MA VIE EN ROSE

"Random Player Mix"....

2007-09-21T06:53:00.000+01:00

...I'd call it an "iPod Shuffle" but okay. Ha... so here is the most random post ever, considering I haven't updated this at all though I've meant to go back and fill in all the gaps from Paris as well as perhaps some interesting, random things from life in NY and DC.

My random 80-or-so minutes' worth:

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis
Weezer - Simple Pages
Morrissey - This World Is Full Of Crashing Bores
Shins - Phantom Limb
Emiliana Torrini - To Be Free
The Clash - Hateful
Fratellis - Got Ma Nuts From A Hippy (Lol... that title still makes me laugh)
White Stripes - Ball and Biscuit
Sufjan Stevens - In the Devil's Territory
Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek (that one threw me for a loop as I hadn't listened to it in half a year)
The Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches (Try like 7 years!)
Arctic Monkeys - 505
Radiohead - 2+2=5
Les Chansons d'Amour - J'ai cru entendre
Pete Yorn - Crystal Village
Memphis - A Little Place in the Wilderness
Death Cab for Cutie - We Looked Like Giants
Tap Tap - Way To Go, Boy
Delgados - Girls of Valour
Loquat - Take It Back
Ted Leo/RXs - The Ballad of the Sin Eater
Neutral Milk Hotel - Communist Daughter
Third Eye Blind - Eye Conqueror
Silverchair - Ana's Song (Open Fire) - I sheepishly admit, I love this song!!
Neko Case- Ghost Writing
Mates of State - 10 Years Later

And the Ween's mix, which totally kicks my mix's arse:

Phoenix-Second to None

The Beatles-Here Comes the Sun

Tori Amos-Mother

We Are Scientists-The Great Escape

Sufjan Stevens-John Wayne Gacy Jr.

Tegan and Sara-I Bet It Stung

The Beatles-Oh!Darling

Stevie Wonder-Isn’t She Lovely

Mendelssohn-Wedding March

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins-Handle With Care

Rilo Kiley-Silver Lining

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah-Blue Turning Grey

Death Cab For Cutie-Soul Meets Body

Everclear-I Will Buy You A New Life

Badly Drawn Boy-Stone On The Water

Yann Tiersen-Pas Si Simple

The Shins-Caring Is Creepy

Norah Jones-I’ve Got To See You Again

Beach Boys-God Only Knows

Death Cab for Cutie-Title And Registration

The Magic Numbers-Try

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists-High Party

Dave Matthews Band-Satellite

Billy Joel-Tell Her About It

Moby-Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

The Shins-Sleeping Lessons

I can think of no other way to end this post than to echo the sentiment at the close of Ween's email to me with her tracklist: Verbatim: RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI RI KI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Au Revoir, St-Denis...

2007-06-05T23:16:00.000+01:00

St. Denis must have known it was my last day, because they made it very special. In the matter of just a few hours (a few rather than 6, because I was an hour and a half late to psych and decided to therefore just go for the "pause" and hand in my paper and take off, and because I didn't go to soc because I was writing my paper for that in the libe instead), I found all of the following:

Bathroom with:
-lock on the door
-toilet seat
-light in the stall
-toilet PAPER
-trashcan
-working sink
-SOAP
-working hand dryer. Good god!

A free computer in the library that let me access my email, put in a disc, and print out my composition.
A salad at the cafeteria counter.
Someone other than madame Crochety, who served me my salad and coke with a smile and sing-songy voice.

I think there were more things but that's what I got for now.

I was so dumbfounded I didn't know what to do with myself. Well, Universite Paris VIII-St Denis, you've done me well, and thanks for the kind send-off. You definitely were worth the 45-minute (and always amusing in some way or other) hike on Ligne 13, even on days when you had no toilet paper to offer me, nor hospitality other than the crochety old lady manning the cafeteria counter in downstairs Batiment A or the group of sketchy gangsta guys standing around a boombox blaring "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". I won't forget your otherwise kind and active and interesting student body, your array of out-there classes, your commie political stance, nor your modern architecture and design that includes signs written in completely lowercase letters indicating that you are automatically cooler than the Sorbonne.

Au Revoir St-Denis!!

Week-end of Caves...

2007-05-26T23:36:00.000+01:00

Friday night we went over to St. Michel -

- down the lively as ever Rue de la Huchette, to Rue Galande and the Caveau des Oubliettes, which I'd been wanting to check out for a while. I'd been really excited to finally get to listen to some live jazz - when we got there we saw that tonight it was in fact blues - but to my surprise, I really liked it; we all did. We had gotten there a little early so we could get a good spot downstairs in the small, cavernous (seriously) space where there was a small stage and tables lining each side, with extra stools dotting the rest of the floor. Within a half hour all the spaces were filled, and everyone was talking, drinking, smoking (I've really gotten used to it - what a nice surprise it'll be to be smoke-free back in the states!!) while waiting for the act to start. Though my host mom had told me that it was a famous place and hence a bit touristy where I would hear classic French chanson and that often the subjects of the songs-as-storytales were a bit vulgar and I probably wouldn't understand it all, it actually seemed like there was a pretty local crowd, and I didn't hear any other English spoken in the room nor see anyone (ahem.... else) with a camera. And uh, it was a modern blues band. Strike twenty-seven for my often quite adorably eager-to-inform, still-thinks-it's-several-decades-ago host mom. Lol.

Sus in sepia...

Ray and Abby getting ready for the "absinthe"

abby and sus... nice face!

bluessss

We all enjoyed ourselves and found ourselves staying longer and dancing more in our seats than we thought! Afterwards Robyn and Nell and I continued the cave trend at Purgatoire, a very small bar off of St. Germain with dancing downstairs - I remembered the music from last time being French rather than American dance/pop mash-ups but it was fun nonetheless!

The next night I met Robyn and Dorothy on the Seine by Invalides, crossing the Pont Alexandre III and admiring Paris in its lit-up-at-night, cool summer air glory. We relaxed and shared a little of the fruity monoprix white wine that I’d bought a while ago and left at Robyn’s, and then we headed over to get in line for Showcase, a new club under the bridge we'd heard about. We waited for about 20 minutes and were surprised to get in – there was seemingly no rhyme or reason to who was getting in – they turned down groups of guys, but also small groups of girls, of guys and girls, of people dressed very nicely - in any case, somehow we three got in, and we exhaled and laughed about it when we got past the bouncers. Inside you’d think it would be really chic... The décor and atmosphere were certainly classy, but in a fun and inviting way, rather than a snobbish and exclusive and self-important way, I thought. Partly… or greatly… because of the music. First of all, there was a live band playing when we got in, and the dude was screaming in English – it was some sort of hard rock – what? Cool, but not really my thing nor Robyn or Dorothy's... they were just finishing up, thank goodness. But the crowd over there in that section was digging it… and then another band came on, who were actually pretty good, a mix of French and English being sung… and only after that did a DJ come on, and it was NOT typical club music at all. There was a great spell of dancy retro 60s and 70s music that came on, mostly American, that was just great, and everyone was having a good time. The crowd was more hip than chic - much like the music explained at one point: "Hip teens don't wear blue jeans/Cause we're cool cats, we got soul/Cause we're the in-crowd on the scene". Funny, I figured that song was from the 60s but turns out it's from a modern group (called the Frank Popp Ensemble) that's heavily influenced by 60s rock. I also remember them playing The Kinks' "I Need You", the original "Venus" by Shocking Blue (that we can't hear now without picturing a razor), and the Hawaii-Five-O theme song.

The one thing I did notice about the clientele, which perhaps also helped make it such a good time, was that there were no guys that looked like they were going to give one of us a suggestive smirk or eye and try to pull us over to them to dance, or ask for our numbers after a two-minute getting to know you conversation that includes little beyond "where are you from" and "tu me plait beaucoup". Nice for a change! I guess their one golden rule was to not let in sketchy guys – you can kind of tell who they are right away, I must say; not that there is one look, but certain looks can certainly scream sketchy. So anyway. We danced, carefree, during the retro spurt, totally loving the environment - we felt really comfortable; no one cared what they looked like, or even whether they were dancing by themselves. I got that sense anyway. Between dancing, walking around, people watching, enjoying the music and the scene, we had a great time. Somehow it got to 3:15 pretty quickly and we headed out, getting tired.

the crazy screamy band in blue

dorothy and robyn in red...

one of the bars

the good band

on the way out. In the back, past the arches, are windows open to the Seine, letting the cool air in. Awesome!

Expat Blues: France +2, US -3...

2007-05-16T22:13:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry to say I have to continue on that slightly deprecating-towards-the-US spirit...

Current Reasons that France Rocks:
1. People cry when THEIR two-term president leaves
2. An Inconvenient Truth is third on Virgin's bestselling list, a good portion of tonight's news was spent on SmartCars and other environmentally friendly cars, and one of today's papers published a segment about huge masses of ice melting in the south pole - obviously not great news but at least it's getting blatantly out there

Current Reasons the US doesn't:
1. Today a couple students were turned away from a museum because they were under no circumstances allowed to bring in their laptops, since there could be bombing devices inside and they didn't have a mechanism to check them... We were like "Seriously? We're students." and the guard says, "Well, look what's happened with students in America..."
2. Encouragement of students carrying GUNS with them at all times ON CAMPUS in Utah and Texas?!? WHAT??!
3. Paul Wolfowitz

sigh. I'm sorry. I really do love my country and am excited to go back to it, I just can't ignore the day's events that have made this list.... Please, if anyone reads this, feel more than free to make some counter-comments to make me feel better about where I'm from!! I know the reasons exist, I just can't seem to think of them right now!

