How to Marry a Frenchman

Je râle. Tu râles. On râle.

2012-02-13T15:00:00.021+01:00

Râler : v : contester, protester avec mauvaise humeur.

Râler is a very important word in French. It is simple enough to translate: to contest, protest with a bad attitude.

In other words to complain, bellyache, yell, grouse, moan, whine, gripe, bitch, grumble. Yet it is a very complicated concept for most Americans to embrace let alone apply to everyday life. Although I strongly dislike it I am finally learning to râler because it is a necessary evil in this land and if you want to get anything done you have to complain and cry and call and shout and if you do all of that louder and more often than the person next to you, then and often only then, you will be served.

Thus it is with a mix of pleasure and discomfort that I am reporting to you that my efforts described in my recent post, Square Trees, which details my crusade to get a spot in a daycare, have paid off. Admittedly it is hard to say if the good news is thanks to my keen new skills as a râleuse (person who really knows how to râler) or if the fact that the city finally completed the remodel of our local daycare thus opening a flood of new spots... but guess what folks? Our little cabbage now has a spot in a crèche after 14 months of waiting patiently combined with 4 months of waiting impatiently.

Two Lessons Involving Bread

2012-01-15T10:48:00.000+01:00

Lesson One

If in your travels through Paris you should happen to get lost, ask directions from a person with a baguette tucked under their arm. Parisians rarely travel more than fifteen minutes from their home to get fresh bread, so that person is certain to know the neighborhood.

Lesson Two

While out wandering the streets of Paris, if you should see a bakery with a line coiling out onto the sidewalk plant yourself firmly in it. Parisians are willing to wait in long lines only for the most exceptional bread and pastry. If they are taking the time to stop and pick some up then you, the traveler, certainly should too.

Square Trees

2012-01-11T14:00:00.003+01:00

On the surface Paris really does seem like an orderly place, filled with organized inhabitants. Parisian parks are lined with rows of trees trimmed into perfect squares, the neat, near obsessive landscaping lulls people into believing that there is structure here, that non means no, that lists are made then followed, and exceptions are rare. Polished white exteriors, daily garbage collection, potato purée pressed into neat rounds on your plate... all of these things add to the impression of order.

This impression, however, falls to pieces whenever Parisians have to wait in line. Arms reaching out, heavy sighs, shuffling sneaky feet, strategically placed market carts, innocent looking mamies claiming they thought the head of the line was the tail, are all common tricks around here that will leave you, the honest, trusting American, permanently last in line. Now, imagine if you will, what it is like to be in an "invisible line" or "waiting list".

Three months before Coco was born we were told to sign her up on the waiting list for a spot in the city run crèche or daycare with our arrondissement's town hall. We dutifully did so. Upon her birth we returned to confirm our request upon the request of the town hall. We did that as well. And then we did what all reasonable people do, we waited. And waited. And waited. It is after all a waiting list.

Three months, five months, ten months... at twelve months suspicions arrose and I started asking questions. Am I doing this right? Can I see the list? Where are we on it exactly? Is there something else I should be doing here? Mais oui Mary! Said every french person who I talked to about my situation. They would give me a cocked to the side sad face and say, "Ohh Mary, you are so sweet. There is no waiting list. It's only a pile of files that they sift though and the loudest, crabbiest, most insistant ones always float to the top. You better start squawking or you will never get a spot! Since they haven't heard from you in months they must assume you must not need a spot that badly!"

At first I refused to believe it. I marched right into the town hall and told them that my friends told me I should be writing letters and visiting more often, they said, "Non non non madame. Please don't. It won't make any difference." "Good" I replied, "because that seems like a royal waste of my time and yours to sift though all that mail and deal with desperate parents calling to confirm they are still on the waiting list as if they might somehow fall off it." My friends with spots in daycare simply shook their heads at my report, "Mais oui Mary! Of course that's what they would say!"

And so the campaign began. I found any reason I could to visit the town hall to update my dossier and prove my deep interest in Coco obtaining a spot. I have recently started a new job so I thought I would update my file with that new information. During that visit they pointed out that they were missing our CAF account number. Now, I could have called Greg and had him tell it to me over the phone, but instead, I tucked that detail happily away knowing I had just found a legitimate reason to come back next week, update my file, smile at the nice state employees and tell them how much I am looking forward to Coco eventually being in daycare.

Then the cherry on the cake. The letter. But what to say? Every logical bone in my body did not want to write this letter. I signed up for a waiting list. I am waiting. You will call me when I get to the top of this list. The end. The letter that I really wanted to write was one explaining the principals and vertus of waiting but no... I needed to think French.

~~Chère~~ Madame,

[Scratch that dear, too cozy, too soon.]

Congratulations on finishing the remodel of the daycare's playroom. Colette and I walked by your building last week and it looks beautiful. You must be so pleased.

[Start with a compliment. Show them I have been paying attention to the situation.]

Our daughter Colette has been on your waiting list since her birth, 16 months ago. [Cue the violins.] Given that both myself and my husband work in the arts we have a very sporadic and complicated work schedule, I wish simply to communicate to you that a spot in your daily daycare would be a real relief for our family's organizational and financial situation.

[Talk about being an artist, they love artists here. Emphasis how much we would like this spot and what a difference it would make to our bottom line... true story.]

We hope that you consider adding Coco to your list for January.

[Recap. Keep it short. This woman has a whole stack of sob stories to read.]

Sincèrement,

Madame et Monsieur Bouron

[Surpress any desire to yell, swear, or show how incredibly silly I feel writing a letter stating something so painfully obvious as Hi! We are on your waiting list and are just writing to say hi we are on your list and hope we come to the top soon.]

Stay tuned everyone! January is here.

Bonjour 2012! Bonne Année!

2012-01-06T12:12:00.002+01:00

Happy New Year isn't just something you say to those around you when the clock strikes twelve on the 31st. In France, Happy New Year or Bonne Année is something that must be systematically and individually wished to each one of your loved ones, cherished shopkeepers and neighbors. Much like the daily ritual of wishing your kin Bonjour, you must do it with sincerity and with accuracy, never wishing the same person twice in one year Bonne Année just as you would never, heaven forbid, tell someone Bonjour twice in one day.

Even the city of Paris gets their wishes out to the masses

Here you are far more likely to receive a Happy New Year card in the mail than a Christmas card with family news and shiny photos, makes sense in a country that prides itself on laïcité, secularism. Gregoire assures me that we have until the end of January to send out our good thoughts in card form to our French friends and family. He also emphasized how incredibly gauche it is to wish someone a Bonne Année in advance. And so since one minute past midnight last Saturday I have been sending text messages, doing a few phone calls and above all keeping careful track in my head of those who I have and haven't seen yet and wishing them a Bonne Année in person.

Keeping track is key, nothing offends the French faster than greeting them twice, as it makes the first greeting look like it wasn't important to you. We all know from my post about French Kissing that the greeting ritual here is taken very seriously. Recently I was working on set with all sorts of people I don't yet know milling about, overwhelmed by the size of the studio and the newness of my new job (more on that some other day) I was smiling my brightest American smile and greeting everyone I saw. A women walked in, we exchanged bonjours. She later walked back out then walked by our table again. Knowing how rude it is not to greet someone in this sort of environnent I smiled and offered up a bonjour. She stopped, whipped around and curtly replied "RE-bonjour you mean...". You can toss in a re infront of your bonjour which will turn it into hello again as opposed to just hello, this could be employed at the bakery for example. If you were to pick up your morning bread and greet the sales person with a cheery bonjour, then that afternoon were they still to be working when you picked up your dinner bread you would wish them a rebonjour! Give it a try, they will be delighted that your morning encounter meant so much to you that you remember it and them and thus adjusted your greeting to reflect that. This stickler of a woman reminded me of that long ago learned lesson.

So to all of you (except of course the ones I have already spoken to since midnight on the 31st) I wish you a very Bonne Année. I think this is going to be a big year.

It's nice to be here.

2011-12-15T23:13:00.000+01:00

Washing and drying clothes in Seattle with my parent's american style stacking mega-machines: 60 minutes.

Washing and drying clothes in our Parisian washer/dryer combo contraption: 3 hours.

Washing and drying clothes with my in-laws washing system in Quiberon: 1 to 3 days depending on the wind and the rain.

Just saying.

Grapes and Garlic

2011-12-01T20:24:00.001+01:00

When I left Seattle four years ago the locavore and seasonal food movement was really starting to take hold. Weekly produce markets were popping up all over the place, meat lovers sought out happy meat and restaurants were dropping farmer's names like rockstars on their menus. Conscious eaters were taking an interest in heirloom vegetables, asking questions about what farmers were feeding their cows and changing the way they navigated through the continuously well stocked produce sections of American supermarkets. Eating seasonally in Seattle was a choice that required a certain amount of work, you had to turn a blind eye to the pretty red strawberries in October and head for the pears, ignore the racks of lamb in December and wait for the spring and summer months, even though asparagus was available all year round you had to figure out when the season was and only buy it then.

The French public is consistently praised for their good food habits and sensitivity to the seasonality of ingredients. Is it in their genetics? A better sense of self control? A natural born desire to respect our mother earth and only enjoy tomatoes in August? Possibly...
but that's only part of it. You see France isn't necessarily full of enlightened consumers who make conscious choices to eat with the seasons. In France, if you would like to eat melon in winter you can't, because you won't find any. Plums, new potatoes, peas, peaches, white asparagus, artichokes, rasberries, shelling beans... these delicious finds flicker on to the market for a matter of weeks then disappear into the darkness of the off season not to be seen again until the following year. If you don't get your fill of dark sweet cherries in June then you are fresh out of luck if you have a hankering in August.

Even if you consider yourself to be an informed eater, the severity of the french food calendar can still catch you off gard. I had a funny moment with an American chef friend of mine who has also been in Paris for a few years. One night as we were cooking dinner and talking about french grocery shopping he said, "Yeahhhh.. who knew? Grapes have a season? I mean it makes sense that eating grapes are harvested at the same time we harvest grapes for wine (in the fall) but I just never put two and two together." The same sort of an "ohh yeah" moment happened to me this spring. In April I was rummaging around my produce guy's baskets looking for garlic. All I could find were dusty bulbs with shriveled cloves and sprouted tops. Towards the end of May, when I had given up completely on using garlic in my kitchen, I started to see large electric green and white bulbs showing up in the markets. Often tied to the top of the stalls, these potent plants dangled at just about nose height. Smelling that distinctive smell I immediately asked my vegetable lady about them, "It is L'Ail Frais or fresh garlic and is the first of the season. Its delicate stalk can be prepared and eaten like a leek and its cloves are a brilliant white that are both sweet and fiery!". Knowing the time I had with this ingredient was going to be short lived, I bought bunches of the stuff which perfumed my apartment... and possibly my neighbor's as well.

All produce sellers in France must mark the price per kilo and the country of origin. These are two great ways to clue into the French produce calendar, if the melon you are eyeing had to fly up from Marocco or travel here from Spain then the French melon season is close but not yet here, give it a few weeks. Or if those petits-pois are outrageously expensive then the season may have just ended and only those shoppers desperate to hold onto the tender days of spring will buy them. Which admittedly I sometimes do... in fact... while I am confessing... I feel the need to tell you that I am currently back in Seattle visiting my family for the holidays and while I was shopping in the lush and misty produce section of the Queen Anne Metropolitan Market I simply could not resist those long thin spikes of asparagus, the blueberries and the sweet corn on the cob. This scandalously out of season produce somehow leaped into my shopping cart and I didn't have the heart to put them back. Sorry mother earth. Just a brief detour. We'll be back to Paris soon enough eating citrus and sandy carrots until the far off days of spring bring back the peas and strawberries!

12 out of 20

2011-06-14T11:29:00.001+02:00

I first became familiar with the French grading system when I was an exchange student back in high school. Sitting in the front row of my history class I waited nervously for the professor to hand back our first papers of the year, 12/20 was written in bold on the top of the page. Oh no! 12 out of 20?! That's not even a C.

Practice brioche

And yet to my surprise, my neighbors both leaned in to congratulated me. You see, as an American (and a competitive one at that) I was obviously shooting for a 20/20. When I shared this objective with my French counterparts they giggled and said "That's impossible, even the professors don't get 20/20. No one is THAT smart."

The topic of grades is on my mind because I just finished a week of pastry making exams. I don't think I mentioned this... but back in September I started taking an evening course in pastry making. I began a paralel blog about that experience here: www.eatinginparis.com because the collection of crazy stories from that class clearly deserved their own place online. The various tests went well and I am now waiting until July 5th to get my results. If I score a 10/20 or higher I will have earned my Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnelle en Pâtisserie and be a State certified practitioner of pastry making.

In France you are pleased with a 10/20, happy with 12/20, thrilled with a 13/20 and anything over a 14/20 is going straight on to the fridge at home. If you get 10 or higher you can consider your grade a success, you have obtained the moyenne which is translates to the average and have therefore passed.

The classroom

If in the States I handed in my work and my teacher gave it back to me saying she thought it was average I certainly would not have been pleased. I was after comments like, great! good! nice work! Followed by a big letter A. We of course use letters as grades which is understandably odd to the French, but what is even more unusual to them is that people regularly get A's and to top it all off we have invented something called the A+. If A is the best anyone can possibly do (which any naturally skeptical French person will tell you is not possible) then what on earth does an A+ represent? Better than the best? How can that be?

The fact that we use letters and they use numbers is interesting, but not that interesting. The real crux of the matter here is that from beginning the French are told that being average is realistic and a good thing, while Americans are told they are awesome, no make that awesome plus. This seemingly basic difference is in my opinion, the first crack in the cultural divide that separates our two societies. Acceptance of average and being told with brutal honestly that perfection is unobtainable, colors the way French people see things far beyond the years they spend in the classroom.

My final exam presentation

For example, one of my favorite French friends just spent three weeks in New York city. While sitting along the Hudson one day, he was approached by a slightly older man, who struck up a conversation with him about politics. They spoke of Dominique Strauss-Kahn which lead them to a discussion about the Jewish culture which lead them to the topic of circumcision. From here, my straight friend told me, the previously innocent conversation took a turn for the worse and my friend's new acquaintance inquired about the nature of his penis... curious both about the presence of his foreskin and the size of it. The reason I am telling you this story comes next... My friend's response to the question about size was this, "Well you know, I suppose you could say it is average in size." Average! A perfectly honest answer that I doubt you would hear from the mouth of an American.

I would know because weather it is penises or pastries I, an American, am still unwilling to say out loud that I would be happy with la moyenne. I want a substantially above average grade for my pastries and fingers crossed I will get it.

A Room Full of Gemini

2011-05-31T11:04:00.001+02:00

Paris is teaming with babies these days. Is it the spring? Just the natural order of things? Lamb chops for dinner and new borns in strollers? Just another month of May in Paris? Well my friends I am here to tell you that there is a lot more than happenstance going on here.

I have no doubt that those clever clever parents who gave birth this month did so with one thought in mind: May babies have the best chance of scoring a spot in the much sought after Parisian daycare system. You see daycares, or crèche in French, accept babies when they are 3 months old. This coincides perfectly with the standard 3 month long maternity leave french working women receive. The trouble is that the daycare-to-baby-ratio is way out of balance here, which means that the race to get a spot for your little cabbage is on way before they are conceived, let alone born.

This was made clear to me by the director of the most fantastic crèche in Montmartre, a sunny, clean, charming spot populated by hip parents, beautiful babies wearing hand knit cardigans and playing exclusively with Scandinavian-esque wooden toys. Coco and I dressed in our Sunday best (or rather Friday best given the history of this particular daycare) and headed up the hill to see the directrice who is available to speak to potential recrutes for two hours on Thursdays. We arrived, chit-chatted, smiled, exchanged compliments and then she cut to the chase, "Madame, as charming as you two are... unfortunately your child was born during the month of August which is.. well... a difficult month." "Difficult?" I replied. "Oui, you see almost all of the spots open up in September, when the little ones move up to the one year old room, Coco was only one month old last year so couldn't sign up with us then and this year she would be ready to go up with the one year old kids but all of the little ones from last year are taking those spots... so unless somebody moves...".

Unless somebody moves? As if anyone would move if they had a spot in daycare?

"I see..." I replied. "Well I suppose we'll just organize ourselves better next time around. So it is true what they say about the month of May then?" She laughed, nodded and sent me on my way. As I walked into the waiting room I looked around and saw a long line of parents cradling babies that were days old... May babies. As I walked down the hallway I peeked in the windows and saw rooms full of bouncy happy children... May babies. And I though to myself, my God, so many gemini! Those daycare workers must be exhausted.

The Man and Other Common Enemies

2011-03-13T11:17:00.004+01:00

One can master all of the technical aspects of a language and call themselves fluent, but one cannot say that they are truly bilingual until they are able to tell jokes and negotiate in that foreign language. I have officially given up on French humor. Their dirty jokes offend me, their sarcasm is completely lost on me and I make people laugh by saying normal things that aren't meant to be funny at all. The ability to negotiate in French, however, is my personal holy grail and I am on a quest to obtain that skill.

The French love to say non. No is so much faster and easier than yes, yes requires work, responsibility and follow through. Whereas a quick and simple non gets the person asking you the question out of your hair instantly.... if you aren't French that is...
For the French know that a no is never really a no, it's a "maybe" or a "convince me" or a "I'm too busy so ask again later". A French person knows how to move beyond the no and get to a place where on peut s'arranger, a place where a deal can be made.

One of the very few positive things to come out of the fire in our building is my generous budget for replacing my handbag. I have been given a nice sum form our insurance company and so I spent a large part of my day today looking at purses. In order to be reimbursed for this purchase however I need to produce a receipt proving that I did indeed purchase a purse and that I didn't just pocket the money. There is a beautiful little Depot de Vente (high end consignment store) in my neighborhood that sells furs, vintage bags and a great assortment of sunglasses. The owner is a force to be reckoned. The first time I visited the store she sat at her desk in the corner, pulled out a package of extra long cigarettes and lit it with her gold lighter, violating the no smoking policy that has been in place for years. From the glint in her eyes you could tell she didn't give a rip and if you, the customer didn't like it, you could leave. Personally I liked it. I liked the brazen nature of it all and thought to myself, now there's a women who might be willing to negotiate.

I walked in to her shop this afternoon and was welcomed with a musty dusty smell of stale cigarettes and old coats. The owner was sitting at her desk, spectacles on, looking through her pile of hand written receipts, no cash register or computer here. Old Mary (uninitiated fresh from America Mary) would have quietly looked through the bags and found one that used up most of my allotted budget, then bought it and sent in the receipt to my insurance company. New Mary (Mary who is one step closer to the holy grail) walked straight up to madame to tell her all about the fire, to compliment the reaction of the firefighters of Paris and then (and this is key) identify the insurance company as the enemy. Nothing brings French people together faster than a common adversary. The larger and more obscure the better, the insurance company, the state, the bosses of the world, The Man... these all make excellent enemies. I told her that the insurance company has given me a set (and I implied obviously stingy) allowance to replace my handbag. "Say no more, you poor thing, let's find you a handbag or two and I'll write you a receipt to give to your insurer for one bag at whatever sum you like!"

Done.

Dam Dim Dom

18 Rue Damrémont

75018 Paris

The Fire Part II

2011-03-11T22:14:00.001+01:00

So there we were, surrounded by art, breathing in oxygen and staring at our neighbor pouring bottled water into a bowl for her cat. It was all very surreal.

Our building (and our apartment) has no smoke detector and no sprinkler system which is the norm in Paris. Although people assure me that there is a law in place that will require them to be installed by 2015... as an American that is accustomed to seeing fire detectors everyone it is hard for me to imagine that this law wasn't already in place years ago. It's like stepping back in time to an era when people thought cigarettes weren't bad for you and that seat-belts were a nuisance.

Given how densely populated Paris is and the abundance of wood staircases you would think that fire alarms and fire escapes would be everywhere. But no, they are few and far between. That said even when they are installed they are not always headed. The one person in our building who did had a smoke detector in her apartment (her landlord is a fireman) got up when she heard the alarm sounding, pulled over a stool and took out the battery mumbling about what a pain this contraption is, assuming that someone was simply smoking in the hallway again. As she was trying to fall back asleep she heard the sirens of the firetruck and quickly hopped back out of bed and out the door to safety.

We swapped these sorts of stories in the gallery for the next few hours as we waited for the EMTs to check everyone out. One of the good things that came out of this whole affaire was being able to meet all of our lovely neighbors! We chatted as the policemen, firemen and EMTs got to work. It was a highly organized affaire, we were each given a bracelet full of stickers that had a barcode on it corresponding to our personal information, then each person that came by to examine us plucked a sticker off and stuck it to the top of the form they were filling out to save time and confusion. One of these examines required us to blow into a smoke inhalation detection device to see how our lungs had fared. Greg and I each blew low numbers to our relief. The highest number blown of the evening was not the person who spent the most time exposed to the smoke but our neighbor on the third floor, a woman in her 60's and a life long smoker who laughed and said well something has to kill me I suppose!

The firemen then scooped Greg, Coco and I up and piled us in to their truck with the other family that has a young child and took us to the children's hospital for further observation. They could see we were all doing well but wanted to be extra sure.... when it comes to children in France they leave no stone uncovered. Upon arrival at the hospital we were poked, prodded, x-rayed and monitored until the following morning. At 7am we were deemed healthy and set free.

With our health and our family intact we felt blessed. We also felt a slight breeze go up our legs as I had put on shoes without socks and Gregoire was in his pyjama pants. When we hopped out the window we didn't grab our wallets so the father of the other family in our building who came to pick them up loaned us cab fare. The taxi dropped us in front of the building which was still swarming with police and firemen. Gregoire was escorted upstairs to gather a few things (our iphones, our wallet and some socks... funny the things you really need in life) then we started walking across town to our new temporary home at my sister in law's place.

It's been over a month since the fire and now that the soot has settled and the crime scene tape has been removed we know that the fire was started by three silly young men who were doing lord knows what in the basement of our building. The troublemakers didn't make it far before the police nabbed them, they confessed to setting the fire right then and there but the following morning their charge was elevated to arson and involuntary homicide because the elderly woman who lives below us died from smoke inhalation. What a terrible terrible decision those three made that night.

The Fire Part I

2011-02-08T13:05:00.001+01:00

Just when I thought I might be running low on new and interesting Parisian experiences, the universe delivered us a doozy.

Two weeks ago our apartment building caught on fire!

It's was 2am and I was up feeding Colette. Laying in bed we heard our neighbor making noise through the incredibly thin wall that separates our bedroom from his living room. He often makes noise around this time as the bars close at 2am and he is young, silly and unemployed so hearing him shout and stumble around on a Tuesday at 2am was par for the course. But that night we detected a hint of panic in his voice and heard him shouting about a fire... at that point we assumed he drunkenly burnt his toast and maybe accidentally caught his sleeve on fire so Greg pulled on his pants to go next-door to see if he could be of help.

