Meet the Delannoys

28 juin 2010 lundi

It’s like giving birth to five full grown children, already full of energy and personality and quirks, and being suddenly responsible for all of their needs, wants, and whims. Oh, and they speak a different language than you. Imagine my exhaustion. And yet, it’s a fatigue tinged with children’s giggles and nutella . . . so for the moment, all goes well. A quick biography of each of my acquired quintuplets:

Alban, 12:
Thus far, Alban has been having a bit of a crisis of classification. As any speaker of French knows, “you” has not one, but two translations. The more informal “tu” is used to address friends, close relations, immediate family, or people younger than you, “Vous” is reserved for professional relationships, groups of two or more, strangers, or as a term of respect to elders, professionals, professors, etc. “Madame,” being in the third person, can be used as an impersonal, extremely formal term. I’m not sure exactly why, but Alban insists upon vouvoiement (using the “vous” form) with me, unless he unconsciously slips into tutoiement (using the “tu’ form). And imagine my surprise when Alban suddenly called me “Madame” while playing Uno! In the Delannoy family, there is nothing but tutoiement, even between the parents and myself (I asked permission first, of course). I insist that Alban tutoie me, but he has to make that decision for himself, I suppose. Other than his strange classification quirk, Alban has for the most part the characteristics of an oldest child. He likes to pretend that he doesn’t want to do the same things as the younger kids (ie: play Uno, jump into the pool in the evening, etc), even though he secretly does. He wants to become a mechanical engineer or an archeologist one day, and he likes to tease his younger sister by telling her horror stories (which frighten her immensely). He and Gauthier can get, well, brotherly violent, which escalated this afternoon when Alban tried to strangle Gauthier in the pool, being fed up with Gauthier’s splashing. We quickly took care of that situation. He’s a Mario champion, and always wins when we play ping pong. Oh, and he loves Michael Jackson.

(I open a parenthesis here to mention Virgil (11), Alban’s best friend, who has been at the house since sometime early Sunday afternoon. Virgil is an expert piano player, and dreams of becoming professional one day. He promised us a private concert while I’m here. His father is a well known Argentinean artist, and married a French woman . . . and voila, now we have Virgil, his little prodigy. And between playing piano, he listens to Metallica. And sometimes Zeppelin, of which I completely approve.)

Constance, 11:
I think Constance wants a sister that can speak (seeing as Montaine is only 6 months old). Constance latched onto me right away—she always wants to be on my team in poker, play games that I taught her, have me swim with her, sit with me while I send emails, etc. She’s a fan of Justin Bieber (I’ll try to change that, don’t worry) and wishes she were American. Today, she taught me the word for cheerleader, and I could see her being perfect on the sidelines of a football or basketball game—she’s certainly energetic, always smiling, and of course, a bit loud from time to time. She’s terrified of horror stories, and she secretly believes in ghosts, which causes her to never want to sleep/walk/or simply be alone at any time. I let her win sometimes at Egyptian Ratscrew, and she’s a conservative poker player, and Uno’s not her favorite, but she plays all the same (although she refuses to play Connect 4 with Alban, because he always wins.) More than anything, Constance is a little fish—always in the water, always showing me tricks, flipping, jumping, diving. She tries harder than her brothers at learning English—I suppose it’s any adolescent’s dream to be able to taunt her brothers in a language they do not understand.

Gauthier, 9:
Of all the siblings, Gauthier and Constance are probably the closest. Gauthier, like Constance, is always in the water, or making cycles around the pool with his scooter. When with his sister, he isn’t too easily bothered, but Alban gives him a bit of trouble (see the strangling incident mentioned above). I’ve spent most of my time with Gauthier playing Uno or Egyptian Ratscrew—he’s not as interested in poker as his brother is. When we all play Uno together, Gauthier defends my position more than Alban, who insists on playing all of his +4 wild cards for me. He also takes great pleasure in the four colors that the Uno game has taught us all: red, green, blue, and yellow (which for some reason is really hard to remember). Gauthier, like me, loses to Alban in ping pong.

