word of mouth by a diverse and vibrant community of artists who come from all over the city. I can confidently say that I’d have easily lived out my year in Paris without ever hearing rumors of its existence if it hadn’t been for a dance teacher/ choreographer/ guru called Flo.

Flo is a dancer, teacher and choreographer of undiscernible age, who teaches one of the best hip-hop classes I’ve ever taken. She’s petite but buff, girly but athletic. She wears her long, bleached-blond hair in two high ponytails and her style is so ghetto-fabulous that being in her presence makes me itch to run out and buy myself a pair of baggy G-Unit jeans and a basketball jersey. Flo taught my hip-hop class during fall semester and I loved her so much that I followed her to her drop-in hip-hop workshops.

Due to a series of scheduling conflicts, vacations, visitors and last-minute babysitting, I wasn’t able to make it to a stage (workshop, also means internship) until mid-April. I arrived five minutes early and after being greeted warmly by Flo, sat down on a bench to take in my surroundings and observe my fellow dancers. The studio is a huge brick room, with one wall made completely of windows that look out over the canal. Hanging precariously from a broken rod is an enormous black velvet curtain, that was probably quite impressive at one time, but today is filled with rips and dust. The floor is covered with typical Marley dance floor, and against the wall opposite the windows are balanced four huge mirrors – cracked and chipped and in constant danger of tipping over and shattering against the bricks. As dirty and run-down as it sounds, the atmosphere is amazing – hip-hop is a gritty style of dance, and exposed bricks, cracked mirrors and tattered curtains only help to get you in the zone.

As I watched the other dancers arrive, I started to get a little nervous – I’m used to being one of the best in my classes, but I had no idea what the general ability level might be. As the others filed in, high-fiving each other and laughing, each looking more ghetto-gritty than the next, I began to get really intimidated. I’d felt kind of hip-hoppy when I’d left my apartment in cropped baggy black cargo pants and an old tee shirt, but there’s no escaping the fact that I’m a former ballet-dancing Caucasian girl from Tacoma.

By the time Flo turned on the music to warm-up with, I had completely psyched myself out and took a spot at the very back of the group. But as the dancing heated up, all my anxiety began to melt away as I remembered that I know how to move, I love to dance and most of all, hip-hop is fun. After two hours of dancing, Flo reminded us that it was the Semaine des Arts at Point Éphémère and asked a group of us if we’d mind going downstairs and performing the piece we’d been working on for the patrons of the restaurant. Mind? Ha! I love performing, so I jumped at the chance. The floor space was minimal and sticky, and we were forced to alter our formation to fit around and between tables, but if I may say so, we were awesome. We left to loud cheers and Flo thanked us all for stepping up. We’re performing again next weekend and a few Sundays in June – but instead of performing just for the restaurant-goers, we’ll be moving the show out to the banks of the canal. I can’t wait.

This is one of the things I’m really going to miss about Paris – being part of an impromptu performing hip-hop troop that dances in old factories and along the Seine. Not to mention the never-diminishing entertainment of hearing Flo shout Un, deux, trois et KRUMP!!!

2007-05-06T22:34:00.000+02:00

Sarko, facho, le peuple aura ta peau! Sarko, facho, le people aura ta peau! Sarko, facho, le peuple aura ta peau!

(Sarko, fascist, the people will have your skin!)

Protestors in front of the July column.

On May 17th Nicolas Sarkozy's five-year term as the president of the Republic will begin – and nearly half the population is not at all happy about it. Anarchists have taken over place de la Bastille. People are threatening to leave France. Effigies of Sarkozy are being burned in the streets. The other half though, is quite thrilled. People are dancing and celebrating on the Champs Elysées and at place de la Concorde, wearing UMP shirts and toasting Sarkozy.

According to my vie politique teacher, when there’s a substantial victory for the right-wing the celebration goes down at place (pronounced plah-suh) de la Concorde – which is exactly what’s happening right now. If I didn’t have a dissertation due by 8h tomorrow morning I’d be out there myself taking more pictures. As for the left, celebrations tend to take place at place de la Bastille. In 2002 when the extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen made it onto the second round, people wandered purposelessly to the Bastille – with no plan or idea of what to do except to gather there in protest and solidarity. The place de la Bastille has been a gathering place for manifestations and revolutions since the actual prison was stormed in 1789, so it follows that it would be a hub of leftist political activity.

Although leftist candidate Ségolène Royal had been holding her own throughout the election, Sarkozy has been the favorite from the beginning and Rachael and I have been predicting a UMP victory for weeks. Since the first round of elections two weeks ago there have been rumblings about the possibility of violent protests if Sarkozy were to be elected – especially in the infamous Parisian banlieue Clichy-sous-Bois. Figuring that manifestations would be far more interesting to watch than right-wing celebrations, we decided to hoof it over to Bastille to see the results.

Walking toward Bastille it was impossible not to notice the buses filled with French riot police lining the main roads that radiate out from the circular place and the TV vans and journalists wandering all around – clearly we weren’t the only ones expecting something interesting to go down tonight.

We were momentarily distracted from the riots by the extremely cute French riot police.

At 19h20 we squeezed onto barstools in Kilty’s Irish Pub where rue de la Roquette joins the chaotic traffic circle at Bastille and turned our eyes to the TV in the corner of the bar to watch the countdown. At T-10 minutes the streets started to empty as people squeezed into any bar or restaurant with a TV. The channel in Kilty’s was a little slower than the one on in the bar next door and at 20h we started to hear screaming without any clue who the screaming was for. A few frantic people bolted next door, but after about 30 seconds our TV caught up and we knew that Sarkozy had won.

We could hear screams of anger coming from all directions but for about 20 minutes after the results were announced, nothing happened. People began slowly filing out of the bars and gathering on a patch of sidewalk usually reserved for the Saturday-night break dancers. As the crowd grew a few guys climbed to the top of phone booths and began chanting, Sarko, facho, le people aura ta peau.

The chanting crowd began to walk straight into the swirling traffic and groups of people sat down in the middle of the road, forcing all traffic to a halt. Immediately the riot police were on the job, blocking off all entrance points to Bastille and directing the cars and buses Southeast toward Gare de Lyon. The thing that’s important to remember about France is that manifestations (protests) are a fundamental right. The police are bussed in with shin guards and riot shields and seem to function more as protectors of the protesters than as keepers of the peace. This is perhaps why nobody did anything when protesters began to graffiti the column.

Once the first two men had breached the spiked fence surrounding the monument, things just continued on toward anarchy. A Sarkozy mannequin appeared in the crowd and he was first kicked and beaten on the ground before being burned in effigy and carried on a stick through the crowd. The column was soon covered in anti-Sarko graffiti likening him to Le Pen and Hitler and piles of trash were burning as miniature bonfires throughout the crowds.

That flaming pile of clothing is actually an effigy of Sarko – complete with face and hair.

When I climbed onto the fence surrounding the column in the center to get a few pictures of the flare-wielding group that had made it onto the first level of the monument I came face-to-face with a girl about my age who was a member of an anarchist group. She asked me if I understood what was going on, and I mostly did, but I did need to ask what people were chanting after “Sarko, facho.” She asked who I would have voted for and I assured her that I was forcement against Sarko – though it was kind of a useless question to ask in the middle of a mob screaming about skinning the poor guy alive. Even if I’d been the biggest Sarkozy fan ever to come out of Sciences Po, there is no chance I’d ever admit that to a pro-Ségo anarchist. She told me it was chouette (kind, neat, cool) that I’d come out to manifest with them – and again, it would have been suicidal to admit that I was just there for a little entertainment and a few good pictures.

After observing the scene for a while together from our perch on the fence, I bid her a bonne soirée and made my way toward the metro – I do have homework to finish after all. As I left the fray things were nowhere near winding down – with drum circles, trash-fueled bonfires and no traffic to bother with whatsoever it was starting to look like quite a party.

Nobody stopped these guys from defacing the monument to the République at place de la Bastille with spray paint.

The big question is why protest something you can’t change? And certainly, even anarchists understand that no amount of manifestation can undo the democratic process of electing a new president. They know they can’t change anything, but want Sarkozy to hear their message – that he and his alienating policies are not wanted or welcome by a large chunk of the population. I get that, I totally do – they’re sending a message. But I think it’s a message that could be sent just as easily without clobbering and burning inanimate Sarkozy look-alikes or threatening that people will skin him alive. Even the riot police were chuckling when the protesters started comparing Sarokozy to Adolf Hitler (for one thing, his family is Jewish) – this was manifestation to the point of just looking ridiculous.

2007-05-04T02:04:00.000+02:00

Anecdotes from Paris, partie deux: The generosity of the homeless

The other night I was strolling back from a movie at Les Halles, enjoying the warm evening and snacking on a half-full carton of movie popcorn. R and I are constantly overestimating the amount of popcorn the two of us will be able to consume, but are also unable to admit defeat. The last time we failed to finish our extra-large popcorn, R was charged with toting home the remains and finishing them on their own – this time, it was my turn.

Being that it was 1 am and Paris, it wasn’t long before I was approached by two homeless men with a dog. All they wanted were a few coins, but once you’ve lived in Paris for any significant amount of time you just don’t give money to people on the street. I shook my head, but held out the carton of popcorn with one hand (the other hand was clutching the handful I was about to eat).

The guys were smelly and chemically altered and I could see that they were hungry by the way they stared down into the popcorn I was offering, but they shook their heads and refused. T’auras faim, mademoiselle, il faut que t’as assez à manger (You’ll be hungry, mademoiselle, you need to make sure you get enough to eat). This struck me because I was clean and lucid, wearing a green dress and costume jewelry, iPod headphones dangling around my neck, and clearly not in danger of going hungry. But before they’d accept my leftover movie popcorn they had to be sure that I’d already gotten my fill.

I shook my head and assured them that I’d already had too much – I finished my handful of popcorn and shook the box at them again. Finally the one who’d originally approached me took the carton with a grin and a thank you. They sent me off with a Bonne soirée, petite mademoiselle! and a wave. When I glanced back a block later they were wobbling back down rue du Louvre, tossing popcorn kernels to their scruffy dog in between their own bites.

I was kind of touched that I had guys looking out for me who don’t even have kitchens to cook their own dinner in – I don’t care what anyone says, Paris is a friendly city.

Why I love Sciences Po

The first thing I always do when I get home for the night is check my email, so tonight I was delighted to receive one from Sciences Po. Usually I have an 8h-10h class every Friday morning, which is pretty much torture for a girl who loves to sleep as much as I do. Every Thursday I plan to go to bed earlier, and every Thursday I fail miserably.

I’d come home from nannying expecting to eat a quick dinner, maybe watch a little France2 and go to bed early – until I found out that my Friday 8h is cancelled for this week. Now a class cancellation is no big deal – it happens all the time when professors are sick or want an extra long weekend – unless your maître de conférence works for the Sénat and the Parlement européen and had to cancel class because of a last-minute trip to Brussels.

When else in my life am I going to be taking classes from teachers who have to jet off at a moment’s notice to rendez-vous for various institutions of the European Union?

Al Gore told us so
High temperatures, and even higher anxiety, in Europe

It’s still only April and at 9:30 in the morning we’re already sweating in our second-floor Sciences Po classrooms. With temperatures that have been hovering in the 80s for weeks and front-page newspaper articles about global warming and climate change it’s becoming clear that this summer is going to be a hot one.

For the moment though, everybody’s too busy enjoying the sunny days to worry about the impending “Sahara summer,” as it’s been dubbed in European newspapers. As soon as the temperatures started picking up at the beginning of April the sunbathers began flocking to the banks of the Seine, the Canal St. Martin and public parks all over the city.

The largest demographic of sunbathers is the slim and ûber-tanned Euro men in Speedos who sprawl themselves in prominent locations right on the edges of the riverbank. They usually station themselves alone near bridges, but whether or not they intend to be checked out by the hundreds of pedestrians is debatable.

The next group is made up of the older but also ûber-tanned Parisienne ladies in bikinis. They usually set up camp in groups on a secluded bank of the Canal St. Martin directly below place de la Bastille and spend the afternoon chatting and reading on their towels, readjusting their bikini tops for minimal tan lines and occasionally pausing to lotion up again.

Finally you have the plain-old people, yours truly included, who spend their days off sweating on the riverbank, listening to music and sunbathing in anxious anticipation of the heat of the actual summer. Whatever happened to April showers? I feel like I should not be able to get away with a bikini in the middle of springtime in Paris, but the heat’s been such that you can’t wear much else.

2007-05-01T22:07:00.000+02:00

Jean-Marie Le Pen is a sensitive subject for the French. To most of the population, he’s a dinosaur – a racist xenophobic extremist whose existence on the political scene is a disgrace to the country. But for a shocking 11 percent of the voting population, he’s a revolutionary – a martyr whose destiny is to make France French again.

Le Pen founded the Front National in 1972, a far-right political party that wants to return France to its traditional roots, distance the country from the European Union, reinstate the death penalty and basically deport all immigrants. Le Pen’s daughter Marine is a party executive and the popular pick for the FN’s candidate for the présidentielle once Jean-Marie leaves the scene. Because Jean-Marie is such a polarizing figure, Marine is seen as the hope for the future of the party. According to my vie politique professor, Marine is a much more dangerous figure than Jean-Marie, for just that reason. She’s softer, less extreme and was never convicted of negationism or accused of torturing POWs – and could potentially gain a lot of votes for the party.

Front National supporters parading in Paris:

As a political figure, Le Pen is a frightening extremist – and as a person, he is no less colorful. As a young man he was convicted of assault several times – mostly through membership in a group of law students whose main activity was beating up Communists. He’s been accused of using torture as an intelligence officer in the Algerian War by the newspaper Le Monde, but was unable to be tried because of an amnesty agreement and expired statutes of limitations. He was prosecuted and fined in 1999 for historical revisionism and Holocaust denial for statements about the supposed insignificance of the concentration camps in terms of World War II and for claiming that the Nazi occupation of France wasn’t actually so bad.

Le Pen is the black sheep of the French political family. He’s the butt of every joke, but behind the laughter is real fear – because he continues to gather enough support to be a real political power. The highlight of his political career was the 2002 présidentielle, in which he managed to defeat the Socialist party candidate (Lionel Jospin) who was expected to be a main contender, and go on to the second round of elections against Jacques Chirac. Although Le Pen’s short-lived success was due more in part to divisions among the leftist parties than to his own popularity, the two weeks between the first and second rounds of elections were filled with demonstrations, marches, protests, graffiti and posters against Le Pen. A popular slogan was “Vote for the crook, not the fascist.” Chirac went on to defeat Le Pen by a landslide in the second round, but France learned its lesson in 2002 and voter turn-out for the first round of the 2007 présidentielle was an impressive 85 percent.

May Day in France is both a national holiday and the date of the annual parade and rally of the Front National. Le Pen supporters from all over France were bussed into Paris this morning to participate in the parade, which took two hours to wind its way from St. Augustin in the 8ème to place de l’Opéra where Le Pen was to speak. Anna and I met at place de l’Opéra about half an hour before Le Pen was to appear, mainly out of morbid curiousity – we couldn’t wait to see “what kind of people” support Jean-Marie Le Pen. Based on his political platform, our general expectation was skinheads and rednecks – but the most frightening thing about the rally was just how many completely normal-looking people were present. There were adorable French moms with pearl earrings, YSL shirts and Longchamp purses pushing babies in strollers that had been decorated with FN and Le Pen signs and banners. There were cute old ladies perched on fold-up camping chairs wearing FN baseball caps. There were groups of attractive young guys wearing armbands and French flags as superhero capes. There were fluffy poodles wearing tricolor cocardes (cockades, or rosettes – these were a symbol of the French Revolution) and doggy tee shirts that read “Vite Le Pen, Vite!” The whole atmosphere was rather unsettling – there were hot dogs and balloons and tee shirts for sale, and the scene felt like a fun festival – except that we were all there to celebrate (or observe) a racist Holocaust-denying torturer.

