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

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 !!!

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

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...

…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

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!

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?!?

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