Teeny-Weeny Monokini

[Heading off for vacation! Follow our adventures in Morocco, in which Family by the Seine tries not to get lost in the (funky cold) medina, in the desert on a horse with no name, at midnight at the oasis, or while rocking the kasbah. You can also sign up there to follow by e-mail. Postings from France will restart in mid-May].


We have friends in town from San Francisco, and since they have been to Paris many times and done all the tourist spots, and since it is a rainy gray day, and because the 11-year old girl has very fond memories of this activity from a trip here when she was just 6, we head out to Aquaboulevard. It's a huge indoor-outdoor waterpark for ages 3 and up, and it costs a small fortune (naturally), but it is really something to see.

photos from: http://www.sejour-paris.net/2011/08/24/aquaboulevard-de-paris/ and http://www.snelac.com/les-sites-de-loisirs/aquaboulevard-de-paris

As soon as we get in, Anthony looks around and notes that he is the only man or boy in site in board-shorts. I tease him that if we live in France long enough, he may have to go buy one of the tiny, tight Speedo-style suits the men wear here. They come in two varieties: banana-hammock and shorts so small I have taken to calling them teeny-weeny monokinis. He looks at me and says, pointedly and very sincerely, "You will NEVER see me in one of those." Flash-forward about five minutes, and I look up to see him walking toward me in his new Euro-metrosexual bathing suit.

http://worldbodybuilders.blogspot.fr/2010/08/black-african-bodybuilders-photos-part_4610.html

There are numerous signs that long shorts are not allowed, and that everybody must be in a bathing suit, but the girl at the desk has told us she thinks Anthony's American-style suit will be acceptable. The lifeguards and staff in charge of the pool itself disagree, however, and they bust him within minutes. So, he leaves us in the pool area and heads over to the vending machines, where he agonizes for a few moments deciding between sizes and coming back with something that leaves little to the imagination. We are all curious why the insistence on tight suits for men (and not just here, but at all public pools in France); they claim it's for hygienic purposes, but that doesn't explain it adequately, as we can't figure out why board shorts would be unhygienic. Perhaps it's just a fashion aversion to bagginess? Macho exhibitionist desires?

Aquaboulevard has a rope swing, seven big water slides that are currently open (with four more closed along with the outdoor portion of the park for winter). For one of the slides -- the favorite of our girls and visiting friend, ages 6, 8 and 11 -- we crowd into a huge green raft which takes us through a mighty chilly outdoor portion before depositing us back indoors. It is not just fast for the kids; even Anthony and I are whooping it up.

photos from: http://www.offi.fr/enfants/aquaboulevard-1415.html and http://www.epitech.eu/olympiades-ionis-2009-art746.html

There's a vertiginous slide no children under twelve are allowed on, and I am happy we don't ignore the warning in our usual way, as it so fast and steep, neither Anthony nor I can even keep our eyes open. There's a wave pool, a wakeboarding pool (too old for our crew), hottubs, and much more, all with generously heated water. Amazingly, other than a few signs stating that children under twelve are the responsibility of the mandatory accompanying adult, there are no signs warning you away from activities if you are pregnant, old, immuno-compromized, left-handed, in a foul mood, etc. There are no signs telling you that you could be hurt, maimed, injured, or in any way harmed by these activities. We sign no waivers, and there are not even lifeguards regulating the top of the slides -- just red and green lights, which each person miraculously obeys (this is not, actually, typically French of them). There are signs showing you not to go head-first, or telling how many people are allowed in each kind of inner-tube, and they assume you are both smart enough and law-abiding enough to follow them. To an American, this is an oasis of common sense, self-awareness, self-responsibility, and non-litigiousness. The only thing they seem to overregulate is men's attire. Let's see that one more time:

All of this aquatic fun can be had for 28€ per adult and 15€ per child (and a few more euro for the teeny-weeny monokini) at the front desk. It appears after-the-fact that there may be a family pass (2 adults and 2 kids) for just 52€, but it's not offered to us and is unclear whether this needs to be bought online in advance or, the next time, we need to know enough to ask for it explicitly. Needless to say, this time we do not know, and they charge us 86€ ($113) for the family of four.

We are there for about two-three hours before we are purple-lipped and starving. The day gets a huge thumbs up from all involved. On our way out, P states emphatically that Aquaboulvard is way better than Disneyland. Then she reflects a moment and qualifies, "well, way better than Disneyland Paris."