Sarko & Spoiled Tor

2007-05-16T21:19:00.000+01:00

Wow. So this blog became just about as ambitious a project as the ziploc bags full of ticket stubs sitting on my floor at home somewhere intended to be scrapbooked. Oh well!

So today while we met outside the Musée de l'Orangerie in the Tuileries before our class there, we saw all the police cars rolling into the Place de la Concorde (where I really wish I'd been last weekend just for the experience) : the signal that Sarko was near. Yup, today Nicolas Sarkozy was officially handed over the power by Chirac in front of the Élysée - okay it's also officially too annoying to put in the accents. Anyway. My art history professor said it was "dommage" - too bad. I mentioned a conversation I had with my host mom last night, and they seem to be in agreement that the new pres will try, unfortunately, to bring France closer to the US and Britain in terms of work and economy - optionally longer workweeks, welfare cuts - basically eroding away some of what I think are key defining values in France that it'd be really a shame to lose. Yes, he'll probably boost the country's economy - but from what everyone says, and like what I'm told happened under Blair (I tread carefully with words like "I hear" and "I'm told" because I don't pretend to hide my ignorance), the poor should plan to get poorer and the rich to get richer. He's said to be closer to Bush's policies than any of the other candidates, and anticipated to bring about a lot of change to move in that direction, which my host mom shook her head at. She only said she was wary of that in terms of the war aspect - she wants her country to stay out of things like war, like they have been - but I'd be wary for the rest, too.

The values that I mentioned - what I meant by that were a deference to leisure time (which means, broken down: necessary time for family, for oneself, for travel - 36 hour workweeks, 6 week starting vacations and paternity leave - ) and a laid back attitude that knows how to enjoy life a little more day by day, and to embrace art and culture as a continuous, fluid element of it. Not to say that Sarkozy is out to change these things or that a country's people could lose some of its longstanding core values and traditions just like that, it's just that I think (fear) that it's all part of the same spirit that's about to get attacked in one way or another in the upcoming years. I like this element of France that's been a refresher to me - whether I'm really still an American at heart that will take every moment possible to work harder, make more money, more more more, I don't know - but in any case it'd be sad for the country to lose a bit of uniqueness. That's just me.

In OTHER news, things are great these days - came back from a lovely weekend in the south of France (my tan lines and weirdly placed and painful burns are starting to subside), and am currently working on finding a job (eeeek), preparing to make the most of my last month here, booking a weekend in Canada pronto, and anticipating some much-awaited catch-ups with family and friends! (Even though some of those friends are doing silly things like doing a Europe tour after I've left, leaving for the whole summer in Maine before I get home, or like, living in California or something... Thanks.) Ha, well, I'm excited and all, but what's more frappant... Striking, I mean... (the French words sometimes just come first!!!) is how sad I'll be to leave. I kinda realized, crap, this may be as good as it gets. Not that it should get any better - I couldn't ask for a more wonderful experience than the one I've been given for the past couple months - but just, wow, these are perhaps some of the best months of my life, and I'll never be in this situation again. Unless I live in Europe later in life (okay - actually I am planning on it - ), chances to come back here will be few and far between. When I get restless and need a change of scenery I won't be able to just hop on a train or a RyanAir flight and go somewhere beautiful and old that I haven't been before. And I'll certainly never have this much leisure time again... besides perhaps this summer, it might just be all downhill from here... aaaah! End of study abroad semester blues!

But in any case, ::snap-out-of-it headshake:: I'm going to just be incredibly thankful for being able to do this and try to really make the most (as in, get my ass out of bed earlier on thursdays fridays saturdays and sundays, spend a little less time on facebook, and make more of an effort to do something different every day) of the rest of my time here. Yyyyyeah!

Cannes

2007-05-14T17:47:00.000+01:00

a post in progress... a chronological photo "parcours" of our one day in beautiful Cannes, just a few days before the festival (damn, we def should have chosen the next weekend, when we booked it back in February!)

Niiiice, very niiiiice...

2007-05-12T17:46:00.000+01:00

Encore, encore! Le Petit Thomas.

2007-05-05T22:28:00.000+01:00

I was so happy to be greeted by this little devil again for a couple days, and his lovely parents who are eager to try out their English while helping me with my French. A couple more photos are in order...!

santoriniiiii

2007-04-22T22:49:00.000+01:00

To come. siiigh. You know you've got a good life when you're upset about coming back to Paris.

Roma

2007-04-15T22:48:00.000+01:00

Dubrovnik

2007-04-14T22:49:00.000+01:00

Split

2007-04-11T22:48:00.000+01:00

Firenze

2007-04-09T22:48:00.000+01:00

Venezia

2007-04-07T22:47:00.000+01:00

Milano

2007-04-05T22:46:00.000+01:00

We're from Barcelona.......

2007-03-26T02:28:00.000+01:00

Not really, and neither is this fabulously fun Swedish band. I saw this show coming up a good while back, and had been meaning to take my brother to a concert forever, so I picked up the tickets for us a couple weeks ago at FNAC and excitedly awaited the show. I had Zach listen to them on my iPod on the metro ride over to Pigalle, the lovely area right by the sex district, where the club (La Cigale) is. Little did I know that we would come out two hours later tee shirt-laden, drenched in water and sweat and raving nonstop about the best show we'd ever seen...

SO! It's now actually been quite some time since the show but I'll at least enumerate some of its memorable moments and or elements, in chronological order:

-Before they came on, the stage hands set up a gazillion balloons all over the place - I said to myself, this is going to be good.
-There were 18 PEOPLE ON STAGE. From what I read there are really 29, and whoever's on stage is just whoever could make it to that show.-If someone wasn't playing an instrument, he or she was probably doing one of the following: dancing, hand gestures to accompany the words, hopping, blowing balloons, throwing confetti, taking pictures and/or video of themselves or the crowd, and definitely sweating.
-During "Oversleeping" after a few extended cries of "Daaaaamn" that are in the song, Emanuel says, "Let's try the French version.... Merrrrrrrde" and the crowd loves it!
-"Rec and Play" periodically transitions into a kickass version of "Like A Prayer" that god knows the entire room shouted along to!
-They keep throwing a seemingly endless supply of confetti at us
-They offer a kazoo to someone in the crowd and bring her up to do the honors in "Chicken Pox" (ohhhh I love that song)
-They announce: "Triple Stage Dive!" and three of them come flying over us
-Emanuel says they're going to end the concert with a question. I knew he would then ask us, "Have you ever felt that nothin's ever going your way?" Everyone swayed their arms left and right... We all knew everything was going to be ok! ("Ola Kala".)
-They come back on stage after barely a few seconds, saying "We just really want to play some more, is that okay?"
-Someone throws a plastic trumpet into the crowd as a gift
-The encore is just as long as the main set!
-They take turns blowing up huge black balloons and bringing out glowsticks - DANCE PARTY ensues!!! One of the guys sets up his laptop on a table in the middle of the stage and just works it, while everyone else goes nuts and distributes the fluorescent jazzy glowy dance accessories
-The floor is SHAKING...
-The encore ends, and we're so in love with them and unsatiable that the whole room sings "Na na na na na na na na na na na...." (<-- okay, the variation really doesn't translate written) (from the song "We're From Barcelona) again and again in unison - it really was amazing. I took a video of the immense room behind me packed with people all chanting together at the top of their lungs. I've never seen anything like this before!
-Clapping, stomping!
-They come back for one more!
-They leave... and respond to our continuous screaming and cheering by coming back for one more! These guys are just having so much fun they don't want to leave. After the show, Zach and I look at each other, huge grins on our faces, eyes wide, drenched in water the band threw at us and sweat. Our legs are about to give way from jumping up and down. We get over the period of quiet astonishment and start raving about all of our favorite elements of the show. Zach's expression of nonchalance or "Um, dancing? No way." has vanished. We got the chance to talk to a couple of the guys on the way out to the merch table, which was also manned by all band members. After telling them this was the best show I'd been to, one guy says: "You know what? I think it was our best show too!" and says the crowd here in Paris was just so great, it pushed them to it. We finally exhale a little and get outside, the club people having kicked us all out, and what's right outside the door but a little group of three of them and a ukelele, singing on the street to a little circle of people that remains - the party never ends! Wow, writing all this is bringing it all back - it was hands down the most fun I've ever had at a show, and probably just plain the best one I've been to. I'm so glad Zach got to see it and have a great time too! DEFINITELY check them out if you ever get the chance. There's a great interview of the lead singer Emanuel that I found here, and a brief description of all 29 members with clever nicknames on their website here.

shoot! excitement must have made me lose my self-picture skills... sorry Zach!

well looks like Z lost his skills of keeping his thumb out of the pic haha so there you go...

the party continues outside. Wow.

Fam time !!!

2007-03-25T01:16:00.000+01:00

The time finally came!!!! I was thrilled on the metro ride over to the 5th to Censier-Daubenton, where my parents had just arrived and were staying, right off of Rue Mouffetard. Why stay in a hotel when you can stay in someone's lovely Parisian apartment, and for less money too? Awesome. It was so wonderful and bizarre to see them here - it had seemed like it would be forever until they came, thinking about it back in late January when I arrived slightly scared and lonely like the first day of middle school, but by the time the day finally rolled around it seemed like it snuck up on me from nowhere and couldn't believe it was already late March.

