Shock Before the Culture

We are in Senegal for the last half of Christmas vacation, spending the New Year there. We figure that while we're over in Europe, it's relatively close, so it would be as cheap as it's every going to be. Ha!

In this case, what comes before culture shock is sticker shock. The plane tickets are expensive, despite using mileage for most of them. But that's now what's so shocking. It's the visas (52.50€ each), then the mandatory yellow fever vaccinations (66€) each, and the anti-malaria pills (60€ each).

For our family of four, that comes to:
visas: $288 total
vaccinations: $365 total
anti-malaria pills: $329 total

That's $982 before we even leave France. Yikes! Had we actually realized that before we bought our plane tickets and made our plans, we might have reconsidered. Oh well...as they say, once in a lifetime and all that. But I can think of more enjoyable ways to spend our vacation money than shots, pills, and bureaucracy.

Happy New Year (and may your unpleasant incidentals come to far less than this...)!

Cheese Aisle Revolution

I break out my camera to take photos in the Montparnasse Monoprix cheese section; it's one of the biggest grocery chains in the country, but this doesn't look like any cheese section I've seen in a grocery store. It's gorgeous -- better than most actual fancy cheese shops in the US, frankly.



But it doesn't matter how lovingly I take these photos. The woman working there comes over and yells at me, "You can't take those photos, and you know it!" When I question both why not and how I'm supposed to know this, she gets even madder. "Of course it's a rule! You must have permission!" You remember the unofficial national motto... "French Bureaucracy: We're Not Infamous For Nothing!"

Will I be imprisoned? Kicked out of the country? Find out what happens at A Year in Fromage....



 

Starting 851...

Notre Dame has finally finished celebrating her 850th anniversary, and the scaffolding for the "special seating" is coming down. Hooray! I know I already wrote about Notre Dame, but I have since taken more photos of her -- many of them my favorites. Here's a taste of the new ones, and for the rest, you can see the entire posting (with cheese) at A Year in Fromage:

 

 

 

 

Transitions

Pippa hits two new milestones in 24 hours:

She transitions from this:

to this (video taken from far away, I know, but it's a back handspring/ back tuck combo):

And then, she transitions from this:

 

to this:

 

She donates over eight inches to Children With Hair Loss, which provides free wigs and hair care products for kids who've lost hair due to illness and medical treatments. Pippa has only had three or four haircuts in her whole life, and those were simply trims, so this is pretty life-changing for her, too.

 

 

 

We've known it was too long for a while, but she had two distinct goals in mind before we could cut it: one, she wanted to have it reach down to her butt (a noble goal, I know), and two, she wanted to have enough to donate to charity but still have longish hair when finished.

 

 

Work of Art

Gigi has a most unusual extracurricular activity this fall. And I mean most unusual. She has been cast as Ann Lee, a Japanese manga character come to life, for a piece of performance art in a major exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, the world-class contemporary art museum of Paris. She and seven others were chosen  from 160 girls at the audition, by the artist himself, Tino Sehgal, who calls the kind of interactive performance art he creates "constructed situations."

 

 

photo from http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2013/may/08/tino-sehgal-reanimates-manga-character-at-frieze/

 

Gigi is the youngest among the girls, and she performs the solo piece he created in either English or French, depending on her audience, three times a week, for two-three hours at a time...

 

To read more, and to see photos of Pippa's high-end modeling job, and to check out the cheese I've selected to accompany this story, click here.

Bonjour, With Feeling

I pride myself on having some manners, some class (not much, but some -- give me that). After a lifetime of living in the US, I feel like I've done my duty when I respectfully approach the saleslady and say, "Excuse me. Can you please tell me where I could find the games for 8 year old?" At which point, here in Paris, the lady will give me a supercilious stare and say, pointedly...

TO READ THE REST OF THE STORY, CLICK HERE

Rats Love Farmers' Markets

So those of you who've checked out A Year in Fromage will have noticed that you're already familiar with some of the material. Yup, it's true: You have been my guinea pigs. But not my dead rats. For those, you'll need to check out the new material on A Year in Fromage, but I wanted to make sure you knew about it here:

There are not one but two taxidermy shops right by Pippa's elementary school. Even after two years in Paris, and with her new middle school big-girl status, Gigi still refuses to look in the windows, much less the stores. So I guess I won't be taking her by Aurouze, which Anthony and I happened upon recently while walking through the 1st arrondissement. With twenty gorgeous nearly-antique dead sewer rats hanging in the window from the same number of nearly-antique traps, it's quite a sight to behold. These are 91-year old dead rats, and I know this almost-precisely because the sign proudly proclaims, "Captured around 1925 at Les Halles."