Why I Like 69

This is my 100th posting from Paris, and I would like to honor it by admitting that it is very, very hard for me to count to 100. In French, that is.

For those of you that don't speak French, you should know that the number all make sense until
#69, and after that it all goes to hell. To say the #70 involves mental addition: "soixante-dix" literally means "sixty-ten." Fair enough, but that also means that #71 is "sixty-eleven" up to #76, which is "sixty-sixteen."

In English we start our "regular" teen numbers at #13, with eleven and twelve given special names. In Spanish, the switch happens at #16 (transitioning from "quince" to "dieciséis"). In French, it happens at #17, going from "seize" to "dix-sept" (literally "ten-seven").

This means that #77 is "sixty-ten-seven," continuing up to #79 ("sixty-ten-nine"), at which point we switch to multiplication.

To say #80 in French, you say "four-twenty" (as opposed to #24 which is "twenty-four"). Then we go back to addition, on top of the multiplication: #85, for example, is "four-twenty five." Then at ninety, you say "four-twenty ten" ... all the way up until my most dreaded numbers: #97, 98, and 99.

80=(4 x 20)
87=(4 x 20) + 7
90=(4 x 20) + 10
96=(4 x 20) + 16
97=(4 x 20) + 10 + 7
98=(4 x 20) + 10 + 8
99=(4 x 20) + 10 + 9

As you may have noticed, I am more of a word person. I mean, I made it through math classes just fine, but playing with numbers has never been particularly fun to me, whereas I regularly scramble letters from street signs around in my head just to see what I can create. So there I am, speaking French rapidly, fluently, and with my "adorably sexy" not-quite-native accent, and suddenly I need to say the number #92. All time seems to stand still as I start doing the math in my head....

Phone numbers in France are eight digits long and broken into pairs when spoken out loud. So the number 12345678 is usually written 12.34.56.78 and is read out "Twelve, thirty-four, fifty-six, seventy-eight." Our home phone and both of our cell phones contains lots of numbers over 70 (my cell phone is exclusively numbers over 70, in fact). I've found that more than one person has written my number down incorrectly, putting 60.12 when I do not say "soixante-douze" or "sixty-twelve" -- which is actually the number #72 -- fast enough.

Contrary to my own personal belief, it turns out the French did not come up with this counting system just to mess with my head, and my French.

This base-20 (or vigesimal) counting has Celtic origins, and appeared in French counting as early as the eleventh century after William the Conquerer hit English shores and brought back with the Normans the concept of "skor" (as in four score and seven years ago....). Presumably, the base-twenty idea grew out of the fact that you can count to twenty using toes and fingers.

In researching this, I came across other counting systems that make me grateful to be living in France. Author Claudia Zaslavsky describes the Yoruba system in her book Africa Counts -- another vigesimal system but one that uses subtraction. Numbers in each group of ten from 1-4 are added to the tens place below, and numbers from 5-9 are subtracted from the tens place above. For example,

35 = (2 x 20) - 5
47 = (3 x 20) - 10 - 3
51 = (3 x 20) - 10 + 1

This is only true up to 200, after which, she writes, "the system becomes irregular." Holy hell. Then it gets irregular?!

Denmark also has vestiges of the vigesimal system, with things really kicking in after #50. So while #40 is simply #40, #50 is "four and half-third." This means: halfway toward the third group of twenty (which would be 60, and halfway there would be 50).

66 = 6 and third
73 = 3 and half fourth

There is, apparently, also a counting system based on 60 which is called sexagesimal. France does not use this system for primary counting, which is lucky for my brain but unlucky for my writing, as I am itching to make some sort of tacky "sexagesimal" pun. I think my cousin Kevin will be the first to come up with a zinger.

But don't think that means you are free from knowing what it's about, because we're all still using this system to some extent. The sexagesimal system started with the Sumerians (approx. 300BC) and went through the Babylonians all the way straight through to us today, which is why we tell time in chunks of 60 (sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour) and angles in terms of 360°. The reason is because 60 can be divided so neatly into so many components: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10,
12, 15, 20, 30, and 60 and, by extension, 360 can be divided into six groups of 60.

Researching this leads me to the book The Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah, which I am intrigued enough to buy for our family to see if we all enjoy geeking out on it. How does this tie in? The author is French. You see? It all comes full circle. 100 postings in half a year, and more to come: You can count on it. But probably not in Yoruba, Danish, or even French.