Rodrigue, 7:
With long, black lashes and blueberry blue eyes, Rodrigue is adorable, yet timid. When I came to visit the family a week or so before arriving to settle in and start work, Rodrigue didn’t say half a word to me. Yet when I left, he clutched to his mom’s leg, and looking quite sad and pathetic, he whispered to her that he didn’t want me to leave. He stutters a bit, especially when he gets excited. He likes to be with the big kids, even if he can’t join in their games. When we play Uno, he’s on my team—not that he really understands Uno strategy at all. He seems to have the most fun when he’s alone—I’ve seen him out my bedroom window playing by himself in the courtyard, speaking more to himself than he’ll ever dare say in company. And there’s something to be said for a child who comes in second, and not first, when he plays with toy cars in imaginary races. When playing Mario Super Galaxy 2, Rodrigue is always the little orange star that follows Mario around. He is more than content as that petite étoile orange.

Montaine, 6 months:
When playing games with Montaine sitting nearby, she always steals cards out of my hand with her tiny, clutching fingers. She is at the age where she clutches . . . everything: necklaces, noses, books, cards, toys, fingers. She takes her bath at 37˚C and loves to have her ears cleaned. She won’t take the bottle, and her tiny face stretches into the most delighted smile at the sight of her mom. Cosette, the laundry/cleaning/baby lady takes care of her during the day, unless of course she needs to hang out laundry, or prepare lunch, or do the grocery shopping. Then, it’s up to me to take care of little Montaine, watching her amuse herself in the little world where babies exist.

Sur le(s) Pont(s) de Lyon

26 juin 2010 samedi

I decided to head this blog with a little map of France, showing where these last two weeks have taken me. I am a bit impressed with the magnitude. In two weeks time, I have been no more than 15km away from the borders of both Spain and Germany, and a hop, skip, and a jump away from Switzerland. In the words of my father dearest—we’re quite the troopers as travelers.

Anyhow, I’m currently in Lyon, staying with a good friend, Soufiane. Again, I have little to report, but I’ve been happy here thus far. I’ve always liked Lyon—even though it’s the second biggest city in France (after Paris, and slightly before Marseille), it has a wonderful small city charm. The Saône and the Rhône, running parallel through the heart of the city, frame a quaint neighborhood, punctuated by bridges of all shapes and sizes. The people here are welcoming and kind, and although they have a strange taste for beef/calf meat of all shapes and sizes, I’ve certainly never gone hungry, despite my own personal aversion to meat.

Yesterday, Soufiane had to work until 5:30, so after he picked me up at the train station during his lunch break, I relaxed at his apartment for a while, then took the metro into town. I’m easily amused—give me a river, a book, some iced tea, and a shady spot on the banks, and I’ll be happy. Sunshine does wonders for mental health, despite my utter exhaustion from traveling so much.

After Soufiane got off work, I met him downtown, and we headed across the Rhône to get a drink before dinner. As I’ve found often to be the case, we ended up talking about politics and current world events and whatnot. Soufiane is originally from Morocco, and his family still lives there, so his perspective on certain world events (ie: Israel/Palestine relations, immigration in France, the United States’ foreign relations in the Middle East, etc) is certainly unique, and speaks strongly of an opinion not often expressed in the United States. I learn so much here, from all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds. I like that. For dinner, he took me to one of his favorite restaurants, where he knows the workers and whatnot. After having slept less than two hours last night (Julien and I stayed up waaay too late talking), I completely crashed after dinner, and so we went back to his apartment, and I slept straight away.

I’m now on my way to Avignon where I’ll actually start to work after two wonderful weeks of vacation. I honestly haven’t a clue what to expect. The kids are certainly energetic, but they seemed relatively well-behaved despite their giggles and excitement. More news when I have it. Wish me luck . . . I’m about to become a nanny. Bring it on.

Aspirateur Sans Fil

25 juin 2010 vendredi

Perhaps my favorite memory of my time in Strasbourg is sitting at a brasserie with Katie and Julien and friends, and laughing hysterically to Philippe’s almost commercial quality sales pitch for his new wireless vacuum cleaner. Poor Dierstein was plagued with that damn “aspirateur wifi” joke for the remainder of the evening, and the next night, when he wasn’t even there.