Click here to read more...

And another story that will be new to you, and is much more appetizing:

These pretty pears, with the tips of stems dipped in bright red wax are Passe-Crassane. Why the wax? To cauterize the end and prevent dehydration. They remind me of the beautiful $100 melons I used to occasionally receive as a gift when I lived in Japan, but less uniformly perfect. Forget about the occasional Bosc (how boring), here we buy Guyot Rosée, Comice Extra, Packam, Conference, William Rouge, Abate, and others I can't even name.

 

 

Click here to read more

A Year in Fromage

After almost two years of imagining, planning, procrastinating, and -- occasionally -- self-doubting, I have launched my one-year, daily writing project called A Year in Fromage, which looks at life in France, one stinky cheese at a time. Check it out! Sign up to follow it daily! Pass it on to your contacts who love cheese or France (or both)!

In fact, I'm two days into the cheese-a-day project by now. Only 363 more to go! If you've already tried to sign up for the e-mails but couldn't figure it out, I do want to tell you that I figured out (ha! of course Anthony figured out) the technical glitch on the site, and now you can, indeed, sign up to follow by e-mail. For today's post, enjoy both a story, and a cheese, that really stinks.

Loyal readers of this blog may recognize today's story, from one of my earliest days in France, but much of the material on that site will also be new. I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile the two blogs I've got going. This is what I've come up with for the moment:

I'm going to continue writing in this blog the stories and observations that are more personal. Also, I'll try to give you a nod over to the most recent all-new postings at A Year in Fromage. However, even for the re-purposed posts you may already have seen, they will have added cheese elements, so there's always something new there.

I once said I felt like I was working 4 full-time jobs: parent, travel agent, writer, and administrator of the small business I was running from afar in San Francisco. Well, that business -- a French-immersion preschool -- has since closed (to my great relief, frankly) and I'm now down to "just" 3 full time jobs. In reality, it means I actually get to spend much more time writing, which I love. I've had one piece and photography published in the Wall Street Journal and have just turned in another that will be published soon. I've been working on some creative projects, including A Year in Fromage. So, I hope you enjoy both blogs!

Chocolate Chip Champion

My friend Mei and I like to champion here in Paris (and abroad) that ugliest but perhaps most delicious of desserts: the American cookie.

The first year of gymnastics regionals, Gigi's team got 13th out of 13. The second year, when she came home with a 9th place, Anthony congratulated her enthusiastically...until she told him there had only been 9 teams. Well, much like this, I fancy myself quite a delicious cookie maker, but then I only have a couple really good non-French friends here, and the only other American's cookies I've tried are Mei's. And, objectively speaking, hers are better than mine. So there may only be two contestants, but I'm the Silver Medal Champion Cookie Maker of My Paris!

And my cookies do whoop the pants off any chocolate chip cookies I've tried that were made by any French person. I have to admit that the cookies I make here also whoop the pants off the cookies I make in San Francisco, and I've figured out the secret: I use all-American ingredients except the butter. French butter has less water in it, and is generally richer and more unctuous, and the cookies are all the better for it.

If you're wondering why there are so many cookies on my counters, and why some of them are upside down, there's a logical explanation for both. Gigi likes me to make her cookies for her class for her birthday. She's in a class of 29 kids, plus a teacher, and I feel like everybody should have at least a couple cookies. So you do the math: that makes a whole lot of cookies, which I must mix by hand -- no KitchenAid stand mixer. It's better than a gym workout for the upper arms, except that I eat more calories worth of raw dough than I burn.

And why upside down? Along with no stand mixer, I also don't have a cooling rack, and I've discovered that putting them bumpy side down allows them to cool without getting soggy, as the steam can find nooks and crannies through which to escape.

Sure, I could buy chocolate chip cookies. There is a cute little shop on our island called "Anne's" which sells single, regular-sized (say, 3" diameter) cookies for 2.7€ -- or about $3.50 -- each. Meanwhile, I can go to Thanksgiving (the store in the nearby Marais neighborhood, not the holiday) and find critically important ingredients for not too much money, including real light brown sugar for under 4€ and baking soda for just a couple more. Still infinitely cheaper than buying at Anne's, where we would need to take out a second mortgage in order to buy a couple dozen cookies.