The Long Arm of the PAW

You can run, but you cannot hide. They will hunt you down, mercilessly, pitilessly, tirelessly. "They," of course, are the Annual Giving office at Princeton University.

The very first letter we received at our new apartment here in Paris was from Princeton: a request for a donation to some department or other. Today, we receive three pieces of mail from Princeton on the same day: a request for money from the rowing association (Anthony rowed his freshman year), a thank you card for having donated to Annual Giving (which we did online, to save paper, but then they mailed us a card anyway...), and the PAW (a.k.a the Princeton Alumni Weekly, a magazine which does not actually come out weekly, which you can see as ironically humorous or moronically misnamed).

When I lived in the Philippines, I spent about six months teaching scuba diving (I call it my ski bum phase, but I did it underwater) on a tiny island called Boracay. At that time, Boracay did not have regular electricity, and my housing did not have plumbing of any sort. I lived in a little cabin where I had to cross a sandy path beneath the palm trees in order to get to the outhouse I shared with a Filipino family, except that I couldn't go to the bathroom during wind storms for fear of a coconut falling on my head. That would be an embarrassing obituary: "Killed by a coconut on the way to pee."

This was before the days of wide-spread internet and e-mail, and certainly cell phones, and my parents would not have been able to find where I was on a map if you paid them. So you can imagine my surprise when one day I was called off the beach to the dive shop because a phone call had come through from the States. I raced to the phone, imagining some health scare from one of my parents. Instead I heard a chipper voice saying, "Hello, Ms. Regelman? My name is Ashley, and I'm a senior here at Princeton University. We want to thank you for contributing regularly in the past and would like to know if you would donate to Annual Giving this year as well..." 

As I am finishing the previous paragraph, I hear a ping telling me an e-mail has arrived in my inbox. It is, naturally, an e-mail from Princeton class of '89 telling me to check out my class website and also pay my class dues. Moments after (and I am not exaggerating this for effect), I see on my facebook home page an invitation from the Princeton Alumni Association of France to a gathering in two weeks at an Irish pub in Paris. If I write this post much longer, I expect a knock on the door from a perky undergrad in a tiger-striped sweatshirt, armed with sleeping bag, tooth-brush, and point-of-sale credit card reader.

So, you may wonder where in the world I am, but the omniscient Orange-and-Black already knows where to find me. And, if you are a Tiger, they know where to find you, too. So don't bother to hide; they're coming for you...

F*** That

Anthony picks G up from her hip-hop class tonight, and parents are invited in for the last ten minutes of class to watch. He finds himself a bit dumbstruck, watching the 8-12 year olds dance their hip hop routine to a song with the following lyrics:

Loca People (listen to it here):
When I came to Spain, and I saw people partying
I thought to myself, what the fuck
All day, all night
All day, all night
Viva la fiesta, viva la noche
Viva los DJ's
I couldn't believe what I was living
So I called my friend Johnny
And I said to him
Johnny, la gente esta muy loca
What the fuck
Johnny, la gente esta muy loca
What the fuck
When I came to Spain, and I saw people partying
I thought to myself, what the fuck
All day, all night
All day, all night
Viva la fiesta, viva la noche
Viva los DJ's, what the fuck
Viva la fiesta, viva la noche
Viva los DJ's, what the fuck
Viva la, viva la
I couldn't believe what I was living
So I called my friend Johnny
And I said to him
Johnny, la gente esta muy loca
What the fuck
What the fuck

G is the only non-French kid in class, and certainly Anthony is the only adult anglophone in the room. The F-bomb is raining down on the children, as they do their pop-and-lock robots. None of the other parents even flinch.

Though many of them probably know of the "F" word, swearing just does not have the same impact in a foreign language. Frankly, it's even hard to swear properly in a foreign language when you want to. I remember meeting a Chinese man who spoke truly incredible English. You could almost believe he was American until he said that something was "unbe-fuckin'-lievable." This was the linguistic kiss of death, as any native speaker would know to say "un-fuckin'-believable."

So I realize I will probably never curse like a native French person, but it certainly would help to recognize the words, since for years when talking to little children about bumping into something ("cogne") I mistakenly used the pejorative word "con" -- which I have since seen translated as: complete idiot, arse-wipe, dick-head, shit-for-brains, stupid bastard, fuckwit, and utter twat, among others.