We'd already been to Paris together and seen the sights, so we had a relaxing, laid-back time, which was more than fine with everyone. I got to spend all of Sunday and Monday with them, went out to dinner Wednesday night with them and some friends, and then we packed up and left Thursday afternoon for Spain.

Daddy at the crepe stand.

Liz later that night at a great, tiny little authentic French restaurant our lovely cousins and English/American expats in Paris, Sophie and Chris, took us to for dinner. It only had about 8 tables, its walls were covered with old photos and posters with seemingly no rhyme or reason, the food was delicious - the kind of place where you don't exactly know what any of the dishes are but you order one and hope for the best and everything is just really good - and the owners were very personable and funny when we talked to them as we finished our meal, the last ones in the place.

Zach runnin' the show looking up "loisirs" in Paris as we took a soup/coffee break at a cafe with a surprisingly stereotype-confirming rude French waiter. I definitely experienced the worst service of my whole time here, when my parents were around! Weird.

my fam! Well, almost...

...There he is! The boy is taller than me! Eeeek!

the Jardin des Plantes in the lovely 5th arrondissement, where we began our walk. Another beautiful park to take a break in when you're sick of being in a city. It's incredible how many there are here, and how beautiful and different each one is...

aww.

Liz is really enjoying our next park break along the Seine, as Zach and James play frisbee.

FALAFEL from Rue des Rosiers, consumed happily inside the Place des Vosges.

Dad digs in.

Zach and the ADORABLE little french boy who walked right up to him and joined the game of catch...

...Who made a few catches, a lot of exclamations, and later turned out to in fact be the adorable little Italian boy - and I thought he was just being shy when I asked what his name was and he didn't answer me! His parents explained that they were from Italy on vacation. Oh, European children... adorable and well-dressed, and so intelligent-seeming, I mean, do you hear how well they can speak that foreign language?? Damn, better than me...

The next night at dinner on Rue Mouffetard, where the rents get to meet a few of my "pots"! (Friends.)

The girls

The whole gang. At left is James and his mom Anne, our neighbors in NYC, who joined my family for their France/Spain let's-take-advantage-of-our-kids'-spring-break trip.

Mix time

2007-03-18T14:36:00.000+01:00

So I made myself a mix of new stuff I’ve been listening to – a good bit of which is European (which I found out about as a result of, e.g., the awesome record store in Amsterdam, posters in Paris, etc.), and including some really different songs/genres that I typically don’t listen to much of. Of course there’s still some good old typical indie rock, too. If anyone’s interested I can send the mix along. Here’s the track listing.

l’europe en chanson au printemps :

1 Alex Gopher – Brain Leech

2 The Wombats – Moving to New York

3 The Arcade Fire – The Well and the Lighthouse

4 Klaxons – Golden Skans

5 Maps – Don’t Fear

6 Stars – The First Five Times (Russian Futurists remix)

7 Jamie T – Sheila

8 Yelle – Je Veux Te Voir

9 Shitdisco – 72 Virgins

10 Kavinsky – Testarossa Autodrive

11 !!! – Bend Over Beethoven

12 Mika – Relax, Take It Easy

13 Bob Sinclar feat. Steve Edwards – World Hold On

14 Love of Diagrams – Pace or the Patience

15 Brendan Benson – Feel Like Taking You Home

16 Voxtrot – Kid Gloves

17 The Broken West – So It Goes

18 Peter Bjorn and John – Paris 2004

19 Cajun Dance Party – Colourful Life

20 The Rifles – Peace and Quiet (unplugged)

21 Pelle Carlberg – How I Broke My Foot and Met Jesus

22 Findlay Brown – But You Love Me

23 Monta – Summer Hits Back

24 Benoît Pioulard – Fir

25 Camille – Assise

26 Adele – My Same

27 Feist – My Moon My Man

28 Odile Closset and Manu Markou – La Nostalgie Camarade

29 4hero feat. Carina Anderson – Morning Child

just a note: track 13 is included only because it’s impossible not to, as I pretty much hear it at least once in EVERY bar or club in Paris. It’s pretty terrible but oddly catchy.

3rd round of classes...

2007-03-13T20:01:00.000+01:00

…and more interesting cultural differences. So today in my sociology of the city class, we’re going through the article she gave us to read, going through each paragraph and making sure we have the main ideas. Our assignment had been to summarize each paragraph in a sentence or quote, so she was asking us for our suggestions and giving her own. This was great for me, as the subject matter was at times tricky enough itself without the French to weigh it down – but I guess it might have been rather boring for a French student, because an hour into the class, some guy raises his hand, and says more or less: “Is this… all we’re doing today? Are we going to read the whole thing?” (pause.) “Because… I mean, I read this (or maybe he said could read this) on my own.” The teacher, rather than yell at him for being disrespectful, explained her reason for going through it rather slowly, saying she was trying to make sure we understood the method of reading a text, that next time she’d just have us do it on our own, and that she was sorry if he thought she was wasting his time. I think it was left at that for the moment, but he did get up about a minute later, making three other people get up in order for him to get out and creating a bunch of noise, seemingly to make a phone call. My mouth was probably still gaped open at that point…

Other than that, the class was really good and interesting, and I even raised my hand and offered an answer once – which apparently was good because she asked me to repeat it so everyone else could write it down! Woohoo!

Drawing class was also good – which I take with Jules, Susannah, and 10 or so French people, from one high school kid to men and women in their fifties (or so, I’d say). Today we had a live model and she was great, definitely the best model I’ve drawn – very interesting poses. Maybe I was just sitting in a good spot. Who knows.

The next day I had my film class… um…
(a) we watched movies for nearly the whole time again, with him talking for only about a half hour (it’s a three hour class, like the others – only once a week)
(b) He hands back my “fiche pédagogique” to me which I had to ask him fill out for my program; it has space for him to write out what work I will be required to do for the semester and what dates – he has written: “ORAL, MAI. DST, MAI.” =oral exam in may, test in class may. No subject material indicated whatsoever, no dates indicated. Sweet. My program’s going to love this.
(c) He says that there is no class next week… because he is sick?? I could swear I heard the word “malade”.

And all throughout the day I continued my ongoing search for bathrooms. They are hard to find, and with toilet paper? That’s another thing.

Another day in a French university!

Flav’s birthday extravaganza weekend

2007-03-12T23:20:00.000+01:00

Today miss Flávia turns twenty-one, so we celebrated Saturday and Monday night, because cmon, 21 deserves at least two nights. A real celebration of her first legal drink will have to wait until back in the US though, as the wine and cocktails and more cocktails and beer Saturday and the wine with dinner on Monday were great but not out of the ordinary!

Saturday night: lovely Italian dinner, a walk in the summery air over to St Michel where we found some dancing for Flávia at Ze Bar, then the Highlander from 230 to 5, where they finally managed to kick us out after Georgetown won the Big East Championship.

mmmmmm

ok - this is the freaky dress we saw in a window while we were walking - it's got pictures of a little girl (or doll... hopefully doll) carrying her own head, blood spewing out of her neck. Comes complete with cleaver!!! K doesn't really go along with the rest of the post, I know, but... couldn't miss a photo op of this one.

Nor this! These are the jolly brits we ran into that were on their way to a costume party! Flav had no problem asking them to take a photo with her... in fact in this case, I even encouraged her and ran over to them with her. They were so nice! Yay for "older" people still having fun!

my girl

Monday night: another lovely dinner, at a chic restaurant just north of Odéon, followed by a stop at a great little gelato place. Some of them went on to a bar after, but not only did I definitely not have more than 50 centimes left on me, but I was exhausted and had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for my 9am class at St. Denis.

A great weekend, the theme of which was complimenting the birthday girl and her new haircut and new dresses (from Zara, of course) – gorgeous! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, love!

Summer in March!

2007-03-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

What better way to celebrate 65-degree weather than to grab an 80-centime baguette and 4-euro bottle of wine (or um, two) and set out to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont to bask in the sunshine on the grass for a few hours with good company and conversation? I don’t know.

see Sacré Coeur off in the distance?

i just liked this guy with the heart glasses. haha.

This park and people like this guy, it made me think for a minute I could be in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, sitting on the grass among picnickers like last summer with Mike watching Dracula with a live orchestra. I think it's a rare place/atmosphere to replicate, but I was surprised, this came pretty close.

In other news, look what I could be seeing instead of lying on a beach in Greece on the 21st of April:
http://www.printemps-bourges.com/en/schedule/schedule.php?typespec=tous
Sigh… Life is full of hard choices these days…

How long's it been?!?

2007-03-11T22:24:00.000+01:00

Ittttt’s….

Funny, I’m become more of a Georgetown basketball fan since I’ve been here than I’ve ever been back at school. Something about becoming more nostalgic about home… It’s been pretty awesome getting together to watch the games at Moosehead or Highlander, whether it be at 8pm in a bar full of French rugby fans that don’t understand how a little group of ten americans can be so loud and excited about a basketball game, at 6pm in an empty bar with more georgetown students than anyone else, or from 3am to 5am in a bar half-full of sketchy remnants from the night and other very interesting types. In any case – HOYA SAXA for our Big East champs!!

at the Moosehead: Mike, Robyn, Jason and Bill

Who knew you could meet more Georgetown people... in Paris?

the lovely Hailey and I

Highlander... probably around 4! Oh, Matty... LOL

le petit Thomas!

2007-03-11T15:14:00.000+01:00

Oh, le petit chéri! Finally some pictures of the cutest 22-month-old EVER… it’s my host mom’s grandson, his name is Thomas.