I can’t say that we did much in Strasbourg, besides eat, laugh, drink, sit, walk, and wander. And yet, I feel highly satisfied by my time there. In all honesty, I owe most of this experience to Julien , who, as of Tuesday morning, I had never met in my life. Let me explain: a friend of mine from Ohio University, Tom Wagener, has a sister (Emily). Emily, like me, was an HTC French student in her day. However, her high school in Kent had an exchange program with a school in Toulon (if I remember correctly). Through this exchange program, she got to know the Servelle family. A series of long and complicated and mostly irrelevant events happened, and Julien, the son, ended up in Kent, Ohio, with the Wagener family. Tom and Julien became close, and when Tom went to Europe in 2006 to make a documentary, he and Julien toured around together.

A few weeks before leaving for France this year, while Katie and I were still trying to figure out where exactly we wanted to visit in France, I ran into Tom Wagener at 35 Park Place. He asked a bit about my plans, and I mentioned that Katie and I were considering Strasbourg, but that neither of us really knew the area at all. Tom immediately proposed to that I get in contact with Julien, and he promised that Julien would take good care of us. And Tom was right.

Julien makes fun of me for being a bit overwhelmingly gracious, but really, I can’t help it. Julien was the perfect host. He picked us up at the train station, took us out to dinner, bought us drinks, brought us bread and made tea in the morning, took us to the top of Notre Dame de Strasbourg, showed us around the city, took Katie to the airport on Thursday, and drove me to the train station at 6 in the morning on Friday. All this . . . for a friend of a friend. I can’t thank him enough.

Anyhow, as I said above, I don’t have much to report from Strasbourg. I can’t transcribe the contents of the countless conversations we had, ranging from politics, to dating, to sex, to family, to social ideas. It must be said that both Tom and Julien have an almost frightening wealth of slang vocabulary, and the time they spent together resulted in a massive transatlantic slang exchange. Julien introduced Katie and me into this very cesspool of argot, and heaven knows, I learned a lot. I told Julien that next time I come to visit I’m bringing a notebook so I can take notes. It helps that Julien speaks impeccable English (although he humbly disagrees), and that he could translate any French expressions foreign to our narrowly educated ears.

Other than the above mentioned vacuum conversation, other highlights from our time in Strasbourg include American win in the USA/Algeria game, the release of the iPhone 4 (which Julien now has, and let me play with), and food. If only food did not have calories, I would be the happiest person alive. From tarte flambée (flamenkuche), to salmon on a bed of sauerkraut, or spaetzle noodles with mushrooms, Julien insisted that we try the most Alsace specific regional dishes. And I am glad he did. I also have a new appreciation for beer cockails (yes, that sounds weird). For example (Stephanie Fisk, take note):

Picon Citron
• picon (caramel colored, bittersweet aperitif, made from a base of oranges)
• beer (probably a light, blonde beer)
• citron (lemon syrup)

Monaco
• beer (again, probably a light, blonde beer, although I can’t be sure)
• grenadine syrup
• limonade (like lemonade, but not quite . . . it’s not as sweet or as strong)

Max
• beer (same as above)
• white wine (wtf?!)
• caramel syrup
• apple syrup
(Yes, that sounds awful, but trust me . . . it tastes a bit like an alcoholic caramel apple, and it is divine.)

But I digress. In short, Strasbourg was at once nothing and everything special. Touring for me is no longer about sightseeing (even though we went to the top of the cathedral), but rather about experiencing all a region has to offer, whether that be through talking politics over pasta, launching into the PC vs. Mac debate at dinner, telling jokes over drinks, trying a sundry of regional dishes, cheering for the soccer team back home, or simply strolling along the Rhine.

Musical Chairs

22 juin 2010 mardi

Fête de la Musique: national French holiday celebrating the first day of summer with live music in every one of the major French cities.