So here's a course curse course from my French friend Aurore:

• mon cul = my ass. Same meaning as the softer mon oeil = my eye. Meaning, "bullshit." Has been said by her teenage son to her. Not horribly shocking, but don't say it to a teacher.
• trou de cul = asshole. C'est vraiment un trou de cul. What an asshole.
• con, and by extension connard and connasse (masculine and feminine versions) = ass, cunt, prick, basically all pejorative words for genitalia rolled into one.
• Quelle connard! What an asshole.
• Gros con = big asshole.
• Petit con = small asshole. Could be said to kids in the South of France, but not in the North, where they are more puritanical. According to Aurore. Who is from the South.
• merde = Shit! A child could say the softer version of this -- "mince!" in public. But the word "merde" itself is considered a very bad word.
• You can say, "Je te dis les cinq lettres," meaning "I say the five letters to you," as in the awful five-letter word. As an American, looking at these words in translation, it's hard to see "merde" as worse than "con," but the French do.
• Can also be called "le mot de Cambronne," Cambronne being Napoleon's general whose answer to the Brit's demand for surrender at Waterloo was this carefully-chosen nugget.
• pétas (in the South), pétasse (in the North) = whore
• putain or pute = whore, and also every possible other thing in the world. Eggs are undercooked? Putain. This putain car is not parked properly. The pute dress is out of stock in my putain size. While its meaning is vague, the sentiment is clear. Children should not say this in school.
• ta gueule = Shut the Fuck Up! Not to be confused with "taisez-vous" = shut up, but more in a "be quiet" way. Whereas "taisez-vous" is said by teachers to children, "ta gueule" is used by drugged up gang members about to get into a knife fight.
• dégage or casse-toi = Beat it! Get lost!
• va te faire.... Aurore, a lovely French woman with a posh English accent, cheerfully spews out a string of these "Va te faire..." curses:
• Va te faire foutre! = Go fuck yourself!
• Va te faire mettre! = Go get yourself fucked!
• Va te faire enculer! = Go get yoursef fucked up the ass!
• Va te faire sodomiser! = Go get yourself sodomized!
• Va te faire chez les grecs! = Go get done to you whatever those Greek guys are doing, probably with sheep, in the horrible stereotypes we all enjoy perpetuating!
• When I ask about "fou-toi," which I was taught in American jr. high and high school was "fuck you," I am met with a a blank stare. "No, that's not correct French. It's 'va te faire foutre.'"

And so, having exhausted my knowledge of French curse words and probably horrified my mother and caused my prudish grandmother to roll over in her grave, I leave you with the request that you click here to see why even though this may be a bitch of a shitty posting, I think you'd be a total asswipe not to fucking learn how to curse when you're living in a goddamn foreign country.

Picard, My Secret Sous-Chef

My French friend, Marie, tells me that "No French woman would be caught without a freezer full of Picard. Picard is our little secret." Yes, it may be sexist but, hey, how many Frenchmen are cooking their family dinners (probably even fewer than American men...)? Popular as it here, Picard may just be the worst-kept secret around.

Picard could best described, at least to Californians and people in urban hipster environments, as the frozen section of Trader Joe's on steroids. Without the steroids. That is to say that virtually all of the ingredients and meals are flash frozen, without preservatives, strange-sounding chemicals, or crazy hormones. Much like with Trader Joe's frozen foods, the ingredients are easily recognizable and generally what you would use to make it from scratch, if you had the inclination. Some are organic, but not all.

You can find a Picard pretty much anywhere in the country, and in Paris there seems to be one in each neighborhood. The stores aren't flashy or fancy -- pretty much just a big white room filled with freezers. Like Trader Joe's, they have a variety of ethnic foods. Frankly, possibly even more than what you find as restaurants choices. For example, in the freezer case above you see American cheeseburgers and Moroccan pastilles next to goat-cheese tartes, gougères, and crêpes. Below are some of the lunches I make for myself when we run out of leftovers and salad ingredients, including a little something to remind me of India (and yes, of course I add my own hot sauce. This is, after all, still made for a French market that is pathologically averse to spicy food).

One of the things that really sets Picard apart from Trader Joe's is not just the sheer variety of offerings, but also the way single ingredients are treated. Meaning: instead of a single frozen block of spinach that you have to thaw then separate, the bag contains ice-cube-sized chunks. So you can just shake out the amount you need and keep the rest frozen. Brilliant! On days when I just need a tiny little something and/or forget to thaw, it's perfect. Below, sauteeing frozen spinach and onions for a base, and cubes of pumpkin puree to help thicken a soup.