 

The expensive ingredients are the real liquid vanilla and the chocolate chips, and I have cabinets full of both, thanks to a steady stream of visitors. However, I refuse to make chocolate chip cookies for any of my visitors from the States. I only make them for other ex-pats who need a taste of home and for French-people who, I must tell you, are completely won over by this ugly-but-delicious American dessert.

Coming Home

No, it's not what you're thinking. We're just back from a fall vacation to sunny Spain, and upon our arrival we see the obligatory airport sign that says "Bienvenue à Paris," but we think it should just say "Welcome Home." It certainly feels like we've come home, and I feel it more strongly than ever. Driving through the streets of Paris, it feels familiar, comfortable, and just as much like "home" as any place else to me. We've been here over two years, and I love all the things that have become a normal part of my life: the rippling waters of the Seine from my desk, our neighborhood markets, the view of Notre Dame, the leaves turning yellow along the quai, fresh croissants from the boulangerie, the walk to the metro stop through medieval streets, my dance class, tea with friends, and even -- slightly, affectionately -- the way our water heater occasionally conks out for no known reason while someone's in the middle of a shower (the sound of the scream sends us with matches to reignite the pilot light).

I have to say that I feel more at home in Paris than anyplace else I've ever lived, with the exception of San Francisco. Even having spent around six years in Tokyo in my twenties, I never felt like that was home in the same way. That's understandable, perhaps, given the linguistic, cultural, and racial barriers, and also because I was there when I was young and single. Here, I've got a real family life, and friends and community through schools, activities, work, and neighborhood.

Home is where the heart is, where the family is, and where the comfortable pillow is. Vacations to exotic places are wonderful, but it's also nice coming back to our simple ole' home by the Seine.

Absolutely, Postively Overnight

"When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," says the classic Fed-Ex slogan. Or, in this case, when it absolutely, positively has to get there, sometime, or perhaps not at all.

Several weeks after Anthony was FedExed an important check from a lawyer in the US to close out his father's accounts, he called to find out where it could possibly be. It was traced to Paris, where it appeared to be languishing in some depot for weeks. Finally, they were able to track it down: It had arrived in Paris and been given to the third-party delivery messenger, who had promptly been carjacked but failed to report it back to FedEx. Whether he was carjacked or "carjacked", the check has since been canceled, and for attempt #2, the money will just be wired.

While being carjacked is, indeed, a fluke, our mail failing to arrive is not a fluke. Mail -- even registered mail -- has disappeared on us several times before. On the other hand, when Anthony accidentally returned to France with my passport, he was able to overnight it back to me at a remote former-monastery outside of Florence.

It's a sad day when rural Italian infrastructure beats out that of urban Paris. So FedEx can get here:

 

But not here?:

 

Needless to say, our junk mail and all the donation solicitations from Princeton are arriving like clockwork.

Worst Parent Ever (Me)

I just did the WORST PARENTING MOVE EVER -- crossed a street with the girls through (stopped) traffic and not at the cross walk -- and watched Pippa get hit by a motorcycle. Oh how I wish I were kidding. Before you panic, she is fine. Nothing broken. No permanent damage. She does have a little neck-ache, though.

 

The motorcycle was going about 5-10mph between a row of stopped cars, and she mostly just bounced off the plastic on the side. She did not hit her head, and got up immediately, without a bruise on her body. It frankly seems less severe than the time she hurt her neck doing the vault at gymnastics, about a month ago. When distracted, she doesn't seem that bad off, but still, she does have a stiff neck. She is SO angry at me. And with good reason. Anthony and myself are so angry at me, too.

I am normally extremely safety conscious, so this was out of character and just beyond stupid. When it happened last night, I was somewhat numb, because the self-loathing that was completely flooding me was neutralized by the simultaneous relief and joy in seeing that she wasn't hurt in any major way. Around 5:30 this morning, however, what I mostly felt was the self-loathing.

We made it through last night. She woke up briefly a couple times because of her neck, so I'm the one who got the bad night sleep. Pretty hard to sleep like a baby when you almost got your own baby killed. Yikes. That means that today I am exhausted, and guilt-ridden, but also nearly ecstatic. Given my theory of alternate universes, I am so, so, so thrilled that I get to live in the universe where my daughter is in the next room singing, playing, laughing, and goofing off with a long-lost San Francisco friend. She's twisting and moving and not even thinking of her neck -- when I'm not around, that is. But I really can't begrudge my most dramatic child any amount of rubbing it in when I am around. Needless to say, I am in the doghouse, and she's a big fan of Daddy for the moment.

