PANTHÉON DU JOUR
On Tuesday, Elizabeth Christian came into Paris to hang out for the day. She’s teaching in a town only an hour or so out, which made a daytrip was easy. When she got in we didn’t have a game plan, but we did know that we wanted a hearty meal. I’m still clueless about restaurants in my neighborhood, so we bummed around and ended up at a German restaurant over in the 5e. They had a tasty lunch special for 15€ that included a huge entrée, beer and a coffee. We were beyond full by the end. Success! In France, usually a meal special includes a coffee at the end. This is great, because by the end of the meal I’m fighting off a food coma and the espresso is a necessity.
When we left the restaurant, we realized that we were right by the Parisian Panthéon. Yes, it turns out Paris has one too! No, it is nothing like Rome’s. We decided to go in since neither of us had ever been. Bonus: We got in for free with our education passes!
This building had a lot of weird stuff going on. It used to be a cathedral, so it’s in the shape of one, but they’ve been battling to make it secular over the years. The walls are covered in paintings that are religious, but don’t make a ton of sense. There are saints mingling with dragons. There’s also a bunch of dedications to famous French authors. In order to show how much they value science over religion, they put a giant pendulum in the middle that has something to do with the rotation of the earth. Elizabeth noted that the pendulum looks like a modern art installation. The building draws an interesting parallel to France as a country. It’s historically religious and there are marks of religion all over it, but it desperately wants to present itself as separate from that. It sells this idea so hard that it ends up being unconvincing.
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On Wednesday I met with another woman interested in taking English lessons from me. Once she can speak English, she wants to sell her real estate office and go into business for herself renting to foreigners. She’s hoping to do this in the next year so she wants to do 3-4 hours of English a week with me. It’s a big project because I basically have to build her up from the bottom (she’s got a real low level of English at the moment). It will require hard work to get her where she wants to be, but this changes my financial situation in a big way. I am still trying to move to a different apartment though. Nothing has happened yet with that, but I’ll keep you all in the loop.
YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY
Thursday was our first day back at school after the Toussaint Vacation. As much as I like being able to sleep in, I missed hanging out with French high schoolers and talking about our respective cultures. They are full of surprises. For example, we were making a list of icons for France and America. We had the Statue of Liberty, Marilyn Monroe, McDonald’s. A girl said “Will Smith.” And I said “really!? You put Will Smith next to Marilyn Monroe?” And they were like “Yeah, the Fresh Prince!”
Well, how about that? French high schoolers watch The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
This seemed kind of random to me as an American icon. But then I thought about it, and realized that if you get in a room of people my age and start saying “In West Philadelphia, born and raised…” 95% of people will respond by singing the entire rest of the song.
So, I had to give them that one. They also asked if we really have fraternity parties and prom. Do we ever. They were amazed when I described how both of these things exist in full form. I believe I saw a jaw drop when I told them that I myself had worn a corsage. Vocab words for the day were “keg” and “kegger.”
Another notable vocab word that presented itself in a different class that day was: “crackberry.”
When talking about differences between Lycée de Villaroy and the high school that I went to, it came up that we had a bunch of vending machines. Vending machines selling food/drinks are illegal in high schools in France. I believe things were moving that way in the USA the last time I checked. Lycée de Villaroy does, however, have condom vending machines by the bathrooms. This does not happen in the USA as far as I’m aware.
Another interesting discovery was that they don’t recognize Attention Deficit Disorder here. We were actually talking about S.U.V.s and one of my students had also heard the abbreviation A.D.D. mentioned and asked what it stood for. At first I assumed that the same thing exists here and just goes by a different name, so I explained about it with words they would know. After a lot of talking in circles, it became clear that they simply aren’t familiar with that here. I find that really interesting. When I was in highschool, probably 10% of the class was on ADD/ADHD meds. Some of my good friends still are. I researched online a little after the class and found that it exists here in some form (TDAH), but it looks like treatment for it is uncommon. Hmm.
Brune/Blonde
Friday night, Marina and I went to an art exhibit called Brune/Blonde. It was about women’s hair in cinema throughout the years. We had gotten free passes along with our movie tickets a couple weeks ago. I doubt that either of us would have sought out this exhibit otherwise. It had potential to be interesting, and it wasn’t dull. They covered how the concept of beauty in Hollywood has evolved over the years.
The underlying message seemed to be that Hollywood had projected an unfair image of beauty in celebrating platinum blonds. And that, of course, is America’s fault because France, the fashion capital, has nothing to do with images of beauty… They talked about American racism and how it limited the images of beauty that showed up in pop culture. I got a riled up because I saw that as blatant hypocrisy. I’ve been getting annoyed with how often it seems that the French don’t see their own problems, but are really quick to address ours. For the record, racism is a very real problem here. Maybe I was being overly sensitive though, Marina didn’t think they were being offensive. I was also irritated because, while they seem to be saying that America neglected the brunettes, the exhibit only gave them a half-assed nod. There were a handful of Elizabeth Taylor shots, but they barely even showed her hair. It was like they just put them there in some sort of attempt at equality. They probably should have called it Brune/Blonde. Okay, I’m done with my fit now.