We felt a little awkward standing in the middle of this fascist rally – on the one hand, we did not want anyone to think we’d ever support this lunatic, but on the other hand, we really didn’t want to get beat up by crazed FN supporters. Grateful that neither of us had accidentally dressed in red, white and blue, we opted to wander casually through the crowd taking pictures and gawking at Le Pen as he made his speech from the stage that had been set up for him in front of the Palais Garnier.

For reasons not completely clear to me or Anna, Jeanne d’Arc is a special symbol for Le Pen and the FN – the parade doubles as a celebration of both the FN and the exploits of Joan of Arc. From what we could gather, Le Pen sees himself as a kind of martyr as well, fighting for his beliefs as she did. It may also have something to do with the fact that she was persecuted by the English, and Le Pen, fighting to return France to its Frenchiest roots, is very wary of Anglo-Saxon intervention. In addition to the pro-FN and Le Pen tee shirts for sale all around the place, there was also quite a bit of anti-Sarkozy and anti-U.S. paraphernalia available for purchase. One red tee shirt featured an outline of the U.S. with the words état criminel (criminal state) written inside of it. Another one read simply, “Yankee go home.”

Sprinkled throughout his impassioned tribute to dear Jeanne d’Arc (who, by the way, I really don’t feel would be comfortable being associated with a fascist extremist) were tirades against each of the other presidential candidates. He led the crowd in loud booing of Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, and started a cheer of Chirac en prison! Chirac en prison! He also spent a significant amount of time bemoaning the 2002 elections before moving on to rail against the results of the présidentielle 2007. After an hour of FN rallying, parading and speeches, Anna and I were ready to escape the chants of “LE PEN – LE PEN – LE PEN.” We snuck off down rue du Quatre Septembre feeling rather ill, but satisfied – curiosity-wise, at least.

2007-04-30T22:05:00.000+02:00

Here's a French music video to amuse until I write about the annual Front National parade tomorrow morning – it's in honor of Joan of Arc and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Should be a disturbing and interesting time.

Mick est tout seul – La clé des chants

2007-04-27T01:08:00.000+02:00

Being at Sciences Po between the two rounds of the French presidential election is like being thrust into a hub of political hyperactivity. The dueling Sarko and Ségo camps have hung up jeunes pour Ségolène Royal/Nicolas Sarkozy flags in penîche (main hall) and spend every free moment trying to turn another young French voter and professors have cancelled classes to go off and debate or campaign for their preferred candidates.

Actually, the mood has been electric since mid-February, when François Bayrou crept up from behind to challenge to two main contenders for the Élysée (the Palais de l’Élysée is the presidential residence – basically the French White House) and turned the fairly predictable election into something much more interesting.

The way the French présidentielle works is by a run-off system. Each political party has the option to present a candidate who must gather 500 signatures from elected officials in at least 30 French departments (regions). The only other requirements to be a candidate are to be of French nationality and be at least 23 years old. After the official candidate list is announced, the candidates enter an official campaign period, the rules of which are strictly enforced – each candidate must be allotted the exact same amount of television time, whether through commercials, interviews or debates. The day before the elections campaigning is forbidden – no speeches, appearances or ads are allowed in order to give voters a “day of reflection.” Citizens vote on all candidates in the prémier tour of elections (which took place here on Sunday, April 22nd). If no candidate receives an absolute majority, there’s a run-off election between the top two two weeks later.

This year 12 offical candidates were announced, the favorites of which have long been Ségolène Royal from the Socialist Party and Nicolas Sarkozy of Jacques Chirac’s party the UMP. A run-off between Ségo and Sarko as they’re popularly called, has long been the expectation, but the emergence of the centrist candidate François Bayrou in the polls in February and March threw a serious wrench into the predictability of the election. As the first voting round drew closer, France was mainly concerned with four candidates – Ségo, Sarko, Bayrou and Jean-Marie Le Pen, a racist, fascist, holocaust-denying, extreme right-wing candidate with one eye, who shocked the country and the international scene when he made it into the second round of voting in the 2002 présidentielle. As extreme and offensive as Le Pen may be, he consistently manages to garner a hefty percentage of votes. Last Sunday he received around 11 percent of votes, compared to the inoffensive Green Party candidate’s 1.5 percent.

Polling stations opened at 8 am Sunday morning and officially closed at 6 pm. Unlike the U.S. elections, where voters watch the slow roll of blue or red across the country as polling stations close in each state and see the votes mounting up as they’re counted, the estimated results are not allowed to be announced until 8 pm the night of the first round. At 7:50 Sunday evening, Rachael, our friend Tom and I arrived at a friend’s parents’ Moroccan restaurant, which had opened early for the election results. Faris (the Moroccan friend) and a few other people had set up a projector and speakers so the news was playing 10 feet tall against the wall of the restaurant when we arrived.

The scene reminded me of New Year’s eve, with a countdown clock ticking away the seconds in the corner of the screen, and the camera views alternating between the different candidate’s headquarters. When the clock reached 7:59:30, a collective “SHHHH” rolled around the restaurant and everyone began counting down with the ticker, clutching wine or beer in one hand and frantically silencing cell phones with the other. At precisely 8:00:00, the screen was filled with two headshots – those of Ségo and Sarko before switching once more to the headquarters of each candidate. The whole scene was almost ridiculously theatrical – from the countdown to the winners’ pictures to the photo montages set to inspirational music that played homage to each candidate. I was reminded more of the Academy Awards or New Year’s with Dick Clark more than a serious political event – but I guess the French are used to doing it with flair.

The restaurant where we were was smack in the middle of the 11ème arrondissment, not too far from place de la Bastille – an area that is distinctly left-wing. When Ségo’s picture flashed on the screen the restaurant erupted in cheers – which shortly turned into boos and irritated Sarko insults when the percentages of votes tipped less and less in her favor. Over in the 2ème arrondissement, on the other hand, Sarko’s advance is being celebrated. As I find myself surrounded by some of the most politically aware kids I’ve ever met, I didn’t bat an eyelid when Paul (7) told me that he was “so happy” that Sarko made it, and was only mildly surprised when Ella (10) went off into a tirade about how “everyone wants Ségolène because they think she’ll give money to poor people, but really she’ll make everything more expensive for every one else with too many taxes!” Even 2-year old Georges knows, in direct accordance with the politics of his parents, that “Ségolène bad.”

While I’m sure 99 percent of what I hear from the kids is regurgitated straight back from their parents, it still amuses me to no end when Paul tells me he can’t wait for May 6th to find out who will win. Though Sarkozy came out of the first round with 31.18 percent and a clear lead over Royal’s 25.87 percent (numbers that three of my four nannying charges had memorized to the 100th), nobody knows where Bayrou’s 18 percent will go. At the moment, he’s endorsing neither candidate, and has instead declared that he’ll be founding a new political party – the Parti démocrate. The rest of the votes are easy to assign – Le Pen’s extremist votes will most likely go to the immigration-unfriendly Sarkozy, while most of the little leftist parties will be casting their votes for Ségolène. It’s the middle 18 percent that has everybody aflutter – and while my personal prediction is Sarkozy in the Élysée, we won’t know for sure until next weekend.

Meanwhile, Paul and I are counting down the days.

2007-04-17T22:51:00.000+02:00

News of the shooting is on the front pages of all the French dailies today. All over the world people are mourning with Virginia Tech. Here's a link to the article in Le Monde.

Compte rendu: Scotland

After two trains, a night on a bench in the Glasgow airport, a plane, a bus and a metro ride, I am finally back in Paris. I landed at Paris Beauvais airport at noon yesterday still wearing my polar fleece and wind breaker from the chilly weather in Edinburgh to find temperatures in the 70s and bright bright sun. Needless to say, I stripped down quickly.

View of Edinburgh from the Camera Obscura in the Old City:

It’s weird to be back – I’ve traveled from Paris before, to Munich and back, to visit Christina in Nantes, to Barcelona last November, back to Tacoma for Christmas, and all around France in a car with my mom, but for some reason coming back this time felt different. Maybe because I’ve been here for 8 months now it feels more like coming back to school and routine than just continuing the fun in Paris. Or maybe it’s just because I had a really really great time in Scotland.

Planning spring break is a different experience in Paris. Last year we just wanted to get out of Seattle and planned a quick backpacking trip to the Washington coast. This year the plan was backpacking again – it was just a matter of picking the country I wanted to do it in. I ended up planning the trip with Anna, a Canadian from Sciences Po who I’d met in my French politics class. Before break we were just class buddies who save each other seats in our conférence de method, but after a week traveling together, two plane rides and a lot of time to kill in Glasgow Prestwick International we’ve got each other’s stories memorized. She knows that my youngest brother Noah is 16 and loves jazz, I know that her sister’s boyfriend lives in India and likes whisky, and we’re convinced that our own boyfriends might actually be the same person.

These kids were a part of the Ipswich (Massachusetts) High School music program, who are currently touring Scotland and England. A and I thought they were so cute that we followed their flier to the Greyfriars Kirk to hear them give a free performance before catching our train to Glasgow Sunday night. The listeners seemed to be made up of a few parent chaperones, a few teachers and a few church parishioners, so we were glad we stopped by to fill out the audience – plus they reminded me of my little brother.

We left Paris last Tuesday morning, and after nearly a full day of traveling made it to our hostel in Edinburgh. We walked around a bit, had a dorky but satisfying dinner in the café where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book and went to bed early so we could be up to meet our backpacking group the next morning. We’d signed up for a tour with Macbackpackers, which is maybe not quite as rugged as I’d like you all to think I am, but it was a great way to see Scotland. When our guides arrived Wednesday morning, A and I flung our packs in the trunk of the MacBackpackers mini-bus and climbed aboard with our 12 fellow backpackers. For three days we were driven around the highlands and lowlands of Scotland by a kilted guide, stopping every so often to hike on mountains, through moors and over battlefields.

The natural result of throwing 14 strangers together for three days with nothing tying them except the facts that they like to hike, love to travel and are at least somewhat interested in Scotland is that they’re going to bond. There are people A and I met who I feel like I’ll be in touch with indefinitely – funny how that happens. Two girls from Paris (currently living in London) and a girl from Australia in particular, all of whom will be making their respective ways to Paris sometime in the next few months.

The five of us went out to dinner in Edinburgh Friday when we arrived back in the city and spent a night talking about anything and everything in various pubs of the old city. Together we learned the most shocking thing about Scotland – its conservative alcohol laws! After three days of our guide telling story after story that involved drunk Scots, we were ready to get back to Edinburgh and check out the pub culture ourselves. In Paris, you don’t go out until at least midnight, and it’s not uncommon to come home when the boulangerie are reopening in the morning. In Scotland, it is illegal to sell liquor after 10 pm anywhere but a pub. We found this out when we tried to purchase a few bottles of wine in a convenience store at 5 past 10 pm to get the evening started. The rule kind of made sense, we supposed, encouraging people to spend more money in the pubs. It stopped making sense at 12:30, when the lights came on and we were kicked out of the Castle Arms pub. Yes, in Scotland, the land of whisky, the pubs close at 12:30. Surprised, we asked around our hostel and were told, “If you run, you might catch one that’s open until 1am, but you’d better hurry.”

This is at a restaurant in Edinburgh – before our wine-buying shutout.

We were pretty surprised at this news, but were more amused than anything and retreated back to the hostel to finish our girly talk about first kisses and ex-boyfriends and favorite movies. The next morning everyone began to disperse. The five of us, A and I, plus two Frenchies and an Aussie woke up earlier to have breakfast together before we went on our merry ways. First to depart were Angelique and Samya, who had to catch a train back to Leicester. Paula stuck around long enough to hike up Arthur’s Seat with us before catching a bus back to Glasgow, the jumping-off point for the rest of her European adventure. That left just A and I to explore together until it was time to head back to Paris. I love how a random group of 5 people can fall together for a few days and click so perfectly that it feels like we’ve been girlfriends for years. It’s sad that we clicked so well and live so far apart, but at least we got a few crazy fun days together before we had to split.

On the way up to Arthur's Seat:

Before the trip, all I knew of Scotland was from the documentary about the Loch Ness Monster that I watched with my Tacoma friend Annette one weekend in high school. I’ve never seen Braveheart – the historical inaccuracy of which is actually a bit of a sore point for the Scots, so maybe it’s better that I haven’t. I’m also lacking any ancestral ties to the country, which made me a bit jealous watching my fellow hikers look up their family tartans or become suddenly extra attentive at the mention of the massacre of the MacDonald clan at Glen Coe. Hiking the highlands and the Isle of Skye and hearing nothing but stories of highland culture, clans and battles for three days made me wish for a little highland heritage myself. I guess I just need to marry a Campbell. Or a MacLaren. Or a Farquharson.

Beyond learning the history, a week in Scotland gave me the chance to absorb a bit of the feel of the country. Coming from Paris, Scotland felt a bit more like home, with its English native tongue, tougher liquor laws, love for fried foods and decidedly less skinny people. It’s also a more environmentally friendly place, with its 100% biodegradable plastic grocery bags and plentiful recycling receptacles. It’s a country with a history that’s a little bloodier, bars that close earlier, people that are friendlier, skirts that are manlier, but above all, Scotland is beautiful.

Culloden battle field:

I wonder if you can guess which loch this is:

The Cullin Mountains:

This is at a place called Faerie Glen on the Isle of Skye. J.R. Tolkien apparently spent a summer on Skye in his childhood – I believe it.

The view of the road from Faerie Glen:

One of our hiking stops:

This is on the Isle of Skye:

Loch Garry (known as "the loch that's shaped like Scotland"):

This is a ridiculous statue at the William Wallace monument. Check out the case of the Braveheart dvd if you're curious about this sculptor's inspirations. Or just look at a picture of Mel Gibson:

More Scotland pictures here.

2007-04-06T08:17:00.001+02:00

It’s starting to feel like the beginning of the end. Today I spent half an hour looking at the new Ikea catalogue with Paul and Ella, the three of us trying to pick out the prettiest bed for me to buy for my apartment next year. We settled on a dark metal bed frame – I knew this was the perfect girly pick when E started making indiscernible cooing sounds and pointing out the matching bedside tables, while P started making fake retching sounds.

I still have nearly four whole months left in Paris, but I’m already planning for the fifth one. I finally bought my ticket home a few weeks ago, which was a 900 dollar blow to my bank account. Apparently it is not cheap to fly one-way from France o the West Coast at the end of July. My flight arrives at SeaTac Airport at 4:45 pm on July 27th, and on July 28th, there’s a concert I want to see in Renton. August 11th we leave for the annual family beach trip to the Washington Coast, and my brother and I are crusading for a family date to see the Steve Miller Band play a concert in September.

I’ve already emailed my boss from work last summer to see about working as a teaching assistant for Seabury Summer classes again this year, and I’ve sent in my volunteer application to work at the UW incoming foreign exchange student orientation at the end of the summer. Christina and I have been stalking the classifieds for rental apartments for the past few weeks now, and P and E are excitedly helping me make-believe furnish it. There should be an emphasis on make-believe, because both of the kids were thrilled by a completely round bed featured in the catalogue. They didn’t want to listen to me telling them that it would be really hard finding an apartment with a bed big enough to host a round bed – not to mention the Hugh Hefner references that I didn’t feel like mentioning to the kids.