As Gregoire entered the living room he saw smoke streaming into our apartment through the gap between the front door and the floor...which is fairly large given our building is slowly sliding down hill. He touched the door and it was hot so he hurried back to the bedroom and informed us that it was more than toast that was on fire!

I got dressed, grabbed some blankets for Coco and we all hunkered down in front of the window in our bedroom. We shut the door and stuffed clothes around it to minimize the smoke filtering in. We looked out of our window and saw that the police had arrived and a sizable crowd had gathered out front looking up at our building and looking worried. The neighbors across the street, who stare into our apartment all day, saw us and went flying outside to tell everyone that there was a bébé on the first floor and that they needed to get us down toute de suite!

I was worried, to say the least, but never truly frightened because we knew that people knew we were there and we could see that they were all trying to formulate a plan to get us to safety as soon as they possibly could. In the meantime Grégoire was working on a plan of his own, McGiver style, he began wrapping Coco in the carrying scarf and between clouds of smoke he opened the window and attempted to lower her down to safety. Our window isn't that far up so the plan was feasible, but even so, I wasn't a big fan of the idea. That particular point in time, however, it didn't seem like a very appropriate time to have a debate with my husband so I let it play out. As soon as he dangled Colette out the window à la Michael Jackson the crowd shouted back, "Non! Monsieur! Non!" as I am fairly certain they thought he was going to toss our little pumpkin out the window and simply hope someone caught her.

Greg then abandoned the idea, so we closed the window and sat there face to face hoping that the firemen would hurry. From the time we woke up to the time we saw top of the ladder at our window about 20 minutes had gone by and we were ready to get out of there. The firetruck either couldn't get down our narrow street or couldn't get it's ladder to work... the newspapers are still debating this... so it turns out that the ladder that saved us was a humble gardening ladder that a neighbor dug out of their shed. The guy that lives on our same floor simply jumped out the window to the sidewalk below, that was our previous plan of escape but jumping with a baby in your arms simply isn't possible and we hadn't revisited our emergency escape plan since her arrival. The rest of the building had to wait even longer to get out! The firemen eventually brought in some sort of giant fan that blew out the smoke from the one and only (wooden) stairway so the the residents could walk down to safety.

Then the incredibly organized team of fireman, medics and policemen took over. The owner of the art gallery across the street opened his doors and the residents were brought there one by one as they were evacuated from the building. So there were sat, on a blanket, with Coco giggling and trying to chew on the oxygen mask we were holding to her face while staring at a fascinating collection of modern art. A tiny dog was yapping in the corner, the old woman who lives below us was stroking her cat and the grande dame from the third floor walked in looking amazing in her fur coat... And I thought... how French.

To be continued.

Hello Tasting Table!

2011-01-26T11:44:00.006+01:00

Dear Tasting Table... thank you for visiting! As promised below you will find a few of my recent food photos. While you are here please allow me to point out a few of my favorite posts. You might enjoy reading about French Kissing and American Sandwiches or learning about French medicine in my post called Sprinkles, Seltzers & Suppositories. Should you have more time, I would encourage you to read about my trouble with Turkey, tips on riding the metro and my upsetting adventures as a receptionist in Paris.

Dear readers... this is just a short aside. I am applying for a job as a food editor for the fabulous website www.tastingtable.com. I would like to show them a few of the photos I have taken oven the years and I thought what better place to post them than here?! So enjoy and rest assured we will be back to the regularly scheduled How to Marry a Frenchman program soon.

The Mamies of Montmartre

2011-01-18T19:38:00.002+01:00

For the first few months of Colette's life I was nervous about leaving the house. I would hover above the changing table hesitating about what she should wear. The long sleeved onsie or the short sleeved one? Pants? Socks? The wooly hat or the sun bonnet? Would she be too hot? Too cold? I would end up jamming several additional and almost always unnecessary accessories into my purse then finally head out the door.

One might attribute these jitters to new-mommy-syndrome and concern about the well being of my new baby but in fact it was a fear based reaction to the glaring (thus caring) grannies of Montmartre. My neighborhood is a mecca for old people. Lord only knows why, considering that there are more steep slopes, craggily cobblestones and steps in our part of town than in any other arrondissement, but be that as it may, Montmartre is packed with Mamies, Grannies. The Mamies of Montmartre have appointed themselves as the monitors of safety. They roam the streets, markets and parks looking for unsuspecting young mothers who may have misjudge the meteorological micro-climate of Montmartre or underestimated the infinitely delicate nature of their child's tender neck skin, and they pounce.

I was attacked once while doing my shopping. There we were, Coco in her sling and I looking over the selection of oranges at the vegetable stand when out of the corner of my I a see a sweet old lady saddling up to us. It all starts off well, she brushes Coco's cheek with her nobly finger and tells me what a beautiful child I have made. But after a few minutes of cooing and ooing and ahhing she strikes, "Bit of a breeze today [raises her eyebrows and sighs as she looks disapprovingly at Coco's obviously too thin cotton onesie] don't you find it breezy?"With her one sing-songy question she clearly called into question my ability to parent and alerted all other grannies with in earshot to the problem.

Mamie number two, who was minding her own business near the lettuces, heard the alert mamie number one set off and hobbled over to supply back up. She took things to the next level by addressing Coco directly, "Oh yes my little cabbage, I bet those arms are as cold as can be! Your mommy really should have planned ahead for these weather conditions." NOTE: It was August. It was sunny and 75. Yes, there was a slight breeze. Now cornered in the stall I saw no way out. It was early days so I did not have a sweatshirt, sunscreen, scarf, and tank-top stuffed into my purse, so against my honest opinion which was that it was not in fact breezy enough to warrant a sweater, I agreed with them. "Mmm. Oui. It IS a little breezy. Come on Coco let's get these oranges and head back home where it's nice and warm." Score one team mamie.

For months the sweet-sour voices of the Mamies of Montmartre would ring in my ears: "Ohh petit amour you look hot in there!" "Oh oh oh you are so cute but your mother doesn't love you very much otherwise she wouldn't leave your little head exposed to the sun now would she?" "Mmm what a little darling she is. Isn't she cold? You know we are in September now." "What an adorable hat, too bad it doesn't cover her pretty little ears."

I took weeks of trying to answer the question "But what will mamie say?" before I finally figured out that there is no pleasing them. No need to keep score. Team Mary will never win. It is just as likely that I am going to be scolded for having Coco in too many layers as it it that I am going to be chided for exposing her to the cold. So now when I leave the house I simply dress her as well as I can and hope for the best.

A How to Marry a Frenchman Party!

2010-11-28T12:01:00.001+01:00

Let's have a Party!

For any of you who are currently in love with a Frenchman, thinking about falling in love with a Frenchman or at some point were in love with a Frenchman and in Paris on December the 7th... please join me for a little meet and greet party.

Where: La Fourmi (bar/café) 74 rue Martyrs 75018, Metro Pigalle.

When: Tuesday December 7th, 6:30pm
NEW TIME! We've moved things up to 6:30.

Why: Because I would love to meet you guys and kick off the holiday season!

RSVP by leaving a comment.

Sprinkles, Seltzers & Suppositories

2010-11-21T10:34:00.001+01:00

My preferred form of medication is liquid gel caps, like dayquil. Brightly colored, small, easy to swallow, flavorless and fast-acting these little pills make taking medicine a treat. The French and I appear to disagree on this point.

Never in my life have I been given such an odd assortment of powders, sprays, beads and waxy torpedo shaped tablets than while I was in the maternité. I had a natural birth mind you, but that doesn't mean you don't get a few things to help you along and more than a few things to help put yourself back together.

During the birthing process I was given Fleurs de Bach which a tincture of wild flowers soaked in cognac. As I was laboring away Sylvie offered me some and explained to me that this potion is designed to soothe you in times of emotional distress, "Like when you have just been in a car accident or when you are giving birth for example..." Perfect! I'll take mine on the rocks with a brandied cherry s'il vous plaît! Unfortunately this stuff is administered in a far less sexy vessel, a little rubber topped eye-dropper that gives you one tiny droplet at a time under your tongue. The French believe that the soft fleshy tissue under your tongue is one of the best places to administer medicine because is absorbs things quickly.

My postnatal collection of homeopathic medicines were almost all in under-the-tongue form. On our way home form the hospital we picked up a collection of little candy colored tubes of Arneca and Aesculus and other homeopathic medicines from the pharmacy. The tubes were filled with medicine that had been broken down and reformed into little sweet balls the size and consistency of rainbow sprinkles, the kind you might put on an ice cream sundae. You twist the bottom of the tube and a little sprinkle falls out much like a gum-ball machine! What fun! Then you put four or five of these little pearls under your tongue and wait for the magic to begin.

According to the French, the only place better than the under side of your tongue to administer medicine is your rectum. The French LOVE suppositories, supositoires or sopors for short. That's right, they are so commonplace that the French language has created a nickname for them. As it turns out almost all medicine is available in sopro form, from colds to headaches any French pharmacist will tell you that almost anything can be solved by sliding a smooth little lump of medicated goodness up your bum.

I took Coco to meet our new family doctor this week. She fawned over Colette, claiming she was the loveliest little baby she had ever seen. So smitten was she, that she called over the doctor next door to show off her new patient. The other doctor asked what she was doing to Coco today and she replied, "Ohh I don't even like to talk about it, no I don't (baby voice). I have to give her a shot, yes I do (baby voice)"she nuzzled Coco and continued, "Oh isn't it the worst when they are cute? It makes it all the more difficult to see them cry after they've been poked." She nudged her co-worker and said, "It's true! Probably shouldn't say it but it's easier to vaccinate the ugly ones."

The vaccine was administered and as I struggled to redress my screaming baby, our doctor wrote a prescription for Dolipran (sort of like Ibuprofen) in baby suppository form. I obviously was making some sort of face because the doctor looked up at me and smiled, "Are you an Anglo-Saxon? Your accent is so slight it was hard to tell but given the look in your eyes I am guessing you are not French!" I explained to her that I am American and my husband French etc etc.. She turned to Coco and said, "Well I guess we are about to find out just how French you are ma belle. My guess is she is going to love it." The doctor handed me the slip of paper to give the pharmacist and said, "The trick is popping it in there then quickly clamping her little bottom cheeks shut so it doesn't fly back out! Bon chance! Bon Courage!"

A Mushy Moment

2010-11-19T18:47:00.000+01:00

It's Thanksgiving week and in our family on Thanksgiving day, before we sit down to eat, we go around the table and say what we are thankful for. I have plenty of new things on the list of what I am thankful for this year, a healthy happy baby girl certainly has a spot on there. But also for the first time this blog has made the short list.

Since my arrival in Paris three years ago it has been a struggle to find my footing and find my voice in this foreign land. Sharing my stories with all of you has been a wonderful creative outlet and reading your comments and emails has helped me feel connected.

So what I am trying to say here is thank you to you my readers! Thank you for your time, thank you for your comments, suggestions, stories, spelling corrections and all the rest. This year I am thankful for you.

So, what do you do?

2010-11-02T17:37:00.002+01:00

As I slowly master the art of typing with one hand, you may notice that the next few posts come out in bits and snip-its. Bear with me.

When in America and at a cocktail party or BBQ and you are meeting someone for the first time, one of the classic get to know you questions is...

"So, Bob, what do you do?"

"Well, Jim, I am in waste management."

"How interesting Bob! You know, I have always been curious about why we can recycle plastic bottles but not the plastic caps..."

And voilà! The conversation is launched.

In France it is considered incredibly impolite to ask what someone does for a living. I have several theories about why this is but the following French expression pretty much sums up how most French people feel about their jobs: je travaille pour vivre et pas le contraire - I work to live but I don't live to work. People here are thus less attached to their jobs, seeing them as a necessarily evil and not as something that defines them. They prefer to be defined by what you know... what you like... how you dress... where you live... etc.

Given that my current official job is possibly the silliest job I have ever had, the fact that I don't often have to explain to people that I answer phones and make photocopies for a living suites me just fine.

Lately however my job title has been popping up in unexpected (and unfortunate) places. After Colette was born, Grégoire had three days to declare her birth at the town hall and confirm that he was indeed the father. There were endless forms to fill out asking for our address, date of birth blah blah blah and our professions. When Grégoire returned to the hospital he presented me with Coco's birth certificate and there it was in black and white for all of history and the world to see, "Colette, daughter of Mary Campbell Bouron, standardiste - receptionist..." I looked up at Grég who started apologizing immediately, "Sorry Mary, I didn't know what to put.... and you weren't there...but since your blog doesn't make any money I didn't think I should put blogger...anyway it's just a job Mary. When you are famous you will look back and laugh!"

For as much as I try to detach myself from my job like a good French person I just don't seem to be able to. Must be the American in me. Note to self: Must find a new job soon.

Vaginal Re-education

2010-10-26T16:31:00.004+02:00

It has been over two months since a very large object (Colette) came out a very small exit (my vagina). Not everyone likes to talk about the gory mechanics of childbirth and recovery, but I will tell you who does, the French! That's who!

I was wandering through the fabric shops in Marché St Pierre with my mother last week when a sales woman stopped me to tell me how beautiful she thought Colette was. We began to chat and she asked me how old Coco is, I told her two months. "Two months? But she's enormous!" she exclaimed. I smiled politely and continued to look through the bolts of floral fabric. "If you are making a dress you are really going to need a lot of yardage... oh la la she is just so big!"*. I smiled less politely this time. After a brief pause she then leaned over and whispered, "And the birth? I mean were you able to push her out yourself or..." she trailed off while waggling her fingers in the direction of my private parts. "Well it was a tight fit but here she is!" I replied laughing uncomfortably as I backed out of the store trying to translate this exchange into English to my mother's horror.

*For those that have not yet met my child let me just say that she is not THAT big.

Once the baby is out the French healthcare system makes sure you have time to rest and bond with your baby. Most maternity leaves last about 12 weeks and can be extended if you are breastfeeding, tired or generally unwell. But for most, once they hit the two month mark the French system tells them that the honeymoon period is over and it is time to start getting your life back in order. By the time your child is three months old daycare kicks in, your job expects you to return and your rééducation périnéale (reeducation of your perineum) is well under way.

The government funds a minimum of ten sessions with a physical therapist to help you squeeze and contract your way back to a taught and muscular perineum in order to, amongst other things, get your sex life back on track so that you can produce another little French tax payer. As you may recall, my tailbone caused little Coco to get stuck on her way out. Thanks to the handy work of Willy the Baby Whisperer she eventually made her down the birth canal and out into the world but not without a few bumps along the way. So my first stop on this educational odyssey was the osteopath's office. Claude, an osteopath and mid-wife at Groupe de Naissance, spent an hour with me discussing the birth and examining me. Her conclusion, "Mary I think you need to forgive your vagina. I can see that you were disappointed by the performance of your perineum muscles during the birth but you need to move past that. You need to reconcile yourself and the best way to do that is through massage and meditation." Ohhh-kay.

Next stop was at my mid-wife's office. Sylvie was going to be my coach during this reeducation process. The first session was composed of two parts, massage and visualization. The massage bit was fairly straight forward but the visualization bit was, well, a little out there. "Close your eyes Mary," Sylvie began, "Now imagine that your vagina is a beautiful château. And at the entrance of this château is a draw bridge. Mary, can you see the bridge Mary? Great. Now try to slowly lift that bridge up and close the door." Riiiiight. I now have to do this 3 times a day for the next 3 weeks.

I'll report back.

The BIG Day

2010-10-09T09:29:00.001+02:00

On August 12th, one day after her French due date, Colette decided that she was ready to come out and greet the world. At 5am I was up and having contractions that seemed like they meant business! I left Grégoire to sleep, knowing he was going to have a long day ahead of him involving screaming and hand squeezing and thus he would need his strength.

I hopped online and was thrilled to see my best friend Katie was online too. I immediately called her on a video chat and sat on the couch with her chitchatting between contractions. Soon Grég was up and we decided to call our midwife Sylive to tell her that we think la fête had officially begun. She was in her car at the time, coming back from a patient's home, so she offered to swing by our apartment to check on us. How luxurious! She came in, we had tea, she looked at my lady parts and said that things seem to be progressing nicely. She suggested we take a little walk through the neighborhood to help move the baby further down the shoot, then come in to la maternité in a hour or so. And so we ventured out..

Paris is mostly drained of Parisians during the month of August but that doesn't mean it isn't busy. Tourist spots are buzzing with Italians, Spaniards and Americans. On that day our neighborhood of Montmartre was crawling with visitors meandering the confusing little lanes of our village on their way to Sacré Coeur. As we left the house and lumbered down our street I know we bewildered a tourist or two, who was likely already a little turned around because if they were hoping to get to the church they should have turned left not right on to our street. No time for tourists today! I had a baby to get out! So I walked for 4 minutes, paused, leaned against Greg or grabbed a lamppost and groaned through a contraction, and then continued on my next 4 minutes of walking and so on and so forth until it was time to call Kristen, our fantastic friend and driver.

By noon we were at the hospital and up in our penthouse pre-birthing suite. Sylvie was drawing a bath and Grégoire was running around making sure I had everything I needed. There was a third person there that day, a fresh-faced intern who was there to experience her first natural birth. She was full of questions and asked me an hour later how many centimeters I had dilated? Sylvie snapped at her and said that she doesn't clutter her patient's minds with that sort of extraneous information! Sylvie turned to me and said "You are dilating beautifully and things are progressing nicely and that's all you need to know". I was in fact thankful for her ambiguity because otherwise I probably would have started to make some sort of cacamayme excel spread sheet in my mind about how many hours it took me to get to this many centimeters, multiplied by the amount of pain I was in now, divided by the exponential increase in volume of my moaning...

Luckily there wasn't much time for that because moments later it was determined that it was time to go to the birthing room! I put my clothes back on (that's right! even when giving birth in a hospital you don't get a paper gown!) and made my way to the elevator which is the size of a phone booth thus only had room for me, my belly and Grégoire. Sylvie waved and dashed for the stairs saying, "I'll see you down there! Try not to have your water break in the elevator!".

Eight floors down we arrived in a much more serious room, no bathtub, no view of the eiffel tower, no jazzy background music... it was time to get down to business. Sylvie asked if I felt like pushing, I said I was willing to give it a try. I pushed a little and Sylvie said she could see the head. "Fantastique!" I thought. We arrived at the hospital at noon, it was now 3:30 and we could already see the head, this was going swimmingly.

And then baby Bouron stopped swimming and decided to tread water for the next three and a half hours. Some something about my tailbone getting in the way but I am persuaded that the delay had more to do with the increasingly fickle French nature of this baby.

At this point things were getting tricky for the baby and I, so Sylvie made a call to the back up doctor and said the words Emergency and Vacuum... given that she only gave information on a need to know basis I decided that if she was saying those words it must be serious. Dr George however did not pick up his phone nor call back so it was up to us! We had to get this baby out old-school style. We launched in to an exhaustive effort to find the perfect birthing position. Sitting up, laying down, on all fours, on a ball and finally the birthing stool which looked more like a small garbage can with a toilet seat glued on top of it than a stool.... I told her that esthetically that one just wasn't going to work for me. During labor your mind wanders and while I was in pain and huffing and puffing this baby out all I could thing about when facing that so-called birthing stool was 'where is my camera?! I wish I could take a picture of this ugly contraption for the blog!'.

But alas, after doing every posture in the karma sutra book of birth Baby Bouron wasn't budging so Sylvie decided we needed to call in the big guns, Willy the Baby Whisperer. Willy is an extraordinary character and a superstar in the world of midwifery. He is short and stout with a thick mustache, curly chest-hair that tuffets out of his slightly unbuttoned chemise and sparkly gentle eyes. Willy walked in, introduced himself to me, Grégoire and my belly. He asked Baby Bouron if they felt like coming out to meet their parents, he then paused (possibly for dramatic effect, possibly because he was listening carefully) and declared that the baby did indeed want to come out and we should get on with it!

Willy then climbed up on a stool alongside the bed. I was laying back at this point with my feet in the air. Greg was holding on to one leg, the now throughly traumatized intern was holding the other. Sylvie was squatting in catchers position at the end of the bed and Willy had both hands on my belly readying to help push this baby out!

On the next few contractions Willy's was pushing, I was pushing and everyone in the room suddenly switched to English and started saying "Puuuuuuoooosh! Again again again! Puuuuuuuuuooooosh!" in the most hysterical French accent I have every heard. Speaking of hysterical, I was obviously starting to loose it because in that particular moment all I could think about was the fact that French people often translate the word encore by the word again and that in this instance again is not the best way to translate encore.... but before I had the time to decide what a better word would be little Colette Bouron came shooting out like a champagne cork.

Colette - 8lbs3oz

It's a girl!

2010-08-20T14:37:00.000+02:00

Colette was born last Thursday evening at the very civilized hour of 7:45pm. We are back at home now and enjoying the customary parade of visitors and endless stream of phone calls from every French person we have ever know wishing us well.

My favorite comment so far has come from the mouth of my self-proclaimed French Mother, Odile, "Well yes, ma belle, babies are a lot more fun going in then they are coming out!"

Whose side are you on?!

2010-08-06T11:28:00.002+02:00

Dear unborn child,

We had discussed a 40 week stay. Yet here we are at 40.5 weeks and I find you dilly-dallying down there with what appears to be zero intention of holding up your end of the bargain. Frankly I am a little disappointed in your behavior at this point.

I don't want to make this in to a whole France vs America thing but I know that you know that in America we say that pregnancy lasts 40 weeks and that the French claim that pregnancy lasts 41 weeks but come on now... whose belly are you in?

This is surely going to be one of several stands that you are going to need to make throughout your life. Will your first word be no or non? At the age of 16 will it be more important to you to have your drivers license or have the ability to order a glass of wine at a bar? Will you eat your pizza with a fork and knife or will you use your hands? Will you say things like see you at 15h or see you at 3pm? Will you bake your cakes using cups or the scale? Will you blast past your American due date (the 4th of August) in favor of your French due date (the 11th of August) just to prove a point to your mother?

All I am saying, sweetheart, is that the early bird catches the worm. And I know you may be tempted to listen to all of these laissez faire French people surrounding you who have a tendency to be vague with deadlines and say things like "Your internet will be switched on sometime during the next 2 to 12 weeks" and "Let's meet at 10 and by 10 I mean 11". I can only imagine that the French's religious attachment to the idea of not doing anything in the month of August except drink rose and tan themselves on the beach is also throwing you off... but what sort of attitude is that to have? May I remind you that you are half Campbell and we are a family of go getters who start as they mean to continue and who (with the exception of your mother and grandmother) show up on time.

So let's get this show on the road!

Love,

Your Mother.

Balls

2010-07-21T13:00:00.002+02:00

Lately my posts have been focused on bellies, bumps and babies. At this point it only seems fair to throw in a post about balls. This particular entry has been on my mind ever since I moved here, my delay in writing it has to do with my lack of photographic evidence but I will just have to use my words (and possibly a stolen image or two) as a substitute.