Think Palmer Fest, but add:
• flash dance raves on public squares
• live music on nearly every other block
• windy, narrow streets encumbered with party-goers of all ages
• fountains and fireworks
• impromptu dance breaks
• percussion parades
• wine
• police dogs and firemen sitting on top of their trucks to watch the festivities below
• ice cream shops open until 2 in the morning, complete with flavors like butter pecan, coconut, nutella, lavender, melon, tiramisu, and crème de la menthe, among other delicacies
• DJs pumping out techno in the middle of thick crowds

and meanwhile, subtract:
• maces, tear gas, night sticks, among other forms of police/crowd violence
• burning couches
• police horses and riot squads
• Natural Light, Budweiser, Miller, Keystone, and other forms of piss-water-beer
• open container laws
• bros and hos
• Good Fellas pizza and Wendy’s frosties
• unintelligible crowd chants
• an 11:00 p.m. mass party break-up due to rampant unruly behavior

In short, I’m attempting to draw a distinction between the way that France parties in mass, and the way it goes down in the United States. My French friends kept asking me if we had something like the Fête de la Musique in the states, and the only thing I could come up with was Ohio University’s fest season, but I was reluctant to make the comparison. Although I’ve only been by OU’s fests in passing, I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable and ill at ease each time I was there. I didn’t feel safe, and it was more of an atmosphere of mass chaos and impending violence than anything else. It was nice to be able to sit on a café terrace, listen to music, spend time with friends, and not worry about being trampled by a police horse, or pushed off the sidewalk by flailing bros or stumbling hos in heels.

Vive la Fête!

(Sidenote: while riding on the train from Aix-en-Provence to Strasbourg today, I stumbled across a perfectly pertinent lyric from a Nickel Creek song:
It’s foreign on this side
But it feels like I’m home again
And there’s no place to hide
But I don’t think I’m scared.)

Mastering the Art of Cold Showers

20 juin 2010 dimanche

Mastering cold showers is a finely nuanced art form, as my cumulative months in living in France have taught me well.

First: shorter is better. No matter how long you wait, the water will not get hot, not even lukewarm. Therefore, the less time standing naked with no hope of warmth, the better.

Second: with a handheld showerhead, avoid spraying the body at all costs. When washing the hair, spray only the hair. Wait until the very last possible moment to have to spray the rest of the body.

Third: keep breathing. Standing under a cold shower has very much the same effect as jumping into a freezing pool—it tends to take the breath away. However, an entire shower cannot be completed sans oxygen, so remember to breathe.

And last, but certainly not least: count your blessings. Although a shower may be freezing, at least there is indoor, running water. And although it may be France’s vendetta to make showering as unpleasant as possible, at least I’m in France. And above all, that’s really what counts.

I suppose I should explain the context. The cold shower that inspired this blog is in Laurent’s grandmother’s house in Argeles-sur-Mer, bequeathed to her grandchildren upon her death. Thanks to the generosity of Laurent and his uncle, who takes care of the house, we were able to spend a weekend at the Mediterranean, only 15km or so from the border of Spain.
Argeles-sur-Mer is for the most part like other beachside tourist towns—it blooms in the summer (mostly July/August) with beachgoers in search of sand, waves, sugary cocktails, and ice cream. Our weekend was pretty much true to form. We lounged on the beach and ate ice cream and went dancing and strolled along the boardwalk and even played mini golf.

Unfortunately, the tempestuous winds and uncharacteristically cold weather kept us inside more than we would have liked, and we had to improvise a bit. This brings me to the allusion to Julia Child and her famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking in my blog title. In an attempt to pass the time in a unique way, we took to cooking. We enjoyed apéros of olives and goat cheese, and for dinner one night Laurent made us duck steaks and salad. The man knows how to cook. This is one of the many reasons why we love him.