Registration for Autumn quarter is coming up in May and I need to email my Jackson School advisor about scheduling. I also need to track down a professor to partner with on my qualifying paper – an international studies-specific paper usually written during the fall of your Junior year, unless, of course, you’re studying abroad. I also need to pin down a topic for the paper, which should be, according to my advisor, an expansion on something I’ve studied this year. So far I’m leaning toward EU enlargement for the paper topic – a subject that intrigues me and is always current.

Besides worrying about my classes for Autumn 2007, there’s also that pesky fact that I’m going to be a Senior. This means that in addition to the regular stress of finding a schedule that fits with my two majors, I need to find a schedule that is going to keep me on track for graduation next June. As much as I want to just sit back and enjoy the baguettes, the reality is that there are a lot of things I need to figure out about what I’ll be doing in the few months after I step off of that plane for the final time.

I’m not the only one who’s thinking ahead. Cassie (nanny mom) is already stressing about how to explain to Georges what has happened to me when I disappear for good in the middle of the summer. You can explain it anyway you want to a three-year old, but the only thing he’s going to retain is “Halley going on a big big airplane?” It’s been more than a month since my mom ditched me for Tacoma, and Georges is still completely befuddled. “Halley, where Halley-mom go?” he asks me every few days.

There’s also the question of my replacement for next year – no matter how thoroughly you interview someone, or how highly recommended they come from their last employer, it’s still terrifying to employ a complete stranger to spend 25 hours a week with your children. The fact that an ex=employee of the family is currently being investigated for letting an 11-month old baby drown in the bathtub on her watch is only compounding the terror. It’s infinitely less scary if you find someone who is recommended by a person you already know and trust, so when C asked me to help her find someone for next year, I completely understood.

Thinking that this would be a great opportunity to keep in the UW family – a free apartment in the heart of Paris in exchange for a little light babysitting – I emailed my advisor in the UW study abroad office, only to find out that not a single Husky applied to Sciences Po this year. I find this totally bizarre, but what can you do? At least the lack of Washington students heading to Paris doesn’t affect the direct exchange agreement with Sciences Po, and there are still 4 Frenchies destined for Seattle in September.

Feeling like I needed to reach out to the students heading to Washington next year, I found their names at Sciences Po and emailed them. Having conversation after conversation about what people wear in Seattle (my answer: Jeans, flip-flops and hooded sweatshirts, plus a lot of polar fleece) or whether there’s a good music scene in Washington (my answer: Um, hello, have you heard of Jimi Hendrix? Nirvana? Pearl Jam? You don’t need to worry.) hasn’t done anything to redirect my thoughts from the upcoming school year.

I keep catching myself thinking about August and beyond and feeling like I should stop thinking about things that are so far away. But then again, four months is not a long time. In two months, I’ll be winding up my second semester at Sciences Po. Then I’ll be hosting a ridiculous slew of visitors, from brothers to boyfriends, to aunts and uncles, to friends of brothers, my floor will be jam packed for a month. Then it’s down to Provence for two weeks in July with the nanny family, two weeks in Turkey and Israel with Rachael (our last hurrah), two days in Paris to square things away and it’s back to Tacoma again. Four months isn’t very much time at all.

Yes, it’s definitely the beginning of the end. Or I suppose a more optimistic way of looking at it would be, it’s the beginning of the beginning of a new set of adventures: Tacoma Girl Back in Tacoma. See you then. Three months, three weeks and counting.

You know it's Passover in Paris when you find discarded matzo-stuffed Dior bags along the rue St. Honoré.

2007-04-03T14:56:00.000+02:00

It turns out that it is not that easy to date someone who lives on a different continent from you. First of all, there’s that word – dating, the very nature of which implies that you have someone with whom you go out in the world and do things. You’d think dating someone you’d go out to dinner, see movies, go to parks on nice days like today (it’s 60 degrees out and gorgeous), but when the two of you are on opposite ends of not only the Atlantic Ocean, but the North American Continent, all bets are off.

I didn’t expect it to be a problem when we started – yeah, it’s a “long-distance relationship,” but there’s still the phone, email, skype and even La Poste. Maybe we won’t get to see each other every day, but I’d rather be a girlfriend than not, and I’ll be home by August anyway. Besides, I have all of Paris to distract me.

Right. The situation is not so easy breezy when you’re having a bad day and all you want to do is see your boyfriend – but you can’t, because he’s 10,730 kilometers away. You can’t call him either, because it’s 5am in Seattle and besides the fact that he’s probably asleep, the long-distance charges on your cell phone would be ridiculous. Then you realize that because of the 9-hour difference between time zones and your conflicting schedules you can’t even talk to him voice-to-voice until Saturday. This is when it sucks.

I'm the red square – make sure to check out step #18

Being boyfriendless because you’re single in Paris is fantastic – there’s a never-ending supply of amorous French boys to take you out, you can go dancing and stay out all night without anybody worrying, you can give your phone number to any cute boy who asks for it. But what happens when you’re boyfriendless and not single? When there’s supposed to be one particular American boy taking you out, waiting for you when you come home from dancing with the girls, glaring at the boys who ask for your number on the street – and he’s not there?

I spent four months being single in Paris, and they were fantastic. I spent my weekdays dancing all night at Sciences Po parties and le Queen, and my weekends splitting bottles of wine with French boys with names like Alexi and Jacques (I kid you not) who gave me flowers and wanted to touch my hair. All of those complimentary French boys combined can’t compare with the one boy waiting for me back in Seattle – but the situation we have here is the pits.

There’s a pretty extensive “Weepy girlfriend” club at Sciences Po – at least once a week the subject of the boyfriends left behind crops up in one of my classes. I am never the instigator of these conversations, but I always end up joining in. The girls are different every time, but the lame conversation is always the same:

Sigh, I miss my boyfriend.

Sigh, me too, where’s yours?

(Insert random U.S. or Canadian city). But he’s coming to visit me!

Oh yeah? Mine too? When’s yours coming?

(Insert random week and month)

Sigh, yours is coming before mine – lucky girl!

The cities vary, as do the names of boyfriends and dates of reunification, but nothing else ever does. The recurrent nature of these conversations is due in large part to the fact that nobody ever wants to hear some girl moan about missing her boyfriend while she’s studying abroad – unless the listener has a boyfriend of her own tucked away at home and can’t wait to get through the obligated sympathy comments to moan about her own.

Things are a lot easier now than they used to be – international telephone calls are expensive, but Skype is free, and if you happen to have a webcam, you can pretend for a few minutes that you’re actually in the same room. Despite all your best efforts though, you’re never actually in the same room. If I had a euro for every time I’ve heard “I was webcamming with my boyfriend the other night, and…” somewhere at Sciences Po, I could…um…buy another webcam.

What can you do, though? There’s an empty spot next to me where a boy is supposed to be, so instead of calling him when I’m having a bad day, I flirt with the bus driver, pause a little longer than I should watching the French boys play soccer in the jardin des Tuileries, develop an inappropriate crush on my vie politique professor and devote entirely too much time and energy to finding Rachael a French boy. There’s nothing else to do – except wait.

2007-04-02T12:46:00.000+02:00

One sunny Sunday morning in February, Rachael and I began by setting out for a regular run around the jardin des Tuileries. Somewhere between the triumphal arch and the carousal something about the beautiful weather, the hordes of people filling the park and the endorphins shooting through us turned us a little silly.

Bored of running, we took up a spot near the Southeastern corner of the park and began doing crazy exercises – partly for our own amusement/fitness and partly because we’re both apparently big show-offs. Maybe a little too tickled by the fact that we were leaping around like crazy girls in the middle of Paris, we took turns picking activities and ended up bolting through the gardens pretending to be football players, skipping around fountains, and just being generally quite ridiculous.

As goofy as we were, we were both nearly too sore to bend the next day, and pleased with the apparent efficiency of our workout, we began to get very into the idea of forming a workout group in the city.

We batted the idea around for a few weeks, every so often saying, “Hey, we should make flyers or something,” but never actually acting on it until last weekend. The motivating factor was probably the fact that we both had a huge amount of homework that we both desperately wanted to avoid doing, so we drafted a flyer for me to have corrected by the nanny kids.

I chose Paul to correct our advertisement, which he was more than thrilled to do. Not only did he correct my grammar, but he was so excited about the flyer that he made a rainbow title reading Avez-vouz besoin d’exercice? Venez ici! (Do you need exercise? Come here!). He also turned the entire flyer’s worth of font lime green and added a few soccer ball clipart graphics. Even at 7, Paul is incredibly perceptive – he advised me to remove the sentence that began “We are two American girls….” We’d just have hundreds of French boys responding who wanted to date us, he thought.

After Paul’s edits, we went ahead and posted our ad on Craig’s List Paris, the Ex-Patriates website and in paper form at Sciences Po and in laundromats and boulangerie around the city. We went so far as to create a new email address (parisworkout@yahoo.fr) for the occasion. So far, we’ve had three replies. One came right away from a Parisienne named Stéphanie whose main interest was getting back into shape. We had an email from a guy from the Phillipines, asking us if we wouldn’t rather just go get some coffee to get to know eachother instead of working out, and we had one from an American ex-pat named Patrick who seemed so into the idea that he proposed the location of our first workout.

We sent an email to our three responders detailing the time, date and location of our first meeting. We chose the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, for its hilly trails and (at Patrick’s behest) its location and somewhat arbitrarily picked Sunday morning at 10 for the workout.

Since the park is about 10 minutes from Rachael’s apartment and about 40 from mine, I spent the night at Rachael's, and by a quarter to ten we were waiting hopefully by the metro exit for Buttes Chaumont. Of our meager three potential group members, Stéphanie was the only one to actually show – she’s around 30, French, works for a non-profit and is a great sport.

It’s hard to throw three people of different physical ability together to figure out what workout they can do together. Due to my typical bossiness, plus the desire to actually get a work out, I took charge, and felt like I was channeling Mark and Denise from Tuf Enuf at the Tacoma YMCA. We alternated laps around the lake with series of lunges, squats, kickboxing, skipping and anything else we could think of. After an hour, we split up and Rachael and I ran back to her apartment while Stéphanie took the métro all the way back to her place in the 15ème – a long way to come for a workout group!

While my thighs are pretty sore today, the part of me that got the best workout was my French-speaking muscles. As with camera repair, doctor’s visits and blood donations, words for working out are not my area of vocabulary expertise. Hopefully our little group will gather a few more people and Rachael and I will have another place to practice our French-speaking every weekend.

We are so ready to work out.

Avez-vous besoin d’exercice ? Venez ici !

Recherche: Des gens de tous ages, toutes nationalités, tous niveaux de forme pour se constituer un groupe actif d’exercice GRATUIT!

On est: Deux filles Américaines, pas trop fortes, pas trop faibles, qui aimerions rencontrer des gens pour faire du jogging et s’exercer dans une atmosphère géniale et décontracté (d’esprit, pas du corps !).

Propose : Un rendez-vous d’exercice par semaine, de n’importe quel type d’exercice – du jogging, du yoga, du football, d’entraînement en circuit, et au déla. Nous vous proposons soit les samedis matins ou soit les dimanches, environs 10h, à une variété des parcs publiques – Parc Monceau, Bois des Vincennes, Jardins des Tuileries, Parc des buttes Chaumonts. Chacun, s’il le veut, aura l’opportunité d’envisager le programme d’un rendez-vous.

Si ça vous intéresse, contactez-nous par email (parisworkout@yahoo.fr), et nous vous répondrons avec le lieu, l’heure et date de notre prochain rendez-vous.

Venez nombreux !!!

Do you need exercise ? Come here !

Looking for: People of all ages, nationalities and fitness levels to form a free exercise group!

We are: Two American girls, not too strong, not too weak, who would like to find people to run and exercise in a fun and relaxed atmosphere (relaxed in mind, not body!).

We propose: A meeting every weekend of all types of exercise – jogging, yoga, soccer, circuit training, et cetera. We suggest either Saturday or Sunday mornings around 10h, in a variety of public parks – parc Monceau, bois des Vincennes, jardin des Tuileries, parc des Buttes Chaumonts, etc. Everyone who wants to will have the chance to plan out a day of exercise.

If you’re interested, email us at parisworkout@yahoo.fr, and we’ll email you back with the time, date and location of our next workout!

2007-03-30T23:42:00.000+02:00

Nowhere is the French reverence for all things culinary more apparent than in the canteen of the Sciences Po blood drive. Rather than the typical Tacoma blood bank fare of saltines, prepackaged oatmeal raisin cookies and array of juices, French donors are offered a selection of sandwiches, yogurts and fresh pastries.

The food isn’t the only thing that’s different about donating blood in Paris – for one thing, the required abstention post-tatouage is a mere 4 months, compared to the year-long wait in the U.S., and there’s no minimum required iron level – in fact, they don’t even check.

I tried rather half-heartedly and unsuccessfully to figure out if I was allowed to donate here at the beginning of the school year, but gave up or forgot or was just to lazy to follow through. I’d completely forgotten about it until I checked my Sciences Po email yesterday and discovered that SciPo was hosting a blood drive today.

Still not sure whether I was even eligible to donate in France, I showed up anyway. Since I had an 8am class and was already at school, I was one of the first in the door at 10:30, ready to completely befuddle all of the technicians.

As easily as I can generally communicate in France, there are some things that I just don’t know. My weight in kilograms, for example, or my height in meters. During my interview, I had several technicians gathered around me trying to estimate my height and weight – as they shouted out their guesses, they’d look at me for confirmation, as though hearing the correct numbers would trigger some dormant part of my brain that conforms to the metric system.

It took me a lot of arguing in my American French to convince the médecin that yes, it was possible that I had donated blood maybe 15 times in my life. He kept asking if I was sure, and after thinking about it I realized that it’s probably more like 25 – I’ve been a pretty regular donor since I hit 16 and this new number just completely floored him. À 21 ans? Vingt-cinq fois à 21 ans? he kept exclaiming. Just as I couldn’t figure out why he was so amazed, he couldn’t figure out why I was so nonchalant – until he asked me what the minimum age for donation is stateside. Until a few years ago, French donors weren’t allowed to donate until they were 21 years old. This age limit was lowered to 18 with parental consent, and then finally to 18 without parental consent, so a minimum age of 16 years and 110 pounds was pretty surprising to my poor interviewer.

I had another adventure trying to explain to the médecin that the only surgery I’d ever had was to have my tonsils removed more than a decade ago. I’d been wrongly assuming that the word for tonsil was the same in French – enlèvement des tonsils, enlèvement des tonsils! I kept pointlessly repeating while patting my throat with one hand and miming some kind of tonsil removal with the other. Turns out, “tonsil” is not a word in French, not even close. The correct vocabulary would have been les amygdales, which was probably one of the words the médecin kept saying, but had sounded so far off that I’d disregarded it. The confusion ended with him writing “tonsil” on a piece of paper and telling me that I need to figure out the word for next time.

Once we had the medical history sorted out, it was time for the interview. For the most part, this was exactly the same history I give at Cascade Regional in Tacoma – but even more inclusive, if you can imagine. For example, if you say no, you have not had unprotected sex even one time since 1980 with a man who has had unprotected sex even one time since 1980 with another man, you get another list of questions. Do you have a significant other? Male or female? How long have you been dating? Are you monogamous? Are you sexually active? If so, when is the last time you had sex, and was it with a significant other, or somebody else. I was kind of taken aback by this series – I’m used to the no, no, no to all of the high-risk for HIV diagnostic questions, but not so much to the relationship/sexual profiling ones. They also ask if you’ve ever smoked hash or cannabis – if so, when and in what quantities. I’m not sure what pot has to do with blood quality, but I guess my médecin was satisfied that I probably didn’t have any traces of marijuana in my system today, and I was sent out to be bled.

