BUDGET GOURMET
On Friday I went out to dinner with Marina, she’s the English Language assistant that I befriended at our training session last week. We’re both kind of poor on account of us trying to live in Paris on our limited stipend. But, we decided that we wanted to go out for a Parisian meal, even if it had to be a budget one. We went over to the Latin Quarter and there were a bunch of restaurants advertising menus (menu=multiple course meal) for 10 euros. That price was right up our alley, but we were a little skeptical of what kind of meal you could get for 10 euros. We chose one with a large sidewalk patio facing a cathedral. The waiter was serving something like 25 tables all at once, it was remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it. He messed up our first course, but he kept our bread basket full, so we were happy campers. The food was actually pretty decent, too.
After we had filled up on baguette and beef bourguignon, we decided to walk around a little. During dinner there had been a panhandler wearing a sea captain’s hat walking around with a wheelie suitcase. Atop the suitcase was a beautiful little long-furred dog wearing a red sweater. Marina fell in love at first sight with this little dog. We went over and she gave the guy some money and the dog posed for photos. As in he actually did poses. He must have been trained to, it was unbearably cute. His name was Poopy.
SPECTACLE
We saw that there was a big crowd gathered at Place St. Michel and we went to check it out. A guy was scaling the fountain in his boxers. He appeared to be intoxicated, so I was concerned that we were about to see this half-naked kid slip and tumble to his doom. He managed to get up to the top ledge and then turned around so that his back was facing the crowd. He pulled down his boxers to give the crowd standing there a view of his bare ass. People applauded. He pulled his shorts back up and gave a little bow. Not long after he had made it safely down, another guy climbed up in his boxers and repeated the same routine. People were less enthusiastic about the sequel, especially since cops were starting to gather along the street. People were kind of shifting around nervously and expecting the whole thing to get broken up.
It turned out the cops weren’t there because of the mooners, they were chaperoning a parade of hundreds of rollerbladers that were blazing by on Boulevard St. Michel. Apparently, this rollerblade tour is something that happens every Friday night in Paris. A group of people get together and skate all over the city. It has grown into such a big deal that they get escorted by public safety vehicles like a legitimate parade.
After the rollerblade parade had passed, we decided to keep wandering and we stumbled across a big used bookstore that had tables and tables of paperbacks for 20 cents. We combed through the boxes and I ended up getting a French kids book about a rowdy child (maybe like a French Ramona Quimby). Growing up in Paris, Marina had read it when she was little and said it was a fun one. I also found a copy of the Fellowship of the Rings (La commaunauté de l’anneau) in French! In the French version, Bilbo Baggins = M. Bilbon Sacquet and the Shire is called “Cul-de-Sac.” Weird. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they changed.
NEW FRIEND
Saturday, I made another exciting purchase. I had been complaining about how there wasn’t that much basil in France, so I invested in a basil plant! I’m excited to have fresh basil and I’m lonely living alone, so it’s kind of like having a little friend. Yes, I realize that’s pathetic, but we all do what we can to get by. You could do a whole lot worse than an edible plant.
LITTLE PIECE OF PEACE
Sunday, I launched a solo field-trip to find a church that I had happened on the last time I was in Paris with my mom and aunt. We had split up at Invalides and from there I just wandered off and ended up at this church. I kind of remembered what direction I had gone and that I had passed some embassies en route. I didn’t know the name of the church or what else it was by, so I just hopped on a train to Invalides and hoped the route would come back to me. It was unseasonably warm this weekend, so there were tons of people wearing t-shirts and picnicking out on blankets and playing large, unorganized games of soccer. I wandered on past them and I managed to find the church within 10 minutes without any turning around. I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday, so it was crazy to me that I was able to find my way back so easily after 2 years.
Turns out it’s called Basilique Sainte-Clotilde. I’ve seen a lot of churches, gothic churchs in Europe are a dime a dozen. It starts feeling like if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. That being said, I am no sort of expert. I don’t think that experts would say that there is anything concretely special about this particular church. I just love it. I think that because it’s a little less than spectacular in a city that’s so full of flashy sights, it doesn’t make most people’s short lists of things they have to see in Paris. It’s a bit of a paradox, but I think that’s exactly what makes it special. It’s like a secret.
It’s in this really quiet corner, despite being a stone’s throw from some major destinations: Hôtel des Invalides, Musée Rodin, Musée d’Orsay. There’s a playground across the street, so the only sounds you hear are kids playing. Once you get inside it’s serenely silent though. It seems like there’s no more than 5 people in there at any given time and the most you hear is a sniff or light footsteps. The basilica is surrounded with big stained glass windows of different saints all the way around. They’re made up of vibrant colors and when sunlight shines through them they pop in a way that makes them almost look alive. It’s not the sort of place that makes a good postcard, it’s just peaceful. Peace can be hard to find in a city of 10 million people. Monday, I started the process of getting on the social security system here. Pain in the arse. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say that their website is so un-user friendly that it took me an hour just to find which office might be the one in charge of my neighborhood. I went there and the woman told me I was in the wrong spot but gave me a map of all the other offices. Why, oh why, is that map not on the Internet? Come on, France.