The French love testicles. They don't hide them under grape leaves, they don't shelter them with baggy swim-wear, they rarely remove them from their pet dogs and occasionally they savor them sautéd with cream sauce. NOTE Rongons Blancs is the seemingly innocent name given ram testicles often listed on fancy French menus.

Growing up I was more of a cat person than a dog person and to be honest with you, I have never taken a great interest in feline or canine anatomy. Based on the fact that I never noticed any dog testicles in the States, I innocently concluded that dog genitalia was tucked up under their bellies and only protruded when their was work/play to be done. I was satisfied with this answer and left the topic alone. However when I arrived in Paris, a city who loves their dogs and firmly disagrees with Bob Barker, I was honestly caught off guard by the sheer size and visibility of dog testicles and was forced to reevaluate my previous conclusion. I was shocked to discover that A. Neutering your dog actually involves removing their testicles (I assumed it was more like a human vasectomy... more on that in a moment) and B. That dog balls are so... well... eye catching.

image stolen from the internet

While I have not found the right time or place to ask a Parisian dog owner if I may photograph their dog's testis for my blog (lack of balls on my part you might say?!) I have had the pleasure of speaking to a few dog owners about this topic. My favorite conversation was with a manly boat captain who was the master of a giant bulldog, whose bulging testicles made him waddle instead of walk. When I inquired about why he chose not to neuter his pup, he looked at me strangely, like I had just asked him why he had elected to not cut of his dog's ears? After seeing that my question was a serious one, he took a moment to think about it then grinned and said, "Why should I have all the fun?".

Now not all French people feel this way. The Original Madame Bouron was in town last week and was gushing with pride when she described her new West Highland Terrier, Ebo, to us. Ebo is the cream of the crop with pedigreed parents, a shiny white coat, perfect proportions, evenly spaced eyes and so on and so on. As part of her elaborate description of just how fabulous this dog is, she noted that even a small sample of his sperm is worth hundreds of Euros and that there are countless female dog owners who would happily pay top dollar to roll around in the sac with a handsome fellow like Ebo. My ears perked up when I heard this and Grégoire's eyes briefly unglazed because he and I have been looking for ways for Madame Bouron to entertain herself as she enters her golden years of retirement and earn a little pocket money. This seemed perfect! For the rest of her stay we encouraged her not to castrate Ebo and instead to start a little Westie stud service in Southern Brittany. She seemed somewhat onboard with the idea but upon her return to Quiberon she found Edo humping her newly embroidered couch cushions and lost it. Ebo consequently lost his balls this weekend and will be sharing his prize winning sperm with no one.

well designed government issued brochure

Moving on to the topic of human males and their balls, I would like to tell you about birthing class last week. We discussed post-partem issues including contraception. Sylvie, our mid-wife and class leader, passed out stylish brochures from the government listing the various creams and contraptions one can use to prevent a second pregnancy too close to first. She then said, staring at me, "Class, you will note that vasectomies are not listed here because they are illegal* in France... unlike in SOME counties... isn't that right Mary?". I was honestly surprised and said, louder than I planned, "What! Why?". Eva, the Danish chick in my class was right there with me pointing out that vasectomies were permitted in Denmark. Sylvie then explained to the group that the French government considered vasectomies to be a form of self mutilation and that in any case men are incapable of making that kind of permanent decision, "I mean, can you imagine Mary if that poor man changes his mind?".

This kind of logic is a classic example of Negative Freedom vs Positive Freedom, a concept that I would like to delve into soon in another post. Essentially Negative Freedom limits your choices so you are free from having to make mistakes like neutering yourself and Positive Freedom puts it all on the table and lets you decide what is and isn't a good choice for you. France has a long history with Negative Freedom while America prefers Positive Freedom.

Irregardless, my class's (and my husband's) verdict was clear, they all looked at me with eyes that said "Torturing terrorists and capital punishment isn't enough for you people? You also have to dabble in genital mutilation? What's next?".

So vive les testicules I suppose! At the very least this phenomenon explains why Paris is teaming with dogs and babies.

* I wanted to do a little further research on the legality of vasectomies in France and found this interesting article about a Frenchman's struggle to get around the current law: http://www.vasectomy-information.com/moreinfo/france.htm

I HEART Pregnant Ladies

2010-07-18T11:51:00.000+02:00

The whole I heart trend swept though Paris this year in the form of stickers, sweatshirts, graffiti and more. While everyone strives to put an original spin on it, the only I HEART _____ that really caught my eye was this sticker stuck to a scooter parked infront of the agency...

Translation: I HEART nothing. I am Parisian. (Note: this rhymes in French making it all the funnier in my opinion)

I love this sticker on so many levels. Parisians really do appear to love nothing and even the few things they secretly do love they happily criticize from time to time just to keep things consistent. The one enormous exception to this rule is pregnant ladies. Never have I experienced so much love, affection and attention from my fellow city dwellers then I have over the past few months.

Not only does everyone I meet (aunt, baker, banker, boss, co-worker, cleaning lady, delivery guy, doorman...) want to talk to me about out my pregnancy, they all want to compliment me and cheer me on! Wishing me bon courage! And telling me what a great job I am doing!

The first set of comments and compliments rolled in at around five months when my belly started to show. The Parisian women in my life peeped up first, commenting on the size and shape of my expanding midsection. "Oh la la Mary, the shape of your belly is so perfectly round! How lucky you are!" or "Mary, pregnancy suites you so well! Look at the curves of this bump it is perfect!". They discussed and drooled over my tummy as if it were the new must have accessory for the summer that my ultra rich husband bought for me as a gift.

Adoration of the bump soon expanded from my private circle of acquaintances to the sphere of public art. It was both part of me and not part of me, it was as if I had sculpted something lovely for the whole world to look at, admire and comment on. Parisians who are known to stomp the streets wearing their funeral faces would briefly remove their stoney masks and smile at my belly or make a kind remark. Note: Never did a Parisian run up and touch my belly, something people from the States warned me about and something I was preparing for mentally. Must be too close to hugging for their comfort.

I should tell you that it is not just the women; as I was walking down the street I overheard two young men sitting in a café say, "Ahhh look at her! Some guys are just lucky as I guess.". I also had a charming old man stop me as he exited the bakery one morning to say to me with admiring eyes, "Félicitations madame! Go make us a beautiful baby!". Who the 'us' is in this sentence is open-ended. I am assuming he means us as in Team France as in go forth young lady and make a beautiful French baby who we can add to the ranks of tax-paying-French-speaking-citizens-of-the-world... I can't help but wonder if I were not a young, fair skinned brunette if he would have said the same thing?

In addition to the kind words that swirl around pregnant Parisians there are all kinds of kind gestures that are offered to make sure we are as comfortable as possible. This is most notable when riding the public transit system in Paris. People practically leap out of their seats when they see you insisting that you take their spot. At times more than one person will offer and then a small debate amongst the travelers will ensue, "Take my seat in the corner madame, you will be more protected here" followed by "Non non madame take my seat by the window you will be more comfortable here!".

Last week I hopped on the bus. Buses in Paris are a lovely airy luminous alternative to the underground metro and have the added benefit of not having to hike up and down stairs with a giant belly, a stroller or a walking cane. Because of this, buses in Paris are stuffed full of the old, the pregnant and the leagues of parents burdened with strollers and toddlers. In this kind of environment I believe almost everyone deserves a seat, but again, fair or unfair, pregnant ladies trump all! When I got on the bus last week I saw that all the seats were filled with young mothers and the elderly. No one offered me their spot which seems logical to me, plus I was feeling fine standing up so I grabbed the bar and was ready to depart. Just then, the bus driver looked in the mirror, opened the door to his little cabin, stepped out and announced to the bus that he was not leaving until someone offered me a seat! I assured him that I was fine and this wasn't necessary and he simply wouldn't not hear it.

So while in a few weeks form now when this little bébé is born I will certainly not miss my swollen ankles and killer heart burn, I will almost certainly miss the rare affection and attention of my fellow urban dwellers reserved for pregnant ladies. Although who knows how much they heart babies?

The Italian Method

2010-06-20T09:36:00.001+02:00

Oh la la! My midwife cracked me up today in our birthing class. Today the topic was Contractions. Two of the best things I have ever heard her say were....

1. Sylvie explained, "There are all sorts of ways to jump start contractions. There are drugs you can put in an IV, you can take a long walk up hill... you can try it à l'Italienne (the Italian Method) which essentially involves having lots of sex with your husband right around your due date." Oh Italians! Do you deserve this title? Or is this another Turkish Toilet situation?!

2. One of the other mothers-to-be in the class asked Sylvie if the baby would be uncomfortable during contractions? "Oh no no no. That little baby will be sitting in your uterus clam and happy like it had just smoked a fat doobie. Those happy hormones will be running through your veins and his. Nature has this one covered." I wonder if this phenomenon contributes to a baby's desire to immediately eat when he is born?

Maison de Naissance

2010-06-14T14:01:00.004+02:00

On my way to work this morning I was stopped by a lady who just found out that she is pregnant and wanted to know where I was going to give birth... from the way she was eyeballing my belly she seemed to think that I might be on my way there that very moment. I told this lady all about the fantastic place we are giving birth and as I was going on and on about it, I realized I haven't even told you!

I am now 33 weeks into this adventure and running more or less on schedule, but back when I was 15 weeks, I was in serious trouble for not properly adhering to the Parisian-Pregnancy-Timeline.

According to all of the women I spoke to, I should have signed up for a spot at a maternité (the maternity ward of a hospital) at least 17 weeks earlier.... that's right, 2 full weeks before I even knew I was pregnant. Why? You ask? Apparently because the number of ladies giving birth and the number of beds in which to do so are grossly out of balance in Paris. Based on several solid sources, women who are trying to get pregnant should sign up for a spot at the maternité every month and then cancel it if their pregnancy test doesn't come up positive. And if they haven't called in advance then they should call the hospital to book a bed immediately after peeing on the stick... before calling a doctor to confirm the pregnancy... before calling your mother to share the good news.

At 15 weeks I was yet to sign up for a maternité... to the complete horror and dismay of my French family, friends and coworkers. Why was I dragging my feet? You ask? Well, in a world where healthcare is supposed to be free, I had somehow managed to find one of the only non-free doctors in Paris. Dr Menard a lovely lady, a highly qualified private doctor dedicated to women's health (birthing babies, doing gynecological exams, performing surgery and researching feminine cancers... something near and dear to my heart). She, however, charged 80€ a visit compared to public doctors who charge nothing and she charged 1,400€ to make an appearance on your big day, again compared to doctors in public hospitals who charge nothing. So 80€ multiplied by 9 monthly visits, plus a 1,400€ showing up fee, in addition to the bed fee at her private clinic add up to spending over 2,500€ more than we would in a public hospital. And to be frank she seemed rather bored with my healthy normal pregnancy and my basic questions, so we decided to take a closer look at the public hospital scene.

I walked over to Lariboisière, the public hospital closest to our house. The building itself is almost regal looking from a distance with a lush courtyard and tall clock tower. Once you get up close however it is a different story, the interior is... well... in an elegant form of decay, sort of like Venice. Cracked marble staircases, once noble chandeliers dangling from a wire and dark greasy smudges on the wallpaper. I ventured though the main building to the maternity ward that is housed in an unusual looking addition, which based on the sculpted burned brick and orange vinyl panneling, must have been built in the early 70's.

Security was tight, the thick glass wall perforated with a microphone sitting between you and the person sitting at the information desk felt unwelcoming. The woman behind the desk buzzed me into the waiting room that resembled a cross between the waiting area of a gritty interurban train station and the visitor's area of a prison. Nothing about this place felt nurturing, welcoming or pleasant. Still, I thought I should stay and sign up for a spot so we would at least have the option. I took a ticket as if I were at the butchers shop and waited my turn. When my number came up, the tired looking woman at the desk almost choked when I told her the date of my last period and she replied, "October 17th? Are you joking madame?? You should have come in months ago!" She then wished me luck and told me that I should receive an official reply in 10 to 15 business days through the mail. Why she couldn't just look it up on the spot, I can't say.

That week Grégoire and I contemplated our options, feeling rather unenthusiastic with both. That weekend we watched the documentary the Business of Being Born that was a total game changer for us. For those unfamiliar with the movie, here is the trailer...

Immediately upon finishing the movie, Grég and I both hopped on our laptops to start looking up independent midwives in Paris. The first place we found that got us really excited was CALM (comme à la maison or like at home in English). This politically active group is fully focused on the revival of traditional natural births and birthing experiences that empower women. After attending one of their meetings and seeing their Maison de Naissance or Birthing House we were sold. It seemed to be the best of both worlds, a friendly home like environment with a bathtub and a fold out couch for the dad, a kitchen for making snacks and soft lighting. All of this homey comfort combined with the fact that is was physically attached to the Hospital Les Bluets so if anything serious were to go awry a crew of doctors and surgeons were literally down the hall.

Saddly there was no room at the inn, I had thoughtlessly gotten pregnant in the fall and thus am having this baby right in the middle of summer vacation which doesn't work well with the sacred and strict French calendar.

The good news was that now at least we knew what we were looking for, a Maison de Naisance. The next one we found (there are only 3 in all of Paris) was La Groupe de Naissance in the 11th and is absolutely perfect for us!

It is situated on the top floor of the hospital Mona Lisa Clinique Léonard de Vinici in the 11th. The space is like CALM designed to feel more like a home than a hospital and is physically attached to a clinic so again surgeons and operation rooms are just down the hall. The group aspect of the Groupe de Naissance refers to the fact that a small group of mid-wives (6 to be exact) have partnered with two doctors (one is a surgeon one is a obstetrician) and two counselors who all share the same philosophy about giving birth: Giving birth should be everything you want it to be and we are here to make that happen for you. You would like to give birth on all fours while mooing like a cow? Pas de probleme. You would like to give birth with an epidural while listening to the Beattles? We are happy to accommodate you. You don't want anyone in the birthing suite with you other than your husband and your midwife? Why that is what we do best.

In a land where conformity is king and state run maternités are run like production lines there is precious little room for individuality or for doing things on your own terms... two very American concepts that are typically scoffed at in France. So when I met the mid-wives of the Groupe de Naissance and asked them what the birthing experience is like in their clinic, the midwife turned the question to me and asked me, "Well madame that depends, tell me what you would like your birth experience to be like?" No one had asked me that yet so I took a minute and replied to her question explaining my desires to have a natural birth in an environment surrounded by people who are telling me that I can do it, not that I can't or I can but probably shouldn't. I told her about my deepest fear of being bombarded by disgruntled state workers who have been working in hospitals all their lives and boss pregnant women around for sport. I told her that I never want people to say, 'are you joking madame?!' when I ask them something. I told her I wanted that day to be beautiful and special and intimate. And that above all I didn't want any strangers or florescent lighting in the birthing suite." She listened, she nodded, she looked at me and said, "That sounds wonderful."

Suspicious of her all too quick reply, I said, "That sounds wonderful, so....?""So that's what we'll do. In this clinic we center each birth around you and what you want to do. Every month you will meet for an hour with the same midwife who will attend your birth and follow up with you at home after the birth. We do all of the necessary medical exams and also spend time talking about your feelings and planning your birthing experience. The entire group will study your case once a week and support your midwife who in turn supports you" she explained.

She suggested I read their mission statement, which is as follows:

L’Accompagnement Global de la Naissance

Accompagner quelqu’un, ce n’est pas le précéder, ni indiquer la route, lui imposer un itinéraire,
ni même connaître la direction qu’il veut prendre, mais c’est marcher à ses cotés
en le laissant libre de choisir son chemin et le rythme de ses pas.

Global Accompaniment of Birth

To accompany someone isn't to precede them, nor to give them directions or impose your itinerary on to them, it is not even to ask them which way they would like to go,

but rather it is to walk next to them, side by side leaving them the liberty to choose their own road and rhythm of their steps.

"Oh" I said, with tears of joy in my eyes, "where to I sign up?"

Here:

Groupe de Naissance
06 69 75 20 64
www.groupenaissances.org

Financial Details:

Given that this is a private practice and not a public hospital they do have additional fees but I am all too happy to pay them! Each monthly visit cost 13€ and the big day costs 1,000€ so while it is far more expensive than free it is money well spent if you ask me.

Glaring is Caring

2010-05-06T10:00:00.002+02:00

Sitting in cafés and people watching is a national past-time here in Paris and a sport that visitors quickly pick up on. There are slight variations to the rules to people watching in France when compared to people watching in America. The principal differences are that in France blatant staring is permitted and smiling is considered to be amateur and is unacceptable in the major leagues.

Parisians not only play people watching while sitting in cafés or in parks, they play while moving around the city. Players walk the streets in their own personal bubble, not greeting the people around them, not smiling at anyone. This technique helps them avoid over-stimulation and frees them up to stare at passersby more openly since they feel somewhat insulated from the rest of the field. I would compare this phenomenon to the 'car bubble' that most Americans are familiar with. Drivers often pick their nose, inspect their teeth or openly stare at fellow drivers as if their windows were one-way mirrors and the others couldn't see them.

I highly suggest visitors to Paris try their hand at people watching, if you are nervous about staring at strangers you may want to start off by wearing dark sunglasses. As you begin to feel more comfortable, take those glasses off! NOTE: Do not stare and smile. Only stare. Smiling will add an addition level of meaning to your stares that could get you in a whole load of trouble.. more on that another day.

At times, people watching in Paris is taken to the next level. Parisians may not merely stare at you, they may in fact glare. This is a technical aspect to the game that alarms most foreign players so I would like to spend some time talking about it. If a French person glares are you do not be alarmed mon ami! These are not anti-American glares! These are not glares of hatred! No, they are glares of interest, of concern and of care for your well-being. Allow me to illustrate...

It was a cold spring day. The sun was out, but there was a chill in the air. Assuming that things will heat up later in the day, I stuck to my original plan of wearing my new red espadrills sans socks and added a scarf and coat to my ensemble to keep warm on my way to the office. Admittedly my outfit was a little disjointed, winter on top, spring on the bottom, but I decided to go with it anyway. As soon as I arrived at work all three of the ladies standing next to the coffee machine stared/glared at my feet. "Isn't it a little early for espadrilles?!", said one. "Your feet must be freezing Mary, that's a little irresponsible don't you think? Especially for a woman in your delicate condition!" said the other. The third just shook her head, stirred their coffee and glared at my offensive and dangerous choice of footwear. Now all of this glaring should not be misinterpreted to mean that these ladies do not like my cute red shoes, oh no, these glares really translate to concern for my well-being and health.

As we have learned, the French firmly believe that being cold can give you a cold and that nothing increases your chances of falling ill more than exposing your delicate neck skin with a scarf or uncovering your fragile ankles too early in the season. A similar incident occured last fall while leading a tour last year with my friends Ritzy and John. We received more than one glare from the Parisians around us. Ritzy picked up on this and assumed people were glaring at us because we were tourists being too touristy. "No no no Ritzy, they are not staring at us because we are tourists", I explained, "they are staring at ME because I am wearing this boat neck dress with no scarf in September and they are concerned that I will get a cold. So while it feels like those nasty looks are filled with distain or dislike, really they are filled with worry for my health and disapproval of my reckless wardrobe choices.".

These caring glares are not limited to clothing (or the lack their of), Parisians also freely glare at people's food and beverage choices. For example, I had a business meeting in a café recently with a fellow American travel writer (who specializes in Eastern Europe... not France). He ordered a café au lait and a citron pressé. The server hesitated, looked to me to make sure that the person I was sitting across from did in fact just order what he think he ordered, furrowed his brow at my nod, spun around and glared at us as he prepared our drinks. My friend stirred his coffee and asked me "Wait, what just happened there Mary? Did my terrible accent offend him?!". "Well... a number of things are going on here, none of which have to do with your accent. First of all café au lait is a breakfast-only beverage and it is 5 o'clock in the evening. Secondly, the French rarely order two drinks at the same time. So while the server might find those two things odd (hence the glance at me to make sure he understood you correctly) the glaring is casued by concern for your digestive system. The French only drink café au lait in the morning because they believe that amount of milk is too difficult to digest later in the day. On top of this milkly mistep, you ordered an acidic lemonade that may curdle the milk in your stomach making digestion even more difficult for you. So the reason he stared at you is because he cares about you and your little tummy. See? It's that sweet?".

Glaring is caring in France. Give it a try.

5 x 0 = 0

2010-04-19T21:31:00.015+02:00

One of the most memorable lines from my mother's visit to Paris came from my husband's mouth. My mother was reading out-loud from one of those pregnancy books looking for facts to back her apartment remodeling agenda. "Ahh ha!" she cried, "Here it says that a woman's nesting instinct is multiplied by a five during pregnancy. Mary, are you sure that you don't want to sort through the junk in the living room closet? Mathematically speaking you should be jumping at the chance!".

To this my dear husband says, "Yes Debbie, but five times zero still equals zero!"

It is true, for the time being I do not feel the slightest increase in desire to scrub our apartment with a toothbrush, alphabetize our piles of magazines or sort through my sock drawer. Maybe that will kick in later. If I play my cards right, it will kick in when I am too big to move and can simply art direct from the comfort of my couch.

While I have not felt the urge to clean I have had a very strong desire to create... stuffed animals out of old shrunken sweaters to be specific. That must mean something! Here is a picture of an octopus, an owl and a robot that I recently finished.

Vocabulary Lesson Part IV

2010-04-13T14:55:00.002+02:00

We Americans are enthusiastic by nature. This fact is evident when you hear us describe things; our everyday vocabulary is bursting at the seams with adjectives and exclamation points! How am I doing today? I am great, fantastic, wonderful. What do I think of this quiche? Oh I think it is delicious, amazing, out of this world. Do I like this music? Like it? I love it! I think this music is rockin-awesome! As you can see, when the adjectives in the dictionary no longer suffice, we don't hesitate to combine and invent even bigger better ways of expressing ourselves, rockin-awesome being a case in point.

In contrast, the French refrain from the casual use of adjectives to protect these precious words from loosing their impact when they are employed. Cautious use of positive adjectives and measured enthusiasm are two things that take getting used to as an American in France. We easily mistake their lack of enthusiasm for snobbery or indifference, which is actually far from the truth. The French are simply more honest and realistic than we are when describing things. It is true that an amazing quiche is actually rather rare. If a French person finds something that is mediocre, they see no reason to say it is great or even good just to spare your feelings. Instead they will frankly describe the quiche as fine or tell you they have had better; both likely true statements. This is not to say that the French never give out compliments or praise, they just wait until they find something or someone who truly deserves it. When a French person does run across something so extraordinary that it merits a strong adjective then it should be seen as a very special moment indeed that others should pay attention to and the person receiving the praise can fully believe and relish.

