January 2011
1 post
Revenue!
Salut, everyone. Are you still reading this? Hooray! Welp, I have made myself a new blog, un-France related but hopefully still entertaining, and it is here.
Go! Read! Or do something productive with yourself!
December 2010
11 posts
Le départ
Well, le jour de gloire est arrivé, mes amis. I’m quitte-ing la France. All that remains for me is a nebulously-defined checkout procedure with the fruitcake-eating securityman, an hour-long trainride to CDG, and a long plane ride. Also, a croissant may occur in there somewhere.
I’m sad, obviously. For all the fairy-tale crap and intense angst that is the prescribed right of the...
Petite confession
Internet, I never went to the Eiffel Tower. Forgive me.
Jour de naissance
My mom has said once or twice (I think jokingly) that it should be the mother of the birthday person who gets all the presents and credits, seeing as she did all the work. She has also pointed out (usually as I am berating her for something stupid and teenagerly) that she doesn’t deserve to be sulked or screamed at. She’s just somebody who had a baby, once.
Well, I am that baby, and...
Bon courage, alors
Classes whose final exams I could probably pass today, based on the kind of studying I did yesterday:
The care and eating of brie sandwiches
How to get through the métro using a child’s ticket, because you are cheap
Theories of fancy French grocery stores
Giggling Studies
Societal and cultural implications of looking up one’s own name on Urban Dictionary
Speculoos 101
Classes...
Le Défecit de l'Attention
Since my parents may read this, it’s probably not wise to admit that I can’t focus on a damn thing lately. Reading for class, which ordinarily sort of goes in one ear and out the other, so to speak, is now almost utterly incomprehensible. Don’t ask me about le structuralisme. I can assure you I don’t know what it is.
But I am still making a valid attempt to profiter from...
La découverte
Let me show you something delicious.
I know! You’re like, “Blair, is France really so awful that you are going to off yourself by ingesting a deadly legume spread? Have you completely lost your mind?!”
Answers: No, and kind of.
For starters, it’s not peanut butter! Ha ha, I have fooled you with my excellent trick photography and the fact that this does, in fact, look a...
L'hippie
Somehow, France has made my downward spiral into crunchiness even more of a chute rapide. See:
my tendency to shop at farmers’ markets
yoga every morning, both as a stress-reducer and a way to offset wine consumption
my newfound penchant for harem pants
listening to Enya’s Christmas album while studying without even a hint of irony
spending time at tea houses talking about global...
Nantes
Nantes, aka the fifth-largest city in France and also aka where my dear friend Erica is passing her semester* abroad, is quite lovely. I would say it was lovely despite the fact that I had to get up so early that I saw the sun rise on my two-hour TGV ride, but I actually like doing that.
In other words, the whole day was great.
There were oodles of Christmas-themed things. According to Erica,...
Les chouchous
Given my recent post, I feel that I’ve come off as unfairly negative towards France. It’s not true! There are definitely some things I like! Despite the awful UHT milk and 8€ pints!
Take today, for example.
Crossing this bridge, and looking at all the locks stuck on here as a monument to the True Love of many many couples (except those that used combination locks. Come on!), I was...
La neige*
It’s been snowing kind of a lot in Paris. Today I woke up to a whisper-light dusting of about, oh, 2.5 centimeters, only to see a headline later on the Daily French Whatever that said something to the effect of COUNTRY PARALYZED BY KILLER SNOWFALL. Given that I come sort of from Chicago, I find this hilarious.
But apparently snow isn’t really a thing here. I’ve nearly killed...
Cahier de doléance
Things I Am Officially Over
Toilets with buttons to flush, microwaves with dials to cook
Lacking a freezer and a teakettle
Having to double-sock just not to freeze my toes off, because France is not supposed to have Real Winter
The jackass on the floor below me who blasts reggae late into the night
The security guards of my residence hall who come to my room at 3 AM to tell me that they have...
November 2010
21 posts
Un aspet d'ironie
Places that are not quiet in Paris:
The catacombs. You would think that l’empire de la mort would be silent as the grave since it, well, is a giant grave, but no; the tourists chatter in all languages there just like they do in every other place in the city.
Not to say that I minded. Frankly, all the creepy inscriptions, low, drippy ceilings, and massive piles of human bones were...