So since this isn't funny and doesn't do much to enlighten you about Paris (other than to warn you that this is a city where you really should cross with the light at the crosswalks!), why am I publicly shaming myself by telling you this story? A) to give you the news B) to serve as a cautionary tale, and C) because I know I fully deserve it.

 

First Rule of Book Club

Gigi and I have put together a book club with the girls from the Native English section in her grade. Of the thirteen girls, six come to the first organizational meeting. These are all theoretically native English speakers (though in truth, most are bilingual children who've grown up in France, and probably only Gigi would claim English as her first and strongest language), so it never occurs to me to put much of an explanation about what a book club is. Just another example of how very American I am.

Nearly everybody shows up with some books they like, that they could recommend and swap with each other, but I don't think any of them understood that a book club is a place where you discuss a book that you have all pre-read. What amuses/amazes me even more is that the parents themselves didn't understand the concept of a book club. Despite coming in blind, the first one was a raging success, and there are at least two new girls joining in for the first actual book discussion in about a month's time. It may have helped that one of the girls brought homemade cupcakes. The girls have picked from among their own favorites for their first few books:

  

 

My own San Francisco book club ladies and American friends and family (nearly all of whom have been in book clubs) will share in my amazement over the concept of not knowing what a book club is. There are many things that I am vaguely embarrassed to export to the rest of the world -- McDonald's, violent films, and Miley Cyrus spring to mind -- but I must say that if Gigi and I can introduce a bunch of her new friends and their families to the idea of book club, I'd be mighty proud.

You know a Paris Mom's book club (fewer cupcakes, more wine) can't be far behind....

 

His and Hers

For the last year, I have wondered why my daughters started making mistakes in what I consider one of the most basic aspects of English: "his" vs. "hers". They are constantly saying things like, "This is Paul and her wife," or "When is Mommy going to finish his phone call?" While their French is bilingual, let's face it: We haven't been here that long, and it's not like they've actually forgotten English.

So why? Why are they asking about Daddy and "her" work? I finally figured it out. Because whereas gender in English belongs to the subject in question -- Paul and his wife -- in French, the gender belongs to the object in question -- Paul et sa femme. So, for example, an apple is feminine (la pomme) which means that whether the person who has the apple is Paul or Marie, either way it would be sa pomme (his or her apple).

Paul et sa pomme (Paul and his apple)
Marie et sa pomme (Marie and her apple)
Paul et son cartable (Paul and his backpack)
Marie et son cartable (Marie and her backpack)

When the object of the sentence actually has a gender, but one that doesn't match the gender it's assigned in French, it's even more confusing. A great example: a lady with her baby daughter. In French this would be

la dame et son bébé (The lady and her baby).

While neither the subject (the lady) nor the object (the actual baby) of that phrase is masculine, the possessive pronoun "son" is. This could easily happen with a female teacher (le prof), a mother (if referred to as un parent), a female doctor (le médecin), and many others.

Now, to my grammatical horror, my girls sometimes even mix up the actual words "he" and "she". Gender is, apparently, a very fluid concept -- even more fluid than when we lived in San Francisco.

 

 

Where the Streets Have Old Names

Paris is so old that some of the streets were named before they were even, well, really streets. Especially in our section of the city, which is the oldest bit, many of the roads were named simply out of a tradition that grew from whatever distinguishing feature the locals noticed as long as a thousand years ago.

This one, for example, which is officially the narrowest street in Paris (you can touch both walls with your outstretched hands) could barely fit a person on horseback, let alone any sort of motorized vehicle.

 

 

It's called "Street of the Cat Who Fishes" because of the cat who fished in the Seine at the end of the block, back when there were still lots of fish in the Seine and before there was a busy four lane road to cross.

Or this one:

 

"Street of the Mule's Footseps" is in the Marais, where nowadays one sees boutiques, tourists, Bobo-chic Parisians, and plenty of cars, but no mules.

I like this one not only for being a name that's evocative of years gone by, but also because it's just so long. Imagine trying to fit that into the squares of an official document.

It translates as "Street of the Market of the White Coats." I wonder if the market sold only white coats? That seems rather limited.

In modern times, there are of course some streets named for famous people. But in France, these wouldn't just be generals and presidents, but also philosophers, artists, writers, and composers. My personal favorite is the 4th arrondissement's Rue de Nicolas Flamel -- not just a character in the Harry Potter series, but an honest-to-goodness Parisian alchemist and philanthropist who lived from 1330-1418 (unless, of course, he really did create the immortality-inducing Philosopher's Stone, as legend claims, in which case his end date is in dispute).