I made ads for English lessons and only managed to get up one copy before I had to run home to change before meeting my mom’s friend Rochelle for a beer. Before I even got out the door, I had a phone call from a student and set up a lesson for next week. Hopefully he will be the first of many.
DIABOLICAL DUO
My mom’s friend Rochelle has been in Paris for the last month soaking up some joie de vivre. She takes off on Thursday so we decided it’d be fun to meet up before then and grab drinks at a bar she knew called The Temple over by Saint-Germain-des-prés. It’s an Irish pub, they have beers on tap and play American music and some of the dreamboat bartenders speak English. We were planning on having a really mild night since I had to get up early this morning for my first day teaching classes. But, when we finished our first round, we decided to go for a second because Sonny, a british bartender who Rochelle has befriended, was on his dinner break and he was sitting and shooting the shit with us. Rochelle told Sonny that I would keep coming back in her absence and that next time I would have to order the 10 shot special. It’s a set of 10 different flavored shots for 20 euros, all the flavors are secret house recipes. He smiled and ordered a set for us right then and there. We decided we’d share them. Both Rochelle and Sonny said that since they were flavored, they probably weren’t that strong. You can see where this is going? Nowhere good.
I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I thought this was a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, it was really fun at the time, as debauchery always is. Rochelle and I had a lot of fun and played this big all-bar game of music trivia. They’d start playing a song and the first one to name it won money. We were way too impaired for a “think fast” sort of game and felt like bad representatives of the US, as most of the music was American. At the end of the night, Rochelle walked me all the way back to my door and we made plans to go out to dinner on Wednesday. No booze, just food. I managed to get myself to bed and even remembered to set the alarm for this morning. This morning. I don’t even want to think about this morning again, but here we go.
DAY FROM HELL
Today was my first day teaching classes. It was also the day of a huge metro transit strike in Paris. My first class was at 10:10 and normally the ride down there only takes 1 ½ hours. Because of how limited trains were, I had to be up at 6:30am to catch the bus that would get me to the train station on time. I felt like a puke zombie.
The bus was super late and packed full when it finally showed up. I managed to wedge myself on, but by the time we got to the Montparnasse station, the train had already left. The next one wasn’t for another hour. I found myself a seat and managed to sleep a little while I waited. The train got me into Guyancourt at 9:30am. I had 40 minutes until class, but I still needed to get to the actual high school. One of my coworkers had offered to give me a ride from the station if I needed it, but my cell phone was out of battery. Luckily, when I got out to the buses there was one just arriving that I was familiar with. I’d taken it before and it took the long way around, but it ends up right in front of my school. We’d been going for about 10 minutes and I was zonking out when I realized that the driver was yelling TERMINUS! Turns out that today this bus was only doing half of its route. If there was any indication of this on the bus or at the busstop, I failed to see it. We were in the middle of this corporate headquarters area, a long ways from where I needed to be. The next bus wasn’t due to come until 10:20, 10 minutes after my class had already started. So, I decided to walk.
I was so focused on trying to get there that my queasiness temporarily disappeared. I wasn’t entirely sure how to get there, so I asked a woman for directions. She was super nice and walked the whole way there with me, about 20 minutes out of her way. I finally got there at 10:30, just in time to see the bus that I had opted not to take pulling away from the stop. Whatever. I got up to the classroom, but if any students had come, they had already left. My next class wasn’t until 1pm, so I went down to the teachers lounge. The other teachers were very understanding about me being late. We got some lunch, but I was barely able to eat I felt so nauseous. I kept looking for the teacher I was supposed to be working with at 1pm, but I didn’t see him anywhere. He’s kind of shy though, so I wasn’t shocked by that. However, when I got up to his classroom, he wasn’t in it. I went to the office to ask about it and they told me that he wasn’t there today because he was participating in the strike. Alright, so I could have slept in a lot later. I still had one more class at 2pm. So I spent an hour trying not to barf and then I went to the room they had assigned me. I was fiddling with the key in the door for a while and having some trouble when a teacher opened it from within. She had a class full of students who were all laughing at me. I explained that I had been given this classroom and she said that it must be an error. I had no way of finding the students I was supposed to be teaching and I felt pretty sure that the effort would make me vomit. All of that was for nothing. Complete bust.
From there it was smooth sailing. I walked outside and caught the first bus to the train startion. When I got to the station, I only had to way 10 minutes for a train going directly to the Montparnasse Station. There were people everywhere in front of the station doing strike demonstrations. When I got back to my spot, the street directely beyond mine, Boulevard Montparnasse, was packed with people chanting and parading. I went upstairs, put on my pjs and passed out.
Tomorrow’s supposed to be the next round of English Assistant training, but the strike is still on and it’s going to be pretty much impossible to get there and back so Marina and I are planning a Paris outing. Then I have a very non-alcoholic dinner with Rochelle and the old travel writer for the Star Tribune. My first class on Thursday is 8am. I hope so bad the strike is over by then. Either way, it’s about to be a long day. But, after today, just about anything will be easy in comparaison.
That’s all I got for now folks!
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