Dear Readers, Day 2

Ugh.  Yesterday was another awful day.  The conversion from centigrade to fahrenheit is one of the most difficult for me, so I finally cheated and looked on a US site for the temperature in Paris Thursday afternoon, and wasn't particularly surprised to see that it was 93.  93 and oppressively, painfully humid, with a hot sun filtering through thin grey clouds.  The Metro was like a sauna.  The heat became more a thing than a condition, an unfriendly, insulting being that made everyone sad and grouchy.  Suzie cried when she saw a picture of our dog Elsie on the computer.  Andrew cried for no apparent reason.  I didn't have it in me to blog.  Everything seemed irrationally, but certainly, hopeless.  We all long for some cool green open spaces.

Fortunately during the night a front came through.  It is fresh and cool outside.  Hopefully it will revive us from our torpor.

Dear Readers

It was hot and still and muggy in Paris today, and all day I've felt damp and overheated and tired, plus perhaps the foreigness of everything and the constancy of the city (it is never quiet) is starting to wear me down a bit.  There's a great expression in French, "Je suis creve," the verb "crever" denoting what happens to an automobile tire when it gets punctured.  That's how I am today.  Deflated.  Flat.  Punctured.

So, my apologies, but no blog post today.  Check back tomorrow, SVP.

A New Sheriff in Town; Our Reduced Carbon Footprint; My Resourceful Son Andrew

Monday brought a new week, and a new language school for me and Will.  We are now taking classes at the Alliance Francaise, which is going to be much better for both of us than our prior school, if my first class is any indication.  Unlike the other school, the Alliance actually has a curriculum and textbooks, if you can imagine such a thing, and the instructors actually give out homework to allow the students to assimilate what they've learned in class.  And the instructor in my class -- a very French-looking woman in her mid-30s named Sophie -- was very, very serious about the class, to the point of semi-intimidation.

First example:  We were doing an exercise that involved reading headlines from newspapers.  The point of the exercise was to change the form of the headline from a noun-dominated phrase into a complete sentence, converting one of the nouns to verbs.  Thus, for example, the headline "Departure of the French National Team" would change to "The French National Team departs today."  One of the headlines was "Baisse du Dollar" (lowering of the dollar).  The student who attempted the conversion meant to say "Le dollar baisse," but (unknown to me at the time) mispronounced the verb by using a "z" sound rather than an "s" sound.  Not a good thing.  "Attention!" the instructor, in a forceful, authoritative voice, "you may not say this word in any French class or use it in public!  It is very vulgar.  Pay attention to this!  If you use this word, it will be very bad."  She explained that the vulgar verb for having sexual relations with someone is "baiser" -- pronounced with a "z" sound, while the verb for "to lower" is "baisser" -- pronounced with an "s" sound.  I almost said that given how low the dollar is, the vulgar term might well apply to the dollar from the vantage point of someone like me, living in Paris with dollar-based savings, but I feared getting shown the door.

Second example:  The conjugation of one of the few first verbs you learn in French, "comprendre" (to understand).  She asked one of the students to conjugate the verb, and it's easy at first, "je comprends, tu comprends, il comprend...." but when you get to the "we" form, the stem changes -- "nous comprenons, vous comprenez, ils comprennent."  Well the poor student did not change the stem in the "we" form, and said, "nous comprendons," and you'd think she'd constructed a sentence using "Le Prof" as the subject and "baiser" as the verb.  "Attention!  Attention!  What happens in the first person plural?  Everyone must know how to conjugate this verb and others like it correctly!"  Whew.  Damn.  Where did that come from?

But the good news is this:  Whenever I use the verb "baisser," it will forevermore be with an incredibly exaggerated "sssssss" sound, and when I got home I wrote out the conjugation of "comprendre" five times to get it stuck in my mind.  So I'd say, at this point, that I have a pretty good instructor.

For our next subject, take a look at this:

This is the clothes dryer in our apartment in Paris.  Suzie and I were discussing the other day how our energy use must be a tiny fraction of what it is when we are living in Santa Rosa.  Actually, what started us on the subject was our noticing that our money seemed to be going farther than we thought it would, even living in an expensive place, and even with the dollar in baissssssssssssse (see?).  We concluded that part of the reason was we are not spending $150 a week on gasoline.  That's a big carbon reduction, as is our use of the old-fashioned clothes dryer shown above (which has the added benefit of being much better than a dryer for your clothes; the lint you pick out of the filter in your dryer are the small pieces of the fabric that the dryer has ripped off of your clothes, slowly destroying them).  Plus our electricity use is down (fewer lights, no air conditioning, less TV).  If the County of Sonoma really wants to fight global warming, perhaps they should allow me to stay here and continue my petite carbon emissions.