While on tour, one of my clients asked me how to translate the word 'great' into French. I paused. I know the literal translation of the word 'great', it is either grand or génial depending on the context. However I did not pass this information along right away, because if I did teach this man how to pronounce génial and set him free to point at things (like his dinner at a restaurant for example) and say géniale while smiling and giving the server a thumbs up, I would in fact being doing this man a disservice. Great is a strong word in French and if used too often or too easily, the person you are trying to compliment will assume you are being disingenuous, that you are mocking them, or that you are a complete fool who can't tell good from garbage. So I told him that the actual translation for great is génial but if he really wants to give a compliment à la française he would be better off saying pas mal, not bad, or one of the following adjectives...

Correct

Literal translation: Decent

To be used when an American would say... good, nice, fine, or lovely.

Pas mal

Literal translation: Not Bad

To be used when an American would say... great, wonderful, or very good.

Bon or Bien

Literal translation: Good or Well.

Side note: As a general rule bon is used when describing things that we can taste, touch or smell and bien is used for everything else.

To be used when an American would say... exceptionally good, far exceeds expectations, fantastic, amazing, or awesome/rockin-awesome.

As you can see, in the photo above these boys are enjoying a Monaco (beer and grenadine). Since they are drinking said beverage at a Parisian café, they have resisted the urge to high-five the bartender and grin with pleasure as they sip their delicious drinks, instead they are making a classic French Face (I will write a whole separate post on that soon) and probably thinking, these drinks are made just like they should be, thus they are pas mal.

Bare Lightbulbs

2010-04-07T10:44:00.004+02:00

My mother landed in Paris two weeks ago to get the lay of the land and see this baby bump with her own eyes. Her time here was very enjoyable and tad exhausting (emphasis on the enjoyable mom!). During the first few days of her visit all three of us were plagued with the stomach flu. Since you are mostly an American audience I will spare you the dirty details but suffice to say that it put a serious cramp in our stinky cheese eating, oyster slurping, wine sipping, walking all over Paris plans and resulted in a lot of time resting in our apartment.

The last time my mother was in Paris was in April of 2008, she arrived one day after we moved into our Montmartre home. At that time we owned two inflatable mattresses, two blankets, a couple of cups made out of cut-off plastic water bottle tops and a set of disposable silverware we kept from a take-out place. Since then we have fleshed out our apartment with some furnishings: a tulip stand record player from Germany, a cardboard stag head, an electric fireplace, a couch, a bed, a vintage rolling bar cart... but admittedly we still have a some holes....

For example it isn't easy to explain to one's mother why one doesn't own a garbage can, a rolling pin, a pot holder, a full length mirror or a single coat hanger... The excuse of 'we just moved in and aren't sure where to buy hangers in Paris' just doesn't fly like it used to. It was equally hard to justify why exactly we have a retro French faux bois Jazz wall clock in our kitchen that slowly loses time (which happened to be 93 minutes slow that day) as our only timepiece.

What sent my dear mother over the edge, however, was the bare lightbulb dangling from the bathroom ceiling. Unlike most American apartments, French apartments come with no light fixtures; just wires protruding from the walls and ceilings and if you are lucky a lightbulb. Such was the case two years ago when we moved in and sadly such is still the case in both our bathroom and entryway.

Why? It's hard to say.

Is it because we have trouble with commitment? Is it because I am married to a person who scoffs at most lamp shades and says things like "30€? Pfffft! I can make you one of those!'? Je ne sais pas.

These missing items, combined with an extended amount of time sitting on the couch feeling unwell, lead to a larger discussion of how we are going to prepare this petite apartment for our new permanent houseguest, the Bouron baby!

My mother looked around, declared it a mission impossible and strongly suggested we move to (gasp!) the suburbs. Coming from her (long time suburb hater) I knew that to a non-Parisian the situation here does look a little daunting.

But not to worry! We have a plan: Since we only have one bedroom and I value my sleep and sex-life we are planning to put the little darling in the living room. I have the corner all picked out. It's going to be lovely. My crafty husband is going to put wheels on the crib so we can slide it over to access our only built in storage which would be otherwise blocked by the crib. Then when we need to do laundry we will just push the coffee table against the record player along the wall and fold out our giant drying rack. The kid won't need a mobile because Grégoire's bike hangs on the wall to save floor space and its spinning wheels will surely provide hours of entertainment to this little bébé. See? Piece of cake!

Parisians have adapted to living in small spaces by becoming expert jugglers and impressive contortionists. As you can see in the photo up top, this clever city dweller stores his bike outside his window. My imaginative sister in law uses her oven as a pantry. These fine people in the photo to the left don't have the space for a garden so they glued a plastic one to their windows. Until last week (when we took an admittedly much needed trip to IKEA to purchase a full length mirror) I inspected my outfits by standing on my toilet seat and bending over to look at myself in the cabinet mirror glued to the wall above our sink. Problem(s) solved.

All of this to say, where there is a will there is a way and Parisians have been cramming themselves into Paris for years! With imagination and determination we too will find a way to integrate a baby and all of its accouterments into our tiny Parisian home. I have no doubt.

Do NOT get fat

2010-03-12T12:00:00.000+01:00

Not getting fat during pregnancy seems to be a major concern in this country. It is a topic that is not merely discussed amongst French women, but an issue that is addressed and readdressed by the medical community and by the government. It is as if there is a nation-wide fear that by encouraging women to have babies (a necessary evil in order to keep the population numbers up and support the tax burden) the government risks compromising one of France's main touristic attractions (tourism is a huge part of the French economy) beautiful thin women.

It's hard to say if it is truly a question of national economics or if it more of a issue of national vanity, but I can say that I am stunned at the amount of attention that is focused on this topic.

The following lines appeared on the State's guide to pregnancy and were repeated in about five different sections, "Pregnancy is a time for you to eat twice as well, NOT TWICE AS MUCH" and "Most women eat for two when they are not pregnant, so don't get any ideas about starting to eat for four just because you are pregnant."

My doctor's office also had a thing or two to say about weight gain. Their list of Dos and Don'ts clearly stated their position, "This office considers 'cravings' to be a myth and they will not be tolerated or recognized as an excuse for excessive weight gain."

Gotcha.

Thigh Highs and Garter Belts

2010-03-02T15:16:00.001+01:00

One pregnancy related problem I am currently facing the struggle to find the right kind of hosiery to wear. This expanding belly of mine is either pushing my tights down in an uncomfortable bunchy manner or causing serious discomfort (not to mention an unattractive double belly fat roll) by coming up half way over my bump.

Last week I started looking around for maternity tights online and I quickly ran across a French forum for women that was discussing this very issue! The title of the discussion: "What does one do to keep their legs warm while pregnant and wearing dresses and heels?"

The French answer to, let's face it, this rather French issue was...

....not suggesting you buy bulging maternity tights.

....not suggesting that pregnant ladies should skip the skirts and heels and just wear sweats and velour.

Oh no, mes amis. Their answer? Thigh highs and garter belts! Not only can you wear them after the pregnancy but they keep you looking sexy and fabulous during your pregnancy without cutting off your circulation, causing unflattering bunching or compromising your femininity.

Only in Paris.

The Dos and Don'ts of a French Pregnancy

2010-02-14T10:00:00.012+01:00

One of the most interesting and amusing aspects of being pregnant in a foreign land is comparing the list of dos and don'ts you get here with the list you grew up hearing about. When you are pregnant (much like when you are a bride) advice comes at you from all angles, charged with personal experiences, political bias and hearsay. Today I want to share some of my favorite dos and don'ts given to me by french colleagues, doctors and official websites...

Do not under any circumstances lift your arms above your head! I wasn't sure what our accountant was talking about when she told me this, so I started to move my arms and said, "What? You mean like this?" Before my arms were at breast height she reached over with both hands and clamped them to my side... "Yes, exactly like that. Don't do it! This means that from now on your husband must scrub the tiles." While I am a wonderful homemaker, I am terrible housecleaner, thus I am honestly not sure what tiles she was referring to... my shower stall tiles possibly? She seemed so insistent that I nodded, looking grave while I assured her I would let Grégoire scrub all of the tiles in our home from here on out.

For those addicted to smoking, up to ten light cigarettes per day is permissible. Whaaaat? And this little tid-bit of advice was on the list of dos and don'ts that my doctor's office gave to me!

Consumption of alcohol is unacceptable, wine is acceptable. This was also on the list my doctor's office gave me. Now, last time I checked wine contains alcohol so reread the sentence... and read it again (consumption of wine is a topic near and dear to my heart) and I then determined that by alcohol they must mean hard liquor. So manhattans are out but a nice glass of red burgundy is apparently fine. What does that mean for beer you say? Well that is clarified in the following rule.

All sparkling beverages should be systematically avoided, especially during the later months of pregnancy. Now in real life (as in when I am not pregnant) I really only like to drink three things: wine, coffee and water. That is it. When hard pressed I will have an Orangina or a ginger ale but I otherwise do not enjoy soda. So what's a girl to do? Two out of the three beverages I drink on a regular basis are shunned by the American pregnancy community and the French have banned fizzy drinks.... A girl can only drink so much juice.

Avoid ingesting dirt or anything that a cat may have peed on. All joking aside this apparently is the most important rule of all for French pregnant ladies to follow. Over here toxoplasmosis abounds and while it has little to no effect on the mother it can kill or seriously hurt your fetus. One way of getting this bacteria is through cat excrement... many French cat owners lodge their cats during pregnancy or add the cat box cleaning duty to their husband's list of chores along with tile scrubbing. Another way of getting the toxoplasmosis bacteria is through dirt that is clinging to your vegetables, some say a good scrubbing is fine others go so far as to say no vegetables or fruit should be consumed in their raw form, especially salad. I am still trying to sort this whole toxoplasmosis thing out, for the time being I am required to do monthly blood tests to confirm that I don't have it... so far so good.... but I can't help but eye restaurant salads more carefully to confirm those black specks are pepper and not dirt sprinkles.

Unpasteurized milk products and undercooked meat must not be consumed. France and America seem to agree here, which is nice. In the US importation of unpasteurized milk products is illegal, so you really have to go out of your way to eat them but here they are everywhere! As soon as you want to eat a fancy bit of fromage or an organic yoghurt they are almost automatically made with raw milk which makes them delicious but which also makes them dangerous for unborn babies. When it comes to meat the French strongly believe that the optimal way to serve it is rare. Restaurants and their staff are so sure of this that when you order it any other way, you are likely to get a look and a lecture on how the meat would be better if you order it, at the very least, medium rare. For me that is apparently not an option. When confronted with the temptation of order a rare piece of steak (both because that is my preference and because I hate being lectured by servers) I conjure up the image of my doctor and her shoe. The day she presented me with the list of rules my she took off one of her brown leather high heels and pointed to the sole saying, "You need to ask for it well done Mary, it should be cooked so tough that you might think you are be eating shoe leather!" Great.

Three reasons....

2010-02-13T11:49:00.006+01:00

Three reasons why having a baby in a 350 square foot apartment in Paris (contrary to popular belief) is in fact going to be great!

1. No need to buy an expensive and complicated baby monitor... I am fairly certain that we will be able to hear our child from any corner of our apartment.

2. The age old argument over what color to paint the nursery will not be an issue for us as I doubt either of us will want to paint a corner of our living room yellow or blue or green or what have you.

3. Once our child learns how to roll or crawl or walk there is absolutely no risk of them falling down the stairs... we don't have any! Ha!

I heart Google

2010-02-09T13:26:00.002+01:00

For obvious reasons I LOVE this spot for Google.

http://creativity-online.com/work/google-parisian-love/18839

Oh my God! Guess what?

2010-01-20T12:10:00.004+01:00

Women in relationships between the ages of 25 and 35 are essentially forced to remove the phrase 'Oh my God! Guess what?' from their vocabulary.

For the past few years whenever I say, "Oh my God! Guess what?". The answer was inevitably, "Oh! You are pregnant!! Yay!". Up until now my response to their reaction was inevitably "No... I don't have to work this Friday!" or "Nooo... I tried that gnocchi recipe and it was a disaster!"

However starting today I would like to officially reintegrate 'Oh my God! Guess what?' into my vocabulary because... Oh my God! Guess what?

Vocabulary Lesson - Part III

2010-01-14T14:06:00.001+01:00

I learned two new expressions this week and cannot wait to share them with you. They are exactly the sort of thing that no French teacher would ever think to teach you and are thus perfect for our series in vocabulary.

Cinq à Sept

Literal translation... 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock.

Meaning...the term cinq à sept refers to that magical period of time when you can sneak out of work without your boss noticing, spend two hours with your lover, and still be home in time for dinner with your spouse which is typically served around 8 o'clock.

Real life examples of this expression in action....Ex 1. "Who is Lilly? Oh. She is my cinq à sept...if you know what I mean". Now I do. Ex 2. "Christine, I am really enjoying you as my English tutor, can we do next week's lesson from.. oh I don't know... cinq à sept?!". Classy.

Baise en ville

Literal translation... a screw in the city.

Meaning... a small men's handbag that is just large enough to contain a toothbrush, tie and change of shirt. Everything you need when you have a sexy overnight date in the city, a longer version of a cinq à sept, one might say.

Real life examples of this expression in action... although vulgar when translated in to English (one can also translate the verb baiser by the verb to F@#%) this expression has become completely banal and is used by the young, the old and the refined. Ex 1. "Oh what a lovely leather baise en ville, would you like one for your birthday sweetheart?".

Screw you and your Dinosaur - Part II

2010-01-10T15:10:00.002+01:00

WHAT?!

A continuation...

Do what?!

You would like me to do math using this piece of paper and pencil while you and your co-workers occupying this hip-open-space-office-loft watch me? No thank you.

But I am in too deep, I used the word amortize as if I knew exactly how to use it. Again a look of surprise and puzzlement must have spread across my face because Pierre kindly offers the use of the calculator function on his iphone if I need it, I could just tell him what to type in. How sweet.

Ok Pierre. Game on.

Twenty painful minutes go by while I try to recall the figures he mentioned earlier and try (to no avail) to distract him with charming questions about keychain sales and t-shirt design. I was hoping that he would see that this simply wasn't going to work out and that the only humane thing to do would be to put an end to my misery. But no, he waits patiently, cruelly. So I eventually come up with a number and hand it over.

"Here, I suppose I would take that number and multiply it by 3 to 5 years depending on when you hope to turn a profit" I say. He seems disinterested and says, "Huh. Ok.".

Very long moment of silence.

"So Pierre... do you do this kind of thing often?" I inquire.

"Do what? Buy dinosaurs? Not often, no." he replies.

I do not find this funny. "No Pierre, I mean do you often purchase items at auction? As in, is that how you acquire some of your wine? In this position would I be expected to advise you on these sorts of purchases?" I ask.

Pierre shrugs. "No." He says.

"And you do have an accountant, don't you?" I ask.

"Yeah." says Pierre.

There is a long moment of silence while I try to understand why then he put me through such a painful and embarrassing exercise.

Pierre breaks the silence and tells me he has some important questions for me and that I should answer them as quickly as possible. Fine.

"Where do you live? Are you married? Do you smoke? Do you play sports? What kind of music do you like? Do you like wine?"

I answer them even though I am scandalized by how personal and off subject the questions are. He then passes the baton over to his associate, Julie, to see if she has any questions for me.

"Are you familiar with Excel?" she inquires.

"Yes." I say.

"Would you say you are good at Excel?" she continues.

"Sure." I reply.

"Mary, can you explain to me what a v-cap is?" Julie asks.*

"No, gosh, I am not sure what that is. What is it?" I say, genuinely interested. Never having heard the word in my life and based on the v like vin as in the word for wine in french I am hoping it is finally a question about wine.

"Oh. You don't know what that is? It's a formula used in Excel. Huh, can you then please tell me what you mean by 'you are good at using Excel'? " she says.

I want to die for the third time during this interview and at this point cannot even recall what I said to them. What in retrospect I would have liked to say them is this: "I am not answering that Julie. In fact I would like you two to answer a few questions of my own. Can you please tell me how these games and questions relate to this position? And why in the ad you did not say anything like, looking for Excel expert who can give us complex financial advice? Because if that were the case, believe you me, I would have never applied for this job. And if you were looking for a candidate that would be able to answer these kinds of questions on the spot why then did you call me?! Someone who clearly states on their resumé that they have a degree in French literature and Urban Design... Experience in event planning and customer service... A love of food and wine and France... Someone who is not an economist... not an accountant.. not a business school graduate."

Julie wraps things up by saying, "Last question. Have you had a chance to look at our website? What do you think of it?".

At this point I am mad. Assuming that I do not have the job thus do not have anything to loose, I answer the question with brutal honesty. "You know Julie, I have had a chance to look at your website and while I like the fact that there is a lot of information on it, I find the overall design unattractive and the flashy color choices garish and cheap. If I were you I would go for a more subtle approach."

Long moment of silence.

"Which agency did you work with?" I inquire.

Very long moment of silence.

"I designed it myself." says Julie.

And with that they thank me for my time and tell me they will be in touch.

I assumed that is were the story was going to end. I bet you did too! Well no my friends, a month and a half later I receive a phone call from Pierre. "Hey Mary! How are you?! Sorry it took us so long to get back to you, we just got home from vacation. Anyway, congratulations! You're hired!!".

Long moment of silence.

What?!

I told him, "Thank you, but no thank you."

*She said what sounded to me like v-cap... in reality I have no idea what she said. All it know it is started with v. So if any of you excel-o-philes would like to jump in here and say what you think it is feel free.

The price of a Dinosaur - Part I

2010-01-06T16:38:00.017+01:00

This Friday I have a job interview... maybe that is too presumptuous.

This Friday I have a meeting with the hippest and most interesting company in all of Paris. It's a get to know you type meeting during which I hope they fall madly in love with me and tell me they want to create beautiful children together in the form of free-lance projects.

All of this excitement and preparation reminds me of a story that I haven't shared with you. I believe enough time has passed that I can freely tell this story... just to be sure, names have been changed.

This summer I ran across an ad for an amazing job: A wine focused special events company was looking for an Anglophone to manager their office and customer relations. I jumped at the chance. Sent off my cv and scored an interview.

I arrive in the shabby chic loft that serves as their office and am greeted by a young Parisian disguised as an American frat-boy. He introduces himself as Pierre... let's say... and offers me coffee. I accept, which forces him to sift through the pile of dirty and less dirty dishes on the counter looking for a cleanish cup. There is no sugar to be found. Apparently the milk has gone bad. Fine.

Black coffee in hand, he starts to describe his business plan to me at length. I tell him a little bit about myself, how I ended up in France etc. He then describes the position to me, sounds like I would be mainly dealing with customer service, a little bit of party planning and a few administrative tasks... going to the post office, photocopying things.. etc.

Pierre then proposes we play a game. I come from a highly competitive family and LOVE games so I tell him that I am in! He says, "I am going to give you a scenario and you tell me what you would do.... sound good?". Let the games begin!

"Let's imagine that I am the owner of a zoo in California. I just heard that through the magic of modern science they have been able to clone a dinosaur! And guess what? They are selling it at auction to the highest bidder tomorrow afternoon. As my employee, how much do you think I should spend on this dinosaur?"

Long moment of silence.

What?!

I was expecting something more along the lines of... we are serving garlicky eggplant at an event next week what kind of wine do you think we should serve? Or... we just realized that we didn't order enough champagne and our client is furious! What should we do?

My face must have shown my surprise and puzzlement at his question, because Pierre quickly and generously offers to answer any question I may have about the zoo if it would help answer his question.

Ok Pierre. "So tell me, what kinds of animals do we already have at the zoo? Do we already have a suitable spot to put the little darling or do we need to remodel the monkey cages? Is the zoo doing well or is this world premiere of a cloned dinosaur a last ditch effort to save our failing zoo? Is this a vegetarian or carnivorous dinosaur? How will that impact our insurance policy if it is a carnivorous dinosaur? How much do we charge as an entrance fee? How long to do think this dino will live?" I say. He answers my questions, pulling numbers out of the air, 10 million here 50 grand there.

After about 15 minutes of this businessy banter, I conclude by saying, "Here is what I would do Pierre, I would take the construction costs of the new dino-land exhibit, amortize that amount over the expected life of the dinosaur and compare those numbers to our projected increase in ticket sales (based loosely on the increase we experienced when we bought that two headed elephant a few years back) and come up with a final number that way."

My plan of attack was to dazzle him with interesting questions, display a sense of business logic, skip over coming up with an actual number and move on to the next scenario.

Turns out this was the only question and that not coming up with a number was not an option. He digs around in his desk, pulls out a piece of scratch paper and a pencil and says, "Sounds like a good plan, let's do it!".

Long moment of silence.

WHAT?!

To be continued....

Good News Bad News

2009-12-29T16:11:00.011+01:00

The good news is that we officially don't have to pay our rent anymore.

The bad news is that our building is slowly sliding down the slopes of Montmartre.

Earlier this week a man knocked on our door. Greg was in the living room wearing just a bath towel so I opened the door. A scruffy looking man in his early sixties was standing in our hall way. He had longish hair and a stubbly beard. I assumed he was a nicely dressed chlochard who had come to knock on our door and ask for money. Bold I thought, as I half listened to his spiel. He asked me if I am a renter or an owner in the building? I told him that we are renters. He then says, "Well I have good news for you ce soir, you can stop paying your rent!". "Well isn't that something" I say smiling, realizing that this man is nuts, shooting glares at Greg hoping he would put pants on and get rid of this guy.

The man goes on to explain why exactly we don't have to pay our rent anymore. It turns out that there is a problem with the foundation of our apartment building and the three other apartment buildings that surround us are also part of the problem. Apparently the individual owners of each of apartment in each of these four buildings have been arguing for the past 10 year about how to fix this problem and this guy has been spear-heading a movement to have our buildings officially declared to be in "a state of peril" so that we can legally stop paying rent in protest.

The unkempt appearance of this man, which I mistook for a life sleeping under bridges, is in fact a popular look for his generation which lived through the infamous protests of May '68. A wave of demonstrations and marches swept across France that spring. University students took over the city, throwing cobble stones and throwing out the capitalist ideals that were starting to creep in to society. Many of the socialistic protections and benefits we enjoy in France today are thanks to the work of these revolutionaries. As the man continued to share the history of the situation with us, I could see embers of his fiery youth reigniting in his eyes as he was explaining to us how we are going exercise our rights and stick it to the man!

He told us that we should keep our eyes out for an official posting from the Prefecture de Police and once we see it we can officially stop paying rent in protest of our landlord renting us a apartment in a building with a cracked foundation.

Sure enough, the very next day a four page document was hung in our entry way declaring that our building is in a perilous state. Due to a structural issue originating from the shared foundation of our building the rich and evil (ok I added that part about rich and evil but that is the tone we are dealing with here) land owners who are renting these slums to innocent workers are no longer allowed to collect rent. As long as the repairs are not done the renters are allowed to live in the building rent free. Based on the fact that it took between 10-15 weeks to set up our internet connection in our apartment I cannot fathom how long it is going to take these land owners to meet, decide, delegate, fund and fix the foundation. I think it could take at least a year.

Now I should say that we live in a beautiful apartment, in a lovely building, in a great part of town. Anyone can see that the people who created this law didn't intend to cover buildings like ours and renters like us. But thanks to our activist neighbor and our apparently negligent landlord we find ourselves in this little legal loop hole that allows us to save 800€ a month! Vive la France!