It still always amazes me when I see parents talking to their babies in French… my automatic reaction is “how the heck do you think they’re going to understand you when you talk like that?” I continue to feel really stupid when I see five-year-olds understanding and then spitting back out the gibberish that is fast-paced French, that I can’t pretend to understand as well as they already do.

Without further adieu, voilà mon chéri :

Drinks in Pigalle...

2007-03-10T23:19:00.000+01:00

...prove to be, much like the surrounding area, flashy and cheap!

Aaaand here are some neighboring haunts worth a few photos – some classy boutiques, and an any-time-of-day favorite, the Sexodrome. (Maybe next time.) Seriously, people say Amsterdam is ridiculous? Take a stroll down Boulevard de Clichy or Rue St. Denis.

Robyn and Lynsey (that’s a lot of Ys…) and I.

Tout le monde va à Paris!

2007-03-08T21:57:00.000+01:00

This post is an ongoing tribute to all the people that have made the very wise decision to make a visit to Paris during these months !

MEGAAAN!

Owen and Cath!

O-Doggy and I and the infamous Circle-of-Life dance.

Steph and Jake!

Emma in front of Sacré Coeur

Lynsey! (with miss Robyn)

AMSTERDAM - part two

2007-03-02T14:34:00.000+01:00

So, Nicole, Leah and Susannah stayed at Nicole’s uncle’s townhouse, in the cute, quiet, residential quarter of Jordaan. Hail and I stayed in a hostel just south of the Van Gogh museum, where her best friend from Georgetown studying in Scotland was staying too for the weekend (people meeting up all over the place! I love it! I would later see people on the street in the red light district that I knew from school. Small world. Or continent at least.).

sleepin' on the train on the way in

“Here you go, bloodyhands…” LOL

la lune et sa lumiere !

exxxxxxcellent tapas restaurant in Jordaan!

red light district

more eerie moon

One of what Hailey would (hilariously) come to refer to as “MOTHER****ING STROOPWAFELS!!!”

hail-in-a-clog

nicole's uncle's amazing CD collection

lunch at Small Talk - our favorite little corner neighborhood coffee place

a real Dutch pancake!

sus & leah

AMSTERDAM!

2007-03-01T12:30:00.000+01:00

I’m really glad we chose Amsterdam : what a great place to spend our four-day weekend. I definitely could have stayed another week, another month, maybe several months. It’s a lovely little city filled with beautiful, calm canals lined with old narrow townhouses that are bright, pastel, and welcoming during the day, and illuminated and quietly charming at night. In between there are endless little restaurants and coffee houses and coffeeshops (two different things!) and lunch spots and local bars that are all very unassuming and inviting, filled with happy, easy-going people: all the Dutch people we met (unfortunately that only includes waiters/waitresses/servers, and random people on the street we asked for directions) were very warm and friendly, and we felt very comfortable there as foreigners. In comparison to Paris, not only is the city itself much smaller and more manageable (and walkable pretty much in its entirety by foot), but the atmosphere is more laid back, slower-moving, and also more international, which I think was part of the comfort we felt. It wasn’t just that there were a lot of tourists or that everything was in Dutch and English (and that everyone spoke English), but also, I think, that there isn’t the fierce defense of Dutch language and culture that the French have. Not to stereotype the French – because I’m the first to get sour at Americans who go on about how rude French people are, when Americans are truly just as bad with foreigners, and when there are of course plenty of very nice French people – but the difference really was tangible, I thought.

We spent the weekend quite leisurely, getting plenty of sleep and taking our time getting up and out, and only did two touristy things: the Van Gogh museum, which was spectacular, and the Anne Frank house, which was really striking and good to see too. Other than that we strolled along the streets, ate, um, a lot of stroopwafels – the most delicious cookies EVER – and just enjoyed ourselves and life and the city.

so, I’m just going to start posting a selection of my bazillion photos :

Bloemenmarkt - the floating flower market

a typical canal view at night - how lovely does it look?

one of the more popular conceptions of the city

this lunch place was just the best - the atmosphere was free and relaxed (yet again), but also had a particularly organic, homegrown, country feel to it too - which reminded both of us of upstate New York.

Can't get enough of the Dutch language... if anyone can tell me what this says I'd be quite interested (um, Erin??).
(Can I also make note of the fact that warnings on cigarettes in Europe are bigger and more blunt? e.g. "Smoking Kills." Granted they smoke like chimneys over here, but still, yet another reason why Europe is awesome...)

Leah in... the name of the place escapes me... Hailey? help?

I like to think that this is what the room looked like to most people

Here’s one of a series of paintings from an artist (Rae Witvoet) who did her own take on 24 masterpieces (e.g. this Chagall one), which Hailey and I loved (if the link ever works, her stuff’s pretty cool). They were just displayed in a window facing the street – a “public art space”. Art is everywhere!

Building on that, here’s a shot of Hailey in the bar we finally decided on, to duck into for a drink and to get out of the cold one evening – look at the art on the wall! The thing is, this wasn’t a quirky place or anything – this was just a normal bar – and that’s the point. Their “normal” is our (american) “weird” – same with how a lot of European pop music is our indie music. I mean, someone I met from England the other day couldn’t believe that most of my friends hadn’t heard of the Arctic Monkeys; he said his grandma could probably name their hit song. That’s actually another thing too – I feel like there isn’t as much of a division between what appeals to old people and young people in Europe – there isn’t that protective need to shade older people from “that loud music those young kids listen to”, for example, that I feel there often is in America. I mean, you go to the supermarket and the old lady next to you is wearing a hip manteau (long coat) and a skirt with stockings and boots, like all the young women in winter, and over the loudspeaker is Lily Allen rapping in her brash cockney accent. If there was a supermarket back home where old and young dressed alike and the music ranged from rock to rap to pop – no “smooth jazz” – wouldn’t you think that that must be an oddly liberal, modern place? Well, here it’s just the everyday. …Just one stab at exploring a much much larger underlying cultural difference that I don’t know will ever cease to exist between the US and Europe. At least, I don’t think our culture is capable of changing and becoming more like theirs in this sense – and god, I really hope Americanization doesn’t seep into theirs so much that it bends more towards ours.

Anyway back to Amsterdam – we really had a tough time deciding where to stop in, because everyplace just looked so darn cute and inviting! Somehow every place we went over the course of these several days managed to have a very local, low-key, warm feel to it too. I just felt comfortable the whole time, and never really like a foreigner either.

Oh man, here's a shot from inside the BEST record store EVER - it's called Concerto, on Utrechtsestraat (where there were like, two more down the block too! Wtf!). If I'd been left to my own devices and didn't feel bad making Hail sit there and wait for me I could have spent all day here. Sean, if in Amsterdam, would have spent his entire stay here (and likely bank account too). The section here, with the upstairs and downstairs - there were four such sections, and one of them - "Pop" - was filled with I'm pretty sure every CD that's on my list to buy. And of course so many more - a lot I hadn't heard of and had to write down and look up when I got home. Some of which I found one or two tracks from on hype machine, many whose CDs weren't available on any American sites I checked, some of which was barely findable online at all. I really should have picked up some things there that I can't find anywhere else... but in my haste and bewilderment I somehow only managed to grab a jazzy edition of the Arcade Fire's new one (that had come out a day or so earlier) and the Klaxons. They had listening stations - posters everywhere, flyers, news, events - I got a free music magazine and Arcade Fire poster on the way out - how much better does it get?

More love of and fascination with the Dutch language.

Drinken!

Paris loves the voxtrot!

2007-02-28T23:58:00.000+01:00

VOXTROT and LONEY, DEAR at La Fleche D’Or:

What a cool venue. Not far from La Maroquinerie, in a seemingly less than glamorous section of the 20^th at the far western edge of Paris, sits La Fleche D’Or – on this « Soirée Indie Rock » , an indie rock venue ‘til midnight-ish, a dance club after. I came in during the second band (of five – not a typical Paris show) and talked to Ramesh a bit who is just the sweetheart you’d think he is – just so nice and I would think a pretty awesome person. We talked about France (he knows enough French to get by from his mom), his solo performance on a French radio show the next day (he wasn’t sure which songs he’d play), their upcoming set (I wondered if they’d play “Warmest Part of the Winter”, which he said – and I agree actually – would be kind of boring onstage here but thought it made a potentially good choice for the radio show!), his drink he didn’t like, and a popular lesbian club in Paris.

Before Voxtrot was Loney Dear, who I didn’t realize I knew until he started singing – that unmistakable voice! (and there’s always gonna be this little girl inside of me…)

Unfortunate that he came on then, because the crowd was still a little high from the energy of the last band, The Jai Alai Savant (who were pretty good I thought), and was also excited for Voxtrot – it just wasn’t the best environment for his type of music, which requires more patience and, quiet. I still was convinced that I need to go get his CD at some point, though.

Wow – wow – when Voxtrot took the stage – well, the keyboardist remarked halfway through their set (which was short, maybe a half hour) that they were amazed to have this sort and this much of a response for their first time in Paris, and frankly, so was I. They went absolutely nuts. Maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that I was one person from the very front and around me was a group of really rowdy, excited fans that danced, jumped, screamed, crowdsurfed at one point, and even stormed the stage during the last song, one girl running right into the bassist – god, they were shameless – I mean they just hoisted themselves up there, scattered amongst the little space there was left on stage, and danced! So maybe I got a different impression being in the middle of all that, but even just the fact that there was a group of people that excited, and that the rest of the crowd if perhaps not that extreme was still nonetheless really into them, well, that definitely said something about the band and how far their music has reached. And just how damn good they are… and how big they could be in the near future, especially after they put out their first full-length album. Watch out, everyone!