There were two technicians drawing blood, a man and a woman, and they both seemed very tickled to have an American girl incapacitated on a cot. The man was excited to practice his English, and told me, “Your snow, I mean rain? Snow? Ah yes, boots for rain, are so nice, mademoiselle,” while the woman fussed over me, speaking as slowly as she could, patting my arm, and unzipping and rezipping my sweater whenever she deemed that I might be in need of a temperature adjustment.

I was hoping for some French “I donated” merchandise, but hélas, all I got was a chausson aux pommes, a Mont Blanc yogurt and a compliment on my footwear.

I know parking is an issue in this city, but this guy definitely should have kept looking:

2007-03-26T21:23:00.000+02:00

I think it’s safe to say that it’s spring in Paris. The sun is shining, it’s warm enough to walk to class without a jacket, and every spare patch of grass in the city is filled with smoking sunbathers – no really. They lay on their backs with their pants and shirt hems rolled up, one arm across the eyes to block out the sun while the other hand brings a cigarette up for a drag every few minutes. Only in Paris, right?

With the onset off a new season and the beginning of a long run of the warmer months, it’s definitely time to reassess French fashion. Get ready with a pen and paper because here are my notes for must-have clothing for anyone currently living in the city of light, or wishing they were.

First and most important is the mini trench. We already knew that the trench was French, but as the months get warmer and dryer, the hems get higher, the colors brighter and the fabrics lighter. Styled exactly like a full-length Carmen Sandiego, but cut to fall at the hip, the shoulder and wrist straps, big buttons and tie-waists of the mini-trench are exactly the same as those of it’s cold-weather big sister, just styled for spring. Khaki is the most popular color, but you’ll also see black cotton, darker browns, grays, and an array of bright springy colors like greens and oranges. It’s important to note that chicness is still a way of life in the sweaty grime of summer in the city, so if you want to look Parisian, go with a neutral – khaki, brown, black, gray or navy blue. If you’ve got the cash, buy yours at Comptoir des Cotonniers for around 200 euro. If you’re on a budget, try any of the cookie cutter “Paris Chic” boutiques lining any side street in the city and style yourself for a much more affordable price of 20-30 euro. The middle of the roaders shop at Gap, Esprit, Promod or Zara. My own happens to be blue and gray plaid and was not quite as cheap as 20, but was well under 100 euro.

As predicted by Vogue back in December or January, the chic nail polish for spring is dark brown – just as chic as the Chanel Black Satin rage of the fall and winter, but a bit less harsh for spring. Buy it Chanel if you’re blessed with a disposable income, but the rest of us stock up at Sephora or Monoprix.

As the Laguna Beach style of beachwear for any occasion – cut-off denim miniskirts with or without leggings, flip flops and wife beater-style tank tops – has not, and probably will never catch on here, you’re a lot safer going with a knee-length cotton skirt or dress. Stock up at Zadig & Voltaire, H&M or Antik Batik and pair with tights, leather boots and cardigans for the spring and flat sandals or espadrilles in the summer and you’re sure to capture that easy breezy French girl chic. These pieces are particularly effective if shown off from the back of a moped driven by a frighteningly stylish French boy.

As for shirts, French fashion doesn’t seem to change tremendously. Tee shirts are cut low to show off a nice décolletage and skim the body. I think the idea is to never look like you’re working for your chicness – tight tee shirts or too-complicated tops just look like too much effort and destroy any idea of chic you might have had. Loose and light, but always sexy.

In a repeat of last summer, the cut-off trousers are back – or maybe they just never left. Worn either below the knee in madras style, or cut high like hot pants that you might happen to wear to work (with some thick opaque tights underneath and a seriously conservative shirt, of course!) Buy them anywhere that clothes are sold and wear them with the same attitude as the floaty skirts and dresses. The perfect carelessly chic French outfit? Short trousers, a horizontally striped cotton shirt (think John Paul Gaultier) and ballet flats or sandals.

There are two types of shoes preferred by French feet from March through August. The first being a pair of chic flat sandals. Styled in the exact same shape as the ballet flats that are still roaringly popular among the chic and skinny-panted young women of Paris, but cut as sandals (cut out toes, for example, or with thin ankle straps). Wear these with your skinny pants – it’s still just morphing from winter to spring after all, cropped trouser pants or floaty cotton skirts. As with every style, you can become an haute couture fashion victim just as easily as a boho budgeted one. Starting at 19 euro in the generic boutiques, going up to a thousand euro if that’s how much you’re willing to pay for your footwear.

Espadrilles are the other foot fashion must-have. From what I hear, they’re back every year as a summer sandal you buy once each spring and spend the summer wearing to the ground as you vacation in Italy or Provence. These you really can buy anywhere – for 100 euro in the boutiques on rue Saint Honoré (which may not sound like a lot until you consider what this shoe is – woven hay and a piece of canvas) or for 20 euro in the women’s clothing department of Monoprix. Go for crazy stripes, polka dots, whatever strikes your fancy at the moment, because you’ll just be stocking up again in Spring 2008.

The French are obsessed with Levi’s denim. There are Levi’s boutiques all over the city, where you can clad yourself in 90 euro pants that you might have paid $50 for at Sears in the U.S. (I should know, I spent a summer working there). Whoever you are, whatever your income, at least one pair of Levi’s is going to be a staple of your wardrobe. You either save up and guard them zealously as your special pair of jeans, or you wear them for day-to-day bumming around, paired with a simple button shirt from Prada. Sound ridiculous? Not for the moms who live in the 2ème arondissement.

Women carrying Longchamp purses should be featured on the postcards of Paris, alongside the beret-wearing, baguette holding men that so often grace the racks of souvenir stands. Though it doesn’t seem to have reached international fame, the brand is as much a staple of life in Paris as is owning a scarf for every day of the week. They make regular leather purses as well, but live here for a while and you’ll probably be more familiar with the brightly-colored canvas bags with leather handles. They come in all colors and sizes and if you are a female who lives in the city, no matter your age, you probably have one of these bags. If you’re a mom, you carry a smaller one as an everyday purse. If you’re a student you probably carry both a luggage-sized bag filled with books and graph paper and a smaller one over your shoulder with normal purse contents.

In Paris, there’s no such thing as putting away your scarves for the winter. Maybe the wool varieties are sealed and stored, but pashminas are as common as ever. More popular for warm weather are little wispy scarves, brightly colored and sometimes sparkly, tied in jaunty knots at the neck. Even though it’s a little sunny and bright to sport black and skulls, it seems like every young person in the city (male or female) has one of the sparkly skull scarves that have been popular since I arrived last August.

Really, the most important thing to remember is to stay chic. Take a leaf from Coco Chanel, and stop in front of the mirror on your way out the door each morning to remove one item from your outfit. Clutter isn’t chic, anymore than looking like you stepped out of a Hollister catalogue is – at least not here. Be chic, be effortlessly stylish, never look like you feel the heat, never ever put your scarves into summer hibernation – and please, please, don’t forget the deodorant. The metro is horrible enough when the weather gets warm without being pressed against other sweaty people of already questionable hygiene.

2007-03-21T02:48:00.000+01:00

I love coming home at night to the smell of burned out candles. It’s a smell I’ve always loved – it used to remind me of birthdays, but now it reminds me of my apartment in Paris. The candle smell comes from my neighbors on the first floor (reminder, in France, the first floor is the first floor above ground level) who are a male pair of interior decorators who do quite a bit of entertaining. Every time they have a dinner or party or festivity of any kind, we enter and exit the building by candlelight.

Tonight I got home after the candles had been blown out, and the only reminders of the evening were the still-smoking white candles lining the courtyard and first floor staircase. I was coming home from a movie, trying to make the most of the Printemps du Cinéma promotion that ended today. For whatever reason, the Fédération Nationale des Cinémas Français organizes this three-day period each spring (possibly beginning just last year), during which all movies at all theatres all over France cost only 3.50 per person. Determined to maximize my benefit, I saw a movie all three nights.

Tonight it was Les Témoins, a movie about a group of people in Paris in 1984 who are affected by the “new virus,” or AIDS. It’s been receiving great reviews in the French press, and it really was a good movie. Even better than the movie, was the fact that I realized that I really have no trouble understanding French. For whatever reason, comprehension has always come naturally to me – I’m nowhere near the same level with my writing and speaking, but I feel like I understand fluently. Sciences Po lectures are no problem, and I often find myself translating or repeating for other exchange students. Realizing that I was following the complicated story of how the disease was passed and dealt with by this group of people (not to mention, the complicated ways in which everybody was involved with one another) was just the confirmation I needed.

At one point the girl next to me leaned over to ask “Wait, what excited her?” And I found myself quickly explaining that these two people are married with a baby but maintain an open relationship, which until now, only the wife had taken advantage of. The scene dealt with the husband asking about her sex life and how she’d feel about hearing that he’d gotten some of his own. Turns out, it excited her. The response of my neighbor? “Wow, I did not get that at all.”

Even when I was here on a month-long exchange in high school, I was always introduced by my host family as “Our little American – who will understand everything you say.” It’s frustrating though, being able to understand everything that’s going on around me and feel so limited in expressing myself. I get along fine in day-to-day life, but put me in a discussion about politics and I can nod along without ever being able to express my views as eloquently as I’d like to be able to. I constantly feel like I have to justify myself when speaking to French students – I’m smarter in English, I swear.

In a way, it’s fitting that I am a nanny to an almost three-year old boy learning two languages. I feel like we’re in the same boat, trying to figure out how to express ourselves in the right way that we’ll be understood. We both confuse French and English words sometimes, and both get frustrated when we can’t get our points across. Though Georges tends to start laughing when I say “What? What? I have no idea what you are saying to me Georges,” while I get more flustered and less able to communicate clearly.

Other times though, I communicate too well in French. Today leaving a brutal breakdancing class, I was walking out with another girl, both of us complaining in French about how sore we’d be tomorrow. (If you want an idea of just how sore my wrists and shoulders are going to be tomorrow, check out the following video – we were working on air flares).

After a full hour of supporting our full body weights on our hands, we were walking to the metro together moaning things like, Alors, mes poignets! and Je ne pourrai pas lever les bras demain! (Ah, my wrists! And, I won’t be able to lift my arms tomorrow!) when she apparently caught a glimpse of the label on my REI rain coat and switched to English – “Oh, you’re from America?” I confirmed, and we laughed at ourselves for a minute before continuing to bemoan our worn out bodies. Just before parting ways at the metro, I asked what part of the U.S. she comes from.

As happens in strange countries a good deal more than you’d expect it to, the answer was “Oh, Seattle.” It turns out she’s actually from Vashon Island, a ten-minute ferry ride from my hometown of Tacoma and is in Paris working on her Master (more like general grad school in France). How funny is the world that a Tacoma girl can go to a hip-hop class in the 12ème arrondissement of Paris and learn after three sessions of toprock and six-steps that she’s practicing her freezes next to girl from Vashon? This is why I love this city.

2007-03-14T20:43:00.000+01:00

Usually I spend my days collecting stories and ideas to write about as I walk, run and metro through the city. These are a few little life in Paris anecdotes that I couldn’t quite stretch into full stories on their own.

Autobus, ligne 39
Last Monday, Ella and I had been waiting at the Richelieu-Quatre Septembre bus stop for about 20 minutes before we saw the notice taped to the glass wall of the stop. Thanks to yet another protest, the bus line we take to the Académie for her dance class each Monday would once again be interrupted. From 18h to 20h that evening, there would be no busses running between Richelieu and Gare du Nord.

As it was only 17h20, we were a little confused about why there was no bus. After mulling it over for a few minutes, we decided our best bet was to hike down the few blocks to Palais Royal, where we could catch the bus at an uninterrupted stop, just in case the line had already been disrupted.

After about a block and a half, I looked back to see none other than autobus 39 heading down the street behind us. We stopped and stared – the driver stared back at us for a moment, and then we broke into a run, sprinting toward Palais Royal as fast as we could run with school and dance bags bouncing at our sides. Thanks to the narrow trafficky streets of the Paris centre and an aptly-timed red light, we made it to the bus stop sweaty and panting, but with a few moments to spare.

When the bus pulled up, the driver – young, male, and oh-so-cute – could barely sit up straight he was laughing so hard. Embarrassed, we boarded the bus and I gave him a sheepish and wheezy grin. “Eh,” he said, “ça va?” (Hey, are you okay?). I nodded, and started to follow Ella toward the back of the bus. “J’aurais vous attendu,” (I would have waited for you) he called after me, and when I looked back, he winked.

I think I have a crush. Is it horribly girly and teenyboppy that I hoped we’d have the same driver today? Sadly, “I would have waited” was nowhere to be seen, but I have five more months of rides on autobus 39 before I head home to Washington.

Greasy picnics in the park
When the sun comes out in Paris, so does the smog, the tourists and the picnickers. As there is a severely limited amount of grass that you’re actually allowed to set foot on in this city, there are a few locations that become nearly impassable on nice days like today. One of these is Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge connecting the cour carré of the Louvre to the rive gauche, and a favorite wine and cheese picnic spot in any weather. When it’s really sunny, it’s best to go here with a picnic in mind or not at all, as picking your way around lunchers, musicians and amateur artists is definitely not the most efficient way to cross the river.

Another popular picnic spot is a little patch of courtyard smack between the jardin des Tuileries and the courtyard of the Louvre. Since this is technically not a part of Tuileries, its grass is fair game, and the two medium-sized squares of it fill up early on nice days, with dogs and their owners, sunbathers and picnickers. It’s quite a nice lunching option if you’d like to park yourself on a rare bit of grass and don’t mind the bold peddlers of sunglasses, hats and knock-off Dolce & Gabbana belts.

Being next to the musée du Louvre and a block from the tourism office of Paris, this is one of those weird parts of the city that is frequented by tourists and natives alike. Usually the city is quite segregated, and while tourists might spend a great deal of energy searching for “real Parisians,” real Parisians spend even more energy avoiding them. To pick out the tourists from the authentic Frenchies, you have to know where you are and what you’re looking for.

If you hit up this particular spot during lunch, look for groups of people sitting on the grass with wine, cheese and baguettes – these are 100 percent tourists. The “real Parisians” are the ones crowded around overstuffed greasy bags of MacDonalds takeaway. It’s disturbing, but true. Sure Parisians eat baguette sandwiches and paninis too, but not here. Americans and the like think they’re being chic and French by eating French bread near the Louvre, but what they don’t realize is that the McDo on rue de Rivoli has designated their picnic spot as the unofficial outdoor dining area for the McDonalds that is so beloved to seemingly everyone in France.

Counterfeit euros
Last night after nannying, I made a quick stop at Monoprix for a few groceries. All I needed was milk and olive oil, but as I was shopping before dinner, I also ended up with several varieties of cookies and some disgustingly delicious Chokella cereal.

Monoprix is always filled with people around 21h because it’s the only grocery store around that is open until 22h on weeknights. Waiting in a line that wound through the store, I felt awkward enough with my basket of unhealthiness. The cashier rang up my groceries and as I bagged them I handed her a 50-euro bill (rather than pay with a credit card) to speed up the process so I could get out of the store and home to eat dinner.

The woman manning the register took my bill and started hmmm-ing and muttering to herself. She held it up to the light to inspect the watermarks, and scratched at the center of it with a fingernail. “C’est bizarre, ça,” (that’s weird) she kept saying, and eventually passed it to another checker, who gave it to a manager to inspect in a special machine. Meanwhile, I was standing at the end of the register with my bags of groceries and line that just kept growing behind me, while everyone in the store was craning their necks to see the criminal who was trying to pay with counterfeit money.