In gratitude for Laurent’s cooking, Katie and I decided to cook him an American meal. The task was much harder than you’d think. What exactly characterizes American food? Burritos, spaghetti, gyros, pizza . . . none really count as fundamentally American food. They simply reflect our strange mélange and appropriation of cultural and ethnic cuisine. We finally settled on homemade macaroni and cheese after rejecting other choices such as cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, chili dogs, and corn on the cob for logistical reasons. However, a trip to the supermarket made it immediately apparent that our task would be more difficult than we had foreseen. Our recipe for macaroni and cheese called for four cheeses: mozzarella, cheddar, provolone, and colby—none of which were to be found in a usable form. We ended up having to buy a cheese sauce with Roquefort and other distinctly French cheeses. Certainly not Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. We ended up with Frenchified macaroni and cheese, hamburgers on French-like buns, and a cobb-esque salad with tomatoes and hard boiled eggs and cheese—a meal that doesn’t really accurately reflect American cuisine. But alas, we tried. Laurent just needs to come to the United States one day, and we’ll show him how we eat.

Anyhow, we’re now back from the beach, and staying in Laurent’s mom’s apartment in Apt. She has a hot shower and she made a nice lemon cake/loaf that she promptly served upon our arrival. I’ll relay more news on the state of French cuisine and hygiene once I have some.

Bipolarity

17 juin 2010 jeudi

I suppose I’ll begin this blog with an analogy to cheese—it’s only appropriate, being in France and all. The context: on Tuesday night, Isabelle, my host mom from last year, invited my family and me to go see Thomas and Hugo, her two sons, play in the orchestra. I was looking forward to it—it had been over a year since I’d seen the kids, and I was sure my parents would enjoy going to the Opéra in Avignon Centre to see the boys play. However, my excitement to see the kids was matched (if not surpassed) by my anxiety to see Isabelle again. I realize that it is not normal for an international student to be utterly terrified of her host mother. In good cases, the host-family/host-student relationship is tolerable, if not passably amiable. However, Jonathan (my Swedish roommate), Natsu (my Japanese roommate), and Shawna (my American roommate) are all in agreement—Isabelle Lestrelin can be, well, frightening.

Back to my analogy about cheese: Isabelle is the cheese grater, I am the cheese. Perhaps a nice crumbly Parmesan that upon contact with the grater fragments into tiny pieces to garnish some nice man’s plate of spaghetti. Not 10 minutes after meeting up with Isabelle and Marie and Pauline (her two lovely daughters) outside of the Opéra, I was subjected to one of Isabelle’s epic (yet typical) reproachful tirades. Isabelle has a deteriorating effect on my strong will—in the face of her jet black hair and bony collarbones and rapid, fierce tone of voice, I absolutely crumble, like well-aged Parmesan. I will not go into the specifics (I don’t want to turn my blog into a space for angry rants about overly forceful French women), but at the end of Isabelle’s reprimand, I was on the verge of tears. And then she gave me a bar of violet infused artisan white chocolate, as though that would make it all better, and we all watched the orchestra.

The next day, Isabelle invited my family over to the house for lunch, and of course, she was syrupy sweet and gentle to my parents, welcoming me as though I was one of her own children. She served us a “quick” lunch of tabouli salad, pasta, fresh cherries, and lemon meringue pie, and had her Partridge Family children entertain us with violin and piano. However, it’s hard to enjoy meringue while a grating woman sits across the table, putting on a welcoming air in front of my parents.

I should clarify her that I do not hate Isabelle, and I do not think that she hates me. I’m mostly just afraid of her. She can be extraordinarily kind, and once in a while we can have pleasant, even meaningful conversations. However, it’s hard not to be tense around someone whose mood flip-flops like a light switch. I see now that I spent my three months in Avignon tiptoeing in bare feet around the shards of Isabelle’s bad moods. After this most recent experience with Isabelle, I understand more than ever why Shawna and I so often took refuge in the harbor of Place Pie, sitting in front of Red Sky. When you’re afraid to be at home, it’s simply necessary that you find a safe haven elsewhere. Hence, Red Sky, and my wonderful relationship with Xavier, the bartender.

But I digress. Every negative must have its opposite. In Avignon, the pavement on the rue de la république glitters under the streetlights at night. Last night, coming home from Red Sky (appropriately enough), Katie and I were discussing why exactly the streets in Avignon glitter. Is it broken glass, or is it gold? Having already discussed the broken glass of my time in Avignon thus far, I might as well pass on to the gold.