Ramesh doesn't by any means stay still long enough for me to get a good picture...

(the stage-storming)

The set, though short, was great – all of the band had energy, but Ramesh, he brought it out of the audience too, jumping around on stage, running around, you couldn’t keep him still; he just seemed so happy to be there, playing for us. They played the big ones (“Raised by Wolves”, “Mothers Sisters Daughters and Wives”, “Soft and Warm” – much to my great relief! my favorite!), some new ones that sounded great, and ended with “The Start of Something” – that’s when the stage was besieged – and the crowd shouted and chanted so much that they brought them back on for one more, and they played another one – was it “Missing Pieces”? I’m not sure. But wow.

Afterwards I congratulated Ramesh briefly on how well the show went. He had said before they left the stage that he wanted to meet us all – and it indeed seemed that way, as he asked some others and I if we were sticking around – I wish I had, I’m sure he and the band hung out with their fans and had a great time. What cool people. And what a great venue. And what a great show! Damn! : )

Believe me and check out Voxtrot now, or don’t and check them out later when you hear of them yourself, because I’m pretty sure you will.

www.voxtrot.net

First Day of School

2007-02-27T12:21:00.000+01:00

(Warning: Journal entry.)

Yes, my classes just started today. I love France.

Well, my real classes started today, you could say – my CUPA program course (art history: 19^th century French painting) and atelier course (figure drawing, in an independent studio in my arrondissement) already have, but the other three courses are at Université Paris VIII – St. Denis. It’s about an hour metro ride from me, which doesn’t seem that bad in this context since it’s on the metro and I’m used to factoring in a half hour/forty minutes for getting pretty much anywhere, but when I think of being back at Georgetown, wow, an hour commute to classes? It was enough to be “off-campus” and have to bear the 15-minute walk. It’s so different living and going to school in a city – perhaps I now can get a sense of what non-campus city schools like NYU and GW are like. Plus, in France, as we’re told, campuses aren’t as much of a home for students at all – besides not actually housing them, they’re more like just stops that have to be made during the day; where you come, take your class, and leave. There isn’t a connection to one’s university like there is at home in the US. There isn’t all that school pride and varsity sports teams and tradition and social events and all that make us so homesick for our universities in the states; that make our campuses become more home to us than where we’re really from.

Anyway, St. Denis isn’t um, the nicest area, but the school is pretty cool. They offer a lot of really fascinating sounding courses – many of which I didn’t sign up for because I was either afraid to take a high-level course in French or unwilling to take anything at remotely inconvenient times, including days like Thursdays and Fridays (ha) – and have all the departments I’d consider taking classes in. Hardly any of the other universities had a psychology department.

So here are some thoughts/notes from my first day; already some differences between the French system and what I’m used to are vividly apparent:

I arrived to my first class (Psychologie de la Santé) (santé = health) a half hour early, with something to read; I’d left myself plenty of time to find everything and see how long the metro journey was. I was surprised to see about 15 other students already there this early. It’s a good thing I got there though, because by the time 9am rolled around (when the class was supposed to start) (I had to concede and take one horribly early class), 30 or 40 more had piled in, and the last 20 or so had to go across the hall and grab tables and chairs from another room. The extra tables and chairs were packed so close to each other and to the professor’s desk that there was barely any space for her to speak, let alone sit down. I didn’t like this because I’d chosen a seat at the end of a table near the door, so I could get up and leave as inconspicuously as possible if I needed to for any reason, but now there were chairs placed in every possible space so that I’d have to make at least four people stand up to worm my way out of the room.

The professor finally arrived at 9:20, and it was not the professor listed on the course offering. Nope – that’s it. She didn’t even know the guy who everyone had expected to see. She then said something I didn’t understand and everyone got up, so I followed suit and realized we were moving to the room across the hall, which I didn’t think was much bigger, and it wasn’t, but at least we all had seats and table space now. So by the time we actually got going, it was closer to 9:30 – fine by me if that’s what happens every time, considering it’s a three hour course.

So, some things that surprised me: the first thing she did without saying anything about the subject was say that there would be a written final exam but that we could also choose to do an exposé (oral presentation) instead, and asked for a show of hands for who’d like to do that, and asked those people to come see her during the break and sign up. I mention this as surprising because it’s pretty much the first thing she said, at home we’d be given lots of time to decide what we wanted to do, and lots of information on each of the options before having to choose one. And we certainly wouldn’t be choosing our topics and dates on the first day either. Moving on… During class, a student said she couldn’t see what was written on the board, and suggested the teacher borrow her dry-erase pen since it was red – and she took it and used it – this is just interesting because it makes it seem like there’s less distance between the student and professor, as if she’s on the same level as we are, which is the opposite of what I’ve been told about French professors. I guess it varies. This was confirmed at the break, when everyone went outside and put their coats on and lit up a cigarette – including the professor. She smoked and talked with the other students, and looked like one too. Funny. We came back in after 20 minutes and in the second half, the students were talking to each other so loud – while the professor was lecturing – that sometimes I could barely hear what she was saying (ha, let alone understand it). I was amazed at their audacity – blatantly leaning over, joking around with each other, laughing, clearly paying no attention – and then it was the strangest thing, they seemed to know when she’d say something important, and everyone would get quiet all at once, and start taking notes. Hmm.

The three-hour course wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was, but maybe that’s because it started late…

I headed to my next three-hour course straight after, which started at the same time this one ended. Thankfully this one also started late. This professor carried herself very differently: she told us straight off, don’t talk when I talk, and this is an exchange: I spent time preparing a program for you, so do your part by cooperating with me.

This was Sociology de la Ville (of the city). The first thing she had us do was write down a list of words we associate with “city”, and then she had several of us read them out loud, and after the girl from Columbia went, whose French was far more terrible than mine, I was sufficiently encouraged to try, and read my list a few people later. Seems like a really interesting class, though it also seems I’m going to have to work! I suppose that’s kind of the point – I forget that sometimes nowadays.

Here are some pictures of the inside of my new favorite bathroom – haha – that sounds really weird but seriously, this bathroom is very interesting – it appears the wallpaper is very amenable to suggestions and additions, most often in the form of captions.

This one I like - according to the artist, this woman is thinking,
« I think that I love him but how can I be sure? Love is only an illusion... »

By land, by sea, by dirigible… The Decemberists arrive in Paris!

2007-02-22T02:11:00.000+01:00

I quite stupidly thought I’d follow the model of the Hold Steady show at the same venue a week or so ago, and arrive an hour after doors and be okay. Why it didn’t click that the Decemberists are a lot bigger in

France

than the Hold Steady are, and that this show was indeed sold out, I don’t know. So I got there at 9, doors having been at 8, and I’d completely missed Lavender Diamond, who I remember vaguely liking at the last show in DC, and the place was packed. I’d actually planned on arriving a little earlier but of course was late. Anyway, I found a little space along the side and peered around for better spots but was too afraid to try and fail, so I held ground for the rest of the five minutes or so that were left before the band came on – they don’t waste time around here before, between, or after sets.

There was a couple next to me in which the obnoxious guy – who kept shouting song titles during breaks in between (I hate that! Like they’re really going to just change their setlist and play what you want to hear…) – seemed to insist on standing in front of his girlfriend – which was lame both for her, since she was a bit shorter, and for me, because it meant I couldn’t see too well either. There’s always someone you want to clock in the head with a hard object at a concert. Anyway it was hard to take pictures so what I did take, well, they’re not spectacular views but at least they’re better than, say, crappy camera phone pics or something.

They brought out Lavender Diamond for the last song before the encore, and again for the very last song. One of them brought out their little son (the one in the picture), who Colin beckoned out with a grin. Those two songs were actually the best of the night, in my opinion, because of all the energy – the Decemberists were tired, which Chris Funk confirmed after the show, as it was their last stop on what I think was a pretty long tour. I understand and don’t blame them, but couldn’t help but be let down, having seen them last at their amazing show in DC which was taped for NPR, which you would barely know was the same band compared with this show. Whereas both DC shows I saw (supporting Picaresque and then The Crane Wife) had Colin talking to the audience nonstop, interacting with us (e.g. taking someone’s cell phone and calling his mom), calling for our participation, and walking into the crowd, this one in contrast gave us a somewhat stone-faced Colin (who, okay, may not smile all that much in general but is sure known to grin slyly), who didn’t talk at all between songs and seemed ready to leave. They sounded good, minus the energy, but the setlist was pretty short. I was very glad to hear “The Engine Driver” and “Red Right Ankle” but I think the rest of the crowd probably shared my disappointment in missing out on “Yankee Bayonet”, which I was most looking forward to.

It was the drummer who announced the last song, telling us this wasn’t a song we should go home and sing for our parents or anything – here’s some video from the awesome rendition of “Feel Like Making Love” – it was great enough just hearing Colin sing the words.

[ ]

In any case, it was awesome to see the Decemberists in Paris, which also gave me a sense of home despite the oddity of not having my concert partner Ween with me L! Ah, see that’s why it wasn’t that great – they didn’t bother putting forth their best effort since you weren’t there, Weenis. You and Colin are destined after all.

Hear all the bombs fade away…!

Know Your Pastries!

2007-02-20T02:43:00.000+01:00

So I’ve taken various photos of all the amazing pâtisseries we’ve/I’ve been eating, and why not throw them all here in one place. Alternate title for this post: If I Start Getting Fat In My Pictures, You Now Know Why.

And here we go:

Opéra

Le Divorce*
What a great name! A divorce between café and chocolat is a divorce I can support.