BREAKING THE CURSE OF THE COUSCOUS
Marina had been craving couscous since she got to Paris. She had made numerous plans with numerous people to go get some and they had somehow all managed to fall through at the last minute. We started calling it The Curse of the Couscous. We actually went to the Brune/Blonde exhibit because her original plans to go eat couscous with a friend had fallen through.
After the exhibit, we decided to try our luck and go to Chez Bebert, a restaurant in our neighborhood that specializes in Arabic food. We realized that this was tempting the fates, as it was the very same place that she and her friend had been planning on going to before the Curse struck and her friend had to cancel. It sits on a highly-trafficked corner, the food is great and the prices are reasonable. So, we were NOT alone there on a Friday night. We managed to get a seat without a wait because we arrived early (7:30pm is early for Paris). But, they sat us right up next to another couple and, as we sat there, they packed more and more people around us. To demonstrate: a girl in the party immediately to our left knocked over my orangina with her butt as she tried to squeeze between our table and hers to grab her seat.
The close quarters could have been really awkward, but we actually ended up becoming best friends with the couple to our right, Titi and Virginie. Titi saw Marina taking a photo of our meals (they were photo worthy) and he offered in broken English to take a picture of us together. Marina shocked him by responding with her fluent French and we ended up chatting with them for the rest of our meal. The meals, by the way, were so good that I’ve been reliving them in my memory ever since. Marina ordered chicken couscous that came with a mountain of veggies and condiments and the first actually spicy pepper that I’ve tasted since being in Paris. Fun fact: hot sauce in Paris is usually indistinguishable from ketchup. I ordered a duck and fig tagine that came with seasoned couscous, apricots and raisins. It was heavenly.
Titi and Virginie had bought a bottle of Algerian rosé wine and Virginie wasn’t pulling her weight, so Titi insisted that Marina and I take a couple glasses to finish up the bottle. We talked with them about Paris and how the dense population is stressful, how people can be so rude and cold. It was refreshing to hear that some French people struggle with the same big city issues in Paris. They recommended towns in Normandy that we should travel to and told us about the hazards/joys of traveling via scooter in France. Titi made us giggle with his ridiculous Celine Dion impressions. At the end of our meal, instead of a Parisian coffee, we ordered mint tea that was exactly how they made it when Pearl and I were in Morocco. It had the real mint leaves in there and I don’t even want to know how much sugar. That evening was really something else.
IT’S RAINING CATS AND FROGS
Saturday, I went for a run along the quai. The way down to the river was stressful as always, dodging clueless or inconsiderate pedestrians. Parisian people, as a rule, will not move out of your way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a runner, it doesn’t matter if they see you from a mile away, it doesn’t matter if there’s tons of sidewalk for them to move to. I end up getting cut off and pushed into the streets a lot, even when it’s not that crowded. If someone accommodates me, I assume they’re a tourist.
This time, a couple minutes after I got down to the Seine, the sky opened up and it started pouring rain. Everyone ran for cover under bridges and awnings and I was left with the whole quai to myself. I have never seen it that unpopulated in the middle of the day on a Saturday. It was great.
QUELQUES GENRES DES CLIQUES
In the afternoon, I went to lunch and a photo exhibit with Chris. It’s photography month in Paris and there are photography exhibits all over town. We went to see a Raymond Depardon exhibit at the National Library of Paris (which is a catastrophe of a building, by the way). The set up for the exhibit was unlike anything I’d seen before. They just had one big white room with huge, color prints lined up side by side all the way around. The photos were of scenes from all over France. Not the sorts of scenes you might expect. There weren’t many gorgeous landscapes or romantic looking streets. It was more about finding the beauty in daily life: grocery stores, apartments buildings, a garage, things you don’t normally take the time to examine. There were no captions. You had to really take some time on each photo to get a feel for what region it was taken in and what Depardon’s focus was. It’s great going to exhibits like that with someone who has expertise in the subject, they can point out all the details that you would otherwise miss. Chris knows a lot about photography and was able to explain about the level of difficulty involved with the type of camera that Depardon used. It was the old-school kind that sits on a tripod, where the photographer has to stick their head under a sheet during the exposure. The kind that makes me think of graying portraits of great great-grandsomeones who had to sit very still for a long time. If you’re interested in checking out the exhibit, there’s a 5 minute slideshow of it online.
The colors aren’t as vibrant as the real prints, but that gives you an idea of the subject matter.
After that we saw The Social Network, which I enjoyed a lot. Facebook exists in full-form in France. But it was interesting seeing the American college lifestyle again after being here for a while. I’m realizing that a lot of what I thought was a product of youth might be limited to American youth. It made me think of how much of that partying and college culture does or does not exist here. My high schoolers are fascinated by it. They love Gossip Girl and they’ve already adopted facebook 100%, I wonder if they will eventually adopt some version of the American party scene as well. Maybe they already have. I will have to investigate this further and report back.
This week is going to be full of travels. Armistice is still a national holiday here so we don't work on Thursday. I'm going to visit Elizabeth in Chauny for Wednesday-Thursday and then Friday I'm going to London to visit Emma. I'm real excited.