The last subject today is my remarkably resourceful son Andrew.  We sent him off today, alone, to a new French tutor whose office is directly across the Seine from Notre Dame, in a busy, busy area.  We told him where to get off the Metro, and gave him directions, and the phone number and address of the tutor.  Things didn't quite go as planned for him -- his Metro ticket would not work (even though he has a monthly pass); he turned down the wrong street; and we neglected to tell him that the bell for the tutor's office didn't work.  But at each stage -- carrying his stakeboard along with him -- he surely and competently responded to the situation facing him.  He asked for a new ticket; he asked at a bookstore where the correct street was; he went to a nearby hotel and asked them to call the number of the tutor when he wouldn't answer the door.  I'm proud of him for being level-headed and unafraid.

The Tour de France

We went to see the riders in the Tour de France today.  Not feeling up to the crowds at the end of the race on the Champs Elysees, we went to a spot near my (old) language school in a near suburb called Issy-Les-Moulineaux, which had the advantage of being near a Metro stop and yet outside of the density of Paris. We stood on a small street named Boulevard Gallieni, which had the advantage of being uncrowded and shaded, and of affording a long view up a slight incline.  Our location is noted approximately below; click on the map to see where we were in terms of the larger metropolitan area.

We had read in the paper that the riders were supposed to go by anywhere between 3:20 and 3:40, so we got there a little after 2, got an excellent spot (which wasn't hard, given the few number of people there) and, along with everyone else, we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And then waited some more.

Maybe they just decided to go slow today, but they didn't show up at our spot until well after 4:15, and then were gone in ... well, they were gone pretty darn quick.

Even though they were gone in a flash (we kept saying, there must be more of them coming, but there weren't), it was worth the wait for the experience, to see all the team cars, and all the press cars, and to be able to walk back to the Metro and get on the first train and be home in 20 minutes.

Satisfied Beyond Recognition

It hit me yesterday afternoon, really hit me, for the first time, in a relaxed, satisfied way, rather than a manic, what-have-I-done way -- I am really living in Paris.  I am experiencing daily almost as many interesting, new things as I can safely assimilate.  I am meeting people from all over the world.  How extraordinary.

I arrived at this emotional place in part because Friday was the last day of my class at the Accord school.  As I was leaving, I was surprised at how sad I felt at the thought that I would never see my classmates again.  We'd spent only 3 weeks together, but it seemed like more; we had formed bonds somehow below the level of language (since our communication in French was pathetically).  The closeness didn't manifest itself (of course) until the very, very end, as is often the case in such situations, probably because at that point the fact the others will be forever missing from your life is driven home, and because the feeling of attachment is completely safe now that no actual attachment will ever be forthcoming.  It is emotionally satisfying but wholly without emotional risk, although the free positive feeling is, for me, leavened by a kind of wistful sadness, almost a feeling of homesickness, of considering relationships that might have been.

Don't push "publish," part of me is saying.  Contemplating these feelings made me realize that in some ways none of us can say under our own name the things that drive us or matter to us at the most fundamental level -- fears, desires, dreams, hatreds, jealousies, pride, conceits, the lies and the truths we tell ourselves.  Perhaps this is why people write novels, to be able to put into the mouths and actions of third parties the things they would never, could never pony up as their own.

But I'm off track ... I came home after class and borrowed my son's IPod and laid down on the couch and turned on my favorite band and spent 45 minutes reliving through the songs times when I was younger, feeling very content and happy that I am older now, wondering if the young students in my class had ever heard any of these songs, wondering what their young lives are like, while at the same time feeling gratitude that I do not ever have to be 18, or 22, or 26 again.  Then a song would end, and in the pause the sounds of the street outside would rush in, the cars and the voices, and I would be pulled back from the cross-country trip I took in 1984, back to the present, and I would think ... that is Paris out there, and this is me lying here, the same confused, agitated kid that listened to these songs for the first time so long ago ... and then the next song would start and I would be off again to some other time, a time now warm in the glow of nostalgia.

That evening, we all went to the movies.  We took the No. 4 Metro line to Montparnasse (the line seems designed to pick us up and deliver us directly to the movie theater -- the entrance is a block or so away from our apartment,

and it deposits us directly across the street from the theater, with no transfers required) to the Gaumont Parnasse Cinema, which in the daytime looks like this.