Many of the meals are quite good. Picard makes some of the better frozen lasagna I've ever tried, and some of the best pizza (period) that I've had in France, which frankly says less about the quality of the Picard frozen pizza and more about the quality of pizza in France. One dish that comes out looking exactly like the package (yet nobody in our family actually likes) is the mushroom-and-chestnut-stuffed guinea fowl. So if you see this on your hostess' table (including mine...) and she tells you she slaved for hours, don't believe her.

100 Calories Per Foot

Anthony can't make it through the year without skiing in the Alps at least once. He heads out for a long weekend with a group from Ubisoft to Tignes, which is attached to Val d'Isere, in the French Alps, chosen because of the high altitude for spring skiing: base elevations 2100m (6890ft), and 1850m (6070ft) respectively.

By the end of the weekend, he feels he's earned some office cred from the trip, even if he is lost for most of the conversations carried on in French. He is a) one of the older people on the trip, b) the sole American, and c) from California. So the French are probably not expecting much from him, ski-wise. But Anthony, in case you've never been on the slopes with him, is a hot-shot skiier. It's a thing of beauty to watch him come down a steep black chute (whereas I look like like a helmeted Michelin-man careening down a mountain, with loud screaming sound-effects).

The weather is gorgeous - blue skies and great spring conditions. Even with his high Tahoe and Colorado standards, he is still like a kid in a candy store skiing in the Alps. One of Tignes's claims to fame is that it contains the worlds second-longest black run, called La Sache (which appears to mean "knowledge"). From up here, Anthony passes by the rock formation called l'Aiguille Percée (the aptly-named "eye of the needle"). The full run is 10km, through a valley and ending in the village of Tignes Les Brévières. Anthony and his co-worker go from top to bottom in roughly thirty minutes of hard, fast skiing. At least, that's his estimate. That would be about three or four hours for me, then.

The ascent alone is 1200m up -- that's about 4,000 ft of vertical -- and takes about an hour (again an estimate): a gondola ride followed by a long chairlift. Unless you're in the gondola that got stuck mid-mountain for eight hours a few months back. Then it takes longer. But that, thankfully, is an experience that Anthony misses.

For their last night, they go out for a special three-course Alps dinner that consists of tartiflette (a potato & cheese casserole) followed by cheese fondue (potatoes and bread dipped in melted cheese mixture), followed by raclette (melted cheese scraped off a rotisserie onto potatoes, sausage and bread). Luckily, Anthony has probably skiied twenty to thirty thousand (+/-?!) vertical feet today and also skipped lunch to get in more time on the slopes, so he can afford the three million calories he ingests.

Photos from: http://www.meilleurduchef.com/cgi/mdc/l/fr/recette/tartiflette.html, http://www.lacuisinedefabrice.fr/2009/04/07/fondue-savoyarde/,

and http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette

Happy Eater!

It's Easter, so naturally, one starts to notice all the cute, fuzzy spring animals -- bunnies, lambs, chicks, etc. In the meat aisle of the grocery store, that is. No, the headline of this posting is not a typo. In the butcher, in the grocery store, and on the menus, (and if truth be known, not just now but all year round) you will find a farm's worth of no-longer-frolicking rabbit, young chicken, lamb, duck, and veal.

After living in Japan, the Philippines, and other parts of Asia, I have long ago given up the idea that some meat, or some part, is morally superior, once you take out endangered/environmental considerations. Why is it OK to eat fish, but not fish eyeballs (which my Japanese and Chinese friends consider a delicacy)? Why are eggs and chickens not just acceptable but "normal," yet the idea of Filipino balut -- a half-developed chicken embryo inside the egg -- is (how shall I say this diplomatically...) utterly vile?

 

http://www.gpwa.org/forum/eatting-filipino-balut-198757.html + http://philippinesfoodrecipes.blogspot.fr/2009/06/filipino-food-delicacy-known-as-balut.html

Remember, many of us used to consider octopus and squid gross until we discovered sushi and fried calamari. I admit that there is no rhyme or reason to my meat philosophy: I despise liver and chopped liver (insert shudder of disgust) but adore pâté: goose liver, pork liver, duck liver, I've tried and liked 'em all.