Indigestion and other French Conversation Starters

2009-09-18T16:31:00.000+02:00

The French like to talk about their bodies. They unabashedly discuss, analyze and share their body's functions with the world. They are only too happy to report on the current state of their bowels, talk about their level of water retention that day or how well they slept last night.

If you have dark circles under your eyes or have gained a bit of weight, chances are someone is going to ask you about it. On the flip side, if you have just returned from vacation and you are looking tan and rested, I guarantee you someone will inquire about your bonne mine which translates to your physical glow. In most cases the person is neither criticizing nor complimenting you, they are simply trying to strike up conversation.

When you wake up in the morning in France one of the first things you will talk about is what kind of shape you are in that morning. As soon as you arrive at the breakfast table someone will ask you how you slept last night? At first I thought this was one of those hollow 'How are you? Good. And you?' type of questions but the answer I received when I asked, and you? was a full on report about how they woke up covered in sweat because of the weather or how they had a hard time falling asleep because of the spicy dinner they ate which had given them indigestion. This level of information often leaves me speechless, uncomfortable with the amount of information I have received I am both uninterested in posing follow up questions and uninterested in talking about how much or how little I sweat last night.

That fact that you are unwilling to offer unsolicited updates on a rash that is bothering you or the wart on your toe, does not discourage others from sharing this kind of information with you. During one of my first days at the design agency I greeted one of our account executives and asked how he was doing. His answer was, "Not great, I just ate Chinese food for lunch and am feeling really bloated and gassy. Don't you find greasy food like that impossible to digest? Always gives me the runs!". At this point I did not even know this person's name and I certainly did not need to know this level of detail as to how he was processing his lunch.

As the weeks progressed at work, I got used to hearing this kind of insider information on the physical conditions of my coworkers so I decided to try sharing a few details of my own. Last week I had diarrhea...see...evening typing this to you blog fans makes me feel uncomfortable....so I come in to work and when my coworker asks me how I am doing, I answer à la française and say, "Oh, I am not doing too well. My stomach is feeling a little unsettled." My colleague was disappointed with my vague terminology and genuinely interested in my condition. She replied, "Unsettled? Unsettled how? Did you throw up? Do you have gas? Is it diarrhea, and if so how many times have you pooped today? What do you think caused it?". Woah woah woah. I instantly wished I had never brought it up but since I initiated the conversation I had to finish it, "Yep, unsettled, must have been something I ate, anyway how are you?"

These conversations do not just come up between friends and colleagues. If you missed the story about how bluntly the immigration doctor commented on the gas that showed up on my x-ray be sure to skip back and read it. Turns out his comment is par for the course in France. Not long ago I had a gynecological visit. The doctor was a lovely sophisticated lady in her late 50's. She preformed a traditional ladies exam which in this office includes an ultrasound. She was looking around, showing me on the little screen what my ovaries look like, and then she scrolls over to my bladder and says, "Oh oh oh! Somebody has to go pee pee!". She was right and despite my gut reaction of surprise and horror I reminded myself she is just trying to be chatty so I replied trying to sound french and said something like, "Oh yeah. Isn't coffee the worst? Runs right through me".

At the UW I had a French Professor who presented a theory about this subtle but distinct cultural difference. He says it all comes back to religion. The French are a historically Catholic society while America is traditionally Protestant. When you enter a French Catholic church you see a large cross with a dead or dying Jesus on it. Jesus usually doesn't look that good (understandably so) his head it hanging, his body is limp and blood is dripping from his head, hands and from the slash on his side. When Catholics look to the cross they see a mangled body. Now, when you enter a American Protestant church the cross is usually bare and is often represented in a more abstract way, like a cross shaped window. Professor Collins argued that these two different crosses illustrate the two cultures different philosophies about the human body. Catholics are focused on the flesh in all its glory and sinfulness. Protestants prefer to ignore or suppress the body, hiding or ignoring it's sinful and dirty nature.

So while books like "Everybody Poops" may help the next generation to more openly and loudly discuss their gas and bodily functions, I guess I am just an old-school American Protestant kind of lady.

Scolding

2009-09-05T11:35:00.000+02:00

The French rarely miss an opportunity to scold. They appear to relish in it and show no mercy to the young, the old or the foreign.

My dear American friend Michelle was strolling through the Champs de Mars with her sun-screen slathered child sitting in the stroller in front of her. It was a beautiful summer day so she pulled back the cover and let Jackson enjoy the light. A French mother came striding over tisk-tisking Michelle for exposing her child to such a dangerous amount of sun! Michelle starts to explain that Jackson is covered in sunscreen but the woman isn't having it and scolds Michelle unmercifully for being an inattentive mother.

I have identified several situations in my life which tend to provoke an unsolicited tongue lashing and I now avoid them like the plague.

In spite of my efforts, from time to time, I find myself on the wrong end of a wagging finger. This happened just the other day in the metro. Grégoire gave me a beautiful new wallet for Christmas. This pale soft leather portefeuille neatly closes with a hidden magnet to contain my cash, cards and metro tickets. The trouble is that this magnet demagnetizes my about half of my metro tickets every time I put a carnet (10 pack of tickets) in there. When you run a demagnetized ticket through the turnstile there is a loud meeeeeep as the bar locks in to place and a crash and sigh as the people behind you bump in to you not understanding why you have stopped up the system. You then have to make your way through the crowd to the ticket sales desk, explain your situation and hope that they replace your ticket.

I have had less than pleasant experiences with ticket sellers in the past so I stock up on demagnetized tickets and trade them all in at one time when I see a nice looking salesperson. I thought I found such a person last week, a young plump girl with an eyebrow ring. I really felt like we would connect and bond over these silly low tech tickets that are always demagnetizing themselves.

"Bonjour, I believe these tickets are demagnetized." I say as I smile and slide the tickets under the window. Silence. Eye roll. She looks suspiciously at my tickets and asks if I know how it is that my tickets have magically demagnetized themselves? I shrug, unwilling to admit that my wallet is surely the culprit. Admitting fault is a rookie mistake in these kinds of situations. More on that another day. She says, "It's not surprising madame that they are demagnetized given the sate they are in..."Oh God. I picked the wrong person. "...you know these little tickets have value! They should be stored is a specific and safe location." I nod, assuming her little scold was over and assuming that if I seem sorry then it would speed up the reissuing process.

But she continued, "And this one! I can see that you ran it through the machine!" She was in an indirect, yet very clear way, accusing me of laundering metro tickets. Of making false claims of demagnetization in order to get fresh tickets in exchange for my used ones. I suggest she run the ticket through the ticket reader which will tell her if it is used or if it is simply demagnetized. She scoffs at this suggestion and tells me that computers don't know everything and that she can see as plain as day that this ticket has been used. Mid-rant I pull out another demagnetized ticket out of my pocket that I forgot about and hand it to her, I figure I am already in trouble so I might as well get as many tickets traded in as I can. This sent her over the edge. She turns red and squawks at me through the holes in the glass, "Metro tickets must be respected! You can't just stuff them anywhere like kitchen rags!!". Silence. I nod. She hands me 3 fresh tickets and holds the 4th up to the glass, "I am keeping this one to teach you a lesson. Next!"

I walked away from the window 1.18€ poorer and laughing. When this kind of thing would happen when I first arrived I would have surely left in tears assuming I had done something wrong. Now I just shake my head and think what is wrong with these people? They are so crazy! I am looking forward to the next step which will surely be having the courage and the vocabulary of a native Parisian to scold her back for selling such flimsy and delicate tickets to me in the first place!

The Scarf

2009-08-29T11:41:00.000+02:00

A well stocked French wardrobe will contain at least a dozen scarves. Frenchwomen own silk scarves, wool scarves, exotic scarves from Morocco, fringy scarves from Barcelona, wool scarves from England, flimsy lace scarves....and on and on. It is not only a important accessory (allowing you to dress up or dress down an outfit) it is a question of health. Everyone here firmly believes that having your neck skin exposed is a surefire way to get sick.

I have, for the most part, adapted my wardrobe to accomodate this trend. In part, because I happen to love scarves and in part, because I live in fear of being scolded by the French (more on that another time). This trend however went to new heights today when I walked by my local Princess Tam Tam shop. See left.

A bikini and a scarf?! Come on now.

The French Calendar

2009-08-01T08:23:00.005+02:00

I find the French population to be incredibly in sync. If you were take a peek at your average Parisian's ical I have a feeling that it would be almost idendical to their neighbor's ical. This phenomenon is most apparent in the month of August when the entire population in Paris leaves for their summer vacation.

For those unfamiliar with the French annual schedule I will break it down for you.

January: Ski vacations and les Soldes. French merchants are only aloud to put their inventory on sale twice a year, in January and in July.

February: Busy working. Valentine's day is barely recognized.

March: Working.....yes....the French all have a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation per year but they do work hard especially in the Springtime.

April: Still working. Somewhere in here their is a school holiday.

May: Working when not enjoying one of the three (THREE!!) national holidays this month. This year was a perfect storm of May holidays, they all landed near the weekend which prompted most people to faire le pont or make the bridge. For example, May 1st is a holiday and were it to land on a Tuesday I can guarantee you that no one will be at work on Monday because they will have 'made the bridge' and turned this one day off in to a 4 day weekend extravaganza.

June: Very busy working because oh la la it is almost vacation season and soon we won't be able to order any more ink, speak to our clients or repair our delivery truck.

July: First wave of Parisians leave the city. Remaining Parisians panic as they try to cram in the last of their work before the tsunami wave of workers leave the city of lights for their country residences or campsites. Second round of Soldes! Summer clothing blow out for those headed on vacation and to make room for the fall collection they will buy when they get back from vacation.

August: Entire population of Paris is replaced by the population of Rome. Most of Paris can be found lined up like sausages along the coastlines of the Hexagon.

September: La rentrée. School beings. Workers begrudgingly return to work.

October: The strike season begins! In September workers are overwhelmed with catch up on projects put on hold by vacation season. By the time October arrives they are lusting after their long summer vacation and have enough free time at work to start organizing les grèves or strikes that block the streets, paralyze the rails and shut down schools.

November: Working. I try to presuade Parisians to embrace Thanksgiving.

December: Holiday time! Use up remaining 2 weeks of paid leave from work plus a few more recoup days (when you surpass the 35 hour work week limit you get to add up those extra hours and cash them in for vacation time at a later date)! Ski vacations!

Better off alone....

2009-07-13T10:37:00.002+02:00

Roaming the streets of Montmartre my friends and I were on the hunt for a good crêperie. Having lived in Bretagne (the birth place the crêpe) and being married to a Breton I have two simple rules that must be respected when selecting a crêperie. 1. No pizza crêpes. I am not saying that the menu must be limited to only the traditional complète (eggs, ham and gruyère cheese) but when you start to bring in mozzarella and the tomato sauce I start to cringe at the outlandish lack of respect for tradition. 2. They must use two different batters, one using blé noir ou buckwheat flour for the galettes or savory crêpes and one using white wheat flour for the sweet crêpes. It's not asking much...really...but you would be surprised at what they try to pass off as a crêpe in this city.

We scanned the menu in the window which passed muster. Seeing several open tables we enter and request a table for six. The gentleman's reply was something like this, "Baahh...sit down if you want but it will be at least 20 minutes before I can even come over to set the table". We take a look around, see that half of the 10 or so tables are full, assume he is bluffing, and sit down. Sure enough 20 minutes roll by and during this time we see him dash from the kitchen to the dining room, back to the kitchen, dart downstairs to the cellar, back to the front door to frighten away other potential diners with long wait times, into the kitchen and finally to our table.

My friend Maxime inquires about the lack of staff. The man laughs and says "Il vaut mieux être seul que mal accompagné" which means it is better to be alone than in poor company. I have heard this expression before in the context of divorce proceedings but never in a business setting. The man, pictured here, runs this 10 table crêperie single handed. He tells us that he had a larger place with a staff and it was a nightmare, someone was always sick or late or pregnant. So a few years ago he jumped ship and bought this little place in which he is the host, cook, waiter, dishwasher and owner.

While clearly he could do more business if he so desired (he successfully managed to scare away the group that came in behind us even though there were enough tables and chairs to seat them) but when we point this out to him, he says, "Why? I earn enough to pay the rent, I can close when I want, if I were to serve more people it would only cause me problems". More money more problems, I hear you guy.

Jumping to Conclusions

2009-07-07T16:43:00.002+02:00

I have been speaking French for nearly 10 years now. While my spelling and grammatical skills could still use some work, I have always been proud of my accent. As it turns out, sounding more French than you are can really get you in to trouble.

The problem is, French sounding words come out of my mouth but they sometimes come out in the wrong order or in the incorrect tense. Or at times the words come out correctly but my questions are so silly and basic that the person I am speaking to isn't sure how to respond. For example, the first time I went to the doctor's office here in Paris I had to ask them how to open the door? Or when I went to the pharmacist and asked if she could show me how large a 6cm band-aid is? In these situations, the person I am talking to, looks me up and down, and thinks hmmm...this lady looks sort of French and sounds fairly French (or given her accent she has at least lived here for a while) why is she asking me such a stupid question? And why didn't she use the correct form of the verb to be? In earlier days people would assume that I was a tourist. Their expressions would soften, their speech would slow and they would kindly respond to my question. Unfortunately, nowadays most people conclude that I am an idiot. Or a racist as the case may be.

I first realized this phenomenon when I was buying bread one morning. I walk in to the bakery, greet the sales woman and ask for a baguette. I greet people all the time and have successfully ordered more than a hundred baguettes in my day so these sentences flow easily and accurately from my lips. She replies, "Trad ou Gana?". My brow furrows as I search my list of vocabulary words looking for trad or gana...nothing...I obviously look lost so the saleswoman repeats her question to me, "Trad?! ou Gana!?". The man behind me in line sighs with impatience and the saleswoman glares at me wondering what my problem is. Apparently she decides that I must be an idiot because she pauses and smiles in a pityful and slightly condesending way then in slow motion points to the two baskets of bread and says, "ça ou ça? this or this?". I quickly realize by Trad she means a Baguette de Tradition and by Gana she means a Flute de Gana. Some bakeries buy the rights or special ingredients which permit them to sell a certain kind of bread. There are a handful of these bread brands which I am now familiar with but at the time I only knew of the Tradition which I had never heard being referred to as a Trad. Native French people are familiar with this kind of bakery lingo, tourists rarely pick up on it, and I land somewhere in between. Not familiar enough to understand her abbreviated terminology, but too familiar to get the nice explanation reserved for visitors.

This same issue comes up at work. This week a man named Saïd Rachidi (a name not of French origins but a common North African name that most French people would be familiar with) called in to our offices. I pick up the phone and from my brief greeting he is unable to detect that I am not French. So when I ask him to repeat his name five times and then finally ask him to spell it out for me he is offended and assumes I am ridiculing him because of his non-French name. Little does he know that I make 90% of people who call in at work repeat their names five times then have them spell it. This man leaves our interaction concluding that I am a racist and not a foreigner who honestly could not understand his name.

When I lived in the States and would come to France for vacation or for work, I wanted to appear as French as possible. I used my very best accent, used French hand gestures and put on my most Euro-fabulous clothing. These days I usually to identify myself as non-French right away, especially in situations where I don't know exactly what I am doing or how to explain what I need. Generally speaking the motivation for doing this is practical. However recently I have been feeling simultaneously motivated by feelings of patriotism. These recent feelings of patriotism are still under review and will surely be analyzed further in a future post. All I know is that ever since I moved here I no longer feel the need to minimize my American-ness, it just gets me in to trouble anyway.

A brief intermission...

2009-07-06T23:04:00.002+02:00

It know it has been a while since my last posting. I started to feel a little directionless in my blogging and I was concerned that I was being negative and overly critical.

Today, I am here so say that I am back! I am officially driving my husband nuts with my daily stories and observations and ranting and raving and have concluded that in order to maintain his sanity (and mine) I should continue writing. So, without further ado....my latest thoughts...

Vocabulary Lesson - Part II

2009-05-17T16:45:00.008+02:00

Since we are on the subject of mornings in France and waking up I thought I would do another little vocabulary lesson. Here are a few more words and expressions that no French teacher will ever think to teach you.

J'ai mal aux cheveux... Literal translation: My hair hurts....Meaning: I am hung over.

J'ai la tête dans le cul...Literal translation: My head is in my ass...Meaning: I am having a hard time waking up this morning.

Je suis dans le pâté....Literal translation: I am in the pâté...Meaning: I am moving so slowly this morning that it feels like I am wading through meatloaf.

Petite House in Seattle for Rent

2009-04-14T13:33:00.008+02:00

We have a 1917 Columbia City house available for rent starting June 1st. The house has been lovingly restored and features a floor to ceiling river rock fireplace, a claw foot tub, original fir flooring and a brand new kitchen. The house is 800 square feet with one large living room, a kitchen/dining room, a full bathroom and one bedroom.

The home is furnished with the basics including a queen-sized bed, a brown leather couch, two velvet wing chairs, a large desk and a dining room table with chairs. More or less furnishings can be negotiated.

We have big yard with lots of potential, great for someone who likes to garden. There is a driveway in the back of the house off of the alley and lots of street parking out front.

Our house is located on S Lucile St, just off Rainier Ave South. We are a 5 minute walk to Columbia City’s row of hip restaurants, an artsy movie theater and a great Farmer’s Market. Walking in the other direction, we are 7 minutes from the Seward Park PCC and 15 minutes from the entrance of Seward Park featuring a great jogging trail, tennis courts, a boat launch and BBQ pit.

From our house you can quickly get downtown, it’s a 6 mile commute. You also have easy access to I-90 and I-5. Columbia City will be one of the major stops on the new light rail system that is opening this summer. So soon you will be able to whiz to the airport or downtown in no time.

Grégoire and I currently live in Paris, but in this high tech world we are available and attentive landlords. We are hoping to find a responsible, self sufficient tenant. We are asking $1,300 a month with a 12 month lease. Water, sewage and garbage are included.

Interested parties can contact me at maryineurope@gmail.com

Thursday at 4 o'clock

2009-03-31T08:08:00.003+02:00

Getting things done in Paris isn't easy. If you have an important errand to run or someone specific you need to talk to, like your banker or your hairstylist, I have determined that the best time to get these things accomplished is at 4 o'clock on a Thursday.

Due to the restricted work week and the French respect for days of rest, the shop, restaurant or business you are looking to get a hold of could be closed any day between Friday and Tuesday. If they are open Friday and Saturday then they are surely closed Sunday and Monday. However some places are open Saturday and Sunday which means they could be closed Friday an Monday or worse, Monday and Tuesday. These days off are unapologetically scheduled and are hard to predict. Therefore essentially 5 out of 7 days in a week you can easily spend time going someplace only to arrive and have it be closed and all you can say is of course, it's Tuesday. Wednesday can also be problematic. Many young school children have half days on Wednesdays so parents sometimes work from home those days or close up early. So then you are down to one day, Thursday.

The timing of your call or visit is also very important. The average French work day starts around 10 o'clock. You show up at work, open your computer, have a coffee and a cigarette, visit, then eventually head to your desk for a couple of hours of work. Before you know it it's 1 o'clock and time for lunch. Lunch can last as little as 45 minutes and as much as 120 minutes so no use calling or dropping by during those hours, even if ironically that's when you have time because you are on your lunch break. By 3 o'clock everyone is settled back in to work, shops are open and people are picking up their phones. This window of time lasts until roughly 7 o'clock but after a year of trial and error I am telling you 4 o'clock on Thursdays is the only sure bet.

TaDaaaah!

2009-03-19T18:19:00.019+01:00

I now am a card-carrying member of French society. My Day of Welcome was a success and aside from a slight misunderstanding involving €300 I would say it was even easy.

I arrived early to my appointment and found the very same crowd at the door that I saw on google map's street view, I suspect their door is permanently surrounded with people. I stood with a group of 40 or so immigrants outside the agency, which was closed for lunch. Everyone had the same appointment time, one o'clock, and everyone had to stay for the entire half day session so I found it baffling that everyone was banging on the door and pushing and shoving their way in. I was seriously concerned about being crushed so I stepped back, watched and waited for the craziess to subside. It occurred to me that maybe these people were emigrating from countries where you have to push and shout and shove to get your way.

Once we were all inside we waited in a more orderly line, handed in our paperwork and then filed in to a kind of classroom. At one end of the room there was a large flat screen television and the bust of Marianne (a symbol of French freedom, sort of like our eagle, but topless and a woman). A Franco-Chinese woman welcomed us to our Day of Welcome and switched on the video. We watched a 20 minute presentation about the traditional pillars of French society, Liberté (Liberty), Égalité (Equality), Fraternité (Brotherhood) and they threw in the additional pillar of Laïcité (Separation of Church and State). There was a long portion dedicated to women's rights. Explaining to the women in the room that in France they have the right to circulate, work, marry, divorce and get an abortion without their families or husbands consent.

The video focused on the importance of learning the French language and embracing French cultural values. The film featured loads of long beautiful shots of French châteaux, vineyards and the eiffel tower. The image that was presented of France, was of a unified and clearly defined monoculture. The message was clear, we are welcome to join the French in being French if we like but that subsitutions, modifications or additions to this culture are not encouraged or appreciated.

After the video we were called up one by one for an individual interview. I met with an immigration adviser who was pleasant and efficient. We chitchatted about my work and why I moved France. As we talked she was evaluating my French and after filling out a quick vocabulary test (ie. matching the word stamps to the sentence saying "At the post office you buy BLANK to mail your letters") she gave me a waver for the state run language lessons and since I already have a job she also gave me a waver for the day of learning how to get a job in France. The only day that I did not get out of is the day of civic rights and obligations. This is a full 8 hour session which includes a free lunch, where all of my new freedoms and duties will be explained to me. From how to sign my future children up for school to how to get medical help should I break my arm. I actually think it sounds pretty interesting.

Then it was on to the medical portion of my Day of Welcome. I stood in a cattle call type line up and was weighed and measured. Then I was escorted into a small booth with two doors. The woman said to lock the door behind me and get fully undressed from the waist up. I glanced around the phone-booth sized room, there was no paper gown, no robe, just a hook to hang my top and bra on and large poster explaining in several languages that you should get undressed.

So I stand, tatas in the air, waiting to see what happens next. The door on the opposite side of the stall opens and a woman asks me to enter the x-ray room. She pins me against the wall of the giant x-ray machine and tells me to stay still as they take an x-ray of my lungs. I ask her why we need to get a lung x-ray and she answers, "Because it is the law." "Right" I say, "Of course Madame. But what are you looking for exactly?" She points to the changing room and says to me "Tuberculosis, now get dressed and go back to the waiting room."