All I could think was, how the heck was I going to get my 50 euro back? It’s not my fault if I got fake money out of the ATM! Could I find my receipt and go back to Crédit Lyonnais and complain? Would they believe me? I spent about 10 minutes like this, while everybody waiting in line, glad to have a distraction from boredom, focused their attention on me.

Eventually somebody pronounced my money legitimate, and as the checker handed me my change she grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes – “You understand that we weren’t accusing you – it could happen to anyone,” she assured me in French. I thanked her, grabbed my cookies and ran before they could change their minds.

And lastly...
Did I ever mention that I finally got my carte de séjour?

2007-03-12T20:45:00.000+01:00

It’s been so sunny in Paris lately that I’ve been waking up early. When I got up this morning, a perceptible haze had set in. The sky was bright and there wasn’t a cloud in sight, but to the North and East, the sky was thick and brown.

It’s actually been remarkably warm here the past few weeks – I’d been warned all autumn what a terrible time February would be in the city, but the month passed in blue skies and sunny days. Today it was so warm that I didn’t need a jacket walking to class – a tee shirt and thin cotton cardigan were more than sufficient.

With beautiful days that stretch longer and longer by the week, comes the annual revelation that yes, Paris is a beautiful, but dirty and polluted city. Indeed, the view from the top of the basilisque de Sacre Coeur is a breathtaking panorama of the city, but more often than not shows a rather hazy view, with the outer arondissements fading into nothing.

This is about as good as it gets:

The most polluted street in the city is rue des Saints-Pères – an address for one of the buildings of Sciences Po that I spend a good deal of time in. It’s something actually scientific to do with the height of the buildings and narrowness of the street, the amount of traffic each day and the wind direction, but I can’t imagine that there’s any section of this crowded city that is significantly better or worse in terms of air quality than any other.

According to my French politics teacher, there was an informal study done one summer by a journalist or professor or something, where the man spent an entire day breathing through a snow white handkerchief. He didn’t do anything special, just went through his daily activities – metro, work, lunch, grocery shopping, etc – all with this handkerchief clasped to his face. By the end of the day, the handkerchief was black.

This was a disturbing bit of information, but not at all surprising. My asthma has been worse here than ever before, and where I only ever used to need an inhaler for working out, I’ve taken to carrying mine everywhere.

Maybe I’m just spoiled by the clean air and mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest, but I find myself walking around thinking, “I’ll be okay, I’m only here for a year. How much damage can just one year of secondhand smoke, smog and uncooked meats really do to my health?” Then I pause and think about the fact that there are people who live their whole lives in this city and don’t seem to be worse off for it. The French are generally a pretty healthy people – at least diet-wise. As of yet, there haven’t been any proven health benefits of the country’s love affair with cigarettes.

All health concerns aside, this city just gets gross when it’s hot. The air is humid and oppressive and you end every day sticky with dirt and sweat. The metros are the worst, but even on foot there’s no way to avoid the feeling that your body is somehow covered with little particles of dirt and carbon.

This perception is not contradicted by the fact that there’s garbage everywhere – even floating in the Seine along with the swans and fish that have gone belly-up. I’m not even going to go into the fact that there’s dog poop everywhere – in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the metro, on your shoes…the fact of the matter is that this city is dirty, and the only way to not let it bother you is look up, which isn’t hard to do. I don’t think anybody would prefer looking down at the ripped papers in the gutters to looking up at the beautiful buildings, pilfered Egyptian art, ridiculously spiky churches or the pretty pretty bridges crossing the polluted river.

Pretty as Paris is in the bright beautiful sun, the fact that it’s been so warm already is slightly concerning. If spring arrives midway through February, when and how intensely is summer going to come? If the smoggy warm afternoon of March 12th had me longing for the start of Paris Plage, I have a feeling I’m going to be longing for Antarctica in a few months.

I once saw a list, "You know you're Parisian if..." The first point was "You love Paris," the second, "You hate Paris." I think that's me. You can't possibly live in this city for any significant period of time without simultaneously adoring and despising it. It's dirty, yes. It's polluted, yes. But it's oh-so-pretty.

* France follows the same general daylight savings patterns as the U.S. – “Fall back, Spring forward,” just on a slightly different calendar. While Americans set their clocks ahead last Sunday, we did nothing. In France, we don’t lose our hour until the last Sunday of March, so for two weeks, I’m only 8 hours ahead of Tacoma (instead of the usual 9).

** The highlight of my February was getting to watch the Nina Ricci show through the back opening of the tent in the jardin des Tuileries. Ohhh the magic of fashion week!

2007-03-02T15:13:00.000+01:00

Oh how I love fashion week in Paris. Sunday kicked off the week of prêt-à-porter shows, and as usual, the city has gone even a little nuttier than usual. From the long white tents set up in the jardin des Tuileries, to tourists visiting the Louvre catching an eyeful as the Valentino and Vivianne Westwood shows empty out, to portions of the Centre Pompidou being completely shut down to set up runways for YSL, to celebrity-sightings all over the city.

Today, after dragging myself out of bed for an 8 a.m. class, I arrived at Sciences Po to discover (with the rest of the class) that our professor had cancelled it for the day. At first I was quite bitter about all the sleep I'd needlessly missed, but then I realized that I could now go watch the arrivals at the Chanel show at Grand Palais.

I arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and stationed myself directly across the street from the entrance, to watch international fashionistas flash their coveted black and white passes at the bouncers and slip inside the massive doors of the Palais. As I stood there, chatting with the driver of a fashion journalist with the fortune to have her own pass, and just observing the flow of people, I began to realize that I am definitely not the only chronic stalker of fashion shows.

There are apparently quite a few of us with this habit – we're all in our early twenties, have the show schedules memorized, and spend our free hours during fashion week lurking outside, trying to catch glimpses of models and designers. While happily watching the arrivals, I swapped stories with a girl from Mexico – she'd been around at the backstage entrance and had seen Karl Lagerfield, while I'd seen Anna Wintour arrive.

Yes, probably the highlight of my as yet brief career in fashion week stalking was the moment this morning when I watched the current editor-in-chief of Vogue step out of her hired car, pose for the photographers and strut past the guards. Unfortunately, I seem to have the slowest camera reflexes of all time, and although she was about five feet away from me (facing me, and the photographers) for quite a long moment, I didn't manage to get my camera out of my pocket and turned on until she was a little bobbed blur in the distance. Still though, I saw Anna Wintour!

Here's a much better picture of her from Saturday's Hermès show at Théatre du Chatêlet:

Though Anna Wintour was definitely my biggest thrill, there were a number of other celebrities lurking about. Also on my sighting list were, Lou Doillon, French actress and daughter of Jane Birkin (inspiration for the Hermès Birkin bag), Cécile Cassel, an 18-year old French comedienne, Clemence Poesy, another French actress and Virginie Ledoyen. At the Valentino show on Wednesday in the Carrousel du Louvre I saw Molly Sims.

Molly Sims posing with some thrilled adolescent boys:

Ohhhh I love fashion week in Paris.

2007-03-01T19:19:00.000+01:00

How to spot tourists in Paris (a few simple tips and guidelines):

10) Look for couples – it is my estimation (and I have absolutely no evidence or any way to back this up) that 60-70 percent of the lovey-dovey couples wandering through this city are from out of town. Paris is pretty high on the list of romantic vacation spots for couples and frankly, most Parisians are just too cranky to be seen showing any sort of public affection. If 60 percent of the couples in Paris are not from Paris, 90 percent of the couples kissing on, walking hand-in-hand over or gazing over the railing of a bridge are foreigners too.

These people, for example – there is no chance that they are natives:

9) Look for anyone carrying a Starbucks cup (or any sort of food for that matter) – this is not a country where people eat on the go. In fact, even going into a Starbucks you’re likely to be pegged as a tourist – the one time I bought coffee at the avenue de l’Opéra Starbucks, the barista started speaking English to me before I’d even opened my mouth.

8) While quite a number of authentic French people frequent the Louvre, from families to art students to groups of école maternelle children on field trips, there is a certain route through the museum that anyone who actually lives in this city is going to avoid like the plague. You may know it as the “Louvre lite,” the quick stroll-through that steers the museum-goer around to view certain famous works of art. If you can make it through the onslaught of camera flashes and awkwardly posed photo ops, you’ll be able to tell everyone back at home that you saw not only the Winged Victory, but the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.

7) Keep an eye out for anyone snapping pictures of the inverted pyramide at the Louvre or Saint Sulpice cathedral – these folks are in the city of light to follow in the footsteps of Robert Langdon, and if you’re lucky you may hear them muttering “the priory…Jacques Saunière…Silas…the rose line…” to themselves as they crawl around in the corner of the church or pose cheesily with the pyramide. These are also the few who are willing to pay the 5 euro to take the Da Vinci Code audio tour of the Louvre.

Girls gearing up for the Davinci Code tour:

Tourist posing at Saint Sulpice cathedral, in front of the "Rose Line"

6) Parisians don’t wear backpacks, so this is a dead giveaway. For school, a chic leather or darkly colored canvas bag is the usual choice. French people also don’t wear anything North Face. Columbia sportswear is imported here (I was pretty surprised the first time I spotted it in Go! Sport), but I’ve never encountered an article of North Face anything for sale in Paris. It does seem to be quite a coup though, to come back from a study abroad with a North Face backpack, so it’s easy to be fooled if all you have to base your assumptions on is a bag.

5) Anyone on the Champs Elysées, be it in a restaurant, a shop or walking down the street, is most likely not from around here. It’s a different story at night, when Frenchies and tourists alike don their swankest outfits and line up to try and get past the bouncers at Le Queen or VIP Room, but for the most part, Parisians avoid the hordes of foreigners strolling between place de la Concorde and l’Arc de Triomphe like their lives depend on it.

4.5) Also, of course, anyone participating in a Segway Scooter tour of the city:

4) True Parisians have the metro system down pat – they store their Navigo passes in outside pockets of their purses or jackets and swipe themselves briskly through the metro turnstiles without ever actually pulling out the card. Some who take the metro less often use individual tickets instead of the rechargeable passes or cartes oranges, monthly passes formatted as reusable paper tickets, but even these publicly transported persons are nothing but business as they breeze through the gates with no hesitation. Those too cheap or lazy to buy passes or tickets simply hop the turnstiles. Usually adolescent guys, these freeloaders saunter up to the barriers and, without batting an eye, hoist themselves up and over the structure with nothing but their arms. Any one of these types is probably French, or has at least lived in Paris for a while. Any one else, though – the families nervously studying the giant maps on the walls, people nervously poking their tickets through the machines and stumbling uncertainly through the gates, or the few who are too befuddled by the weight-sensing mats to figure out how to trigger the doors to open and allow them out of the stations – anyone holding up the metro commute for any amount of time is probably an out-of-towner.

3) Although there is a growing number of runners who frequent the quais de Seine and the few large jardins scattered throughout Paris, most of the people seen exercising in the city are either just visiting or are foreign imports. There are gyms and there are those who try to keep in shape, but in the words of a French friend, “the French hate exercise.” Any kind of exercise (except for rollerblading, oddly enough) is pretty detested, but none more than the street run. I never receive stranger looks than when I’m out for a jog. Usually I’m someone who gets stopped a lot to ask for directions by Frenchies and foreigners alike (something I’m perhaps a little too tickled by), I guess a combination of the fact that I don’t look stereotypically American, and that I don’t walk around with a scowl on my face. When I’m running though, I either get “hey sexy” in English, or “Arrrriba!” A jog through the city in stretchy yoga pants and a hooded sweatshirt practically screams “America!”

2) Anybody spotted actually giving money to the hundreds of beggars slumped around the city, on corners, in metro stops or in parks is probably not Parisian. After living here a while, you become so jaded at the number of homeless in the city that the easiest thing to do is ignore the cups they shake at you. It’s so hard to tell who is really in need and what they’re actually going to use the money for – and there are so many of them, that ignorance is the typical choice. After a while you begin to recognize the regulars – the man who kneels on a pillow on St-Germain with a dirty sign that reads “j’ai faim” (I’m hungry), or the woman with the deformed foot who sets up shop underground in the Châtelet metro stop every day. Even glancing at one of these people will set you apart from the hordes of city-dwellers, much less giving one of them a few coins.

How many tourists can you spot in this picture? My guess is that everyone in the street is from somewhere outside of Paris, and most likely outside of France as well.

1) There’s a certain quality possessed by true Parisians, that outsiders, no matter how hard they try, can not emulate. Those endowed with the elusive je ne sais quoi, stand out in a city of camera-clutching tourists by this intangible but very noticeable carriage. You know someone is from the city if they can manage to lean casually against the door of the metro while it careens around corners, expressing only boredom through facial expression. An authentic Parisian strides from place to place “with a purpose,” with the goal to get from point A to point B without being distracted or side-tracked by any of the beautiful sights or interesting people that fill this city. It’s a quality near impossible to describe – hence it’s ambiguous name, the je ne sais quoi (I don’t know), but spend even a few days in this city and you’ll know without a doubt who belongs here and who is merely passing through.

2007-02-12T00:02:00.000+01:00

I remember the first time I saw the movie Amélie. It was New Year’s eve before any of us had our driver’s licenses, and my friend Rachel’s dad drove us to the Grand Cinema to see a movie.

I’m not sure why we picked Amélie, but aside from a few moments of discomfort – the kind that stems naturally from being 16 and hearing the word “orgasm” while sitting next to a friend’s father who also happens to be a pastor, we loved it.

I’m not sure I know anyone who has seen the movie and didn’t enjoy it, actually. We loved it because we were 15 and it painted such a magical picture of Paris. Freshman year living in the dorms at UW we had an “Amélie Night” in the third floor lounge to share the movie with those hapless Honors students who had somehow escaped falling in love with Amélie thus far.

It’ll always be one of my favorite movies, but these days the name Amélie Poulain carries a bit more weight for me. Tacomans and Seattlites watched it for Paris and its mystery and romanticism. Parisians watched it because it was their movie. Audrey Tatou is their sweetheart, and being set in the heart of Montmartre – filmed in cafés and markets that really exist, Amélie was born in the heart of Paris.

Café les deux moulins:

In the six years since the world became privy to the Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Audrey Tatou’s Amélie has become something of a Parisian symbol. C’est la Paris d’Amélie, it’s Amélie’s Paris, has become something of a catch phrase, inducted into life by students, professors, journalists and all other denizens of Paris. The funny thing about this categorization, is its connotation – which depends completely on the context and the person saying it.

Montmartre is rather idyllic:

If you hear someone refer to Amélie’s Paris, it’s just about as likely to be pejorative as it is affectionate. If you’ve seen the movie Amélie, it’s going to be easy to conjure up an imaginative mental picture of Paris – a bright and lively world, where the streets are clean, Parisians know the names of their grocers and waitresses. It's a place where you’re not going to catch a crippling disease sleeping in a metro station, where a goldfish “liberated” into a river is going to survive the pollutants for longer than a few days, where love is waiting to sweep you off on the back of his scooter.

Amélie's Paris:

It’s a nice place to imagine – it really is, and in some ways it does exist. In a way, Amélie’s Paris is the heart of this city – a chic, colorful, comfortable, fascinating, magical endroit. A place where there’s possibility in every day – and, as trite as this expression has become, you never know where the day will lead you. In that sense, the Paris of Amélie Poulain is quintessential Paris, a fabulous girl that holds a special place in the heart of the most cynical of Parisians.

