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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.