I cannot say I believe that this is the day that Jesus rose up from the dead. But I can say with complete certainty that if I were to serve one of those cute animals for dinner, this would be the day that Gigi would rise up from the table to go fetch herself some yogurt. She has unilaterally decided not to eat even any form of beef, hamburgers included. She's near vegetarian, with a healthy love for certain pork products: bacon, ham, and pork loin, as well as chicken sausages. (And when I was a vegetarian, I used to cheat with occasional chicken curries and an annual trip for barbeque ribs, so I guess strict dogmaticism does not run in our family...). Pippa, on the other hand, we call "Henry VIII" because not only does she love meat, she particularly likes to hold a bone and start gnawing.

Since I'm the one that does the grocery shopping, however, most of our family's meat intake is chicken, turkey, fish, and occasionally pork, which makes us decidedly very un-French. I would kill for ground turkey so I could make meatloaf and chili the way I do in California (though, hypocritically, I wouldn't actually kill a turkey for the ground turkey....). This aversion to many forms of meat makes it difficult for me to find something I'm excited about on most French brasserie menus. And it may be what drives Anthony to order the most bizarre form of meat available whenever he gets the chance ("Blood sausage?" He's there...), though it could also be because he has a perverse sense of humor that way.

And so, on this day when some believe Jesus rose from the dead to absolve us of our sins, and when they celebrate, logically, with a big ham or lamb in the middle of the table, and six-foot pastel bunnies delivering chocolate eggs and jelly beans, we will be celebrating with omelettes and hunting for tie-dyed Easter eggs in the park. But no baluts. Happy Easter and Happy Eating!

What a Mickey Mouse Operation

The first thing we do when the gates open to Disneyland Paris is rush to Thunder Mountain Railroad, only to discover that it is closed. The girls are so disappointed, but we say,“Well, we’ll do other things. We’ll still have fun.” We are wrong. The Steamboat is also closed, and the only attraction open in Frontierland is the Haunted House, which lets the girls down yet again: At the end, they turn to us and ask, “Where were the ghosts?” There we were, in the cars, facing the mirrors, and there’s supposed to be a ghost projected in with us. It’s supposed to be the punchline of the ride but apparently isn’t working.

 

Since Frontierland is a bust, we wander into Adventureland to go to the Pirates of the Caribbean, which is also closed. We turn to the pirate ship but it is -- you're sensing the pattern here -- closed. Finally, in desperation, we go through the Treehouse, which appeals to nobody, simply because we cannot find anything else to do. By this point, we’ve been in the park a couple hours and the girls are complaining about how bored they are and saying they want to go home. I've never heard them use the word "disappointed" so much in one day.

My friend Andi gasps audibly when I tell her about our opinion of Dismalland Paris: "It's like bad-mouthing Santa Claus!" Let me tell you, if it were a child, Dismayland Paris would get a lump of coal in its stocking.

Trying to get at least one thing right, we head to Discoveryland to go on Space Mountain. The girls love roller coasters and their two favorite rides at Disneyland (California, that is) are Thunder Mountain (1st) and Space Mountain (2nd), which they ride continuously if given the chance. Space Mountain in Disorganizedland Paris is, in fact...drumroll please...open! But we are informed the girls are not tall enough to ride, because the Space Mountain here is "Mission 2" and has a loop in it and, therefore a taller height requirement. G & P are so small, I don't think they'll hit 132cm (52inches) till they're 12 years old. At this point, the girls just break down crying, G especially, and saying how awful this Disneyland is. It's Disappointeyland.

By now we are desperately hungry, which always makes matters worse. So a little meat and many fries later, we have a serious family discussion about whether we should just ask for our money back and leave. But since we've committed our day here, and by now it's already early afternoon, we decide to try again.  We walk through the passageway into Fantasyland, where we try to re-excite the girls by telling them there is a new ride they could try – Alice’s Labyrinth. Which, you are not going to be surprised to hear, Disorderland has closed. 

We then go on basically every open ride/attraction we can find, even the obvious dogs. We are desperate to find something to do. On the Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, the ride breaks down and has to be stopped about four times while we are on it. We wait on the Peter Pan Flightline over half an hour and just as we get to the front, it breaks down for about twenty minutes, and I must tell you that I honestly think, "Well, the good thing is that it's taking up more of our afternoon." When it does restart, the squeak of the equipment is almost unbearable. Welcome to Disrepairland, the Crappiest place on Earth!