What can’t be forgotten is that while Amélie’s Paris really is that endearing magical place for some people (i.e. bobo (yuppies who don't want to believe they are yuppies) to affluent exchange students here on a ticket from an elite institution of political science), it is the absolute contrary for so many who live here. An article we read about immigration and discrimination in France for one of my classes during the stage d’integration defined Amélie’s Paris as a Paris with ni noir, ni arabe (basically a white Paris without blacks and Arabs). The sole Arab in the film, Lucien is a handicapped employee of the grocer, played by a Moroccan beur actor (a beur is a second-generation North African – the term used to be derogatory, but it’s lost its original meaning in becoming part of mainstream speech) who was born in Paris.

Lucien was an intentional placement by the director as a symbol of the Arab in France, but his solitary presence still adds weight to the implications of Amélie’s Paris. For those who have a lesser affection for the Paris of Amélie Poulain, it is more a symbol of everything that is wrong with the country than everything that is essential to Paris.

Real Paris:

The film shows nothing of the banlieues, the tent cities that line the Canal Saint-Denis, the street protests and the problems facing the countries immigrants and minorities. There are many who feel that the country is run by a stuffy elite, all formed from the same mold who often fall into the trap of thinking that Paris is a true representation of France. There’s a pretty widespread sentiment that that very quintessential Paris inhabited by Amélie represents this stale situation and everything that desperately needs to be changed. To this end, to live in Amélie’s Paris is to be idealistic and naïve, to sweep the country’s problems under the rug – no matter how attractive and whimsical that rug may be.

For me, an outsider just listening and observing, I love living in the marvelous Paris of Amélie Poulain. I love walking through Montmartre in a skirt, buying baguettes at my local boulangerie, going to the open-air Saturday market, making eyes at cute boys on Vespas – all to the soundtrack of old-school Parisian street-corner accordian music that plays in my head.

This is fun and lovely while it lasts, this strolling and thinking how much I love living in this most magical of cities. But then I take a turn up Quai de Valmy, and spend 20 minutes walking by tent after tent after tarp after tent, spray-painted with messages like, Je vis sans toi (I live without any help from you) and a sloppily-scrawled survivant (survivor) across a small red tent close to collapsing under the wind. This is all it takes to jerk me back to that other Parisian reality – the one that exists in a combination of Amélie’s magic and all of the problems that are unceasingly present.

Real Paris:

2007-02-07T23:13:00.000+01:00

I’ve been terrified of my European Union final since the first lecture of the semester. After sitting through one Cours Magistral, I realized that it was completely pointless for me to be in the lecture – not only was the class held for two hours at 8 in the morning, I could not, for the life of me, understand the French of Professor DeWost. Going to my conférence only confirmed my assessment – none of the other international students got anything out of the lectures either. The man just mumbles, and there’s nothing to be done about it, aside from filling out less than favorable course evaluations.

Fortunately, the teacher of my conférence was very knowledgeable and a clear speaker, so I figured I’d get more out of paying good attention during her section classes on Monday afternoons. All was well until we found out that at Sciences Po, completely unlike the system at UW, you receive two separate grades for each course – one full, five-credit note for the conférence and one full, five-credit note for the lecture.

This is when I began to get even more apprehensive – I’d been going on the assumption that even if I blew the final, I’d have my exposés, débats, fiches and participation credits to balance out my lack of familiarity with the French system of oral examination. Apparently not. Instead, the final that I took for L’union européenne et droit communautaire would yield a full grade – and since that grade was based on a mere 20 minutes of assessment, I could very easily fail a five-credit course.

Fears grew even sharper among the international students when we learned the full format of the exam. Apparently we were each to receive an appointment time for an individual exam. Upon arriving at the site, we’d be called into a room to receive our topic and 20 minutes of tense preparation. After that, we’d go into another room to present a 10 minute exposé – yes those oral presentations that I’ve been preparing and giving all semester (but with days and days of prep time).

Everyone in my conférence emailed each other their notes for the entire semester, but still I had no idea what to study. The only advice I’d received was the not very reassuring (and kind of insulting), “Make sure to tell them your American (or from the programme international) so they know to expect less from you.” I read through the European Union’s website to remind myself of the functioning of the Parliament, the Council and the Commission; the ratification dates and objectives of each treaty and the demographics of the EU. I read the BBC’s European news coverage from the past week, but other than that, I didn’t know what to do. So instead of studying efficiently, I sat around and worked on giving myself a hernia.

To add to everyone’s stress about this test, the fact that individual exams had to be scheduled for each of the 300-some students in the lecture meant that for weeks after Sciences Po had posted the final exam schedule online, we were still waiting to find out when our appointments would be. We finally received an email from the sécretariat, with an attachment that would supposedly give us our assigned times. Instead it was an Excel chart with the names and email addresses of all the international students in the course. After many frantic mass emails were sent out, someone from the class finally emailed the sécretariat back, and on Monday we finally received our appointments. Mine was today, February 7th at 14h40.
When I arrived at the ENA building, I found out from the line of classmates waiting in chairs outside of the preparation room that exams were running late. Like everyone else, I pulled out my class notes, but instead of reading them I stared blankly at the opposite wall, feeling my legs and hands twitch rhythmically.

I was finally called into the salle de préparation at about 15h10. I presented my student card to the woman overseeing the preparation time, signed my name on a contract stating that it was really me taking my exam, and she offered me two manila envelopes. From each envelope I was to select a strip of paper with an exposé topic on it, choose the one that interested me and return the other. My two options were l’élargissement et approfondissement de l’union européenne (the enlargement and deepening of the European Union) and le processus juridique entre l’union européenne et les états-membres (the legal processes between the European Union and its members).

I grabbed the slip about l’élargissement and ran to a desk as I was already down three minutes of prep time. Since this was supposed to be a formal presentation, not an interactive examination, I needed some kind of coherent structure, not to mention a problématique and a thesis, so I sketched out a sloppy outline and begin writing down everything I could remember from the week we’d discussed the EU’s enlargement and any other useful information I could come up with.

After twenty minutes of frantic scribbling, I was escorted into the actual examination chamber. I shook hands with the examiner, signed another contract and began to argue my thesis, that enlargement, rather than being a detriment and complication to the EU was a necessary project to not only unify Europe, but inspire a greater confidence in the power of the EU by not only its citizens, but outside countries as well.

While I’m not sure my actual presentation made any sort of sense organizationally, I had a thesis that, if not always being completely logically supported, was strong and I finished with a solid conclusion. I also pulled out some of my old International Studies written exam techniques and threw as many hard facts into the presentation as I possibly could – so that even if my on-the-spot French and exposé were at times shaky, the examiner would at least know that I’d attended class and knew what I was talking about. I hit a rough spot when I stumbled before remembering that the newest additions were Romania and Bulgaria, but hopefully made up for it by discussing the Bolkestein Directive and quoting Jacques Delors and Winston Churchill (when he called for a “United States of Europe”). I even found a way to work in the article I’d read just before my final, about the busting of a child pornography ring in Austria.

My examiner followed up with a few questions about the relationships between the Commission, Council and Parliament, and whether the judicial system of the EU could be compared to that of the U.S., which I answered adequately, if not brilliantly. My final question was something along the lines of “what do I want to be when I grow up,” so we spoke for a few minutes about journalism and whether or not there would be any demand for an American foreign correspondent whose specialty was French politics. We came to the conclusion that, as horrid and convoluted as it is for us non-Europeans to learn, my best bet is to stick with my studies of the European Union.

As I left the exam, my legs were shaking so badly I could barely walk up the stairs, but I managed to tell a German friend from my class that he’d be fine. When my muscles finally began to relax, I treated myself to a pastry from my boulangerie (whichever neighborhood boulangerie you shop at the most automatically becomes “yours” when you’re describing it to anyone else) and couldn’t think anything but “I survived!” Now all I have to do is make it through one more marathon night of studying for my three-hour essay test on contemporary French politics tomorrow morning.

2007-02-04T14:42:00.000+01:00

Something I’ve noticed a lot, living in Europe, is the fact that as a people, we Americans are really quite conservative. After five months in France, I’d like to think that I’m mostly used to the freedom of sexual expression that is so different from the taboos and behavioral expectations back in the United States – but every once in a while I’m still caught off guard.

The first thing you notice in France is the pub, or advertising that is often blatantly sexual and is pretty much everywhere. From naked women on billboards, to a TV spot for instant coffee that borders on soft core pornography to the infamous egg billboard, sex is everywhere you look, with a hand in nearly everything you buy. You can turn on the TV at 16h and see naked people (which you definitely can not in the U.S.), sex in movies is more frequent and less of a deal, and posters advertising porn websites or hotlines fill the windows of most tabacs and presses.

Sex in France isn’t limited to the media – stroll across any bridge crossing the Seine, or wander through any park in the city and you’ll probably see enough action that you can save your money on those adult websites. It isn’t uncommon to see a couple making out horizontally in the grass, or feeling each other up as they lean against the wall of the Pont Neuf or Pont des Arts.

(Like this couple, who seemed close to undressing each other, surrounded by families having picnics in the Champs de mars below the Eiffel Tower).

It’s surprising for me, a girl from a pretty liberal area of the United States, to witness all these public displays of affection, sexy billboards and intense TV ads, but for the French who see them day in and day out, the presence of sex in mainstream society is old hat. Sexuality is so integrated into everyday life here that Printemps, a major department store like Galaries Lafayette, Nordstrom, Sak’s or Macy’s features a plaisir section.

Even for someone who may not be versed in the French vocabulary for lovemaking, plaisir is pretty easy to figure out. Last Wednesday I was wandering through the sous-sol (basement) level of Printemps, checking out the soldes, when my attention was caught by a long counter with a sign reading simply Plaisir. I couldn’t see any of the items on the counter, as it was surrounded by a low wall to keep anything from falling off, so I walked over to check it out.

Apparently, the pleasure section is exactly what you’d imagine. There, sandwiched between the Christian Dior and Christian Lacroix lingerie departments was the sex toy section of Printemps. In addition to dildos, lubes, vibrators and furry handcuffs, the display also contained a book section. The Kama Sutra (in French) a “position playbook” (in English) and a French book about achieving female orgasms were among those featured.

Being an American and completely surprised to find such a section in the middle of a department store in the 9ème arondissement of Paris, my cheeks were burning as I examined the contents of the table. The French women hitting the sales however, were completely unsurprised, and either walked by without a second look, or walked over to the table to unashamedly handle the toys. While I feel like I’ve gotten quite used to the sexed-up culture over here, I was really not expecting to find plaisir during my casual browsing, and couldn’t help but imagine the reaction if Macy’s or JC Penney’s was ever to begin stocking vibrators alongside their make-up, shoes and towels.

The progressive attitude here isn’t limited to the explicitly sexual. For every erotic TV ad, there’ll be another billboard that features nude people but is completely un-erotic. For the French, it’s okay to be a sexual person – but it’s also okay to appreciate the human body for what it is, without a display of nudity having to be overtly sexual. Kids learn about their bodies at an early age, and there is no shame associated with nudity or sexuality – which seems to be the complete opposite of trends in the United States.

Check out this book on the human body for young children, for example. The nanny family owns two copies, one in French and one in English (so the kids learn the appropriate vocabulary in both languages). Notice anything bizarre? In the French version, you actually see the entire body, and learn the real word for each body part – including la sexe. In the version published for U.S. consumers, however, every single child wears a pair of white underpants – even the babies are covered up, and while there are arrows pointing to the stomach, the belly button, and the waist, there’s a big gap in the middle of the body before jumping down to the legs and the knees. Disturbing the difference, isn’t it?

The result of the openness here is that everybody is incredibly comfortable with themselves and sex in general. While everybody may have an inkling about Jacques Chirac’s sexual indiscretions, nobody cares – it’s his decision and his business and his sexuality has nothing to do with his ability (or perhaps lack thereof, based on more recent public opinion) to govern the country. If the U.S. adopted an attitude that was anything similar to that of France, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky would have been the last thing on anyone’s mind – and nobody would even know who Kenneth Starr was. The infamous Janet Jackson boob slip at the Superbowl would have been so insignificant that it would have been forgotten the next day. Looking back at the States with my new French goggles, we seem pretty ridiculous. Who protests a breast? It seems like a joke, but I guess we are the joke.

It’s rather invigorating to be living in a country that is so open about its sexuality. The whole atmosphere just seems so healthy – nobody’s growing up with shame or confusion about their bodies or feelings. It’s so much easier for people (particularly teenagers) to make decisions about their bodies and their sexuality when they have a plethora of information that nobody’s trying to stifle. Twenty years of growing up in a country with institutions like the FCC has apparently rendered me a bit more conservative than I’d like to admit. While I really admire the freedom of sexuality here, I still tend to blush when I find things that surprise me, which embarrasses me to no end. I don’t want to be the American who blushes at sexy commercials! Maybe after a full year of expatriotism, I’ll have trained a slightly cooler response – or at least have figured out how to keep the blushing to a minimum.

•••• This has nothing to do with sex, sexuality, nudity or conservatism, but the idea of a Che Guevara bellybutton ring really cracked me up. What better way to honor a symbol of revolution than to put him on a charm and stick him through your bellybutton?

2007-01-29T15:35:00.000+01:00

As I often lament, for all my obsessive printing out of entire fashion week schedules, “casual” walk-bys of the Ritz, the Georges V hotel, and strolls up and down the rue Saint Honoré (a celebrity-sighting hotspot for all the high-end shopping), I am really not very good at celebrity stalking.

Every fashion week, I study and print out the fashion week schedules, and wander around the outside of the École des beaux arts near Sciences Po or the Grand Hôtel near place de la Madeleine, hoping to spot, if not celebrities, than some really tall chic models. R and I compulsively check Pink is the New Blog to find out which celebrities might currently be wandering around Paris, and lurk around the nicest hotels and most expensive designer boutiques.

Last weekend it was Beyoncé, Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy, here for the French premiere of the movie Dreamgirls. Last week it was Victoria Beckham, Katie Holmes and Anna Wintour, here for the haute couture shows.

For an International Studies major and admitted nerd, I am hyper-aware of Fashion Week. Errr, make that fashion. I refuse to buy Diet Coke in Paris because it’s too expensive (1 euro 30 for a bottle!), but I’ll gladly shell out eight euro for an imported last month’s American Vogue – and then buy the British and French issues as well.

My favorite thing to do on a Sunday evening is walk along the rue Saint Honoré, from the avenue de l’Opéra to the beginning of the embassies, not exactly window shopping (when am I ever going to be able to afford a John Galliano slip dress?), but window gazing. I hit up Chanel, Miu Miu, John Galliano, Dior and everything in between to soak up the window displays. During Fashion Week, I make the same rounds, but instead of checking out the mannequins, I’m peering beyond them to see if there’s anyone famous in the store.

During Fashion Week, instead of walking straight down avenue de l’Opéra and through the courtyard of the Louvre, I walk down rue de la Paix and through place Vendôme, home of the Ritz hotel – to absolutely fruitless results. So far, my celebrity log includes one moderately well-known French tv actress I’d never heard of, a random footballer from FC Barcelona, who I’d never heard of, and a mad paparazzi rush to stalk some American actress (I couldn’t see who) in Le Voltaire, a restaurant across the Seine from the Louvre.

Yesterday I finally began to understand where I was going wrong. Apparently my stalking efforts were entirely misplaced, because the first thing Zoé said when she got home last night was “I saw that guy with the big nose again.”

I was doing the kids’ dinner dishes and kind of laughed and asked what she was talking about, thinking something along the lines of “Haha, 12-year olds…”

“You know, that actor with the big nose – he’s French, he’s in a lot of movies?” This is where I finally paused in my dishes to look at her. “You mean Gérard Depardieu?”