Crêpe chocolat chantilly

Moelleux amandes

Tarte aux fraises

Tarte Normande (poires, amandes)

Gâteau chocolat

Assorted

Millefeuille*

Réligieuse (café)

Tarte aux pommes

Assorted

Forêt Noire (Black Forest)

Tarte aux framboises

Galette des Rois: This one of the cheesy Pirates of the Caribbean galette I discreetly (or so I hope) just had to take, having spotted it sitting there in the super-ghetto supermarket near Flávia. Around this time of year this huge circular flaky, layered, buttery, delicious cake is cut into slivers and shared among friends or family (I've had it with my host family, real family, and friends - excellent), and whoever finds the little truc inside (it's a little figurine) gets to wear the paper crown and be the king (Roi) or queen (Reine). From the looks of it the one that comes with this one is pretty effing jazzy. We should have bought it.
See my post in late January about my cousin Sophie's party for further info on this topic.

Tarte aux fraises, éclair chocolat

Assorted

* contender for Favorite Pastry

A Massive Night: the HOLD STEADY à la Maroquinerie

2007-02-11T23:59:00.000+01:00

There are nights I think Sal Paradise was right…

Despite being pretty sick and despite the rain and hour-long metro ride to the most random place to have a concert venue, I was very excited to check out La Maroquinerie to see the Hold Steady for the first time. They have since been catapulted to the front of my list… well, at least, nearer to it. Awesome show, and awesome venue! We finally stumbled upon the place, a little hole in the wall, with seemingly no one around, a little past eight and checked out the inside and got some drinks before we found a spot to watch the rest of the opening act. Not that it was hard to find a spot, at all – it was rather strange, there was a very small standing area, vacant, bordered by a small set of steps on three sides, which everyone was sitting on. No one was standing. The opening act was pretty mellow, though, so I guess it’s understandable – though all four of us (myself, Yotam and Niko, and another American we’d been talking to, a really nice guy) kind of looked at each other and back at the stage, and then back at each other again – when the Hold Steady came on stage and no one flinched or moved a muscle. (“Ummmm…..”) Thankfully, a few people got up and and stood at the front, and by the time they finished tuning their instruments, enough people had followed suit, and we joined them. We moved to the front after a few minutes too, as the crowd was so spaced out and scattered that there was plenty of room to move, and no one was standing on the right side in the front. It definitely wasn’t the packed, smashed, smoking, sweaty, jumping, flailing crowd that I’d imagined, but that’s got it’s good and bad points. It was intimate and awesome, and they sounded great. I didn’t get to hear First Night, but heard Stuck Between Stations, You Can Make Him Like You, Stevie Nix, Multitude of Casualties and Southtown Girls, so I was happy as a clam. I really liked every song they played.

Here are some shots of the band and Craig that I think pretty much capture the feel of the music and the night – the Hold Steady is a band you feel drunk just listening to, and indeed that’s a fitting sentiment, given the lyrics Craig Finn spewed and spitted out, while lurching over the microphone, teetering on the stand. If that thing had fallen I think he’d have gone down too. He stumbled around on stage, dropping his glasses, chucking his near-empty Heineken bottles on the floor of the stage, repeating lyrics without the microphone for emphasis (“High as hell!”) (“Positive!”), spitting while he shouted.

How’m I s’posed to know if you’re high if you won’t even dance?

If you get tired of your boyfriend’s friends, there’s always other boys, there’s always other boyfriends

Craig also enjoyed a little dancing (read: flailing) during the harmonica solo

If this shot doesn't capture the night, I don't know what does

Southtown Girls won’t blow you away… but you know that they’ll stay

And here’s the set list he accidentally kicked off the stage halfway through the show (but that I tastefully waited until after the set to pick up):

The lead guitarist Tad (I think) and I. We talked with him at the bar after the show for a bit – about how different the crowds are in Paris, for one thing (and how early shows start and end). It was only eleven at that point. He was very nice and down-to-earth, and asked about us and what we were doing in Paris. He told us their last show on the tour is going to be at the Templar in Dublin, and that it’s going to be great – oh man, I can only imagine.

We said hi to the keyboardist on the way out, who Yotam and I agreed was our favorite (and would have been Ween’s too, I imagine ;) . Craig was, as you can imagine, “passed out somewhere.”

And finally, me and my little hoodrat friends (L-R, Niko and Yotam.)

Great night!

Cultural Differences: Plus/Minus

2007-02-10T23:59:00.000+01:00

There are those that I very much appreciate, and those that I find incredibly frustrating. A subjective ongoing list that I’ll keep updating as I go along…

PLUS:

-high value on conserving resources e.g. electricity, water, etc.
-education system: With the BAC, students are forced to have a much better general knowledge base before they enter college; students are left very independent (i.e. no homework – usually just a midterm or oral presentation, and final exam); and of course, university is basically free
-importance of leisure time: you deserve it! 36-hour workweeks and 6 weeks vacation in starting jobs? Yes.
-student discounts everywhere
-resistance to our impending culture of immediacy: you still have to at least sit down at the counter for a few moments if you want a cup of coffee before work, for example. Not a lot is open Sundays and not a lot at night, because people want to devote those hours to themselves rather than to working, and because people manage their affairs so that they don’t need everything all the time, like we do. It’s really nice to stop, take a breath, and learn to enjoy life a little more.
-popular music isn’t all crap
-smaller (i.e. much more realistic) portion sizes
-wine is cheaper than coke… and always good

MINUS:

-everyone smokes, everywhere – the newly enacted ban on smoking indoors has fazed the French perhaps even less than I expected it would.
-education system: all of college is über-specialized with very little electives if any, which also means that you can’t really change your mind without starting all over; since it’s free, facilities and professors are not necessarily as good; classes aren’t posted until the very last minute and often change or are cancelled at the last minute; students don’t care as much or have as much respect for professors (at least in my experience)
-resistance to our impending culture of immediacy: it’s freakin’ frustrating! I want my midnight coffee now and to go, so I can drink it on the run on the way to the library or somewhere to pick up a snack – Oh wait, neither of those things will be open either. We all burst out in laughter when Isabelle (from our program, who was taking us on campus tours) told us that the library at the Sorbonne closes at 7. Oh, Midnight Mug, how we miss you…
-concerts end and bars close early
-showerheads not affixed to anything but a hose
-tiny cups of coffee
-telephone service is hideously expensive
-there does not exist a sandwich without a copious amount of mayonnaise already on it
-tips are included in prices, so waiters don’t care too much about good service, and the idea of substitutions or special requests is unthinkable

Example:
“We’ll have a pitcher of wine…” (pitchers are on the menu)

“No pitchers.”

“Okay, how much is a bottle?”

“No bottles, just glasses.” (a glass costs practically the same as a pitcher)

“Okay… then I’ll just have a mango tea.”

“What?”

“A tea… Mango.”

“I don’t have any of that.”

“Um, alright, can I have a passion fruit tea?”

“No more.” (Um, can’t you just maybe tell me which teas you have?)

“Okay. A café.”

(Nods, goes away.)

Visite à Montmartre

2007-02-10T14:07:00.000+01:00

Here’s an a-capella group I listened to while waiting outside the Abbesses metro stop for Susannah, who sang in French, English, and Spanish. Besides “chile con carne”, my favorite song was the first one I heard, mostly because of the chorus, which went like this: “You can be/ What you want to/ All I need/ Is to boogey down!” I found that amusing enough to put it up here.

After our lovely lunch (we split the best galette we’ve had so far), we met up with the group and were led around Montmartre by our lovely tour guide Sabrina. We’d both been before so it was nothing new but it’s always nice to promenade around the area, with its charming winding streets and humble restaurants and boutiques. It has a very local and friendly air to it – though bordered by the sex district on one end and less-than-beautiful Boulevard Barbès on another (which I’d already been acquainted with thanks to last summer’s two nights in “Friends’ Hostel” – oh, good times), it manages to stay rather quiet and inviting. You can imagine lots of Amélies living there. Here, indeed, are two very Amélie shots – the first a view of the carousel and Sacre Coeur in the background, and the second the café Les Deux Moulins, where she worked as a waitress in the movie.

Here’s a glimpse of later that night:

myself, Ray, and Flávia, the latter two of which are amazing dancers – when together, an event to be seen

mademoiselle Chelsea et monsieur Aaron

Embarrassing moments, translation issues, and other socially awkward situations

2007-02-08T21:58:00.000+01:00

Saturday 1.20

So the first installment of this lovely series of embarrassment and awkwardness comes on my first day in France, when Madame’s daughter and husband (and ADORABLE little son, Thomas) come to visit for the weekend. I was a little groggy and out of it when I met them, since I’d just arrived from my red-eye flight, so when the husband said something and put out his hand for me to shake, I wasn’t exactly sure what he said but I guess I thought it was « Bienvenue » or « Bonne » -something, so I said « Merci ! » and shook his hand, and no wonder he’d looked confused, because he had actually said, as I realized later, « Benoit », which is his name. He was introducing himself and I’d said “Thanks!” and shook his hand. Wow.