We trudge through the Nautilus (at this point it feels something like the Bataan Death March), with the girls complaining how boring it is and – even worse – there is such ugly construction around it at the time, our 6-year old suddenly transforms from an innocent child who believes in magic to a sullen cynic: “It’s not a real submarine. The octopus is fake. There’s not even water outside the boat.” It's Disillusionmentland.

 

There are a few good moments. The highlight of the lowlights is driving the cars at Autopia. The girls ride in an elephant, which seems fitting since they've recently ridden on a real one, and see Indian dancers in It's a Small World, which they are excited to identify, having just been there.

  

 

And I do have some perspective: Having a bad day at Distraughtland is not on par with, say, losing a loved one or breaking your collarbone or being on the real Bataan Death March. But G shakes her head sadly at one brief moment we are actually enjoying ourselves, and points out, accurately, "It's sad that what we'll remember of this day are the bad parts."

With this, we manage to kill enough time to make it to the 5pm parade and Anthony tries to make up to the girls for the day with an $8 micro-cup of popcorn. He comes back shaking his head, “That guy purposely tried to shortchange me!”

 

 

While the worst of it is that the big rides are closed, it is compounded by the fact that so are many of the smaller attractions, and others are just plain absent. Paris has more space, but far fewer attractions: where's Mr.Toad’s Wild Ride, the Matterhorn, the Jungle Cruise, the Tiki Room, PikieHollow, or Splash Mountain? Instead, they just have bigger walkways. And crêpes, women in stylish Minnie Mouse scarves, Ratatouille characters instead of fairies, and fake European village architecture (oh wait, that's at all Disney parks...).

 

 

According to the lyrics from that Disney film, the Lion King, "Hakuna Matata...means no worries for the rest of your days. It's [a] problem-free philosophy." No worries and problem free, as long as you don't spend the day in Disasterland Paris, that is.

April Fish Day

In France, April Fool's Day is not a day for creative trickery. As with many other aspects of French culture, there's a specific tradition, and they're sticking with it. In France, it is known as "Poisson d'Avril" or April's Fish, and the point is to tape a paper fish on an unwitting person's back. Basically, it's like a "Kick Me" sign, without the kicking. This means I have to turn my back on my girls for large portions of the morning and pretend not to notice when they give me long, pat-pat-pat hugs out of nowhere. I think in theory, once they get you, they're supposed to yell "Poisson d'Avril!" but of course this would take all the joy out of it as far as we're concerned. Let's just see how long somebody will go around with a paper fish on their back. Much more fun.

Because Anthony is off on a ski weekend, and our semi-planned playdate doesn't work out, the girls have to come with me to my dance class this afternoon. They have met some of my classmates, so they manage to hug some of them hello and rather successfully slip on some fish. A few people truly do not realize what's been done, much to the girls' delight. I may be walking around with a fish, and we may have needlessly used up a lot of scotch tape, but at least I know I won't have to worry about salt in my sugar bowl or cellophane over the toilet seat for a while.

As this April Fish Day happens to fall on Palm Sunday, we see a procession going down our street to one of the (many, many, many) local churches. The branches they are holding, along with the fact that Gigi tells me that she learned in religion class that today marks the day Jesus was crucified, makes me rethink the meaning of Palm Sunday, which I had always assumed was named after palm leaves. Perhaps instead it has to with the palms of his hands? But no, I look into it and it actually does refer to palm leaves -- the ones laid down as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, in what seems like quite a festive parade for somebody about to be executed. Apparently, in northern climes such as Paris, they give out different kinds of branches. And, also apparent, while Gigi does extremely well in most subjects, religion class is never going to be that little atheist's specialty.

 

While I'm discussing Catholic and French traditions in one fish-themed posting, I feel I must mention the French proclivity for pureeing fish inside mashed potatoes. I've served this at our apartment once, when I accidentally bought purée de pommes de terres with Alaskan hake blended in. The girls, Anthony, and I all hated it (of course we did! It's fishy mashed potatoes!), but at least Anthony and I never have to eat it again, as long as we recognize the name for this dish (which dangerously escapes me right now) at the local brasseries. The girls, on the other hand, are subjected to this on a recurring basis at their Catholic school on that most dreaded of cantine days: Fish Friday. Guess the ultimate April Fish joke's on them.