A few minutes later a doctor in is late sixties calls my name and asks me to follow him. He has my x-ray in hand. We go in to a more traditional looking doctors office and he puts my x-ray on the light board. "Ooooh! Is that me?!" I say. He looks at my seriously and says, "Non". I can plainly see my name at the bottom on the x-ray and in seeing my confused face he takes my hand and says, "This (my hand) is you. This is just a distant image of you. This. This is you.". He looked like a cooky old philosophy professor so I smile and nod and try my best to humor him.

He says that my x-ray looks good. Although he can see that there are some gas bubbles in my upper intestinal track. He asks my nationality, I say American. He nods knowingly and says, "I imagine you drink lots of soda then? Coke probably?" "No, no I don't" I say, turns out I don't like the stuff. "Oh, do you drink a lot of alcohol then?" he says, "Alcohol? Oui" I say. "The gas must be caused by all the beer you drink then" he concludes. I assured him that I am more of a red wine kind of gal and he just shakes his head and shrugs in an I am not sure why you (an American who doesn't love beer and soda) has gas then. I paused here to make a mental note to write a separate blog entry about the French and their affinity for discussing and analyzing bodily functions.... which has since been written here.

I was tuberculosis free so all he needed to do was take my blood pressure and listen to my heart. I had put my shirt back on so he asked me to pull it up and he tucked his stethoscope AND his hand inside my bra....not sure if everyone gets this kind of warm welcome...and then sits down and tells me he thinks I am beautiful. He says, "I know that your country and my country don't always agree but I want you to know that I know how to differentiate between a beautiful young American like you and the choices that her government makes. After Obama got elected all I want to do is give the Americans I see a hug and thank them for having the courage to make such a bold decision." At that point I was fairly sure he was coming in for a hug so I pulled my shirt back down, stood up and said, "Great, are we done here then?". He escorted me back to the waiting room without hugging me.

Medical visit done, language test complete and video screened. I was ready to pick up my visa. I am called up and they pull my file and ask for my temporary visa and 300 euros in fiscal stamps. "Excusez-moi? What €300 are we talking about here? And what is a fiscal stamp?". I was sure that this whole process was free. No one during this whole ordeal ever mentioned anything about any kind of fees. I had twenty euros in my pocket, a 300 US Dollar daily limit on my American ATM card and no French checkbook or card because you need a Visa in order to have one of those. Grégoire was in NYC on a business trip and he is the only person that can withdrawal from our checking account (side note the bank is happy to put my pay checks IN I am just not allowed to take any money OUT unless Greg is there) so I tell the guy that I don't have the money. He says it is no problem and that I can just come back later. Later. Ugh.

Greg returned from New York on Wednesday and with €300 in hand we walked down to the local Tabac (shops that sell cigarettes, magazines, lottery tickets and fiscal stamps) to buy our stamps. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of fiscal stamps, they look like postage stamps and are sold in varying amounts (€5, €15, €35 and €55) and used to pay for parking tickets, license renewals and visas. They are like money orders for government fees. Why they are sold at privately owed cigarette shops? I don't know. We went back to the immigration offices, handed over the stamps and in turn was handed my carte de séjour!!

Batten Down the Hatches

2009-03-17T14:51:00.003+01:00

Spring should be showing up any day now but for now it is still fr-fr-freezing in Paris. It's hard to say if it is colder here than in Seattle or if it just seems colder since I now spend more time in the elements. Growing up in Seattle, one of the rainiest places around, I never owned an umbrella and owned a few warm coats but never needed to use them on a daily basis. The 10 steps it took to get from my front porch to my car, then my car to my office and back again could be done with a light weight jacket. However in Paris, you are constantly exposed to the elements! A 10 minute walk to the metro, a 20 minute jaunt to work or to the shop, then outdoors again at the market, not to mention the daily 5 minute walk to the wine shop. All this adds up and all of this requires a warm jacket, a hat, gloves, and a scarf.

Parisians have adapted well to the winter weather season. They break out their furs, start mulling wine and wrap their necks up tight with never-ending layers of scarf. During the winter Parisians are willing to give up some of thier habits, like sitting along the banks of the Seiene or playing chess in the park but they are not willing to abandon the sidewalk café. The cafe owners prepare their terraces for the season by rolling down flaps made from tarp, revving up the heaters and handing out thick blankets to its clientele. Not quite inside and not quite outside these toasty little café campsites are warm and welcoming. Hauled up in one of these little tents I am happy to watch the world go by through the wavy tarp flaps and wait for spring.

My Day of Welcome

2009-03-16T09:48:00.003+01:00

Today is the BIG day. My day of Welcome. Today is the day that I will undergo a medical exam, be tested on my langueage skills and view a film about how to intergrate in to French society. At the end of this little event I should receive my Titre de Séjour which means I can live here in totally legality for a year.

In preparation for today I googled the address and when I clicked on the street view this is what I saw...
Note to self, be early to avoid this line.

Mr Stephan Justtellhimthat

2009-03-10T11:07:00.016+01:00

My life as a receptionist vacillates between being a comedy and tragedy. One moment we are all laughing and the next moment I want to crawl under my desk and hide.

When I speak French I prefer to do so face to face, so I can look at your lips and read your facial expression and use hand gestures when my words fail. Of course, all of these methods are unavailable when speaking on the phone.

Unfortunately the vast majority of my job is answering the phone. I have to find out who it is, where they are calling from and who they would like to speak to. Then I make sure so and so is available then I transfer the call or take a message as the case maybe. We have no answering machines so all messages are hand written by moi. If speaking French over the phone is the hardest part, then the second hardest part is having to write in French and a close third is having to listen to someone spell out a word or give you a phone number in French. In French i sounds like e and e sounds like i and g sounds like j and j sounds like g and é sounds like a. If that isn't challenging enough, the French failed to come up with a word for seventy and ninety. So if your phone number is 01 93 88 75 60, it would sound like this "zero one, eighty plus thirteen, eighty eight, sixty plus fifteen, sixty" by the second plus 15 my brain has turned to mashed potatoes and that person better hope their number is already in this person's rolodex.

Most callers enjoy my accent; I think I am even starting to have a small following of people who save their calls until the afternoon just so they can speak to me. People have told me that they feel like they are traveling to some exotic land when they have to call us now. Others are less entertained, and several are flat out rude, assuming that I am either hard of hearing or stupid as opposed to foreign and fun.

In the hip design world of Paris lots of English words are used. This trend both helps and hurts my cause. Our company has an English name so when picking up the phone I muster up my most clear and American accent while saying our name, then move in to a smooth and sultry bonjour in hopes of announcing my American origins but communicating to the person that I do speak French well. However, on the other end of things, I have a terrible time understanding Frenchafied English words and am often left at a complete loss.

Last week a couple of young guys came in the agency for a meeting with the boss. I ask for his name and where he works before I call down the boss. He tells me something that sounds like Starrr Tracks....knowing that we work with tv shows and movie stars I think ok this guy is an agent or a pr person for some actor so Star Track seems like a legitimate name. Before I call the boss I wanted to be tippy sure so I repeat is back to him and he says, "Non non c'est StarTrek". "Ohhhhh" I say, "of course you said Star Treck! With the stars and the rockets and Spock!" assuming he worked in special effects, I say "Great company name. Love it.". Since he was standing in front of me I supplement my new understanding with pantomime, as I pointed to the stars and transformed my ear in to Spock's pointy lobe with my fingers. I am laughing and having fun and he looks lost and a little disturbed. I stop. "What? Quoi?" I say as I lower my arms. "No no no", he says while grabbing a post-it he wrote down the name of his company, "Start Rec. You know like on your VCR remote?". Wow. I would have never guessed that, not in a million years and not with all the hand gestures in the world.

Another recent incident involved a phone conversation. A man calls asking to speak to François. I ask for his name, he replies Stephan, I then ask for him for his full name. He is in a hurry, I can tell because he is talking so quickly, and he says, "It's Stephan Justtellhimthat" or for my francophone it sounded like this "C'est Stephan de Louisa". I say, "Ok Stephan Justtellhimthat, I'll see if François is available." Stephan then bursts out laughing, he is laughing so hard he can barely speak. After a few seconds he says, "Oh la la, no no no sweetheart, I said my name is Stephan just tell him that!". Terribly embarrassed, I laugh a little with him and quickly transfer the call. A few seconds later I hear a burst of laughter coming from the editing department where François sits as I am sure he is getting the full story from Stephan.

Lordy. There will without a doubt be more stories like this share with you all soon.

I have been Bamboozeled!

2009-03-09T15:33:00.003+01:00

I have been bamboozeled this week, not once, not twice but three times!! When I was working as a tour guide I had a standard speech I gave to clients about pickpockets. I taught women how to hold their purses in the urban underarm clutch, I warned men to move their wallets from their back pocket to the front and I scolded kids for leting their ipod ear-buds dangle out of their pockets. I delivered this lecture with gusto but having never been pick pocketed myself, it admittedly had a smug, only silly or careless people get pickpocketed undertone.

Well I take it back. I was totally blindsided this week and got a debit card stolen from right under my nose. My best friend Katie was in town visiting last week. This was her first trip to Paris and so as we rode in to town from the airport on the RER I gave her a quick speech about pickpockets which was followed by a philosophical conversation about frequent non-violent crime which abounds in Europe verses infrequent but disturbingly violent crime in the US.

The very next day we were looking for an ATM machine to pull out cash for Katie. The bank closest to my house didn’t work so we walked a little father a field and found another bank. This bank is in Barbès on a corner that is frequented by young Parisians with for the most part North African origins. On this particular corner you almost always see large groups of young men just hanging out. Sometimes they will try to sell you fake packs of Marlboros or faux Dolce & Gabana belts but generally speaking they leave passersby alone. With that said, there was no motivation other than race or age discrimination not to use this bank, so being the open-minded urbanite that I am, Katie and I marched on in.
The ATM machines were housed inside a bank but the bank was closed because it was Sunday, so we were in a little room off of the sidewalk but not in the bank either. A few seconds after we entered a young man came in and stood right behind us. I think, “what a nut, there are 5 other machines in this place why does he want to use this one?”. I turn around and he says to me, “Mademoiselle, these machines are broken! Your friend isn’t typing in her request the right way!”. I assume he is trying to help us poor tourists figure out how to use the machines in hopes for a tip. So I say to him in French, “Thank you, but I speak French and know how to use a cash machine.” He starts beebopping around saying, “ No no the cash machine is broken. She needs to push the buttons harder. Etc etc.” I say, “No really, we are fine so get out of here”. He jostles us and I push him away and in a flash he pushes back, reaches over my arm and touches the screen. I give him a shove and backs away looking surprised and saying, “Wow well I can see I am scaring you, so if you are scared then I’ll just leave”. His tone was indignant, implying that I was either racist or ungrateful for his help or both.

I turn to Katie, who doesn’t speak French and wasn’t sure exactly what was going on but knew it wasn’t good, to see if she still had everything. She says, “Yep. I hit cancel button and am just waiting for my card to pop back out.” I look at the screen and read Welcome to BPN, please insert your card. At that point it dawned on us that he had hit the cancel button, grabbed the card and ran. All without us seeing a thing!
At that very moment his crony comes in, overhears us cursing the machine and the situation and he says, “Hey ladies, I think these machines are broken so it’s not surprising that it ate your card.” This sneaky Pete was hoping to buy some time by convincing us the bank had our card and that we should just wait until the bank opened back up on Monday to ask for our card back. While I was royally fooled by the first guy this second one did not win me over.

So Katie and I walk back home to call her bank to cancel the card. In the 10 minutes it took us to get home the guy had already withdrawn 200 euros. He must have seen Katie enter her pin number so he was able to withdraw at will. Katie, luckily lives in a land where the customer is king so her bank canceled her card and will reimburse her for the fraudulent charges.

As Katie's visit cotinued, so did the bamboolzing. That week we were twice tailed in the metro by nerdowells. The first incident culminated in a man's hand sliding delicately into my pocket. Unfortunately for him, all he got was a used tissue and a very dirty look from me. The second incident began just like the first, a young man was following us far too closely in the metro, except this time I turned to him and told him to pass us if he is in such a hurry. He looked surprised and said he wasn’t in a hurry, and since he spent the next 15 minutes hitting on us and following us half way home I suppose he was telling the truth.

Traveling around Paris on my own or with Greg or French friends I seem blend in to the Parisian backdrop farily. Maybe it is because of my clothing, or my manner of walking or the fact that I am usually reading a French newspaper, but typically people leave me alone. Moving around the city with my beautiful friend Katie, taking pictures, giggling and talking at an American volume level we suddenly became highly prized targets. The difference was shocking.

In the end, I am sorry for the hassle it caused Katie and for the tainted view of Paris she now may have. I also feel sorry for the youths who are drawn (or pushed?) into a life of crime by the society which surrounds them but doesnt always accept them. Looking back on it I see it as a highly educational, albeit disturbing, experience.

Salad Dreams

2009-02-23T14:56:00.000+01:00

Restaurants in the US will sometimes attempt to gussy up their menus by tossing in some French vocabulary, an A la mode here and en croute there. They may take it so far as to change the name of the place from Bob's Grill to Chez Robert for example. By adding a French word or two you instantly add a certain je ne sais quoi to an otherwise passé eatery. Parisian Restaurateurs play these same games with English! Although the use of English here doesn't conjure up images of haut cuisine or gourmet dining, rather they imply that the food will be fast, cheap and efficient. Here are a few funny examples I have seen around town.

Working Girl

2009-02-17T10:22:00.001+01:00

Oh France. Just when I think I have you pegged, you turn around and prove me wrong. I was preparing myself for a massive uphill battle. I translated and tweaked my resume, purchased stamps and nice paper, highlighted want ads and ironed my shirt. I needed a well paid short term job that started ASAP to help keep us in the black while I waited for my dream job (everyone still has their fingers crossed, right?!) to start this summer and I was ready to fight for it.

The first shot was fired in January. On a Monday and Tuesday in mid January I sent out a stack of letters and a bunch of emails. On Wednesday morning I dropped off a resume in person at an advertising agency in our neighborhood that needed a part time receptionist. On Wednesday afternoon I met with the my new unemployment counselor who went over my resume with me and set me up with another counselor to meet with later that month. However, just as I was signing all the paperwork saying that I am unemployed and will need all the classes and help I can get because I am sure this is going to be really hard...the advertising agency called and asked if I could come in for an interview.

By Thursday I had the job and on Friday I came in for a day of training! My new title is chargée d'acceuil or person in charge of welcoming people. The office is full of hip kids with tattoos, three day beards and flea-market chic sweaters. The massive steel and raw wood desks are stacked with Macs and the smell of felt-pens and spray-mount is in the air. Ahhh! It was a delight! My mother, two brothers, sister in law and both cousins are all in advertising so I know I thing or two about these kind of people. This job was exactly what I was looking for and it only took three days to get it! I will take some pictures and post them soon.

French Fashion

2009-02-13T21:27:00.001+01:00

This particular posting has been in the works for several weeks, months even. I was waiting to collect the perfect photographic examples which I believe I have now finally acquired.

As I packed my bags for Paris last year I was worried about my wardrobe. Did I have enough chic clothing? Should I buy a few outfits here before leaving? Should I wait until I get to Paris? I decided it was best to wait until I got to Paris to be sure to buy the latest local fashion...in retrospect I should have bought more clothes in Seattle while I still had a paycheck and a husband with a job...but never mind that.

When I arrived, I kept my eyes peeled for fashion trends. My mother soon came in to town and we put our heads together to figure out what women in Paris were wearing these days. I was feeling a little lost but mom, as usual, nailed the trend "It seems to me that in Paris you can wear whatever you want, you just have to own it!" Not own it as in it is in your closet but own it, as in hold your head up high and rock it.

I wasn't so sure, can you really wear whatever you want? Boots, braids, pink jeans, ray-bans, floppy hats and suede boots... potentially all in one outfit? That answer apparently is yes. Yes you can. All you need to do is tilt your head up, walk with purpose and paint an half smile on your face that communicates, "That's right, I know you are jealous but stop staring" or "Oh, you haven't heard that blue fur and army boots are the new must have, well you will and then you'll feel silly".

Exhibit A: Platinum blonde buzz cut, black leather pants with a raised design on the back pockets, a deconstructed metallic down jacket and boots with four in heels before noon. I crossed this same extraordinary woman the following day at the supermarket, she was wearing exactly the same outfit except she choose her orange purse that day.

Exhibit B: Fur lined shiny black down jacket, perfectly bleached jeans, playboy bunny sculpted in hair and sunglasses despite the fact that he is indoors and it was December.

Exhibit C: Fur, fur and a little mohair.

Exhibit D: Blond lighter-than-air bouffant, wool coat with blue fox fur cuffs, pointy high heel boots with a blue military motif at well over 65 years of age.

In Paris you can wear whatever suits your fancy. Seriously. I have already tested the theory. My first test was to wear a dress, heels and lipstick to a morning coffee date. No one batted an eyelash. No one asked me why I was so dressed up, unlike in Seattle. I then pushed things a little further. I have a black knit hat with a pompom the size of a grapefruit, would that be too much for these Parisians if I paired it with a giant 8 foot long wooly black scarf? No. It was a hit. Then this week I wore a controversial pink sweater that has a high ruffled collar similar to the styles of the kings and queens of England....it was a huge success. I had a few stares, a few smiles, and a few compliments. My friend Emilie told me she really liked it, I thanked her and said that I know it's a little different but that I enjoy wearing it. She said, "As you should Mary. It's Paris, anything goes!".

Case closed.

Vocabulary Lesson - Part I

2009-02-10T12:46:00.003+01:00

This month I learned a few new vocabulary words that no French teacher ever thought to teach me. I thought I would share them with you.

Frottis = Pap Smear

Agraffeuse = Stapler

Femme au Foyer = Housewife

Un Pâté de Maisons = A city block

Tea Leaves

2009-02-07T12:51:00.009+01:00

After months of non stop travel the tour season ended in October. I found myself with an abundance of time on my hands. Hauled up in my apartment, wrapped up in my new Italian robe and slippers I sipped tea and contemplated my next move. By November the tea leaves in the bottom of my cup clearly spelled disaster.

The dark winter weather forecasts matched the tour sales forecast for 2009. Being one of the newest guides in the France program I knew I was the last in line for work and by the time they got to me there might be nothing left. I needed a new plan.

Touring kept me away from my handsome husband, far from my new french friendships and biensûr away from the blog. I wanted to find a job in Paris. My favorite parts of being a tour guide were always the parts that had to do with food. From organizing an oyster tasting in Cancale to teaching my young tour members how the French eat their soup, every time food was involved I was particularly involved. So I decided that I would like to transition from food lover to full time food professional.

So I began to beat the drums of social networking. Soon wonderful suggestions, connections and phone numbers started to pour in. My girls from Mrs Cooks (www.mrscooks.com) hooked me up with Monsieur Jacques Henry (fifth generation owner of Emile Henry ceramics). The ever inspirational AmyP put me in touch with Theirry Rautureau (www.rovers-seattle.com). My old bosses Tom Douglas and Jackie Cross (www.tomdouglas.com) introduced me to the talented duo who run Hidden Kitchen (www.hkmenus.com) who in turn encouraged me to contact Daniel Rose of Spring Restaurant (www.springparis.blogspot.com). My long time fellow food loving friend Kristin from Hawaii also sent me an article about this same young chef from Chicago, so I decided to introduce myself.

I marched down to Spring, which is conveniently located a few blocks from my apartment, shook Daniel's hand and told him why I think he should hire me.

Here's a snippet from the letter I wrote to him...

Mr Rose,

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mary. I read cookbooks like romance novels, I visit foreign grocery stores like art galleries and I make my own jam. In short, I am a gastronome who is trying hard to transition from food lover to food professional.
After three years in the tourism industry working as a tour guide and travel writer, I realized that my favorite part of the job was always the part that had to do with eating. So I have decided to cut the fat and find a job that focus exclusively on food.
I have been scouring the city looking for a dynamic young chef who may need some assistance in the form of a personal assistant. I can help with marketing, communications, event planning and other back of the house logistics....

He was sold. Next month the restaurant is moving from its current location in favor of a slightly larger, more centralized, spot near the Louvre. If all goes according to plan (fingers crossed) I'll be Spring's new event/marketing/communications/office person later this summer. This solves the long term question of where I would like my career to go but it presents a short term issue of finding a little job to keep us afloat this spring. Armed with my Carte de Séjour I am ready to attack the French Unemployment system. Stay tuned.

Metro Moments - Part III

2009-01-30T21:33:00.010+01:00

People say that the French are very romantic. This may be due to their affinity for public affection. They also have a reputation for being a very intellectual people. I believe this theory was formed due to the high frequency of public reading.

The Metro is packed full of people reading! Pocket novels, essays, poetry, tabloids, newspapers, some trashy, some classy but all nourishing for the mind. Just one more reason to vote for public transportation funding in the US, if you ask me. I am sure there is a direct correlation between a population's IQ and the availability of well lit public transportation.

Legal

2009-01-26T11:07:00.012+01:00

I am legal!!

Despite my use of bold letters, when I received the news that I was indeed a legal resident of France I wasn't that excited. I was feeling so beaten down by the negativity and the weight of bureaucracy I could hardly breathe, let alone boldly celebrate.

We had our appointment at the Prefecture de Police and showed up on time. We pulled a number from the machine and waited our turn. We walked up to the counter and sat face to face with a sour looking woman in her mid-fifties. Smiling, we chirped in unison, "Bonjour Madame!". The already prominent frown lines around her mouth deepened as she grunted, "passport.". Didn't she know this was my special day?

She then asked for a series of documents which were on the list and a few which were not on the list. We had come prepared and pulled out page after page from our fat file. She tried to stump us by throwing a few curve balls our way, like asking for originals in addition to photocopies, but we hit each one out of the park.

Then she started to smile. I hoped this was a welcome to France smile. My gut told me it was not. As it turns out this was a I just found an error in your file and now I don't have to deal with you two anymore smile. In addition to our wedding certificate, the official translation of that certificate, the livret de famille, a recent gas bill proving we are currently living together and a rent check from last year showing that we have been living together for sometime now, according to her we had not proved that we share a life together. A shared life is demonstrated by showing bank statements from a joint bank account or claims from a shared an insurance policy. Ironically joint French bank accounts and insurance policies are not available to illegal residents like moi so we didn't have any of those. I tried to point out that we have been married for one and a half years and living together in the States for three years prior to moving to France so of course we share a life, how can something like that be quantified or proved? Should we have brought our wedding album? Should we have starting kissing and holding hands in front of her?

A lecture ensued. A mean spirited, condescending, lecture that included jabs like "don't you know how to read?" and "why did you bother coming today if you weren't prepared?". Near tears, I turned to Greg who was looking rather pale himself. We sat there in silence and let her rant, we didn't know what else to do. After threatening to give us an appointment three months from now, which according to her would give us enough time to sort our selves out, she let us slide and said if we could bring in a copy of our joint American bank account that same day she would consider approving my application.

She scribbled on our entry pass that we had permission to reenter the police station later that morning. Grégoire asked if we need to speak with her when we return, she snaped, "I just wrote that on this piece of paper" which is Greg's defense she had not yet handed to us.