Suzie and I saw a wonderful, wonderful French movie called Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis, a warm and absolutely hilarious comedy about a manager in the French Post Office who gets transferred to what the French apparently believe is akin to hell on Earth -- Nord-Pas de Calais, the very northwestern-most part of France, next to Belgium.  The plot was simple enough (and I know just enough French) to follow the story.  I laughed so hard that I cried at times, even though (or maybe because) the gags were often pure slapstick, although very, very well done.  The movie works because it has a heart to it; it is an ode of sorts to the Nord-Pas de Calais by the film's director, Dany Boon, a native.  And, because it has been out a long time, our tickets were only 3 euros each, even though it was Friday.  (The boys, in their typical fashion, chose to see Journey to the Center of the Earth, in English.)

Today was another good day.  I went out fairly early to get the boys some breakfast, but first I bought a newspaper and went to the brasserie on the big Place near our house, ordered a cafe au lait, and sat there for 30 minutes, alternatively reading and watching the people go by. After that I bought some pain au chocolat and pain aux raisins for me and the boys and came back home. Later that day we went shopping; it is the sale season, and Suzie and the boys have found a lot of nice clothes for very, very reasonable prices. (One observation I'll add about Paris here, at least the parts I've mostly been in: It must have more womens' shoe stores per capita than any other city in the world. It seems there are at least three on every block, and they are not small.)

While out shopping the boys decided they wanted to come home (!!), and Suzie and I went to one of the free museums that she had found referenced in a book at the Alliance Francaise, the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.  Located just north of the Trocadero, across from the Eiffel Tower, it has a nice, small collection (we are not sure we saw it all).  We stayed for about an hour and a half (including an ice-cream break on the patio), then returned home.  After Suzie and I went grocery shopping at a painfully packed Champion store (it is a must here to buy groceries on Saturday, since most stores are closed on Sunday), Suzie cooked an excellent dinner (beef and little French tater-tot type things, and a salad), and we spend the rest of the evening relaxing.

We did have one exciting thing (well, sort of) happen today, but since the hour is late, it will have to wait until tomorrow.  More pictures from today follow.  Don't push "publish," it's still saying but, as you know, I did.

A Satisfying Recognition; More Skateboarding; Modern Architecture in Bercy

I had an "wow" moment coming home on the Metro today from class.  I realized that for the past couple of days, I've been able to sit in class and listen to the teacher speak in French and understand what she was saying totally easily and comfortably, seemingly without having to translate the words into English in my head.  This, I think, is the very beginning of being able to know a language well -- to have it be in your head in such a way that the words you hear are just naturally understood, without effort.  That just comes with time and practice, both of which I am fortunate to have right now.  When I got home from class, I turned on the midday news, and was even able to follow most of the newscast with relative ease.  (The commentary on the French stations during the Tour de France, however, is pretty much a lost cause.)

I'm going to miss some of the people I've been in class with the last three weeks.  It's interesting for me to have discovered much I usually evaluate people by their speaking ability, since I've had to suspend that mechanism during this class.  There is, in particular, one woman in my class, who is from Finland, who I am quite sure is very, very intelligent, but who has difficulty speaking.  I have heard that Finnish is quite different from other Western European languages (and is related, somewhat oddly, to Hungarian), so that a native Finn speaker trying to learn French has a much more difficult time of it than does, for example, an English speaker, particularly where vocabulary is concerned.  Even if a word in French has not exactly the same meaning as in English, often times the sense of the French word is close enough to the English sense that you can divine the meaning (excepting, of course, the infamous so-called "faux amis" -- words that look the same in French and English but have completely different, or somewhat different, meanings).  The same thing faces (although to a lesser extent) the woman in my class from Russia.  So I've had to remind myself that these young women are no doubt highly intelligent, and not at all "slow," even though they speak even more halting French than I do.  (It also does not help that both of them appear shy and reserved, speak in quiet, soft voices, and almost never give an opinion or crack a joke.)

Elsewhere, one of the better things about having kids is that you are sometimes drawn into situations and circumstances that you'd never experience without them.  The day before yesterday, my older son Will tried some kind of trick on my younger son Andrew's skateboard, which involved jumping down on the board with his 205 pound frame.  The trick did not succeed, and the board ended up in two pieces.  So yesterday afternoon off I went with Andrew to search for a skate shop called "Nozbones" located near the Place de la Nation.  This necessitated a long, long trip, as part of the No. 6 Metro line is being repaired, which requires as a result getting off at Place d'Italie, walking to a bus, taking a slow bus ride past 4 Metro stops, getting off the bus at Bercy, walking into the Metro station and getting on the Metro again, getting off at Nation, finding the right street, and walking 3 blocks to the store.  The store looked exactly like you'd expect a skateboard store to look, and was staffed by wonderfully friendly and helpful people, including a young man (and two young kids who were just hanging out there) in the 'new board' department who helped us select a board, then put on a grip and attached the trucks from the old board.  During part of the time this was happening, I walked down the street to a little cafe and sat in the shade watching the people go by.  Andrew was extremely happy to get a new board, and the owner of the shop also gave him a new skateboarding DVD, a bunch of stickers, and a few other things.  If you ever need a skateboard store in Paris, Nozbones is the place -- great, great folks there.