Monday 1.22

Embarrassing moment #2 happens chez Starbucks, which I hate to admit I went to here in Paris – but in my defense, it was my third day here and I was going through major coffee withdrawal, and besides, it was interesting to go and take note of the differences between the two countries’ Starbucks. And I haven’t been back since and as of now don’t plan to. Anyway, I got to the cashier ready to order my drink, with the right French words for ordering my latté that I’d repeated in my head fresh in my mind and ready to use, so I was a little taken aback when one of the two young guys at the register said « Ça va ? » (“how are you”), and in my daze and flabbergastedness I once again reverted to « Merci » : apparently when I find myself in peril I give thanks, and this strategy really hasn’t worked well so far. The cashier turned to the guy next to him (there were kind of two people at the same register) and smiled, knowing now that I was a foreigner – who else would say “Thanks” to someone who asks you how it’s going? He probably thought I didn’t know any French but was pretending to understand. I then laughed at myself and admitted my French wasn’t great yet, to try to smooth over the situation a little, and then moved on and ordered my drink, while they continued smiling.

Monday 1.22
The crêpe man signals for my hand, after I took a picture of Flav and Betsy with crêpes, and I give him my camera thinking he’s volunteering to take one of all of us and enthusiastically say « Oh, Merci!! », but then realize, as I try to give it to him and he doesn’t take it, that my camera is in the same hand as my money, and what he actually wants is the 5€ bill to pay for my crêpe. Everyone got to see that one… it was pretty funny.
Tuesday, 1.23
Walking out of the supermarché, Susannah says: « Il faut marcher vite » I say: « Fromage vite?!? Quoi ?!? » (“We have to walk fast” / “Fast cheese? What?”)
Tuesday 1.23
On the metro, there were three of us sitting in one of the booth-like sections for four, Susannah, Flavia and I, and next to me was a tall, somewhat older, kind of sketchy looking guy who definitely seemed like he was listening to our conversation, which had been mostly in bad French. Then he started talking to us, I think addressing Susannah, and I’d been impressed and jealous that she’d understood what he’d said, as she laughed after he spoke. He went on and on, and turned to me, and made little gestures, and on… and Flavia and Susannah smiled and laughed and I eventually said apologetically, when he addressed me, that my French wasn’t too good and he said to them, « Ah, elle n’est pas française? », and continued and they laughed, and I caught a few words (« rigoler/des femmes/laide/belles ») and Susannah was signaling to me, pointing to her cheeks on her face, and so I thought he was saying something about how beautiful women smile, and ugly women are women who don’t ever smile, so I thought they were all trying to get me to smile, and I did, and said I thought I understood… anyway, when we got off the train and I asked what the crap he was talking about, it was revealed that neither Susannah nor Flavia had understood barely a single word he’d said either, but had just ever so smoothly gone along and laughed at everything anyway, and were trying to get me to do the same. I’m… such an idiot.
1.25.07 Susannah was telling me what cigarette packs say in France: she said « Fumer Tue », but I heard « Fumer Tout ». So I was like, “What? Wow, ‘smoke everything?’”, when in reality, it was “smoking kills.”

1.28.07
Note to future grocery shoppers while on vacation in France, weigh your fruit in the fruit department before you leave it. That is to say, before you wait in line at the register, get to the cashier and start to realize what you’ve done when she turns your bag of pears over in her hand, sheepishly say “no” when she can’t find the price sticker and asks if you’ve weighed them while staring at you skeptically wondering what kind of idiot you are, head back to the fruit department with your bag of pears, have them weighed and price-stickered, wait in line again, and re-hand your fruit over to the cashier who then lowers her head and raises her eyebrows a bit, remembering you from a few minutes earlier and still wondering what’s wrong with you. Stupid foreigners…
2.6.07
Not really an embarrassing moment but so could have been: I was trying to describe “boyfriend” to my host mother, and I asked, does one say “petit ami”? That’s what I’d been taught in french class but I figured it might be the case, as it often is, that what they teach you comes right out of those 1980s textbooks and videos (gotta love Robert et Mireille…) and doesn’t really work with today’s world. That was indeed the case, as she told me that a « petit ami » is « quelqu’un qui on emmène à son lit » , meaning literally, someone you bring to your bed. She said if you use « ami », it’s a bit more ambiguous, that is, it could of course refer to a friend, but you’re not really saying what type of relationship it is. When you say « petit ami », however, you are blatantly indicating that this is someone you “take to your bed”. Therefore we laughed and I continued my story with « mon ami »… anyway, c’était marrant (it was funny), and definitely could have made for an awkward situation in front of a different audience.

Another pic from the "fumer tue" night, at "Le 10" at Odeon, otherwise known as Sangria Bar.

Mémorial de la Shoah

2007-02-06T23:59:00.000+01:00

« Si le monde savais, nous étions liberés ! … La liberté refleurira… »

David and I spent two hours that easily could have been three or four this afternoon at the Mémorial de la Shoah: the Holocaust Memorial. It’s interesting that the French use the word « Shoah » to describe the event, which literally translates to “catastrophe”.

The wall of names, reminiscent of the Vietnam memorial where I’d otherwise be home, stands to preserve the legacy of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust, selon moi, is one of those things/events in history you think you’ve been told about a hundred times, that you think you know all about, Yes, yes, the Holocaust, it was terrible, inhuman. But I was reminded that not only do we (or at least I) easily forget the magnitude of exactly how terrible and inconceivable a genocide like this was, but we assume we’ve been told all that there is to know – which can never really be true. I was surprised at how much I learned today, and we only made it to two and a half floors’ worth – there are still three more. In a nutshell, I was just overwhelmed, being reminded by placards, paragraphs, posters, videos, and pictures how horrible a human being, and worse, a group of human beings, can become, and what they can do to one another – and could not begin to imagine how it must have been for those who experienced it first hand, and how something like this (in terms of a genocide) could ever be forgotten, denied, or worse, repeated again in history.

Just a few interesting things I learned during the visit:

The memorial acknowledged that at the beginning, there wasn’t a lot of aid or support for the Jews from France, that the Vichy government delivered Jews under 16 years of age to the German occupiers, and that the responsibility and culpability of the Vichy gov’t wasn’t recognized until 1995, finally, by President Chirac. I just found it interesting how frank and forthcoming the museum was about France’s shortcomings in this.

There were operations (notably Operation 1005) after the war devised by the Nazis (or what was left of them and their supporters, I guess?) to destroy proof of the mass destruction of Jews, such as planting a forest to camouflage a concentration camp site, or using a machine like this one to further break down the remains of the burned corpses that were left.

Le Mémorial des Enfants – 2500 photos of children deported from France, 1942-1944.

Daily rations in the Warsaw ghetto, 1940, after the occupation and regrouping of Jewish communities into centralised ghettos:

Allemand (German): 2,613 calories
Polonais (Polish): 699 calories
Juif (Jewish): 184 calories

The quotes at the very top come from an interview with a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust. She had said with hope, when the horror began, “If the world knew, we would be free! Liberty will flourish again…”

Le Week-end à Saint Malo et Mont Saint Michel : Part One

2007-02-03T16:55:00.000+01:00

Our orientation weekend trip was to Bretagne (Brittany), a region on the northern French coast. We arrived at our adorable hotel (pretty sweet deal) just outside the small, old walled-in town of Saint Malo. The streets were cobblestoned and filled with restaurants, boutiques, and of course patisseries. It’s a touristy town because you wouldn’t really want to live there, but for a weekend, it’s lovely and a lot of fun. We checked in and tout d’abord (right away) scattered into the town to find a place for lunch. We all had galettes (crêpes salées, or, lunch crêpes – filled with things like meat, cheese, and eggs, rather than crêpes sucrées – jelly, sugar, chocolate, etc.) since it’s a specialty of the area.

As Susannah cleverly commented, this photo is indicative of our respective identities: Flavia the rockstar posing in the window, and me, the nerd, consulting the map in the info packet they gave us. Of course.

there's always time for a patisserie break

Hailey and I in front of one of said boutiques.

We then met up for a tour with Sabrina, starting atop the fortifications around the town, and descending to the beach, climbing up steps onto giant hills with beautiful views.

la plage

yotam, oliver & ray

admiring the town

girls in black jackets with colorful scarves, atop a grassy hill in the French countryside: myself, Susannah, and Hailey

the Susannah kick-back laugh… classic.

My place...

2007-01-21T16:17:00.000+01:00

my bed, with some nice reminders of home on the wall – actually this picture was added much later, when I finally put them up

my desk

the balcony, closet and clothes rack – apparently I only felt like hanging one thing up

my little bathroom

le séjour – the living room

the little kitchen

and the note she left me this morning

Day One

2007-01-20T23:00:00.000+01:00

So I just put on some Phoenix, because the Viva Voce song I had stuck in my head was too melancholy, and that’s not what I’m going for right now. I’ve only been here for about 12 hours, only four of which I’ve been awake for, and it’s already very clear that I am in a completely different world, with seemingly more than just an ocean separating me from the one I know. Ugh, which sounds so pathetically cliché but in my defense I’m reminded of Chuck Klosterman, who somewhere in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs said that the most real things are cliché: when you find yourself in situations and emotional states that are typically described over and over again in the same simplistic language, such as when in love, or after a break up, or… when arriving in a new, foreign place you’re about to spend five months in… The only words you can seem to find to express yourself are those very ones used in Hallmark cards and boy band and emo songs, cheesy and uninventive as they may otherwise seem.