Le stuffing, à la moi
Sausage-less Apple and Sage Stuffing serves at least 5
You will need:
1 baguette 1 apple 1 onion 2-3 cloves garlic 3 sticks of celery handful of sage leaves handful of parsley leaves broth of some kind milk 2 eggs butter, duh
Buy a baguette. Do this the day before you want stuffing (this requires forethought). Don’t eat it.
The next day, whack the baguette on the table. If it...
Merci-donnant
I love Thanksgiving. It may be my favorite holiday. In my opinion, nothing beats a day of being sleepy and making hand turkeys with your family in a house that smells like turkey fat, sage, and pumpkin pie spices. There’s the parade and football, too, but I don’t really go for either. And one can never forget the traditional waiting for the corn pudding to be done so that we can...
Le "Princess movie"
A while ago, I began to see posters for this movie called La Princesse de Montpensier. It looked kind of awesome, meeting some of my most important criteria for movies, namely:
Fancy costumes
With attractive men in them
And smoldering looks
Doing minimal research, I discovered that the movie was actually about a period of French history I was studying at the time (la deuxième guerre de...
Le cheval en vue de l'écurie
I have only two and a half weeks left in Paris.
It’s a strange realization. I feel like I just got over jetlag. And now that I’m almost done, my mental attitude is way better than it was at the beginning. It feels almost easy to live here. I know where to buy groceries, I can stay more-or-less on top of my schoolwork, I can take the métro without blinking. It’s like what one...
Quand est-ce qu'on mange?
Foodwise, it was a successful vacation.
So the traveluh huz landed in Lundun?
When I was a kid, we had this book about a stuffed rabbit who went on adventures and sent postcards home. I think it was called Travels of Felix or something? Anyway, at one point he sends his human-girl owner-friend a postcard from Big Ben, and her dad remarks “So the traveler has landed in London?” Only when my sister and I would read it aloud, she would always do this line in her...
Edinburgh
Briefly: it’s very cold, and very windy. Did you know it’s as far north as Moscow? This is the the sort of thing you should be aware of before booking a November vacation.
Seeing as I was there for all of two days, one of which I was rather sick, I can’t say much about it. There are many old stone buildings and winding streets and I ate a really good ye olde pub pie there.
...
Dublin
Dublin is a cool city. No one will contest me on this, I’m confident. If you disagree, you should probably visit it and then you’ll change your mind.
Trinity College is lovely and old-timey. Very Hogwarts. Also, it hosts the Book of Kells, which is this super-intricate and beautiful medieval copy of the Bible that’s so incredible and rare that you can’t even take...
“Avoid anything that has “Olde” in the title or plays up its...”
– Eli Sentman, noted expert on Gaelic culture
À plus, Paris
After finishing a final exam and a final paper in the same week (yes, I am exhausted and nearly dead from stress, how nice of you to notice!), I am finally getting to the gallivanting-about-Europe part of this Study Abroad Experience. As my professor noted on the syllabus, “après la Révolution: liberté!” I get a week off to do whatever, and whatever, in this case, means take a...
gross
beeinrome:
3rd day of straight rain.
In Paris too. It’s absolutely de la merde.
You’d think that being forced inside would make me more inclined to study. But only if you have never met me and don’t realize that I have four unwatched seasons of Good Eats on my computer.
Edit: Patty Griffin’s “Rain” just came on my Pandora. It’s kismet. You should...
Vous dites que vous voulez une révolution
Hokay, so. The French revolution happened.
Basically Louis XVI was like “Yo, La Fayette, go and ‘elp zee Eengleesh colonists while I eat some brioche,” and La Fayette was like “D’accord” and then the colonies got their independence but France went kind of bankrupt. The guillotine was invented by a guy named Guillotin, but they didn’t like him so they cut...
La pantouflarde
Here is an unfortunate reality about “studying abroad in the City of Lights”: the first part is always true, and the second is rarely. That is, 1. you actually have to study, and 2. sometimes it rains, like, all the time, lights be damned. This means that every weekend cannot be packed to the brim with champagne-swigging by the Seine and deafening discothèque Europop. Sometimes, you...