Wednesday, after lunch with Isabelle and the rest of the family (along with some other random children that were at Isabelle’s house, like usual), I drove with Katie and my parents out to Montfavet to meet the Delannoys, the family that I’m working for this summer. The first serendipitous discovery of the visit is that the Delannoys live on the same road as Adrien, just down the street from his apartment complex. I feel entirely less alone in the world knowing that he will live no more than 200m away from me this summer.

I’m not entirely sure how to describe the rest of my visit. I’m still not entirely convinced that it was real. In real life, I don’t give bisous to movie-star beautiful people. In real life, I don’t live in a 300+ year old house, with a horse and a donkey and a courtyard and an in ground pool and a private drive and a gate. In real life, I don’t have a jeep at my disposal, nor an entire wing of a house to myself. In real life, I don’t get paid to play with five lovely children, who like to swim and sing and ride scooters and paint.

Conclusion: this simply can’t be real. When I start work next week, I half expect the whole thing to dissolve like a vivid dream in the morning. I’ll open my eyes to soybean fields, not poppy fields, and the hazy humidity of Ohio will rise in the absence of the Provençal Mistral wind. Until then, I’ll revel this strange illusion of happiness.

(Don’t) Put the Baby in the Freezer

15 juin 2010 mardi

Oh you know, just another day in the great city of Avignon. A picnic in the park above le Palais des Papes: chicken and baguettes and French mayonnaise (yes, Shawna, that’s for you) and fresh grapes and goûters (FINALLY). A stop at H&M. Coffee with Laurent at Red Sky and then a mid-afternoon Foster’s at O’Neill’s. Token mass confusion and a long bus ride out to the middle of nowhere. Grocery shopping in Agroparc. Soccer games and soccer fanatics. Old friends and massages and rainstorms. Vocabulary lessons (plan cul = one night stand; rassasié = full; griller le feu rouge = to run a red light) and business reports (?). Late night fast food runs. Goodness, it feels good to be home.

(In regards to the title of this blog—it comes from a song that Adrien and Paul were singing to Katie and me last night. It’s actually rather vulgar, so I will not post it in its entirety here. But it nevertheless afforded us quite a few laughs last night, so I figured it’d be an appropriate title for my first night back in Avignon. Adrien, Laurent, Paul . . . I love you all, but putting a baby in a freezer doesn’t keep it “fresh.” Crazy French boys.)

(ALSO: We’re staying in a hotel on the rue de la république called the Hôtel Regina. For all who know my Regina Spektor love, you can understand how awesome this is. And we have clean towels and sheets. No shower curtain, but hey, we take what we can get.)

Comme c'est bizarre . . . quelle coincidence!

12 juin 2010 samedi

Whodathunk that Eugène Ionesco and his absurdist drama would have absolutely anything useful and/or coherent to say about my experiences thus far in Paris . . . but honestly, the only thing I can possibly think to say about my first full day in the City of Lights comes straight out of “La Cantatrice Chauve”—an absurdist play about, well, nothing.

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that strange incidents have a tendency to follow me around as though I trail them on a string. Although I’m convinced that this string is by no means one of my own construction. It has simply sprouted and keeps entrapping me in strange situations.

After successfully finding (or rather, being found by) Alex and Rachel Ferchak in front of Sacre-Coeur, wandering through Montmartre, seeing (quite by accident) Monet’s “Water Lilies” at the Orangerie, strolling through the Jardin des Tuilleries, and having a nice sit and café noisette at a café near the Louvre, I had to leave my American friends to meet up with my parents for dinner. This is where insanity begins.

Apparently, metro tickets don’t work doubly as RER tickets to the banlieux (RER tickets work as metro tickets). Once I got to La Défense, I was supposed to transfer from the metro to the RER line. To do this, I had to have a ticket, which most unfortunately, had been eaten by the last machine I put it in. I grumbled at having to buy another ticket simply to transfer lines, but there were certainly worse things that could have happened. Worse things did happen. The machine in the train station only took coins and European credit cards, neither of which I had. I asked some kindly gendarmes (if gendarmes can be considered kindly) what to do. They directed me to an exit, but again, I was unable to leave without a ticket (it’s a silly quirk in the Paris metro system). I will not go into the gory details, but basically, I spent nearly 45 minutes frantically running around La Défense metro station, unable to leave, unable to enter, and unable to find a train that was going in the direction I was going. It was quite a small catastrophe.