So anyway. It’s very strange and disorienting, much as I’d expected and been told it would be. There is good news and bad news about the situation as I see it thus far. The first bit of bad news, first because it’s probably the worst (though honestly I’m sure there are much worse things), is that there’s no Internet chez moi. Hmm. The good news is that my host mother seems nice, and it looks like a nice neighborhood, and I do indeed have a room and bathroom to myself. The other sort of discouraging news is that, at first, she seems a little… touchy… a little particular and a little more French than I’d have liked, in that she seems to like her own way, and explains things at least three times… She gave me a little crash course of practicalities, which included how to use the key, general stuff about meals, going out, etc. The key stuff all seems easy enough, but she took a lot of time to show me and show me again, and watch me try it myself… not in the nurturing making-sure-you’re-okay way; seemingly more so in a neurotic, high-strung way. But maybe this is just the French disposition, naturally less easy going than I’m used to. I can’t help thinking of my mom, though, and how easy-going and wonderful she’d be to anyone staying with her, and how much at home she would make them feel, and how much she’d smile and laugh. Sigh.

Hailey had told me she’d followed up with an ancien (former) CUPA student we spoke to at our pre-orientation session at Georgetown and asked for his family’s info since he’d spoken so highly of them and his experience… she requested them on her housing info sheet and wrote that she thought it would be a good match. That was a good idea. I hate to say, I’m wishing the other thing had worked out, with the family I’d initially been placed with, and thinking the neighborhood would have been better, I’d have been closer to a métro, having kids around would actually be nice (at least it’d be louder and there’d be life, and perhaps I’d have less of an obligation to commit to dinner plans the night before), and maybe they’d have had internet. I never imagined not having access could make this much of a difference. Really, I was imagining myself here logging on, sending a few emails, going on AIM and talking to a few people, looking into Skype and into setting up a blog, and looking at my program info… how different I would feel! Seriously, I think my whole temperament and outlook would change and I wouldn’t at all be looking at pictures or avoiding sad music or yearning for American life… Well, I’m going to speak with the coordinator, who seems very nice and understanding (Nathalie), and see if there isn’t anything that can be done. On va voir (we shall see).

Anyway, back to my arrival… I was approached by someone asking me if I needed a taxi, so I said I did and where I was going. I actually understood all that he asked me… Just in making conversation, I apologized that my French wasn’t great and that I was an American student, and he said “Oh, you’re American? Your French is very good!” Ça m’a plait beaucoup (that made me pretty happy). I asked him what would be a good gift for my famille d’acceuil (host family), and he suggested chocolates or flowers. Good, because I’d bought some kind of cheesy New York chocolates at JFK after they threw out the Crabtree & Evelyn lotion-y gift thing that I’d stupidly put in my carry-on. Oh well. She seemed to like the chocolates. She said they would go well with the café (here café can mean the drink or the place).

I arrived at 32 rue Robert Lindet, where the driver helped me in with my bags (well, certainly should, after I paid him 80 euros!) and I buzzed Madame on the interphone. She came down and sent me up in the elevator, which was so classically French and tiny, I barely fit in there with all my stuff. She took the stairs, to the deuxième étage, which to Americans is the third floor. They start counting one floor up from the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée).

I got in and finally, still all smiles, reached out my hand for an attempt at a more formal hello, and said “Enchanté,” which I had been told is the usual way of saying “Nice to meet you”, but she looked at me kind of strangely, so maybe that’s not what you say. Anyway, though she smiled and moved quickly and was energetic enough, as I started to explain before, the excitement on her part seemed a bit more nervous than warm and inviting. She showed me around the apartment, and excused it’s clutteredness, and explained that her parents were moving out of their apartment into a maison de retraite (retirement home), so there were pieces of their furniture scattered around. I have my own bathroom, but as French bathrooms are, it’s literally a bath room – a shower and a sink. It’s pretty tiny, and the showerhead is on a cord and doesn’t hang up or fix onto anything—I have to hold it—so that’ll be an adjustment. The toilette is on the other side of the apartment, in another closet-like little room next to the kitchen (though when I say other side of the apartment, well, it’s not that far). It’s actually pretty cute. The place isn’t cute in a French, Amélie kind of way, nor as adorable as the flat in the old apartment building with the formidable door (and without an elevator) that I stayed in with Dad and Liz and Zach in the quartier Latin several years ago, but it’s still French (read: small) and cute. And it smells French too, or at least foreign – not only does the place have its own smell to it that’s not overbearing but strong in the sense that it’s identifiable; nothing like the airy, fruity, breezy, or even musty scents of Long Island homes that I’m used to, but there was also a pungent, interestingly spicy smell of food cooking in the kitchen, where she was preparing a meal for lunch. She said I could eat with them (her daughter was arriving with her husband and son), or sleep and eat dinner with them at around 8. So after she sat down and explained the few rules she has (she said she’d just tell me these few things, and otherwise it’s comme tu veux – as I want), I slept. I actually wasn’t that tired, I didn’t think, but I was out like a light when my head hit the pillow.

So the basic rules/important things include: don’t lose the key (because then she’d have to change the whole system and there’d be a very large abonnement), try not to take long showers because the water’s expensive, don’t use the phone (my program had told her all the students will get portables – cell phones – because the telephone in France is expensive)… see a pattern here?... , no boys at the house at all, since she once had a problem with that, and if une copine (girl friend) wants to come by, I have to ask her permission first. For dinner, she provides me with six meals per week (as the program says), so she suggested samedi (Saturday) as the day I find my own meal, as she typically goes out Saturdays. I am to tell her a day in advance if I won’t be home for dinner the next night, as she knows sometimes I will want to eat with my friends, etc. – that way she can plan what to buy, as each morning she shops for the day’s meals. So different from how in the U.S. we do huge supermarket runs for weeks of meals at a time!

After that I went to sleep - when I woke up it was 7, and I came out and said hello. She explained that her daughter and husband had gone out to the cinéma, so we weren’t going to eat together as she’d thought – she asked if I was hungry, and I was, so she said she’d call me in ten minutes. I met the little baby, Thomas, who is adorable. In ten minutes as I was looking up what le veau is (veal, as I’d thought – she’d offered me a choice between that and a tarte – like a quiche – and I took the tarte), she called me to dinner, and she placed our two trays on the table in the séjour (living room), where we ate while watching TV. I wonder if that’s typical or just her. There wasn’t much on besides commercials; elle n’a que six chaînes (she only gets six channels). I didn’t care, though – I was interested in my food, and in talking to her. The tarte had tomatoes, goat cheese, and something else in it, and was delicious. We each had a small salad, a bottle of water and a glass, and a yogurt, which I figured would be eaten at the end, so I waited for her to eat hers and then ate mine. She had a glass of wine too, which I’m surprised she didn’t offer me. Not that I mind that much –but, I don’t know, thinking of all this now, it just doesn’t seem like the ideal situation/warm family I was looking for, but we’ll see, and I’ll manage, anyway. I think of how much worse it could be.

It’s very easy, as I’ve been told and that I can now understand, to shy away from the idealistic initial desire to immerse yourself in a country and language and lifestyle completely new, and instead wish nothing other than to be with your family and friends, or to think about nothing other than how things were, in my case, less than 24 hours ago. Already I’m imagining driving along Jerusalem Avenue yesterday, in my mom’s car with my Winter Mix blasting from the CD player, driving in to Eckerd to pick up necessities for my trip, or stopping by Dunkin Donuts to pick up a blueberry latté via the drive-through. I realize that sitting here in beautiful Paris and dreaming about a crappy Dunkin Donuts drive-thru is more than just a little sad, but, the general sentiment is of course understandable, no? Just having been in a state of running my own life, being responsible for myself, deciding what I needed to do and hopping in the car and doing it, talking to my friends several times a day and coordinating plans… well, you don’t realize what kind of life you’re in until you leave it behind.

I can’t even believe I was on the phone talking to my parents and friends just before I took off, in the waiting room and on the plane – even that seems lightyears away. Ah, I wish I could just pick up my phone… the first need I feel is for contact, to speak, to connect with my other world… I mentioned to Madame a few times using my phone card to call my parents, but she thinks it will cost her money and explains, again, that using the phone is expensive in France and she does not want to pay an abonnement (sum) for it. I also really want to get out and walk around a bit, at least get a slightly larger glimpse of the world I’m living in than just this small apartment, and more importantly try to find an internet café, or a payphone, something – but she said she would prefer I stayed in tonight. As she reiterated for about the fifth or sixth time, she will take me around tomorrow and show me the quartier (neighborhood), and look for the internet café (cyber-café) her friend told her of (though she’s not sure it’ll be open on Sunday, as most commercial establishments aren’t—all the more reason I see for me to try and check it out tonight…). Ah. And it’s late here, 10:22 pm, but I’ve just slept 8 hours and am awake and… Ooh! Just got my hearing in my left ear back! …and, what better time to get out and stretch my legs and see the Paris night? And search for un moyen (means) of contact? Housebound. That’s not the word I want. House… I don’t know…. and stir-crazy, until tomorrow morning.

Listened to: Phoenix, Iron & Wine/Calexico, The Shins, The Long Winters, Jason Collett, Voxtrot, The Elected, Rilo Kiley.

Goodnight, pavement puddle stars… Ooh, but it’s only tear gas tears…

Bienvenue à la blogosphère…

2007-01-19T23:00:00.000+01:00

BONJOUR tout le monde! I am now a blogger. I don’t know how I feel about that. But regardless, rather than sending mass emails to everyone I know, I’m setting this up to leave a trail of my five forthcoming months in Paris – as much for myself to have a souvenir of sorts, as for some friends and family at home to see what I’m up to. I apologize in advance for uninteresting or too-much-detail posts. Please comment if that happens.

Disclaimer: My first couple entries are quite long, but this won’t be the norm – I’m keeping a journal at the same time, and will occasionnally paste parts of it here, but for the most part will keep this mostly events and interesting things-related, rather than like a livejournal.

Alors! Il faut commencer…