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.