In short, eventually I figured it out. It was a long, painful process. I ended up being about an hour and a half late for my scheduled meeting with my parents. Needless to say, they were distraught. In their despairing state, they had befriended a French man in a bar named Christophe, who promised them a home cooked meal once they found their darling daughter (ie: me).

Well, upon my arrival, Christophe wad delighted to hold up his end of the deal. He walked us to his girlfriend’s house, made chicken and stir fried mushrooms and other vegetables, and drowned us with wine and calvados (apple liqueur). He spoke about 12 words of English, and my parents speak approximately 12 words of French (combined), so it was up to his girlfriend Angélique (who speaks lovely English) and me to translate. Christophe is a handyworker (il a les mains d’or) (he’s currently a plumber, but he’s worked in carpentry, roofs, a butcher shop, and a deli, and he grows plants like children and loves to cook. His girlfriend was an opera singer and now teaches singing to local adults and sings in an operatic choir in Paris. We ended up staying until 11:30 or midnight, and they invited us back for dinner Sunday night and Angélique offered me a job as an au pair next year. How . . . bizarre.

In the morning I woke up early to go pick up Katie at the airport, and after a transportation marathon that lasted 2 hours, I found her (also somewhat distraught, because I was a bit late due to the unexpectedly long trip). We took a taxi back to Maison-Laffite, where we are staying with my parentals. When we finally headed into the city after eating lunch along the Seine, Katie and I headed for the catacombs (recommended highly by Mr. iPhone Designer, mentioned above) while my parents split off to go to the Orangerie. Our need for coffee took presidence over our desire to see the catacombs, so we sat at a café outside the metro station before looking for the catacombs. Upon our arrival at about quarter after four, we found them closed. First fail of the day.

We got back on the metro and headed east towards la Cimetière Père Lachaise, to see Jim Morrison and Chopin and Edith Piaf and other important relics. We successfully found Balzac and Eugène Delacroix, but as we were attempting to find Guillaume Appolinaire, we were ushered out of the cemetery, as it closes at 6:00. Second fail du jour. But it was made up by the fact that we found a kebab, and when I got minutes for my phone at the Orange store, I ended up getting a special offer where I get free texting from 9:00pm–midnight. Hurrah for three hours of unlimited texting a day!

Our path then took us back to the Scottish Pub that we frequented on our first trip to Paris, right down the road from the Mije hostel where we stayed a year ago. The World Cup patrons watching the France/Uruguay game certainly made it a bit more chaotic than the last time we were there, but it was wonderful to have our first demi-fraises of the trip in such a nostalgic location, even if surrounded by sweaty (but attractive nonetheless) soccer fanatics.

The need for fresh air drove us outside and took us on a meandering walk along the Seine, towards Notre Dame. In search of a bathroom, we found a bar nearby. We should have known . . . our drinks ended up being 11 euros apiece. I suppose it was a fair price to pay for a bar along the Seine, in plain view of the golden façade of Notre Dame in the sunset. We were taking in the evening when suddenly, none other than Jonathan Olsson walked by. Yes, my Swede of years passed. My former house-mate. In a city of several million, I found Jonathan, alone. I’m convinced that it was Serendipity asserting her authority in a world ruled by cell phones and schedules. Anyhow, I ran after him (praying that I hadn’t found another Swede that looks exactly like Jonathan). Fortunately, it did in fact turn out to be Jonathan—he lives in an apartment literally above the bar we were. He came and sat down and had a drink with us. After catching up a bit, he walked us to the metro station, and we said goodnight.

After Jonathan left, we decided that we didn’t in fact want to head back to Maison-Laffite quite yet. So we sat at the entrance to the metro and chatted and watched the world go by. Soon, the need for a bathroom again drove us back to the Scottish Pub. We shared a drink, and then headed back to the metro for the night.