On the way to the store, Andrew had noticed that located at Bercy was a very famous "stake spot."  For those not in the know about such things, a stake spot is different from a stake park.  The latter is a place specially made for stakeboarders; the former is just a regular public space that happens to be useful to stakeboarders.  The famous skate spot at Bercy is the plaza surrounding the big arena called the "Palais Omnisports Paris-Bercy."  This big plaza has a lot of concrete, and steps and blocks of various heights, making it a perfect place for jumping.  Because I know you are all just dying for more skateboarding pictures, here are two of Andrew (more, as always, on Flickr).

The arena and the area around it are places in which the traditional Hausmannian Paris style has been thrown out the window. The arena is of an ultra-modern design, with lots of bars and girders and geometric patterns and exterior walls covered with grass (yes, grass, which had me wondering how the mowed it). A great place for taking interesting pictures (see below), but not exactly warm or welcoming (unless you are a skateboarder, I guess).

 

The other huge facility in the area houses the French Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Employment. It is also a modern-plus building, a portion of which extends into (more exactly, over) the Seine. A photo from the French government (showing the end that's in the Seine) is followed by one of mine.

 

 

By the time we got home, we'd spent more than four hours coming, going, transacting business, and skating (one of us only). Sometime earlier I had pulled some muscle in my leg, which all the walking and step-climbing we had to do exacerbated, leading to a painful night last night, which I promised myself I wouldn't mention because I doubt it's very interesting even to those who might be concerned, but which has made me realize how very many steps I have to take in the course of a normal day here, since each one of them today has been painful. Come on, Advil, do your thing.

PS -- Thanks again to Beth for e-mailing me about my tendency to type "stakeboard" instead of "skateboard."  I did it again today, but caught it before publishing.

PPS -- Lest you think skateboarding is easy, I give you the following.  For every success, there are more failures, perhaps a good life lesson.

Four Hours of Sleep

Ugh. Last night was horrible. I couldn't get to sleep (the boys had their friend Fernando sleeping over, and they kept horsing around), and when I did get to sleep, it was fitful and uneven and interspersed with horrible, scary, and violent dreams in which I was utterly helpless to stop all the bad things that were happening, and when the bad dreams ended I had a series of cramps in my calves that kept waking me up, and when those ended the dawn had started to break and I woke up at about 4:30 as a result and could not ever get back to sleep. So today was mostly a struggle to stay up and alert, which was not helped by another not very exciting language class and the increasingly warm weather.

After class this morning I went to the Alliance Francaise on Boulevard Raspail to sign up for classes next week, having thrown in the towel on my current school, which started off badly and never got much better. This entailed taking a test of about 45 minutes, which I did better on than I had expected, but which ultimately determined that my level of French is what it is (just below the border of "Intermediate," which, in my defense, is not too bad for someone who never took a high school or college class and didn't speak a word of French four years ago). The personnel there were much more professional than at my current school, and the place seemed much more serious and highly organized. You can also get a real, not-out-of-a-machine latte in the cafeteria for 1.10 euro, the best deal I've found in Paris so far.

After returning home, Andrew and I set out to buy baguettes and to look for a bicycle pump (we have access to two bikes that are in the "cave" or basement of our building, but which have tires that need inflating). Andrew thought he remembered a bicycle shop nearby down Rue d'Alesia, and it turned out his memory was good, but the shop was tiny, and the only proprietor present was a 7 or 8 year old Pakistani boy who, after greeting us with "bon jour," explained that his father was out and would return in a few minutes. We looked around for a small pump, but they didn't seem to have any there, so we left. Here are some pictures I took on our way back, all taken within a few blocks of our apartment.







This evening I hooked up the webcam to my computer so that Suzie could have a video Skype call with her father in Berkeley. The result was remarkable -- the technology all worked perfectly, so that we were each treated to a fairly clear, full-screen view of the the other, which made it seem like you were having (almost) a face-to-face conversation with a person 6,000 miles away. If any of my readers wish to attempt the same, hook up your webcams, download Skype, and give me a call.