Coupe-chevaux
Stardate: senior year of high school. Scene: my French teacher asks me to describe someone, or myself, or something. I say something to the effect of “and he has short brown hair” and she stops me. “You mean he has short brown hair,” she says in French.
“Yes?”
“You said, il a des chevaux courts et bruns.”
“Mais, non. Je ne dirais jamais...
La baguette magique
Baguettes: the bagels of Paris. A simple bread (it’s literally flour, water, and yeast). A tasty bread. And yet it has kind of a bad rep stateside. In my Real American Life, I am very conscious of these things. My bread is dark brown, sprouted, and crammed with more whole grains than my body has room for. As I am living la vie française and trying to do all of the cultural things that that...
This is a public service announcement. Do not adjust your set.
So I’m trying to write this novel, which, as I have mentioned, is kind of a ridiculous undertaking. I also really like writing this blog. But, dude, that is a lot of daily words to be pumping out. I am only one girl! One girl who also has a 4-5 page French paper due on Monday!
What I’m trying to say is: if my posts are...
Parlez-vous Frenglish?
As many poor creatures do when separated from their homelands, I’ve begun to forget how to speak English. Or, rather, I’ve been slowly infecting my mother tongue with weird anglicizations of French words. They make sense to me (and a few other people who know me) but any normal English or French speaker would probably be at an utter loss to decode what I am saying.
Examples:
...
Tarte au Citrouille
If you think the name sounds ridiculous, you, O reader, are correct. Pumpkin pie just doesn’t translate well into French. Canned pumpkin purée? Unheard of. It’s not something they do.
However, I recently had a revelation, thanks to several friends. Pumpkin pie does not actually come from a can. Hell, you can use one of those orange things you put on your doorstep for Halloween to...
Comme un coq en pâte
In no particular order, some wonderful things about this weekend.
Fall foliage and its being everywhere
Brilliant ideas for novels that are much too ambitious, and not giving a shit
Successful navigation to that pub with an Irish name, German bar food, and unpasteurized tasty beer brewed on site
The Seine, which may smell at times, but is still beautiful after you come out of the Louvre
...
La Folle d'une Nanoteuse
November is a special month. In a related story, I may have lost my mind.
In case you didn’t know, November is (inter)National Novel Writing Month, aka the month where you try to write 50,000 words of fiction while not killing someone out of stress and creative frustration. It’s a lot of fun. This is my fourth*.
I know, I know, it’s like “Blair, you are not even in...
October 2010
32 posts
Savoir-faire
Travel tips for the Louvre:
Don’t try to see it all in one day. Do be a student, skip the line, and get in free, even if it requires you to verbally tussle with the snooty ticket lady.
Don’t waste your time seeing the Mona Lisa. Do waste your time failing to read Ancient Greek inscriptions.
But, okay, do see the Venus de Milo. Do marvel at the ancient standard of beauty that...
Que je mange de la brioche
Versailles is a concrete example of a part of French history that I sort of assume I know more about than I do. It’s a giant palace that the revolutionaries hated because it rubbed royal decadence in the face of starving street urchins, except the ones adopted by Jean Valjean, and then the revolutionaries crossed the Delaware and killed the monarchs, except Anastasia, until it turned out she...
Even if the sun doesn’t rise until 8:15 in Paris, it still does a hell of a job.
Enough so that you have to run back to your room after putting your oatmeal in the microwave to grab your camera and take pictures.
An exciting life, I know.
Chanson d'automne
I was a champion school-cryer in my days at GFS. I cried in kindergarten when I fell off a trike and scraped the shit out of my knee, I cried in 5th grade when I forgot the rough draft of my report on the Vikings, I cried in 8th grade Latin class after failing an algebra midterm, and my last week of senior year was pretty much non-stop weeping.
Today, age almost 21 and of what I thought was sound...
Pas dans mon assiette
Being deadly allergic to anything makes eating in restaurants at best inconvenient and at worst terrifying (okay, at real worst, fatal. But let’s not go there). I loathe the necessity of explaining (usually more than once) that I can’t eat nuts or peanuts, that my food needs to be kept away from any ingredients that will kill me, and that no, they can’t just pluck the offending...