We ran home, grabbed our American files, and dashed back to the Prefecture de Police. We went back through security, entered our assigned room and waited for our lady to call us back up. As we waited we saw her deal with another applicant. She was a woman in her forties from Russia who already lived in France and wanted her elderly mother to join her. The Russian women had failed to prove that her mother had her own health insurance. The lady from the Prefecture gave her a lecture then paused to lean over to her co-worker and say that she thought the Russian was doing this on purpose and that she was too cheap to buy insurance for her mother....horrified I wanted to shout, "Hello?! She is standing right there, she speaks fairly good French and probably just understood what you said....what is the matter with you?!".

However, since this lady held my future in the palm of her hands I said nothing. The Russians left, defeated, and we were called up. We presented our paperwork and apparently she was satisfied because she sent us away with another form to bulding F, desk 14, to make an appointment for my Journée d'Accueil, the Day of Welcome. Relieved to be leaving this women's presence we moved on to building F. There we are met with a nicer looking lady. We told her that we needed an appointment for my Day of Welcome and before I could finish the word Welcome she said, "Did you verify that all the information on your form is correct?". I though that was an odd question given that the form only had two lines of information on it, one being my name and the other that I was asking for a visa because I was married to a French person. I examined the page again and told her, "yes". Her eyes tightened as she said, "Paper has two sides". This was not said in a nice or informative tone, like gee ma'am as it turns out this form is two sided so you might want to check the back side too. Oh no, it was said to me like I was some kind of illiterate monkey who didn't know that paper had two sides. Greg's mouth dropped open and I stuttered, "uh uh ok, well let me look then.". Blinded by frustration I could hardly read the trembling page. I handed it in and said, "Yep, looks good.". "March 16th, one o'clock" she barked, this was obviously not up for discussion so I marked it in my agenda and we walked back to building E to turn in our appointment time. They made a photo copy of my appointment time and told us good bye.

On our way out we read the note which was crudely stapled to my temporary cart de séjour. It said that I was now a legal resident of France and that I would receive my French ID card on March 16th after my Journée d'Accueil. There. I was legal. There were no fireworks, no trumpets, no smiling, not even a simple welcome to France madame.

The Flood

2009-01-21T21:13:00.004+01:00

There has been a flood of activity here in Paris and I can't wait to tell you all about it. Legality is within my grasp and job interviews abound. More stories are on the way! I'm so excited.

La Bise

2009-01-19T13:45:00.005+01:00

For all the time I spend dwelling on how unfrench I feel, being back in the States for a few weeks showed me that I might be a little more French than I thought. As I greeted friends and family I hadn't seen in a while I found myself leaning in for la bise or the French cheek kiss.

In America we have very loose rules about how we greet each other. Sometimes we shake hands, sometimes we hug, sometimes we kiss one cheek, sometimes we kiss on the lips, sometimes we wave and sometimes we do nothing at all. This is all very difficult for French visitors and immigrants to deal with. In France the method for greeting people is clearly defined and uniformly applied.

Men who are greeting men shake hands. Men who are greeting men who are good friends or family kiss. Men who are greeting women in a professional context shake hands. Men who are meeting women in a social context kiss.

Women who are greeting other women in a social context kiss. Women who are greeting men in a social context kiss. Women who are greeting either men or women in a professional context shake hands.

Now, allow me to explain how one properly performs la bise.

Close your eyes and turn your head to the left. The number if kisses depends on the region. Two is the most common but it can range anywhere from one to four kisses. I just keep my eyes closed and let the other person lead. The kissing sound in critical. It needs to be nice and loud. You really can't over do it.

The cheeks must actually touch. Air kisses only happen in the movies and in LA. When the cheeks meet, it should be all cheek. If you adjust the cheek to lip ratio, as in part of your lips touch the other persons cheek or your kiss lands fairly close to the other persons lips, do so with caution! A strong message of intimacy or hope of future intimacy can be communicated by a single lippy kiss. Believe me, sweet young exchange students who unintentionally give far too lippy kisses find themselves very popular with the boys very quickly.

La bise, is performed at hello and goodbye. This amount of kissing can make Americans uncomfortable, we consider kissing to be a very intimate act. We much prefer hugging, be it of the full on, sideways or back patting variety. Interestingly, the French have quite the opposite opinion. Hugging can make them very uncomfortable while kissing is viewed as far more casual. I suppose if you consider the body parts touching while hugging (arms, chest, neck, back, hips, hair) and the parts touching when you kiss (cheeks) they do have a point. When I first met my sister in law (who is now a dear friend and accustom to my crazy American ways) I would tackle her with a giant hello hug. As I wrapped her up in my arms I could feel her back stiffen and her shoulders tense. I unknowingly moved too quickly from kissing to hugging. This same thing occurred with many other in-laws and French friends. I have since toned down the hugging and turned up the kissing. There is just so much to learn.

The Entry

2009-01-13T11:58:00.015+01:00

On January 1st I had my Visa de Long Séjour in hand and felt proud to be entering Europe legally for the first time in months. Grégoire and I flew to Paris via Copenhagen on SAS. At the check-in desk we were, for no apparent reason, bumped up to business class! What a dream!

There are various theories as to why we were upgraded. Greg believes that it was thanks to his vintage coat and traditional briefcase, his chic outfit oozed business class and the lady behind the counter simply wanted to reunite him with his people. I believe we were upgraded because there weren't any seats together in coach and she saw how in love we were and didn't want to separate us.

Whatever the reason we were thrilled. Grégoire and I were giddy as we waited to board the plane, I turned to Greg and told him, "Ok. Let's not get too excited sweetheart. I mean it's going to be nice but it's not like the seat is going to fold out in to a bed and vibrate.". Well, mon coeur, I stand corrected. Our seats not only folded in to beds they also came with soft pillows, duvets, all the booze you could drink and a remote control to regulate the desired strength of vibration.

During the flight I reviewed the instructions attached to my visa, they clearly state that upon arrival in France I must have the visa inside my passport stamped by the officers at passport control. We stopped in Copenhagen en-route for Paris. When we landed in Denmark we walked through the passport control there. As per usual, the guy behind the counter looked at the photo-page of my passport, smiles at me and welcomes me to Europe. No stamp, no scan, no questions, no form to fill out, no flipping through the pages to see if I had any visa and thus in need of further examination. I thought, great, well that was easy. Then, as we boarded the flight from Denmark to France (both members of the European Union) I realized that that was the ONLY passport control we were going to see, since inter-european flights are treated as domestic flights and thus do not go through passport control a second time in France! Merde! I had no stamp.

When we landed in Paris we went to baggage claim and then looked for some kind of official to ask where I can find the passport people in order to get my visa stamped. "Oh no madame, you are in the domestic arrivals area. You cannot go back in to the international portion of the airport unless you have a boarding pass." I explained, " Listen, I just took a quick trip to the other side of the world to get this stupid sticker in my passport and it says I need a stamp from the French passport people and you, monsieur, are not going to ruin this for me. So can you please tell me where I should go?". The group of men shrugged and sent me to the information desk. There we found an obviously discontented worker whose only response was, "Yes, well, you should have got your passport stamped in Copenhagen since that was your first point of entry.". "Well fabulous! Would you like me to fly back there today and get it stamped? Or can you some how figure out how to connect me with a person who has the ink and the stamp in THIS airport since we are here!?". Folding her arms she leaned back and continued to scold us for not getting it stamped in Copenhagen like we should have.

It was tempting for me to direct my anger to this unhelpful airport employee but really, if we want to point fingers, it was the guy at the passport control in Copenhagen. Maybe it was my innocent looking face, maybe it was the color of my American passport, whatever the reason that worker should have scrutinized my passport and not just smiled at me and waved me through. That Danish worker, 750 miles from Paris, was charged with policing the French boarder. Since France is almost completely encircled by EU member states they are often dependent on their fellow European nations to decided who does and does not enter their territory. Maybe I should have pointed out my visa to him but is that really my responsibility? Maybe the language in the visa instructions need to be updated and tell you to get the visa stamped by the first EU passport control you see? Maybe the Prefecture de Police won't care? We'll see next week.

Almost Legal

2009-01-12T18:09:00.016+01:00

It has been a long and bumpy road to legality but I am finally on the right path and nearing the finish line. Over the past three weeks I have gone from illegal to almost legal to temporarily legal, several huge steps. Let me fill you in!

During my last rendez-vous with the Préfecture de Police Cité I learned that I needed a Visa D long séjour pour famille ou conjoint Français before I could apply for a Carte de Séjour. Period. This visa can only be obtained at your local French Consulate. The trouble was, of course, that my local consulate is in San Francisco!

Since I was heading back to Seattle (There, see? I used the proper name instead of home. Progress.) for the holidays, I incorporated a side trip to San Francisco. After much debate about how long this little meeting was going to take and if I needed to spend the night for not, I decided to hope for the best and buy a flight that went down and back in the same day.

As it turns out, one of my new friends, who is has also married a frenchman, had an appointment that very same day! I flew in and met Dominique for lunch. Clutching her visa in her hand she told me all about her successful appointment over a bowl of wonton soup. Encouraged by her story, I marched in to the office feeling confident. I was told to sit on one of the blue chairs and wait for my name to be called. I was surrounded by a lineup of doe-eyed college students who were applying for student visas. In their oh so french slouchy boots, trench coats and barrets they looked postcard perfect before they even touched the ground in Paris. As I waited to be called up to the front, one of these little darlings leaned over to ask where I was going to study? I smiled and said, "Oh no sweetheart. I have moved on to the next level: Marrying a Frenchman." The girl's mouth fell open a little and the other girls leaned to overhear my story. It was a priceless.

Moments later, my name was called, my file reviewed and my passport stamped. I was then the proud owner of a Visa which meant that I then had the right to enter France and ask permission to stay, a small but important step.

There is Dirt in my Food

2009-01-06T15:03:00.006+01:00

I really don't have much to say about this other than stating the facts. In 26 years of living in the States I have found dirt in my food two, maybe three, times tops. In nine months of living in France I have bitten down on a bug, found a piece of sand or other earthy matter in my food five times. Five.

Beauty Secrets

2009-01-01T11:00:00.011+01:00

As we strive to be a more beautiful and fabulous version of ourselves in 2009, I thought I would share two of my favorite beauty tips that I have received from my European counterparts.

Hair Removal: My dear aunt Annie, sister of my French host mother, taught me a valuable, albeit harsh, lesson about leg hair. In the fall of 1999 Odile and I were visiting Paris for a Jewish holiday. Annie arrived fashionably late, as she often did, and floated elegantly around the apartment kissing all the guests. She spotted a pair of big black Doc Martins on the floor. Her face lit up as she inquired if any young men were invited to dinner this evening. Annie, a beautiful woman in her late forties, loved young men. She was sorely disappointed to learn the shoes were mine and genuinely confused as to why I would be wearing men's shoes. At 16 I admittedly had a mixed bag of fashionable and less fashionable items in my wardrobe.

The evening rolled on and soon it was time for bed. Annie and I were sharing the fold out couch. I let Annie use the bathroom first. A few minutes later she came rushing back in to the living room with my razor in hand shouting "Qu'est que c'est ça?! What is this? Whose is it?". "Uhhh..mine?" I reply, knowing that was going to be the wrong answer. Annie shook her hair in disbelief, "and what do you do with it?". Unsure as to where this was going I thought it best to answer honestly, "Shave my legs?". "Quoi?! Do you want to have thighs like the cheek of a man? Women should only ever wax their legs!". She gave me a sad, poor you, look wondering who failed to teach me this essential life lesson. She turned away and went back to the bathroom. I heard her rummaging through the rest of my toiletries but they apparently past muster since she then switched off the light and went to bed. Annie, thank you for the advice. I have been waxing my legs ever since, I swear. May you rest in peace.

Peeing to the Marseillaise: This advice is more recent and was passed on to me with equal conviction and enthusiasm. I was on tour this summer with a sassy and beautiful Belgian coworker who was boasting about how long she can go on road trips without having to pee. This conversation meandered and finished by her looking me square in the eye and saying, "Mary, chérie, it is important for a number of reasons to keep that area taut and fit [wink and a smile]. All women should be able to pee while keeping time to the Marseillaise.". The Marseillaise is the French national anthem and when she told me this I practically peed my pants with laughter. Later that evening I put this exercise in to practice and have been reaping the benefits ever since. Les enfants HOLD de la patrie RELEASE la jour de gloire HOLD est arrivée RELEASE.....

Home is where the Heart is

2008-12-19T03:19:00.009+01:00

Alright clever person that coined that phrase, what do you do when your heart is sliced in two? What then? Hmm?

Grégoire and I flew home for the holidays. Home. I suppose it would less politically and emotionally charged to just call it Seattle. Eight months after moving to Paris I catch myself often referring to Seattle as home. Should I be worried that I don't always refer to Paris as my home? Can you have two homes? If you live in one city and call another city home is it considered cheating? How long will it take for me to consider Paris home with a capital H and Seattle a place where I used to live? Do I even want that?

Oh la la. That's quiet enough of that. No more exhausting self-analyzing questions for today. From here on I am officially eliminating home from my vocabulary and using the cities' proper names. There. Problem solved.

It's not ALL bad.

2008-12-11T11:31:00.004+01:00

In case people feel like we are getting down on the French here I should say that there are a few aspects to this process which are really great.

1. It's all free. Except for the photocopying, the ID photos and the flight to San Francisco. Obtaining a visa in the US costs over a thousand bucks.

2. They haven't asked me to fill out a questionnaire about my past. In the US they sent Grégoire a form with questions like: Are you a prostitute? Are you a drug dealer? Are you a communist?

3. They haven't sent me to prison or deported me even though technically they could.

So it's not all bad. France, I know we are going to get through this.

Arg!!

2008-12-10T18:30:00.005+01:00

Well that didn't take very long. As noted in my previous entry about immigration one should be wary of lines that move too quickly. It often means that the people in front of you, and thus you, are likely to receive a no.

That is what I got today. A big fat NON.

Looks like I will be making an unexpected detour to the French Consulate in San Francisco. They are lucky that I happen to like that city and that I happen to be going to the states for Christmas anyway. The problem is that I entered France as a tourist. It is impossible to transition from a tourist visa to a resident visa. So I need to go back to the US and visit my closest Consulate (a 2 hour flight from Seattle, thank you very much) and apply for a Visa D Long Sejour, famille ou conjoint d'un Français in person. Once I have that little sticker in my passport I can fly back to France and then I can ask for a resident visa.

"But Mary, what about the 6 months worth of rent receipts they asked you for? What about all the time you wasted waiting for those?!" you say? I know. Believe me, I know. Apparently that only applies to people married in France. If you get married to a Frenchman in France you have to wait 6 months before you apply for the visa to prove that you are not only married but that you survived living together in France for half a year and are therefore surely in love and worthy of a resident visa. Alternatively you can ask for a fiancé visa, which you have to apply for in person at the French Consulate in the States, then fly to France get married and then you can ask for your resident visa right away.

However, if like me, you were married in the states, you have to have an entry visa in your passport before entering the country, period. Then, and only then, can you ask for a resident visa. Why the workers at the filtering counter of the Prefecture de Police failed to mention that when I first visited them in August? I can't say.

Immigration Offices - Here I come

2008-12-10T13:37:00.004+01:00

Lip gloss? Check.

Pearl earrings? Check.

Sexy yet professional sweater? Check.

Husband? Check.
Piles of wildly personal original paperwork with photocopies? Check.

Prefecture de Police, I am ready for you.

Metro Moments - Part II

2008-12-07T17:15:00.011+01:00

The list of ways in which Non-Parisians can offend Parisians on the metro is lengthy. Today I am going to focus on two key areas where we tend to make mistakes.

The Pole: The pole is designed to be a shared space that several people can grab on to in order to stabilize themselves while the train is in motion. One should NOT use the pole as an accessory for dancing or twirling. Only sweet little girls under five can occasionally get away with this and even then it is frowned upon. One should also, NEVER, use the pole as a footrest.

Do NOT use both hands or LEAN against the pole thus hogging all the room and possibly smashing someone else's hand. Do NOT use both poles at that same time. Passengers should use ONE hand to hold on to ONE of the poles.

On that same note, do not be a hero, use the pole or other available handles while the train is moving. Your natural sense of balance and soft ski knees are no match for an urban metro driver. If you accidentally fall in to the lap of a passenger while holding on to a pole you might be forgiven. However if you bump in to a fellow rider because you were stupid enough not to hold on to the pole, Lord help you.

The Folding Seats: This can be a real point of tension. Use of the folding seats is a treat only to be enjoyed if the train is relatively empty. As soon as the car starts to fill up you MUST surrender your privileged seats so your knees are not driving in to the crowd in front of you. This creates more space for more people to grab on to the bar (using one hand) and pack in around the door.

Misbehaving on the metro can result in a sharp elbow in the back, an exasperated sigh, a dirty look, an eye roll or a nasty combination of these things. Children and tourists are not given any slack.

Just a minute!

2008-12-06T21:35:00.007+01:00

In America we say things like, "Just a minute" or "Hold on a second" or "See you in a sec". In the last example it's apparent that we are so busy and things are moving so quickly in the States that we don't even have time to finish the word second, we shorten it to sec.

Instead of one second or even one minute the French use two minutes. They say things like, "Je reviens dans deux minutes ~ I'll be back in two minutes" or "Ça prend deux minutes pour y aller ~ it takes two minutes to get there" or "La table sera prête dans deux minutes ~ your table will be ready in two minutes". While two minutes may still be a gross underestimation and it may actually take five minutes to get where you are going, it is slightly more realistic than a sec.

The difference in word-choice boils down to more than who is better at guessing how long it takes to do things. More importantly it illustrates the sense of time in France. Everything takes longer here than it does in America. Allow me to point out that two minutes is 120 times longer than a second. Don't even get me started on how much longer it is than a sec.

Based on my experience thus far, things in France take approximately 120 times longer than I want them to. Getting your bill at a restaurant for example, takes forever. Waiting for your internet connection to be set up takes up to 10 weeks, an eternity in my opinion. Trying something on at H&M can take the majority of an afternoon. Obtaining a legal immigration status in France has taken seven months and counting.

Transitioning from a life in Seattle to a life in Paris requires a serious increase in patience. Rushing the post office employee or your hair dresser can result in disaster. The only thing a busy bee American girl can do is surrender and accept life at a slower pace. I am trying. Really I am.

Ommmmm. Ommmm. Namasté.

How much soufflé is too much soufflé?

2008-12-02T14:27:00.000+01:00

In my opinion you realize that you have ordered too much soufflé somewhere between the last bite of your first and the second bite of your second. The knowledge that a third was on it's way was also a factor.

My sweet husband brought me to a restaurant called Le Soufflé which serves, get ready, a multi-course meal composed uniquely of savory and sweet soufflés. While their soufflés are highly acclaimed and acknowledged as the best in Paris, I suggest limiting your consumption to one per meal. My dining neighbor, who had clearly eaten here before, wisely combined a cheesy mushroomy soufflé as a starter with a meaty main dish. I feel like I learn new things here everyday. One soufflé per meal. Got it.

Repatriation

2008-11-30T14:24:00.001+01:00

Although we arrived in France back in April I feel like I am only just starting to get my bearings. Spending six months on a tour bus visiting Europe was wonderful but not helpful in making me feel at home in Paris.

Grégoire, however, is taking to Paris like a fish to water. After a matter of weeks he fell back in love with his mother land. Feasting on duck confit, nutella crêpes and tiny cups of espresso, he is re-assimilating at an impressive rate. Yes, these days he looks, walks and smokes like a Parisian. I have to trot to keep up with him, I can store things in his new French man purse (he claims that the English translation of sac makes it sounds much girlier than it is) and I enjoy knowing that he has matches on hand.

Here is a fun set of before and after shots. This top photo was taken in 2007. We stopped for fried chicken on our way home from a weekend in Manzanita Oregon. Note the bud light being consumed directly from the bottle, the country style table cloth and Greg's van T-Shirt.

This second shot was taken last weekend a few blocks from our apartment. Note the ever so French mustache, the man in the béret behind Greg, and of course the cigarette au bec.

Oui, a frenchman in his native environment is both a beautiful and dangerous beast.

The BIG Day

2008-11-24T20:21:00.015+01:00

By all reasonable measures the party was a success. We woke up the following morning to find my underwear on the kitchen floor and dishes piled up in the shower. So. Yes. It was a fun night.

It was not, however, all smooth sailing. Far from it.

Allow me to present article A. This innocent looking little piece of paper almost ended my marriage. As Grégoire and I sipped coffee discussing the big day ahead of us, he asked me a few questions, like when are you going to put the turkey in? What time are we eating? All fine questions which I thought I gave fine answers to. Turns out he was unsatisfied with my vague answers and decided we (read me) needed a schedule so we would not double book the two burners and one stove. Did I mention that Greg is a quarter German?

He breaks out the colored pens, scissors and graph paper. Then asks me questions like how long does the turkey need to rest. My reply was, "well at least 20 minutes but it can rest for up to an hour if it is tented with tin foil". Then he asked about the green bean casserole, "how long does that take to heat back up?". I say, "well if we preheat it on the stove then top it with the onions then pop it in the oven, then we would need about 15 minutes of stove time and 10 minutes of oven time. But we could do the whole thing in the oven and that would take more like 50 minutes.". At this point Greg throws down his pens and says, "Mary you can only give me short answers like yes, no, or a number. How can I write 20ish minutes on this graph? and how do you want to heat up the beans, oven or stove?! Just pick one!" Needless to say, things spiraled from there and we butted heads for about an hour.

In the end, as you can see, the schedule was created and although I HATE to admit it, it was mildly helpful.

The second obstacle hit around 4 o'clock. We have the discount electricity plan which heats our water during off hours (11pm to 7am). When we wake up in the morning we have a fresh tank of hot water that is supposed to last us all day. This is usually no problem. However, that day, I was using hot water like never before. I own two pots and one pan. I would boil the beans in my one large sauce pan then pour them out and quickly wash that pan so I could put the potatoes in it. This heavy rotation caused frequent dishwashing, which when combined with our two showers meant that we ran out of hot water hours before the party began. Reaching back to my food handlers permit class I am pretty sure not having access to hot water is an issue. I would boil water in a pan but of course they are all full of mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and according to Greg's schedule the burners are fully booked from now until 8:30. The show must go on.

Grégoire's two main tasks for the day were cleaning the house and getting the table and chairs set up. Moving any kind of furniture in Paris is a pain and damn near impossible when you don't own a car and neither do any of your friends. Greg was able to borrow the van from work and picked up two unbuilt ikea desks from the new office in the 9th and brought them home. He was hammering and screwdrivering all afternoon and then it dawns on him that he doesn't like the lighting in our living room. AHHHH! For those that don't know. I HATE with capital letters the lighting in our living room. For the past five months we haven't been able to decide what to do about it thus the bare light bulbs are still in place. 45 minutes before the guests arrive Greg announces that he is going to run an errand. Where is he going, you ask? Castorama. The French equivalent of Home Depot. Why, you ask? Because he has decided that NOW is the perfect time to fix the vintage lamp I bought in June and pick up some christmas lights.