Tightening the Belt (A Good Thing!)

This weekend I realized that I had to tighten my belt a notch -- literally, not figuratively -- because with all the walking around we've been doing, I have apparently lost a few pounds notwithstanding my consumption of baguettes, cheese, tarts, pain au lait (God help me if they had pain au lait easily available in the US; I would weigh pounds); non non-fat lattes with sugar; non non-fat milk, butter, etc., etc.  So my girth is not a problem for now, even though my cholesterol is probably higher than when I got here (and I'm not at all sure it was a model of good health when I left).

This afternoon was another "Vivre Velib" afternoon.  Suzie told me to go out on my own, so I took a Velib from the station near our apartment, pedaled to the Place d'Italie, went into the big shopping center there and looked for a video camera (to replace the one we've had for a number of years, which has died on us, the mechanism that puts the tape into and out of the camera being stuck permanently, it seems, in a half-in, half-out position), a new "sac" to replace my backpack (Suzie remarked on something I had already noticed, which is that French men don't use backpacks, but rather satchel-type bags that are held on the side or slightly in front of you, useful both for keeping pickpockets out and also for making sure you don't bump someone with your bag on the Metro; Suzie said that my backpack, while functional, marks me as a tourist), and a book (I looked in FNAC but never did quite find anything I wanted to buy bad enough to face 15 minutes in the check-out line).  After that, I walked around the Place d'Italie in search of a Velib to ride back.  Here's what it looked like there today:

As is typical, the Velib station I found had no bikes that worked. The one that seemed to be OK was missing a nut on the mechanism that allows you to raise and lower the seat, meaning that I risked having to ride a bike suited for a midget if the seat were to slip down. So I got on the Metro instead and rode south, getting off a couple of stops later, where I found a Velib station with functional bikes, took one, and rode it home. There, Suzie was studying and cooking a stew (a pot a feu, she calls it now). The stew smells delicious, my wife is cute, and life is good.

 

Suzie Almost Gets Picked; the Strange Metro Family; Chinatown in Paris

Strange goings-on last evening.  South of the Place d'Italie on the Avenue de Choisy is an area with lots of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Cambodian, etc. shops and restaurants.  The family with whom we picknicked at Parc Montsouris had recommended a couple of good Vietnamese restaurants in that area, so we made plans with the Fernando family to meet them at 7 at one of them.

En route, we had two unusual things happen.

First, both Suzie and I had noticed several times that there was a family (a father, a mother, and a daughter who looks to be about 12) that seemed always to be waiting in the corridor just inside the entrance to the Alesia Metro station.  The first few times I saw them I assumed they were tourists, as they looked perfectly healthy and normal, and seemed to be looking at a map of Paris on the wall.  But then we noticed (most prominently on Sunday) that they seemed to be in the same spot every time we went past, at many different hours.  They weren't asking for money, or trying to convert anyone to a new religion, or handing out Scientology questionaires, or doing anything untoward or offensive, they were just ... standing there, chatting among themselves.  Very bizarre.

Second, someone tried to pick Suzie's purse as she entered the Metro.  A man snuck in behind her just after she had retrieved her ticket and was going through the turnstyle, and tried to put his had in her purse.  Sensibly, Suzie always has her purse closed and positioned around her neck so that it can't be grabbed, so what she experienced was someone pulling on her.  When she said "hey!," the man (very slight and nondescript, which I suppose is a good set of characteristics for a pickpocket to have) acted as if she had done something to him, and started to walk down the stairs to the other side of the tracks from where we were going.  Of course he never arrived there, and after the fact I wondered if I should have done something, but it wasn't clear what I would have, or could have, done.  I could have chased him and tried to hold on to him, but then what?  There were no security people in the stop, and I couldn't say for sure that he was trying to pickpocket Suzie, and even if the security people had been there and had believed me, we would have been involved in a criminal proceeding, and would may have had to make God-only-knows how many trips to God-only-knows how many offices to prosecute him. So it was probably better that we just went on our way.

Dinner was fanastic, at a restaurant called Pho 14 (oddly, since it is located in the 13th arrondissement), which was packed with people, both inside and outside waiting to get in.  We had egg rolls to start, drinks, and very sizable entries for about 10 euros each, which was a bargain given the quality of the food.  We also enjoyed once again the company of Fernando Sr. and Bianca.