Yes, she meant Gérard Depardieu – one of the few French actors who has mostly made the crossover to mainstream American pop culture. His one disadvantage is not being a gorgeous woman – if he happened to resemble Audrey Tatou or Juliette Binoche, he might be even more familiar.

Apparently, Gérard owns the restaurant right around the corner from my building, Le Petit Gaillon. Apparently he’s always wandering around right in my neighborhood, checking on his restaurant – the restaurant that is directly across from the boulangerie where I buy my bread every few days. Apparently, I am a terribly inobservant person. How many times might I have passed by him already, too focused on the taste of my still-warm baguette to look around me?

This is kind of ridiculously embarrassing. I really am the world’s most inefficient stalker, wasting my time patrolling rue Saint Honoré, place Vendôme and rue Georges V. Not to mention the fact that a Gérard Depardieu sighting would be a much grander coup than a sighting of Posh Spice or the like.

••• Pictures of Le Petit Gaillon to come, check back!

2007-01-27T16:46:00.000+01:00

Getting dressed this morning, I chose my outfit carefully. I don’t have huge plans for the day – just babysitting, doing a little apartment cleaning and then meeting some people at a bar in the 11ème for drinks and couscous. While the bar is chill and nobody really dresses up to go there (well any more than French people usually dress up just to live their lives), it is still a Parisian bar – which means you’re likely to be sitting in a cloud of stale smoke for upwards of an hour or two, which in turn means choosing your clothing wisely.

Even when the temperatures are measuring below freezing, I won’t put on a sweater – sweaters are a pain to wash and the wool sucks up the smoke like a vacuum. Some places aren’t so bad – clubs, for example, are still smoky but most have fairly high ceilings so it’s not a big problem. Chez Georges is one of the worst places for smoke – you won’t stop reeking until you’ve showered at least twice and you probably won’t stop coughing for at least 24 hours. It’s also one of the most happening bars for students, so sometimes you just have to suck it up, make sure your inhaler’s in your purse and be prepared to wash all your clothing the next day.

Tonight though, we’re going to Tais. Tais isn’t so bad – I’ll need to hang up everything I’m wearing and let it air out for about a day, but it’s pretty inoffensive as far as smoky bars go.

That’s just Paris though. Everywhere you go you expect to be surrounded in a cloud of smoke – or at least you did five years ago. As difficult as it is for a girl from the clean air of Seattle and its notorious but appreciated smoking ban, even I have to admit that the second-hand smoke problem is far better than it was either of the two previous times I’d been to France.

Smoking kills. Also a common warning label is the Smokers die prematurely.

Just in the past few years a small number of non-smoking restaurants have begun to crop up around the city – this is a huge deal for Paris. Some restaurants have been offering non-smoking sections for longer, but a French non-smoking section is usually just a few tables without ashtrays.

I still inhale quite a number of exhaled carcinogens, but the Paris of today is a far cry from the old thought that “all French people smoke.” When I was staying near Bordeaux in 2002, 16-year old friends of my host sister would stroll into Isabelle’s house, roll up a quick cigarette from their bags of tobacco, grab one of the parents’ ashtrays and start puffing away.

A few weeks ago though, I went out with a boy to celebrate the fact that after being a smoker since he was 16 (he’s 20), he hadn’t had a cigarette in a month, and was really excited about quitting.

Some of the other tenants in my building are pretty obnoxious smokers – sitting on the steps in the courtyard so everyone else is forced to walk through their clouds of smoke to get in and out of the building, or even smoking in the elevator. Given the size of the average elevator in Paris, this is just disgusting, but it’s a long ways from walking down the street and feeling like I need to keep my inhaler out and at the ready.

One particularly interesting development in the smoking culture of the French came in the form of a weekly Sciences Po e-newsletter. Beginning February 1st, all buildings and courtyards of the campus will become completely smoke-free. This is kind of a huge deal – most of the lycées (high schools) have student smoking areas, and of Sciences Po’s two cafeterias on the main campus, one is the “smoking cafeteria.” On any given day, even the sub-zero temperature ones the courtyard between the two main buildings is filled with students grabbing a smoke.

At the beginning of the year, there were actually a few times I thought it might be easier to meet people if I started smoking – it’s very social at Sciences Po. The thoughts only lasted for a few moments – then my asthma brought me back to reality.

I feel like the climate of France is in the process of changing – one of the oldest and truest stereotypes about the French is that “everybody smokes.” But not for long – the times are changing. Maybe in a few years I could even wear a sweater to go out for drinks…errrr, or a few years after that.

2007-01-20T01:50:00.000+01:00

Today I watched a girl climb out of the metro at Étienne Marcel to the soundtrack of the Clash (album: London Calling). She was in my subway car, and I noticed her first for her extremely chic and Parisian coat before I ended up following her out through the turnstile and out of the station.

I was listening to music on my headphones, and thinking only of what I’d make for dinner later as I exited the metro, not paying a great deal of attention to my surroundings. But as this girl reached the top of the staircase, she broke into a huge grin as she spied what she’d been looking for and flew into the arms of her waiting boyfriend.

Surprisingly (to me, anyway), their reunion did not erupt into that infamous spontaneous Parisian make-out session. Instead my girl from the metro recieved an enormous hug that engulfed her, lifted her chic French feet right off the ground and said “I am so glad to see you. The sweetness of the scene put me into quite a good mood. It was kind of like the beginning of the movie Love Actually, with the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport – though this analogy apparently makes me Hugh Grant, which I’m not completely sure I’m comfortable with.

In the city of love and the extreme public display of affection I find it rather funny that instead of the joyful embrace on rue de Turbigo near les Halles, I get the awkward encounters with the boys I really don’t want to be encountering as I make my way through the 7ème arondissement.

I mean honestly. I really feel that Paris is a large enough city, and I am still enough of a foreigner that I really shouldn’t be running into anyone I know, much less three boys I’d either dated or had some sort of history with in the five short months I've been living here. I’ve only been back from the U.S. for two weeks, and while the first was pretty uneventful, I’ve managed to encounter all three of these rather awkward boys in various parts of the city since last Sunday.

First there was the run-in at the Centre Pompidou. Sunday afternoon Rachael and I, thinking we’d accomplish more in a library than in either of our apartments, packed our school bags and waited in a two hour line just to enter the library. (Yes, I know this is ridiculous – but not only is the Pompidou’s library catalogue the most comprehensive in the city, it is also really the only place to do work on a Sunday.) Approximately 10 minutes after finally making into the library, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to behold the boy I’d been off and on dating since October – and still hadn’t had the French version of the “I can’t date you anymore” talk with (partly due to my laziness, but mostly because I've been too busy with school to see him, and can't bring myself to do the deed through a French text message).

The second boy I’d only been on one date with before deciding I’d rather just not return his phone calls. Luckily, I spotted him coming from down the street and was able to behave like an immature fool and run in the opposite direction down a little side street. A little disturbing to me, being that I'm 21 and living on my own in France – shouldn't I be beyond the eighth-grade reactions by now?

The third, though, was Thomas. Yes, the one who upon hearing the “I don’t want to date you anymore” speech lectured me for being a “heartbreaker” and told me that he doesn’t just kiss any random girl. This was the first time I’d even seen him since the most awkward evening of my 21-year life, and it was just as uncomfortable as the last time I’d seen him. Luckily I was standing with a group of French friends in the St-Germain Monoprix, so I just blushed and grimaced at him (I promise I tried to smile – it just didn’t work out).

It’s true that everyone has the awkward encounter with an ex stories, but I really feel that three of them in less than a week (in Paris, of all places), is quite excessive. The Thomas encounter unfortunately happened right after the reunion at Étienne Marcel, so as determinedly as I tried to think of the smiles of the metro girl and her boyfriend while climbing the stairs of my building, it was impossible. Instead, I just blushed and cringed, enjoyed the smell of burned out candles from my neighbors’ dinner party, and felt that three awkward moments were surely a fair trade for at least another month of French boy drama-free days.

2007-01-19T13:55:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's been rather windy in Paris the past few days. Though I just thought I was hearing particularly loud gusts because I live at the very top of my building.

2007-01-16T23:28:00.001+01:00

So it’s two weeks before finals start at Sciences Po – and nobody has any idea what’s going on. For the past several weeks we’ve been asking our conférence teachers to explain our finals to us, but after half an hour of explanation today by one of them, none of us (in the programme international) is any closer to understanding.

This is what we’ve got: each Sciences Po class is apparently worth 10 credits rather than the five any U.S. university would assign to a course that consisted of a lecture and a conférence (similar to a quiz section). The scary part is that rather than have a grade that’s an average of the work each student has done over the semester and their grade on the final exam, each grade sheet will reflect two separate grades – one for the conférence, where notes are cushioned by exposés, dissertations and class participation done throughout the past five months. One grade, however is based entirely on the final exam. That’s right, five entire credits are dolled out or withheld based on each student’s performance on a 10-minute exposé during finals week.

That’s the other scary part – the actual format of the finals. A group of us from the programme international were talking in class today (the conférence for La vie politique française d’aujourd’hui) about how in the U.S., you know on day one of the semester when your final will be, what it will cover (be it comprehensive or midterm to final) and what the format will be. At Sciences Po the information is just beginning to trickle down to us, the foreigners.

This has nothing to do with finals, but I rather liked this truck (found in the 19ème arondissement):

Though we’d speculated before on the degree of difficulty of finals at France’s elite school of political science, we hadn’t given a lot of thought to the format – how different could a final on the continent be from what we’re all used to? The answer is quite. We do have a “finals week” at Sciences Po, but at the moment the only finals scheduled are for the masters students. The rest of us are waiting to find out when and where our exams will take place. How will we find out? We have no idea. All we got out of our maître de conférence was that we would, at some point before we’re supposed to show up for it, be assigned an individual exam time for each of our classes.

When we receive our exam assignment, there’s nothing to do but prepare as much as we can – which for my European Union class means that we will all be doing everything we possible can to finally understand this freak political entity, but will most likely not succeed at this. I think the main thing I’ve gleaned from this course is the fact that the EU really is an objet politique non-identifiée, a play on the acronym OVNI, the French version of UFO. Think “Unidentified Political Object.”

When exam day arrives, each of us will arrive at our appointed examination room at our appointed hour, and receive two questions or theses. We then have an hour to prepare a 10-minute exposé on one of those topics, using no resources but the knowledge we’ve acquired over the semester. When the hour is up, we must argue our thesis for 10 coherent minutes in front of anywhere from one to several examiners. After 10 more minutes of exposé-related questions from the examiners, the final is over – and we are left to chew our fingernails to their quicks until grades come out and we find out just how terrible a grade for five credits of lecture can possibly be.

At the moment though, everything is still completely up in the air. We don’t know when our finals are, we don’t know what they’ll cover, we don’t know how to prepare and we have no idea what kind of grades to expect (er well, aside from the fact that we’re expecting low ones). All I have to go on is the fact that my maître de conférence of my EU class doesn’t think that any of us are likely to completely fail the five credits. That assurance really does nothing for my mental state right now.

2007-01-10T22:19:00.000+01:00

On my way to the 11ème this morning, I had the wild idea in my head that I might just walk away from my visite médicale with my carte de séjour in hand. Had I not spent the past two weeks in the United States, I might have remembered that France isn’t exactly a country in which it’s easy to get things done. Assertiveness, sharp negotiation skills and even outright pushiness will get you nowhere here. Efficiency is not a trait I would attribute to any institution in France – be it Sciences Po, the government or the RATP (the organization of the metro, buses and trains within Île de France).

The carte de séjour is a residency permit you are obligated to apply for if you will be living in France for longer than three months. You can be eligible for residency for a number of reasons – marrying a citizen, being recruited for work by a French country, going to work as an au pair for a pre-arranged family, or studying at a school in France. You can’t just up and move to France to find a job or whatnot – you have to have a plan and designated entry and exit dates.

The difficulty in getting a carte de séjour is that you have to apply for it once you’re actually in France. You can apply for a long-term visa (three months, maximum) from the U.S., but it’s supposedly only good for one entry into the country (although I never had a problem returning from trips), and you have to apply for your carte de séjour immediately upon arrival.

The problem with France is that to get anything important done, you usually need to deal with about three different people in three different locations – and they don’t usually have any idea what their counterparts are doing or saying. For example, the Préfecture de police provided Sciences Po with a list of required documents for the carte de séjour, which they then mailed out to us. An officially translated birth certificate, for example, which was not only expensive, but also turned out to be quite an adventure to obtain.

When R and I went to the Préfecture de Police, they informed us that the site had moved and sent us to an address in the 15ème arondissement. When we arrived there, however, we found that we could not apply until we had permanent addresses and bill receipts – our letters and receipts from our hotel were not valid (although we had been told that they would be). When we returned a second time, we found out that Sciences Po has a special office for processing the cartes de séjour, and we were supposed to turn everything in there.

The woman at Sciences Po was incredibly helpful and got everything sent off for us – at which point there was nothing to deal with until we received our dates for our visites médicales.

January 10th at 10h30 was both Rachael and my appointed time, so we arrived early at the Délégation with shot records, medical histories, our birth certificates and stamps (yes, like postage stamps) that served as proof that we’d paid our 55 euro residency taxes.

After checking in, we were ushered to a full waiting room, where we were called one at a time to go wait in another waiting room. From there, we were called one by one into a third room, where we were weighed, measured and had to read eye charts. We were then asked if we were pregnant, and if not, formed a line into a hallway with four doors. One led back out to the waiting room and the remaining three were dressing rooms. We entered the dressing rooms individually, stripped to the waist and were called into an x-ray room that connected to the other end of the changing rooms.

We were then x-rayed (chests only) by a male and female doctor and sent back out to the waiting room. There we waited again, this time to be called on by individual doctors. Mine was more interested in my iPod and practicing his English on me than in doing any kind of actual exam – he ended up just taking my blood pressure, asking about any medications I’m on, giving me my lung x-ray (“It’s a present, for Christmas!”) and sending me on my way.

R and I were then sent to an office of the Préfecture de Police housed in the same building, where we found out that we should be able to get our cartes, but surprise surprise, the machine is broken. We have to return on February 16th to finally obtain our residency permits (just six months after arriving in France), which is a good thing because my visa expired in mid-November – I guess I’m an illegal resident.

I’m not going to get my hopes up though – if you expect to be able to accomplish things, you’ll only be disappointed.

2007-01-10T02:12:00.000+01:00

It’s the second Tuesday of 2007, and I’m back in my little apartment in Paris from a two week vacation. Christmas is officially over.

Rather than vacationing in the South with the nanny family, which was alluded to several times, and blatantly lied about several other times, I flew home to Tacoma for a surprise visit. Well, it wasn’t a complete surprise – my family obviously knew that I was coming home – it was my parents who paid for the round-trip ticket (to Paris in August, back to SeaTac in December) after all.

I managed to pack quite a few friends into the short two weeks I got to spend at home, but there were still quite a few people I’d intended to call and just didn’t have a chance to. I only had 15 days – I had to budget my time very carefully, to eat the maximum amount of pho and Mexican food, bake as many chocolate chip cookies as I could fit into the family supply of Tupperware, drive a car for the first time in four months, and hang out with the family as much as possible.

Though I’d expected to feel weird about being back in Tacoma for such a short time, it felt completely natural – especially since the vacation was packed full of the things I always do in Seattle. I went to PNB’s The Nutcracker with my grandparents, cheered at a Stadium swim meet, helped out in the Seabury School library, got dinner on the Ave and hung out with both Tacoma and Seattle friends.