Au-dessus de mon corps mort
Our visit to Ste. Chapelle got rescheduled for today, and I have to admit that after a weekend of oohing and aahing at cathedrals even I get a little weary of it. Especially when I have 5 chapters of Descartes to read for class the next day. And I forget my camera.
The thing about Ste. Chapelle is that it is located inside the Palais de Justice, for some reason that was probably explained to me...
On dit quoi?
How my dad has signed emails to me since I have come to France:
M. le Dad
M. Hoh Hon
Le petit baobab qui s’appelle M. Jerry Lewis
Les émotions ou passions de l'âme
The first part of my class trip this weekend was to a real live monastery. While everyone else was busy being asleep on the bus from the train station, I was bright-eyed and chipper, listening to Medieval Baebes on my iPod and thinking about illuminated manuscripts as beautiful French countryside whipped by in plumes of fog.
Upon arrival, we stood around the gift shop for a bit* and then were...
Ah! si mon moine voulait danser
Me, squinting at inscription on a statue pedestal: (indistinct lip movements as I try to read Greek)
Monk (to me, in French): Oh, you read Greek?
Me (to him, in mumbly French): Er...sort of. I can't read capital letters very well because they look different.
Monk: Well, look here, on the other side, it's in Latin--
Me: Oh, great! Latin is easier.
Monk (chuckling): Really? Latin is easier?
Me: Well, easier than Greek, anyway.
Monk: Because there's also French on this side here, which is easy to read.
Me: Ah, yes. So it is.
But I am le tired
I was away this weekend on a class trip. Adventures abounded, but since it was very fast-paced and involved rousing myself at 5:30 and 7 AM on two respective weekend mornings, I’m going to write about it later. Just a post to say that I’m alive, and that cathedrals are awesome.
Faisons la cuisine, encore!
Did you know that, by French law, a baguette may not contain any preservatives? It’s true. This is slightly problematic (at least for me) because I cannot in good conscience allow myself to consume more than 1/4 of a baguette in a single sitting, and the smallest you can buy is a une demi-baguette (and only 45 cents, too!) Leave it sitting around overnight and it’s as hard as...
Le camoflauge
or, How to Dress Like A French Person.
1. Boots*
2. Large-ish v-neck** and skirt.
3. Scarf.***
4. Blazer****
5. Accessories*****
Done! Now go hop on the métro and enjoy your life as an américain-in-plain-sight. They’ll never know!
*Or bottines if you’re cool, but I’m not and don’t own any. **Yes, I have had this shirt since high school. ***Not optional....
Métro, boulot, dodo
To go to school, I have to commute. I have 3 options, more or less. Take the métro 4 to the 14, take the RER B to the C, or take le tramway and then walk.
Given that it’s still kind of nice out, I prefer the last option.
And so, my commute.
(In the interest of full pseudojournalistic disclosure, taking all these pictures added a good 10 minutes to my walk....
Le pays enchanté
Everything in France is tiny. And I’m not.
Today especially I felt as if I had swigged a “drink me” potion and was shooting upward.
Pennies are small enough that I doubt they even pose a significant choking hazard.
The little cups they give you for your café à emporter are positively dwarfed by my monster hands. Also: is it dangerous to wolf espresso like it’s a...
Plus ça change
Once upon a time, I had long hair, no glasses, and thought that 3 weeks was just about forever. This was when I lived in France the first time (yes, this sounds pretentious, but whatever). I spent 3 weeks in Normandy in February (pro-tip: not the time you want to be in Normandy) living with a family as an exchange student. I almost went crazy with homesickness and culture shock, but I survived,...
Pourquoi nous faisons ce que nous faisons
When you are studying abroad, seeing someone from home is like a mini-miracle. Finally, someone who speaks English and thinks it’s weird that French people don’t eat snacks and hate Muslims for no good reason and also likes to play “Gay or European?”!
It also, if you are me, allows you to levy an emotion-dump all over them about studying abroad. Erica and I came to the...
L'art d'attendre
French people love to strike. Have I mentioned this? Well. Let me say that it’s difficult to win my sympathy to your cause when your strike causes massive delays in my plans to see gothic architecture. They should probably take this into consideration when trying to capture the coveted “hopelessly uncool white female foreign exchange student” demographic.
Our train to Chartres...