Today is very cool again, but sunny.  I am about to go out across the street to do the grocery shopping.  I am considering changing language schools, after talking today with the other students in my class who've been in the class all along (two young women from Finland and Russia, and another young woman who is Bulgarian but now lives in the States), and hearing them complain about the same things I've been concerned about.  Typically, there was another problem today with the teacher; the teacher who was supposed to be there never arrived, the replacement teacher was OK but then tried to show us a movie with a DVD machine that did not have a cable to hook it up to the TV (and which, after she got a cable, did not work in any event).  Organization is definitely not their strength.

A Quick Morning Post and Pictures

Waiting for the coffee to kick in, here's the report from Sunday.

We slept in and lounged around in the morning, then gave the apartment a thorough cleaning, which it badly needed.  Suzie then took the boys and Fernando back to the Pariskate facility.  We met up again about 4 at the St. Placide Metro stop near Montparnasse.  One of the best things about Paris (especially for someone like me, who likes to take pictures) is that it is picturesque almost everywhere you happen to find yourself, as evidenced by this random street scene before me while waiting for Suzie:

After we met, we had some tea and a pastry called a ... well, I forget, but it was delicious, sort of like angel food cake but not quite as sweet, and with a stronger, nutty flavor.  We then decided, for no reason, to take a bus to the Etoile, which entailed a nice, scenic 15-minute ride, and which deposited us at this scene, one of my favorites in Paris:

From the Etoile we walked down the Champs Elysees, through a large festive crowd partaking of over-priced food and shopping in over-priced stores.

We only went in one store, a Toyota showroom obviously made to draw in tourists, as in the entrance was this very cool new convertible concept car.

More happened this day, but I've got to get going to class, so I will finish up this post when I return.

Go Go Go Go Go

We find almost impossible to force ourselves to have down time.  It is too hard, when the whole city of Paris is out there, to stay in our apartment and rest, especially when even otherwise mundane tasks are exciting and novel -- like returning something to FNAC, the big electronics/book store, which Suzie and I did on Friday afternoon -- an experience which provided further evidence to my hypothesis that the French will add as many steps to a transaction as they can, such as requiring someone wishing to return an item to go to one window, take a ticket, wait for an open window, participate in a transaction with one person, who will take the item and then give you a piece of paper showing you have returned the item, which you then must take to a regular cashier (and this stand in the long check-out lines with everyone buying something) in order to have your credit card credited.  Why?  Why not just have the first person apply the credit?  A mystery, that.

That evening, instead of relaxing at home after a long week, Suzie had arranged to meet another family for a picnic at Parc Montsouris, which ended up being a very nice experience.  (I had met the wife, a woman named Meryl, on the Metro one day after class, because her son is attending the same language school as me and the boys.)  Both the husband and the wife were very fun, nice, and interesting (he is a particle physicist doing research for 2 months in France; when he asked what I did and I said I was an attorney for the County of Sonoma, it seemed like a really small job).  The park was mostly empty, and it was refreshing to sit in a lush, green spot, away from the sounds and the bustle of the city, and just eat, talk, and throw the Frisbee around a little bit.  We stayed a long, long time, and hope to get together with them again.

Today we all got up relatively early, and inspired by the fact that Suzie had found a gym and was going to leave to sign up and have her first workout, I decided to go for a run.  Which turned out to be a half-run, half-walk, in part because I haven't had an aerobic exercise since we left California, and in part because I wanted to start slowly to see if my aged flat feet can take the stress.  I ran down to Parc Montsouris, around the park a couple of times (a good workout because it is hilly), then did some stretches, sit-ups, and push-ups and walked home.  It all took a little over an hour, and it felt great to have that feeling you get from the endorphins after you exercise hard.

Then, as is usually the case (what, me resentful?), we spent most of the rest of the day accommodating what the boys wanted to do, which was to go to a big stakepark called "Parislide" with their friend Fernando.  This required a lot of planning, meeting Fernando at the Place d'Italie Metro stop, then taking a long, circuitous Metro route to the Bois de Vincennes, on the southeastern side of Paris.  More particularly, to a place called the Pelouse de Reuilly, which was a big, flat, semi-paved area that looked like it was set aside for traveling carnavals or big shows where people would set up large tents.  (As a strange aside, the only other place I'd ever heard that word, "pelouse" was is a sports context, since one of the Pac Ten schools, Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, is located in an area that they call "the Pelouse," and so whenever they played at home, the announcers would say "welcome to the Pelouse."  "Pelouse" is the French word for "lawn," and I suspect that's what the area we went to was before they paved it over.)