Like I said, it was totally natural to be home. The weird thing is being back in Paris. I think part of the strangeness is the fact that this Christmas was particularly eventful. Wilbur (the family dog) was hit by a car and killed two days before Christmas, which definitely shook things up. Ben is waiting to hear back from a few schools he’s already applied to and is in the midst of the rest of his college applications. My dad is trying to write and publish a book. We threw a party (we’re not generally a party-throwing family). I decided to forsake all of my overly-amorous French boys and try a (really really) long-distance thing for the rest of the year (though I still need to have a talk with one of the boys I’d been kind of casually dating since October – I’m getting really good at giving the “I don’t want to date you” speech in French by now). It was a busy vacation.

Sunday though, I packed up my bags again (this time laden with peanut butter, contact solution and American candy for the nanny kids), and after two planes, a six-hour layover in Amsterdam, two pieces of lost luggage, a train and metro ride, I was back home. This is the really weird part – I feel like I just stopped in to visit Seattle life for a while, but now that I’m back in Paris, I’m back in my real life – everything else that happened in the past few weeks seems like it belongs to someone else’s memory.

Unpacking, yet again:

The truth is that I don’t live in Tacoma or in Seattle – I live in the 2ème arondissement of Paris, France, and I feel completely at home here. I’m back in my apartment, on my street (although I was disturbed to see that a new restaurant has appeared across the street from me – Paris wasn’t supposed to have changed in only two weeks!), and after sleeping for 14 straight hours in my bed, I went shopping at my local Franprix, to restock my kitchen.

I’m back to the life where I walk through the courtyard of the Louvre everyday to get to school, where I have a year-long membership to the Pompidou Center, where we go out for a drink at 23h on a Tuesday night. I’m back to the life where I buy my bread, produce and groceries in three separate locations, and have to dress up before I leave my apartment to go shopping for them.

I feel like I don’t know where I live anymore – do I live in Tacoma, Paris or Seattle? It feels so weird to “visit” my house in Tacoma – but at the same time it’s so normal that it’s weird to feel as settled as I do, living alone in Europe at the age of 21. I don’t know if that’s something I’ll ever figure out though. I guess the plan is just to enjoy where I am while I’m there and not worry so much about everywhere else. It’s 2007, after all – and I’m in Paris!

2006-12-19T22:59:00.000+01:00

Today Paul asked me what color the number seven is to me. I guess I surprised myself a little, but he was completely unfazed when I answered immediately with “yellow.” But why would he have been? He was expecting me to answer with a color, and I came through.

I love hanging out with that kid – he’s so incredibly smart and genuinely loves learning new things. We have the most fun and random conversations, and he’s completely riveted when I regale him with tales of the Donner Party, or Black Widow Spiders.

He has a continuous stream of questions popping into his head, and, being seven, has absolutely no hesitation in posing each one to me. From what color I think Thursday is (purple), to how many electronics I have in my house in Tacoma (um, a lot, I guess?), to a description of my favorite day ever (the day in kindergarten when I got to go home early because I had tied my shoelaces together during story time, only to find out that my lost American Girl Doll had been found, and that I’d won a Beauty and the Beast coloring contest all in the same day. It’s a warm memory for me).

Check out this pony from the window of BHV – the disturbing part is that it's a real stuffed pony:

These rabbits are no less authentic:

Sometimes the more pressing questions on his mind are what kind of food Wilbur likes best (peanut butter and cheese), or if I know any words in Korean (Kamsahamnida, thanks Dad), to my favorite taste in the world (cilantro), to how I feel about Sundays (I love them), or whether I am in love with anybody right now. No matter what I answer, as long as it’s not an “I don’t know,” he’s satisfied and moves on to other more pressing queries.

I thought these guys were awesome. No ladder? No matter.

I think out of everyone, P is the most like an actual little brother of mine – at least banter-wise. He tells me that my sunglasses are ugly, and I tell him that I’m trying to trick people into thinking I’m a movie star. He wants to know if it’s true. I say of course, and maybe they’ll think he’s famous too, since we’re together. I tell him he’s stinky, and he tries to gross me out by eating boogers.

We are constantly trying to outsmart each other – him trying to escape into the upper reaches of his bunk bed without me confiscating his Gameboy, and me of course, trying to confiscate the Gameboy. We take turns reading Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Tom-Tom et Nana, and compare our thoughts after each chapter. He tries to catch me with unfamiliar French vocabulary, and I outsmart him by knowing the words (he’s seven years old – we have similar vocabulary skills).

Sometimes P tells me about the girls he “loves” at school, and in turn wants to hear about every boy I’ve ever dated. He asks me each day for gossip about my brothers, and always wants follow-ups on the stories I tell him – he’s anxiously waiting to hear whether Ben has bought new earrings yet, and when Noah plans to take his driving test.

I found my neighborhood on the little model Paris in the floor of the Musée D'Orsay:

And my building!

We’re also constantly teaching each other. I taught P how to play Mancala and about the joys of Legoland, and in return, I learned the names and biographies of each character in Spongebob Squarepants. I know how to say “You suck!” (T’es naze!) and that French ados say tu peux me re-phone for “call me back,” and P is finally beginning to understand what I mean by constantly referring to things as “sweet.”

We really just have a lot of fun together – whether we’re singing “Jingle Bells” to Georges to get him to fall asleep or playing one of his practice songs as a duet on the piano. For a seven year old, he has a great sense of humor. He mailed E a brilliant fake letter from their feared and detested Grandmère that he came up with completely on his own.

Chère Ella, je t’écris cette lettre avec amour. Je veux te dire que ma radio ne marche plus, et je ne suis pas du tout contente. ~ Grandmère

Dear Ella, I send you this letter with love. I want to tell you that my radio no longer works, and I am not at all happy. ~ Grandmère

The greatest part of the prank was E’s reaction: “Grandmère has completely lost her head!” She bought the entire thing, and the fact that it was conceived by her seven year old brother tickles me to no end. P is pretty twisted for such a young age.

Is it weird that my favorite person in Paris is still in CE1 (like second grade)?

2006-12-16T20:39:00.000+01:00

Chanukah began yesterday at sundown. I was curious about the holiday in Paris after hearing stories about French Jews unable to broadcast their religion, and the huge amounts of security around all the temples on Yom Kippur.

Chanukah is not actually that big of a holiday, though. I think I was more into doing something celebratory than even Rachael was – we were originally going to make latkes with a few friends, but we postponed until Monday evening in favor of checking out a new bar.

Christina and I met Rachael, Thomas (French) and Ricardo (Spanish) near Saint Germain, where we left to walk to the smallest, most crowded, smokiest basement bar I’ve experienced in Europe.

This place, Chez Georges is wildly popular. We made our way past the bar and down a tiny set of spiral stairs into a brick cellar no larger (and possibly smaller) than my apartment, to find five seats at a wooden table. As we sat down, we congratulated ourselves on finding seats, which, according to Thomas, is a near-impossible feat.

Within five minutes of sitting down and ordering a bottle of wine, in walked three people I know from classes at Sciences Po. Over the course of the evening I probably ran into ten to fifteen people I know, which is a pretty rare event in a city as populated as Paris.

For a while we all sat around the table, just drinking our wine, talking and slowly asphyxiating from the clouds of cigarette smoke. Think about it – a teeny tiny brick basement room with only one exit and no windows – there’s nowhere for the smoke to go but into our lungs.

At about 23h, the place started to pick up. Soon the room was completely packed, with ten people crammed at each little table, and the minimal amount of standing room packed with couples and groups holding their bottles of wine and glasses. Meanwhile, the smoke cloud became denser and denser with each breath we attempted to draw.

After a few hours and many bottles of wine, the crowd was ready to dance – a difficult endeavor in such a small endroit. No matter, dance we did. There were people on tables, benches and chairs, packed in the center of the room and lining the twisting staircase to the rez de chaussée (rdc, or ground floor).

Normally, I wouldn’t expect such a dank and polluted little cellar to have such a powerful draw, but this is Paris – the people (patrons and bartenders) are friendly, the wine is decent and the music is eclectic, which is a sure recipe for success.

The playlist slid from an Elvis medley, to swing music, to thirties slow-dance music, to half an hour of Beatles songs, to Klezmer Music, to Judy Garland and around and back again. There’s something slightly unreal about standing in a packed mob with your arms around Parisian strangers while everyone sways together, belting “Let it be” at the top of their lungs.

It’s even odder when the same group grabs hands and begins to dance in a frantic circle, singing Hava Nagila in a smoky basement on the first night of Chanukah with approximately five people of authentic Jewish faith are present in the circle. It’s so surreal that the only solution is to join in with the singing, embracing complete strangers and pausing between songs to make toasts (being sure to always look into eyes of the person you're cheering – lest be cursed for seven years with a variety of complaints).

Despite the cough I had upon waking up this morning, the red wine drips on my shirt from last night and the horrible bar smell radiating from my coat and scarf, it was definitely a good night. Hava nagila! And happy Chanukah, of course.

2006-12-14T23:43:00.000+01:00

Sitting here in my apartment, with a cup of tea, the heat blasting, some really warm socks, and no homework to work on, I’m finally starting to relax a little. The past two weeks have been ridiculous, work-wise, but now (with only 4 more days of school before break) I can breathe again.

Yes, that's Notre Dame peeking through the tree.

Beginning December 3rd, most of the work of my semester began to pile up – over the past 10 days, I had a presentation and analysis of current events and projects of the European Union, an exposé (basically a speech) on Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Death of Bara, a fiche technique (basically a report), a debate, an essay for my French class and an exposé for my French politics class.

It was a stressful beginning to the month. Today though, I have only five classes (and one final essay) standing between me and Christmas vacation. Of all the work that piled up, my French politics exposé was by far the worst. All of the projects required considerable work, but once I put the work in, I was quite satisfied with the result.

It's Christmas time in the city

This exposé though, Combien de gauches dans la vie politique française aujourd’hui? (Or, how many leftists in French politics today?) really terrorized me. It wasn’t so much the subject (which was pretty awful, I do admit), but the fact that for this particular class, my entire grade for the semester is weighted on this one exposé. That’s a lot of pressure riding on my analysis of the shock of 2002, Lionel Jospin’s political failings and the ultragauche (extreme left) in France. This was the exposé that I devoted my 21st birthday to, that I stayed up until 5am three nights in a row working on, that I’d practiced so many times I had it timed to the minute (exposés may NOT exceed 10 minutes).

Despite my knocking knees, quavery voice and flub of one of the post-exposé questions posed to me, my professor thanked me with a smile and a “Vous avez bienfait.” (You did a good job). Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my work, as I had to return home after class to complete an essay for my French class Wednesday.

Today is Thursday though, and I am feeling pretty good. Somewhere in the middle of all my researching and note-taking and typing in French of the past couple weeks, I began to notice a few bizarre things about myself. Or, the amount in which I unwittingly conformed to France over the past three and a half months.

In France, we do not double-space our fiches and essais. Everything is force justified rather than aligned-left. Titles of books, movies, institutions, and anything else with a multi-word designation have only the first letter of the first word capitalized – everything that follows is lower-case. Example, Droit constitutionnel et politique by Olivier Duhamel (who happens to be one of my professors). Oh yeah, and everything’s italicized.

Last names are always capitalized to avoid confusion and usually come first, GRIFFIN Halley, but not always Halley GRIFFIN. Sevens and Z’s are always crossed, and ones are never just vertical lines. We underline important points with rulers (although that might just be us nerds at Sciences Po) and we never omit zeros from dates. January 5th, 2006 is always 05/01/06, never 5/1/06.

None of these things are that odd individually, of course – the strange part is how easily and unconsciously I’ve adapted them. They’re all just simple differences in style – and being that I’m across an ocean from the schools where I learned to write papers it makes perfect sense that the styles should be different. It’s just interesting how naturally they’ve integrated themselves into my American style – which isn’t so American anymore, apparently.

I keep imagining next year and wondering how long it’ll take me to shake all the French out of my schoolwork. Christina will have the chance to reintegrate before I do, since she’s flying home for good next Thursday, so I guess I’ll have to hear about it second-hand.

C is staying with me for a few days and we spent the afternoon at a marché de Noël outside the Pompidou center. We were wandering around, casually drinking paper cups filled with cinnamon-y and delicious vin chaude, and we stopped to look at some artwork by a typical, if unusually scruffy-looking street artist. He looked at our cups and asked, “C’est du café?’ (Is that coffee?) When we informed him that it was in fact hot wine, he winked, said, “Yesss, al-co-hol-ic? Moi, je préfère la bière.” He then opened up the pocket of his dirty coat to show us an open bottle of beer for him to surreptitiously swig in between ripping off tourists with overpriced mediocre paintings. That’s Paris.

It hasn't snowed here yet – well, except for the dusting of sparkly plastic that's coating the Champs Elysées.

2006-12-08T22:13:00.000+01:00

Paris was a mess this morning. I woke up at about 7h this morning to the sounds of my building collapsing under the pressure of the wind.

Once I’d actually been awake for a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that my building was not actually being blown over – but it definitely being assaulted from every direction.

My apartment sits under the Northern eave of the building, and my windows are all positioned at a 45 degree angle. When I looked outward, I felt like I was in a carwash – buckets of water being thrown at the glass. I attempted to open one just a crack and one arm was immediately drenched.

I spent most of the morning dreading the moment when I would actually have to bundle up and venture outside to go to class. Most of the time I love the fact that I can get to Sciences Po faster on foot than in the metro, but today I wasn’t feeling particularly thankful.

When it starts raining in Paris, the souvenir stands suddenly all stock these very large blue Paris ponchos.

Unfortunately, I had an exposé to present in my art history class today, so no freak wind and rainstorm was going to be a legitimate excuse for skipping class. I waterproofed (read: Seattled myself) as best as I could, with my North Face, my REI raincoat a waterproof Timbuktu bag and my trusty if already falling apart cheapo umbrella from H&M.

Then I was ready to venture out into the storm. I thought maybe the wind would be a little less intense once I made it down to street level, rather than the top floor of my building. I was wrong.

I felt like a member of the riot police as I joined the ranks of soggy Parisians battling their way down avenue de l’Opéra. We’d position ourselves carefully, looking directly into the wind and pouring rain, force our umbrellas open and begin stalking down the street, umbrellas held out directly in front of us.

This picture (from the pompier protest a few weeks ago) comes from BBC’s week in pictures. Yeah, that was me trying to walk to school today.

After a few blocks, we began to realize that today was not a day for umbrellas.

The face full of December rain proved to be less of a hassle than battling an umbrella through Paris. In the courtyard of the Louvre, I put my umbrella back up – the wind was extra strong in open spaces. It sheltered me for about….half a second, before flipping inside-out.

That’s when I officially gave up on the umbrella and instead walked backward through the courtyard. A few older ladies saw me doing this and chuckled at first, but once they got a face full of the wet wet wind, they were ready to adopt my technique.

My backwards walking technique made much more sense than chasing this around:

Throughout the rest of my walk to school I grinned at fellow soaked Parisians. Each one of us was soaking wet and disheveled with an umbrella tucked under one arm, even as the rain continued to drench us. Everyone wore the same hapless look that said, "I just had to give up on the umbrella."

We all eventually gave up.

For the rest of the morning, the trash cans of Paris continued to fill up with battered and broken umbrellas. Then, around 14h30, the sun broke, and it became a beautiful French day.

The evidence remains, though.

••• In other news, Rachael and I RSVP'd for a talk by Vice Premier of Israel, Shimon Peres at Sciences Po. It's scheduled for Monday morning and should be pretty interesting.