He arrived 15 minutes before the guests were scheduled to arrive and they all arrived 30 minutes late (very French) so in the end Greg had just enough time to rewire the lamp and hang the lights which looked beautiful. So, again, in the end he was right. But I experienced a very stressful 45 minutes while he was absent.

While he was out, I Skyped my mother to both complain about my insane husband and have her take a look at the stuffing. My mother's stuffing recipe is one of those mysterious Debbie Campbell recipies that has a little bit of this and a little bit of that and in the end I'm not sure anyone knows (including her) exactly what's in it. I held up my webcam to the bowl and squeezed the bread cubes so she could gauge the moisture level. She approved and I tossed it in the oven. Speaking of ovens. In addition to disowning my husband I almost killed his best friend Mathieu. He was supposed to arrive at 7pm sharp with his portable oven so I could start heating up the sides. He saunters in at 8pm. By that time the other guests had all arrived and we were busy eating deviled eggs and drinking crémant, so at that point all was forgiven since I had forgotten all about my side dishes! We fired up the second oven which was stacked on my washing machine and by 9:45 we were finally ready to eat.

I gave a short speech on the history of Thanksgiving and in true Campbell family tradition we all stood, held hands and went around the table to say what we were thankful for. This year I am thankful for the luxury of choice. Thanks to the support from my friends, my family and my loving husband I am able to choose things like what part of the world I want to live in, what kind of fancy cheese I want to buy and where I would like to work. I am able to take my time and am lucky enough to have a wide selection of things to choose from. Choice is a luxury and I am thankful for it.

Turducken

2008-11-21T20:00:00.002+01:00

The butcher on Rue Lepic is my new best friend. Based on several measurements, discussions with my mother and online research I decided that a whole turkey was out of the question. I thought the next best thing would be a roasted turkey breast. So yesterday I dropped by my local butcher shop to inquire about a skin on, bone in turkey breast. I peered in to the case and saw turkey legs, wings and skinless boneless breasts but these turkey parts weren't going to add up to a platter worthy bird. So I asked the butcher for what I wanted using my sweetest, gee I'm new here voice. I told him that I need a skin on, bone in breast. He said he didn't have anything like that and didn't think that cut was a very good idea. I pleaded and explained that of course I would rather buy a whole turkey but given the fact that I am working with the smallest oven on the planet I think this cut wouldbe a good compromise. I would have the rib bones for structure and the skin for presentation which I would slather with butter and herbs and all the glorious white meat we needed. He frowned and said, "Come back tomorrow afternoon, madamoiselle, so I can think about it.".

I returned the next day at 2:00 only to find the shop closed. They close between 2:00 and 4:00 so apparently by afternoon he really meant evening! Fine I thought, more time for him to think about my turkey. I popped back down the hill at 4:00 and found my guy. "So?!" I said, "what did you find?" He pulled a whole turkey out of the case and says, "Voilà!". Oh god. He didn't understand me at all. My eyebrows furrow as I explained, again, that a whole turkey simply isn't going to fit in to my shoe box sized toaster oven and he said, "No no my dear, just show me what part you want and I will cut it for you!". Perfect! He then chops off the legs and cuts out the backbone leaving me with a perfectly sized, skin on, bone in breast! Hurray!

As the butcher was preparing my bird, the man behind me, who overheard my duress, tapped me on the shoulder and wished me a happy Thanksgiving. We got to talking and he told me that last year he was visiting some American friends in New York for Thanksgiving and he had something called a Turducken. The butcher stops chopping at this point to ask what, pray tell, a Turducken is? It is, for those unfamiliar, a chicken stuffed inside a large duck stuffed inside a turkey. The butcher shakes his head in disbelief and disgust. The frenchman who ordered the dish agreed. "How absurd! How extravagant! Why would anyone do that?" they proclaim. I laughed and said, "I know. We are nuts. But this dish speaks volumes about good old American ingenuity. Yes, our taste for excess can sometimes lead us astray but what can you do?" I left the store turkey in hand, feeling relieved an oddly proud of my wacky compatriots.

Deep Breaths

2008-11-21T14:19:00.009+01:00

28 hours and counting until I am hosting my first solo Thanksgiving party. My poor little fridge has never been so full, my knives are dulling from all the nut chopping and my turkey is yet to be purchased. I have spent the last 5 minutes turning in circles and I have decided it would be prudent for me to sit down for a moment and take a few deep breaths.

I originally invited 6 people to this little soirée, the guestcount has recently grown to 11 and I am wondering what the safe maximum occupancy is for an apartment the size of my childhood garage. In addition to limited square footage, we also are working with limited supplies. I am cursing our romantic idea of piecing together mismatched vintage silver to create our collection of flatware. I currently own, 7 forks, 9 large spoons and 3 knives. Up until yesterday I owned 6 plates, I now own 10 which still leaves us 1 short of a load.

So what's a hostess to do? Out source. Our dear friend Matthieu is bringing the requisite bottle of wine in addition to his kitchen table and his portable oven. Other friends are bringing coffee cups, pies, butter knives and folding chairs. Should everyone remember the list of odd items, we should be in pretty good shape for eating dinner.

Dinner. That of course is the ultimate source of anxiety. Earlier this week I rode the metro 45 minutes away in order to find cranberries which cost €5.60 a bag. I dove deep into the Algerian neighborhood to find large orange fleshed yams and yesterday I spent 10 minutes trying to convince my butcher sell me turkey breasts with the skin on. He told me that he will think about it and that I should come back tomorrow.

As noted in earlier posts, I own an oven that is smaller than a conventional mailbox. No whole chicken, let alone turkey, would ever fit. Matthieu suggested that I let someone with a larger oven cook the turkey. Days later Kristen, who does indeed own a full sized oven (she is American), offered to preform this service. Grégoire accurately replied to Matthieu when he said that this idea was hors de question. That having someone bring the turkey to a Thanksgiving party would be paramount to asking someone to bring in an already decorated tree to a Christmas party. Matthieu shrugged not seeing why that would be a big deal either. Mary would never let that happen! I was simultaneously touched by how well my partner knows me and concerned that I may have a fatal case of MSS (Martha Stewart Syndrome) which was no doubt passed on to me from my mother during childbirth.

Speaking of my mother, her voice has been present all week. Unbeknownst to her, she made me buy the more expensive paper napkins, serve 4 side dishes instead of 3 and attempt to make gougères just before the guests arrive so they will have a hot little snack when they walk through the door. Her voice almost drove me to bake individual banana breads as a party favor but that's where I drew the line.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Metro Moments - Part I

2008-11-19T09:31:00.006+01:00

This is the first of a new series called Metro Moments. While riding around the city on this amazing network of underground trains you find very fertile grounds for people watching. In this series I would like to share a few of my favorite moments in the metro.

Here is one. This young lady is so starved for privacy in this crowded train that she is holding her scarf over her mouth to muffle her cell phone conversation. This technique also has the added benefit of shielding her mouth so that people can't read her lips. Why go to such extreme measures? I can't say. In my opinion she looks totally nuts and I argue drew more attention to herself than if she just talked into her phone like a normal commuter. Personally as soon as I saw her trying so hard to conceal her conversation, I leaned forward even further so that I could better eves drop on her conversation.

Cats in Europe

2008-11-14T15:59:00.006+01:00

I have often thought that in my next life it would be nice to be a cat. Specifically my mom's cat. That way I could laze around all day sitting on stylish leather chairs while being fed salami ends and fried up giblets extracted from the envelops inside whole supermarket chickens.

It turns out the Europeans take pretty good care of the cats too. While Parisians are notorious dog lovers they also hold a great fondness for cats. Just this afternoon I was sitting in a park listening to This American Life and a perfectly normal looking lady sits down next to me with a very chic siamese cat on a thin blue leash. The cat comes over to me and the lady says, "Don't worry, she wont bite. When I see the sun shining like this I just cannot resist taking her out for a little fresh air." Italians would agree. Please note the nice old man parked on a bench in Levanto, Italy with his cat in a bird cage enjoying the afternoon sun and the view of the port.

The Italians, however, take thislove affair with cats to the next level. They don't just love their own cats, they love all cats and for anyone who has spent some time in Italy you know there is a lot of cats to love. Rome is crawling with them. There is a ruin in the middle of the city called Largo Argentina that has been officially transformed in to a sanctuary for disabled felines. While hiking between the Cinque Terre villages this summer I ran across a cat encampment. Complete with a donation box, free food and tents. Yes, Italian cats are familiar with the Dolce Vita.

Oddly Affordable vs Annoyingly Expensive

2008-11-09T10:50:00.006+01:00

Paris is expensive. It's expensive like London, like New York, like any other metropolis where the population is so dense. Produce is pricey, rent is high, and parking is outrageous. Moving to the big city we knew we were going to see high prices for certain items and services but every once in a while I still get sticker shock. Dental floss, for example, is wildly expensive, €5.90 the pop. Shoes are another crazy expensive item, I rarely see any shoes worth wearing for less than €90.00.

It's not all bad news though. We have run across several things that are surprisingly cheap!

Leg Waxing ~ €12.00
Bottle of decent wine ~ €6.00
Internet/cable/phone package with unlimited US calling ~ €29.00
Baguette ~ €1.00
Flying from Paris to Rome ~ €70

I guess it boils down to priorities.

Milk Honey and Rum

2008-11-08T16:51:00.001+01:00

The French have a lot of unusual theories about what does and doesn't make you sick. Eating raw beef? Drinking expired milk? Pas de problem. Not wearing tights in the winter? Exposing your delicate neck skin to the wind by not wearing a scarf? Attention! These are sure fire ways to get sick.

Gregoire has a long standing belief that being cold can give you a cold. Whenever he brings this up I nod and smile and think how quaint. This theory must have come from the olden days in France when they didn't have microscopes and modern medicine. Or possibly the theory was launched by the booming scarf industry here in France and he is just a victim of the propaganda machine? Either way, until today I thought he was absolutely nuts.

As it turns out, he may be on to something. Yesterday I stood for three and a half hours (That's right! Enough time to drive from Seattle to Portland! Enough time to watch two movies! Enough time to bake a banana bread!) in line outside the Prefecture de Police waiting to have my immigration papers validated. The line snaked around the sidewalk, ducking in and out of covered alleyways and finally into the police station. The first two hours were cold and then it started to rain. In the cold, in the rain, I stood with the other people who love this country enough to wait in these kinds of conditions for the chance to live here legally.

France, I think at this point my feelings for you are clear. I do love you. I did stand in line for you. And what did you give me in return? A cold and another five week delay until my paperwork can be settled. This morning I woke up feeling stuffy and unwell. The only explanation for my cold is the exposure to the cold yesterday.

Tonight I am going to make an old French cold remedy to fight this French cold. A mug of hot milk, spiked with rum and sweetened with honey. They say this potion packs a punch. It should knock you out for the night and the next day you should wake up sweaty yet refreshed.
We shall see.

Hip Hip Horray!

2008-11-07T10:43:00.000+01:00

France celebrated with us this week. There was honking and wooping and dancing in the streets! Europe is thrilled with our choice of new president. I received this photo from Monsieur Bouron Senior this week! Check it out. He is wearing a T-Shirt of his own design. In case you can't read it, the shirt says "Change Yes YOU Can!".

Go Obama!!!

2008-11-04T11:23:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago I attended an early morning (3am to be precise) live broadcast of the third presidential debate. My friend Caroline is a camera-woman for BFM Télé which is a 24 hour news channel similar to CNN. She told me she was assigned to this event and I promptly invited myself to tag along. The event was organized by the Democrats Abroad and held in an Irish pub near the Louvre. The bar was packed with American girls looking rather French and sounding rather French but being very American in their choice of beverage. Smirnoff Ice straight from the bottle.... a dead give away.

At 6am when the debate was all over and the bar was emptying, Caroline interviewed me and my clip made it on to TV! Essentially I told all of France that this last debate proves that Obama is going to be a great leader because he knows how to eloquently and politely express his views in the face of provocative and unpleasant politicians. What a man. Go Obama! Here is the clip!

3...2...1..Sarkozy!

2008-11-02T14:29:00.003+01:00

Last May I was lucky enough to be traveling through France during the presidential elections. As our election day approaches I thought I would write a little something about the French election process as I experienced it.

The presidential election dominated the news and cafe conversations. I was having lunch with my friend Matthieu, a radio journalist, who was trying to explain the French voting process to me. Mid sentence he stopped and said, "I know Mary! Why don't you just come with me to vote in the primaries tomorrow morning?! That way I can show you how it works."

So I woke up extra early the next day to stand in line with Matthieu. 84% of the French population voted in 2007 so the line was long (64% of US voters turned out for our 2004 election). We finally entered the gymnasium. Matthieu showed his ID card and signed his name in a giant book documenting his participation in the election. He was then handed an unmarked white envelope and 12 post-it size pieces of paper with one of the 12 candidate's names printed on it. Matthieu then ducked into the voting booth closing the velvet curtain behind him. All I could see was his feet and a waste paper basket.

Two seconds later he popped back out and dropped his envelope in the big box. "So? What happened in there?" I asked. "Simple, you put the name of your candidate in the envelope and you throw the other pieces of paper away. Then tonight they will open all the envelops and whoever has the most pieces of paper wins." Aside from the obvious environmental concerns (all that wasted paper!) I loved the simplicity and anonymity of this system.

Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union pour un Movement Populaire and Segolene Royale of the Parti Socialiste emerged as the two front runners. They now had two weeks to win over a majority of the electorate and piece together political coalitions with the remaining political parties. France has a mutli party system, there are roughly 18 parties ranging from the Parti Communiste Français to the Front National. This multi party system prevents any one party from dominating the political scene and forces politicians to work together inorder to gain enough support to win the national election.

Let the games begin! During the next two weeks the candidates were not immune from mud slinging, but it seemed to me that they both spent most of their energy talking about the issues. I mentioned this observation to the hotel owner I was dining with and they said, "Mais oui! In the states your election is a glorified beauty pageant! All you care about it personality, not zee issues." While I found that observation a little harsh, I could see where he was coming from. The conversations that I had been overhearing all week were all about complex tax policy and how best to restructure the French medical program with a level of understanding and detail that would be lost most Americans.

Two weeks later it was election day and I was sitting in my hotel room in Bayeux. The restaurants were empty that night so there was no use trying to get any book research done. So I was munching on my dinner (a sanwich) half listening to the TV thinking we wouldn't have the results for at least a day or two. Two film crews were following Royale and Sarkozy. The shots were jumping back and forth between the two official galas and then at 9 o'clock à la Time Square on New Years Eve the news anchor begins a countdown 10...9...8...shot of Royale...7...close up of Sarkozy...6...Royale...5...Sarkozy...4...3...I am thinking they can't be serious! Are they really going to announce the winner tonight?!.....2....1...The next great leader of France....Sarkozy! My mind was blown. How on earth did they already count all the votes? Don't they need to double check the for hanging chads? Aren't there any law suits? No scandals of voter discrimination? No. It all seemed so easy. So simple. It could have something to do with the fact that France comfortable resides in one time zone and only has 60million residents verses America's 305million, but still, I was impressed.

As our election day approaches I am humbled by the interest Europe has taken in our politics. The US election is consistently covered on the nightly news and makes the front page of most daily newspapers. The level of detail in which the French can discuss our politics is both flattering and slightly embarrassing. Their knowledge and interest inspires me to be the most well informed and active American I can be.

Drunkin Punkins

2008-10-31T12:25:00.002+01:00

I realized that I was suffering from Halloween withdraw as I stood in the greengrocers by my house seriously considering carving a butternut squash. Just then my phone rang. It was my fellow American tour guide buddy inviting me to a pumpkin carving contest! With real pumpkins! I promptly put the squash down and went home to get ready.

We entered the Irish bar which was stuffed full of British and American ex-pats. The floor was sticky with pumpkin guts and spilt beer. It was perfect.

We joined a carving team called the Seed Spitters. The creative vision was already decided by our group leader, a four part series of drunkin punkins. I offered to handle the vomiting pumpkin.

Traditionally I carve what we call in our family the Grandpa Day pumpkin. It's a classic design that has been carried on through three generations of carvers in the Campbell family. My mother (all star pumpkin carver) fearlessly works an eight inch chef's knife and can carve a pumpkin with her eye's closed. My other teammates were working with round tip serrated knives....I went for the henkles paring knife. While this new age design was a little outside of my classic pumpkin carving tastes I think it turned out well. It was paired with three other pumpkins who had various party night props. One was smoking, the other was grinning with a beer bottle hanging from it's lips and the last was crossed eyed and green.

Our team clenched second place. I think Grandpa Day would be proud.

French Kissing and American Sandwiches

2008-10-28T13:33:00.002+01:00

From French Fries to French Kissing I would say that whoever is in charge of PR for France is doing their job. The French are generally associated with nice things but why are they so lucky? Why is their culture associated both with fancy kissing and delicious potato dishes when officially speaking they did not invent either?

If you were get in a conversation with a French person about French Fries they would at some point chuckle and shake their heads saying, "I do not know why you call them French Fries when everyone knows they are from Belgium, biensûr!". When it comes to French Kissing, which is another claim to fame that the French don't necessarily deserve, they are less likely to pass the credit along to the Belgians. Although if you push them to define a French Kiss they

are likely to say, "Je ne sais pas, kissing a French person?". In fact the French word for French Kissing is to "Rouler une pelle" which roughly translates to digging a hole in someone's mouth using your tongue as a shovel. Not very romantic sounding if you ask me.

Recently I discovered that the French are not always associated with beautiful and romantic things. The case in point being the so called Turkish Toilette. When traveling in Europe, especially by bus or car, you often run in to Turkish Toilettes when you stop to fill up the gas tank and empty yours. It is essentially a porcelain hole in the ground with grips for your feet and occasionally toilette paper. You are expected, male or female, to drop your pants, hover over the hole and try to tell your bladder that this time it's ok to pee standing up. Sometimes you will find handle bars on the walls, these of course are for the foreigners who have not yet built up the thigh muscles to handle these toilettes.

Whilst traveling with a Belgian coworker last month we were giggling in a the ladies room of an Autogrill rest stop about the faces Americans make when the only stall available is the one with the Turkish Toilette. Nina, stopped me mid sentence and said, "Wait, what did you just call

that toilette?". I said, "duh, a Turkish Toilette". Nina laughs and laughs and says, "Mary, that is too funny. Do you know what we call them in Belgium? French Toilettes?!"

So were the french just trying to pass the buck? Blame the Turks for this messy invention? It happens to the best of us. For example, you can often find cafes in France selling something called a Sandwich Américain. This is not a turkey sandwich with miracle whip and iceburg lettuce on untoasted wonderbread. Oh no. It is a meat sandwich that is stuffed with French Fries and topped with mayonaise and/or ketchup. Has anyone EVER seen one of these sandwiches in the US? No. Were the French ashamed of this caloric nightmare? I think so. Thus they came up with the name Sandwich Américain. Genius.

My bubble has burst...

2008-10-15T14:01:00.015+02:00

No. I am not talking about the real-estate bubble or the economic crisis. I am talking about my bubble of personal space.

Americans need an average of two feet between them. Be it at a party, in an elevator or in line at the grocery store, we feel at ease if we have an arms-with between ourselves and a stranger. The Europeans, the French specifically, work with much less. In Paris, the space between you and the person sitting next to you on the train or at a restaurant can be a matter of inches. How are you supposed to deal with the closeness? How are you supposed to enjoy a romantic dinner while knocking elbows with a stranger? How do you get used to having several arms reaching around you to grab the pole in the metro? Makebelieve.

Most Parisians have mastered the art of ignoring each other. When sitting on the metro, shoulder to shoulder with a muttering crazy person you simply pretend you cannot hear them. When walking down the street and passing pedestrians at a rate of 100 people per block you pretend you're the only one on that sidewalk. Because if you paused to process the people around you, you wold loose your mind. So Paris has decided to ignore its fellow residents for sanity's sake.

When my mother stayed with us in May, she would open our shutters every morning and greet the world like Mary Poppins meeting her bird friends. She would then break the unspoken Parisian Apartment code of conduct and wave to our neighbor across the street. We can plainly see in to his apartment and he can obviously see in to ours. We have been mutually observing each other for some time now but we pretend that we aren't. If you acknowledge the fact that a stranger can see in to your life and that the banging coming from above is likely not a basketball and that the reason the hallway smells bad because the garbage from the 40+ people living in your building are stacked at the entry, you would go nuts. So you just simply pretend it's not happening.

At first I thought this practice was cold hearted and an impossible habit for me to get in to. But as I rode the metro yesterday with a tangle of arms between me and the pole, I took deep breaths and successfully ignored the overweight couple making out inches from my face, ignored the crazy old man talking to himself about the pot smoking youth and ignored the tall kid behind me breathing on my neck. All for the sake of sanity because otherwise I would have to cover my eyes and start screaming, "get me out of here!".

The Original Madame Bouron

2008-09-11T15:49:00.006+02:00

This week Grégoire's mother came in to town. Her much anticipate trip to Paris was an overall success. While she lives a mere four hours away from the capital this was the first time she's been to Paris in 18 years.

I have been enjoying a break between tours and thus have been home all day...all week... with Madame. Mrs B is the queen of domesticity. She includes cleaning as one of her hobbies in life. While I posses many interests, cleaning is not one of them. Despite this, in fear of being judged a poor choice of wife for her only son, I spent the entire day before her arrival scrubbing the apartment. It was a long day's work but I was pleased with the results and felt sure my mother in law would agree. These dreams, however, never came true. Shortly after her arrival I found her cleaning the grime stuck in the rubber seal of my fridge. I caught her red handed and she smiled apologetically saying, I just couldn't resist.

Later that day she and I went grocery shopping for dinner. As we hopped from cheese shop to wine store, Madame Bouron gently suggested that I not waste my money on designer food and organic vegetables. Rather I should learn to bargain hunt and shop at large scale grocery stores. We did just that the following day and admittedly she made a mean dessert out of discount raspberries.

In addition to been a very good cook, Madame Bouron also cuts her son's hair, paints her living room walls according to the season, coifs her west highland terrier herself and sews like a professional seamstress. During the week she tried to pass some of these money saving household skills on to me. This week we made white linen curtains for our living room and bedroom and three cushions for our couch! While I did play a big role in selecting the fabric, for the most part I was not allowed to touch sewing machine.

I am looking forward to Christmas this year. I can see Madame made a long mental list of things that I simply must have, ranging from microfiber dusting towels to scissors that actually cut.

Unofficially French

2008-09-09T15:27:00.001+02:00

Even though the French government may disagree I am feeling more French than ever. The proof? I now own and frequently use an outrageously small oven and I dry my clothes to crispy perfection on a drying rack the size of a golf cart.