We had to walk a long way to get to the Parislide facility ... and were amazed when we got there.  It was a large facility set up by the City of Paris with a ton of activities -- a huge half-pipe for skaters, a smaller half-pipe for skaters, various and sundry other jumps and things for skaters, a trampoline area, a "beach sports" area filled with sand and volleyball nets, a BMX bicycle area.  Not only was there no charge to get into the facility, but If you didn't have any equipment, you could get equipment there -- skateboards, roller blades, bikes, helmets, pads, etc. -- absolutely free.  Plus, the people who worked there were extremely friendly.  We got into a couple of extended conversations with the young man who looked like he was in charge of the whole thing, and he went out of his way to tell us about other things in Paris we should check out, both stake-related and not.  Andrew was in skateboard heaven, and Fernando put on rollerblades, but unfortunately Will's size 14 plus feet would not fit in them, although he eventually migrated to the BMX bikes, and even tried out a unicycle.





After getting the boys settled at the Pariskate, Suzie and I took the Metro to the Marais area, and wandered around aimlessly.  We found by accident one of the great meal deals in Paris, at a Chinese place that sold food by the kilo either to go or to eat in, so we were able to get exactly the right amount of food for a late afternoon snack-plus for 4.50 euros.  An excellent find.  We shopped a little, and walked a little more, before deciding it was time to head back and pick up the kids.  A few pictures from our excursion follow.  A beautiful, pleasant area, the Marais, if a little touristy.











Back at the Palouse de Reuilly, we called the kids and asked them to meet us at front of the Palouse, to avoid having to walk all the way in to the skate facility.  Of course they didn't come and they didn't come, but for most of the time we didn't care, because we were sitting in an uncrowded, quiet (despite the nearby freeway, see below), wide-open area, and after all the running (me) working out (Suzie) and walking (both of us) we'd done during the day, we were happy just to sit.  Which we ended up doing for longer than we really wanted, because the boys were having fun and didn't want to leave, although they finally did (after the fourth call to them).





The trip back home was one of the worst I've ever taken on the Metro -- long (we couldn't take the direct route because they were doing work on one section), crowded (lots of tourists), hot, stuffy, and more than a little ripe (I hope it wasn't me but I am still not sure, ugh).  Never was I so happy to get off the Metro and get a blast of cool air from the above-ground world as I was about two hours ago.

Now I'm whipped, dead tired, and ready to sleep.  My legs ache, my feet are tender, and I know it is highly likely that tomorrow will be another day of go go go go go.

A Spanish Lunch, etc.

We were invited over to Fernando's family's apartment near the Place d'Italie today for a Spanish lunch, which we enjoyed very much, both the food and the company.  The food was excellent -- appetizers consisting of bread with an olive-oil, garlic, and tomato spread; proscuitto and melon, and an absolutely delicious gazpacho soup; a main course consisting of a delicious, somewhat spicy combination of chicken, green and red peppers, onions, garlic, olive oil, and other assorted ingredients; a salad; a dessert of apple tart that Suzie had purchased, and ice-cream bars; along with bread, sangria, soda, water, and, to top it all off, espresso.  We started at two in the afternoon and didn't get done until five fifteen, and the time seemed to fly by.  I sat there wondering (marveling, really) at why these people who we'd just met would go to all this trouble for us, and how slim the odds must have been that we would meet people so friendly and so compatible within the first weeks we are here.  They are, unfortunately for us, leaving next week, but I am sure that we will stay in touch.  We invited Fernando Jr. to California and they invited us to Madrid, so we will see.

A few random observations --

1.  The TV service here continues to perplex and bewilder us.  From day to day we never know if it is going to work; just this evening it worked until I got to Channel 60, at which point it froze up and would not nothing (I could not even turn the converter box off -- I finally just had to unplug it).  Last night it wasn't working at first, and then when it started to work all of the channels were different than they had been -- Channel 2 wasn't France 2 anymore, but something entirely different, for example.  Then in a few minutes the channels all went back to their "correct" positions.  Weird.  I think the problem is that the TV service is not real cable service, but rather comes through the DSL phone line, and is thus subject to all the glitches to which a computer would be subject.  We have resigned ourselves to having to live with it.

2.  It kills me, absolutely kills me, to walk down the street and see how many petite, attractive, seemingly educated and intelligent young women in their 20s smoke cigarettes.  If I had more gumption, and were less polite, and if my French were better, I would go up to them and say, "Mademoiselle, you are tres, tres jolie now, but if you keep up your smoking you will look like an old hag by the time you are 35."