Somewhere along the line, I made a mistake—just a small one. We accidentally got on the train in the wrong direction. It was no problem—we got off on the next stop and turned ourselves around. Here’s where serendipity comes in again. While standing on the quai, waiting for the next metro to come in, I look up and see . . . Soufiane, my good friend and correspondent from l’Université d’Avignon last year.. I stopped speaking midsentence, my jaw dropped, and I stood standing in utter disbelief. Soufiane doesn’t even live in Paris—he lives in Lyon. He decided last minute to come to Paris for a conference, and he was with another of his friends that I had met in Avignon, that now lives and works in Paris.

It was Soufiane that broke the silence first—he was in disbelief just as much as I was. Practically the only thing that I could think to say was “ce n’est pas vrai.” I repeated it without end for several minutes. The entire situation was just too strange to be true. We weren’t even supposed to be in that metro station—we were there completely by mistake! So, after a day of completely failed plans, serendipity came in and took over. Comme c’est bizarre! Quelle coincidence!

Somewhere over the Rainbow

10 juin 2010 jeudi

Today, one of the chief designers of the new generation iPhone explained to me that if the particles of water are fine enough, and if one is high enough in the air, one can see a circular rainbow. It’s true. I saw one from the window of the plane as we sprung out of the high clouds over Newfoundland, preparing for the long journey across the Atlantic. Thierry Dannoux, for a reason apparent to neither my parents nor I, took me under his wing for the first third of the seven and a half hour flight from Newark to Paris. The man is quite possibly one of the most intelligent people I have ever conversed with in French—excepting perhaps Dr. Vines and Dr. Rodina, although we speak mostly about literature and 20th century philosophy. M. Dannoux and I talked about the evolution of the television (he helped to invent LCD technology), human genomes (yup, he worked on those too), the origin of the expression ça va (although it is used to ask how one is doing, it apparently originally was a question asking how one’s digestion was going), where the stones used in Parisian houses come from (they originally were quarried under Paris itself, believe it or not), powdered milk (which he claims was responsible for millions of deaths in Africa due to contaminated water), among other things. He also informed me that I have a québecois accent. Bugger. I blame Mme. Rodina.

Although I only left home (*brief mental calculation*) nineteen hours ago, my trip thus far has already been chock full of those strange little incidents that I tend to encounter almost habitually whenever I’m abroad. There has been no bar dancing or soccer riots thus far, but I did meet a Defense Agent who thought I would make a good CIA agent (I told him I was thinking about the Peace Corps instead), and I had a brief stolen property scare. When exiting the plane on my flight from Cleveland to Newark, my backpack (aka: my life) was curiously not in the overhead bin where I had left it. I immediately sprung into a furious/anxious/horrified/irate panic, and (according to my mother) began swearing and directing my wrath at the first class passengers that were seated below my bag (ie: WTF, what business do those damn first class passengers have stealing anyhow—they’re f***ing rich enough to have gin and tonics delivered to their spacious seats before their asses have barely hit the seats, etc.). In short, it turned out that a flight attendant had simply shifted my bag around to make room for other bags, and it got lost in the shuffle. I apologize, first class passengers, for blaspheming you all in an airport gate.

Anyhow, all things considered, the flight to Paris was lovely (although the airplane food was a bit too salty and the croissant a bit too flat). We descended through the clouds with the rain, and landed in a gloomy Paris. And yet I couldn’t help but smile at the sub-sub-sub compact cars puttering along on the highway, or the poppies growing in the ditches, or the sudden influx of French dialogue. After customs and passport checks and baggage claim and coffee and other necessities, I helped my parental units deal with the debacle that is French transportation. Yes, we successfully navigated through the car rental process and highway system to find out way to our little “bungalow” (it’s a long story), which is conveniently located on an island in the Seine.

Well, I’m off to meet Alex Menrisky and do the great telephone swap, and goddamnit, get a demi-fraise.

*sigh*

Hi honey, I’m home!