3. I know readers of this blog like pictures, and while I haven't taken anymore outside shots, I thought I'd share these of our apartment which, as I may have mentioned, is in an old building with old, classic features.  Some of the more interesting things in the apartment itself are pictured below.

The ornate porcelain fireplace:

 

 

Weird plaster face staring down from the ceiling in the corner of the room (number 2):

 

 

Weird plaster face staring down from the ceiling in the corner of the room (number 1):

 

And the elaborate plaster ornamentation in our bedroom:

So very, very different from our 60's ranch house in Sonoma County.

Another Once in a Lifetime Experience

I mentioned that we were planning to go to the Champ de Mars to see the fireworks for the 14th of July.  We did go, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We were concerned that we had not left early enough to get a place, but we managed to squeeze into an open area right in the middle of the Champ de Mars dead in front of (or in back of) the Eiffel Tower.  Also going on at the same time was a free concert, called "Champ Libre," being put on by France 2, one of the main TV networks.  It started at 8:45, and went on for almost two hours.  It wasn't bad, exactly -- the music was all well-performed, the artists (listed here for anyone who cares) were backed by large orchestra, the sound system was excellent, there were large TV screens so you could actually see the artists (Google Earth, a wonderful tool, tells me that we were 560 yards away from the stage), and the volume was loud enough but not too loud.  The music was OK, mostly derivative, but easy to listen to, and it definitely helped pass the time.

What is hard for me to describe is how magical it was to be there.  The evening was absolutely perfect weather-wise: the temperature was mild, the breeze was soft, there were only a few high puffy white clouds in the sky.  We sat and watched the concert as the sun slowly set, turning the sky a deeper and deeper blue.  The crowd there was mixed, mostly young, but a few older folks like me, but everyone was exceedingly polite and respectful.  If someone had the audacity to stand up and block the view of those being them, shouts of "assied" would soon follow, not angry shouts, but shouts conveying "you have apparently forgotten there are people behind you."  Suzie remarked at one point that if this had been a similar event in the US, there would have been lots of excessive drinking, lots of loudness, lots of stupid dancing, lots of idiotic "look at me" posing, and a number of fights.  There was none of that in this crowd (save one incident when the group in front of us resented having their space infringed by two late-coming Czech girls, an incident that was soon amicably resolved).  The crowd was happy but restrained, not in a neurotic "I can't really be myself" way, but in a "I want to be respectful of others" way.  I asked in an earlier post why it is that I feel so comfortable here, and I think that this is one of the reasons -- I am very much that way myself (OK, in addition, perhaps, to being a little suppressed in a neurotic way, too).  So even though the crowd was estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000, it did not feel at all threatening, but rather like an intimate gathering. 

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the concert.  More are on my Flickr site.

 

 

 

I realize you can't really get the scale of the massive crowd from these pictures, so here is one I borrowed from Flickr, taken by someone from the Tour Montparnasse (the large building you see in the center in the picture above).  See if you can spot us in the crowd.

The best came last, however -- the fireworks.  At the end of the concert, and before the fireworks began, they lit up the Eiffel Tower.  In the dying light of the dusk, it was beautiful:

 

We had thought the fireworks would go over right over us, but instead they went off over the Seine, on the other side of the Eiffel Tower, which was cool in a way, as they were often framed through the bottom arch.  I had brought a tripod and researched how to shoot fireworks, but as it happened there was a short fence about 15 yards behind us, which meant that everyone stood so they could see, which meant everyone behind them had to, which made my tripod too short to shoot through the arch.  Even so, I got some good shots.  But the most amazing thing about the fireworks were the way they were set to music, almost seamlessly, although the music had been made for the fireworks although, of course, exactly the opposite had happened.  Beautiful classical music, soft, then building, then louder and louder as the fireworks made their crescendo, movement after movement, like an opera or a play with lights.  At the end, the crowd was quiet for a moment, then joined in sustained applause for something that really had been artistic and beautiful.

 

 

 

 

By the time we gathered our things to leave, it was past 11:30 p.m., and 400,000 people were trying to get home at the same time.  Yet that same odd calm prevailed.  The crowd oozed out into the various sidestreets like a dexterious amoeba.  There was no hope of catching a Metro at any nearby station, as those were jammed, and while stations further down the line were less jammed, they were served by trains that were completely full.  So I decided we should walk to Montparnasse, where we could catch the line that goes directly to our house, which we did, albeit with some complaint from the young-uns, which, I should note, subsided somewhat once we found them a hidden spot along the way.  We didn't get home until almost one, but we still had with us the sense that we'd seen something special and wonderful, and had had an experience that we may never have again.