But perhaps my favorite street name in all of Paris:

 

This means, literally, "Street of the Bad Boys" -- you know, the kind of boys who would put stickers on a street sign and graffiti the wall.

 

 

 

Confusion Says

Here they are: the two most confusing conversations to have in a French-English multi-lingual environment. Like our own household:

1) "How was your entrée at dinner last night?"

Well, if you hear the word "entrée" in French, and this is what you get, then great.

But if you hear it in English, then you expect a full main course. Which it is not. It is an entrée, as in the entry into your meal, or what we call an appetizer. Why do we call the main course the "entrée" in English? It makes no sense at all.

2) The girls tell me about their day at gymnastics, "My front flip was great!" Well, do they mean flip in English, which is a tuck or flip with no hands touching the ground? Or do they mean flip in French, in which case it's a handspring? It's hard to know because they regularly sprinkle their English conversations about gymnastics with French terms.

 

Those are French flips above, and American back-handsprings.

 

Sticker Shock/ Sticker Joy

I go to the local dry-cleaner/tailor and am quoted 78€ (about $100) to replace the zipper on a kid's denim jacket. It's as if I suddenly don't speak French, because I have to ask, re-ask, and repeat the number half a dozen times. Finally, needing to confirm that I'm not just misunderstanding something, I ask, "Soixante-dix-huit? The digits 7 then 8?" The jacket itself probably didn't cost me more than $3, because I'm pretty sure I bought it at Goodwill in the first place.

So what else causes Sticker Shock in Paris, even after a couple years here?:

Children's shoes: boots, for example -- the kind a girl might wear with leggings and a dress, leather-style (though probably not real leather) and not super-well made -- start around 80€, over $110, in the stores, and many hover at 100€ or about $135. In the U.S., for $80, I could get the girls a much better-made pair. But this isn't the sort of thing that can easily be bought over the internet and brought in somebody's luggage. They need to try it on and like it.

Granted, I live in an expensive area, but still, does 6€, or about $8 for a cup of tea seem reasonable? We are talking, after all, about a cup of hot water, with a tea bag that costs less than 10¢ at full retail price (so, what, 5¢ wholesale?). I don't like coffee, so I'm always stuck when we stop at the café ordering an $8 cup of tea, hot milk, or hot chocolate.

Housing: This is Paris, after all. At the moment, places in good neighborhoods rent for around 36€ per square meter, which works out to about $5/sq. ft per month. This is less shocking when moving to Paris from San Francisco, frankly, where places rent for about $3.70 (measured against averages at one point during 2013). But even we are a little stunned by the prices to buy something. About $800,000 for a 400 sq. ft. studio? But I want three bedrooms. Uh, maybe in the next life.

And let's not even get into fish pills (seen at over $100 for a small bottle), dental floss (about $7 at the admittedly overpriced pharmacy below us), or chocolate chips (about $5 for 100g, which is about 1/2 cup, or only half as much as I need to bake a batch of cookies). Seen below is the approximately $205 worth of Costco-sized chocolate chip bags that people have brought to us from the US. Actual Costco total for both: $23. And now you know why we've asked you to bring these in your luggage.

On the other hand:

There's private school. When I sign Gigi up for her new school next year, they tell me that in addition to the $1800 private school annual tuition, there is an extra $1800 fee for the special program they offer for native English speakers (extra hours, at native Anglophone level, paid entirely by parents of the children in the program). Apparently, my face registers no shock, horror, or concern over the additional annual fee, so they assume I don't understand and keep repeating the amount to me: total $3600 -- annually. The same $3600 would be approximately the monthly charge for private school in San Francisco, per child. This is Sticker Shock in reverse. It's Sticker Joy.

The girls' gymnastics program also gives me Sticker Joy. For 730€, or just under $1000, both girls will do three days per week, plus competitions, for the whole school year. Pippa will be doing 7-9 hours per week, and Gigi will be at 6, and there are 35 weeks, with a few days off thrown in, so roughly 475 gym hours total. For just $1000. What will $2 per hour buy for child care and children's activities (especially good quality ones) in the U.S.? I don't know: I think you'd have to go back to 1964 to find out.

Other things that cost shockingly, joyfully little:

Babysitters -- roughly $10/hour, vs. $15-20 in San Francisco, which is, officially, the most expensive city in the U.S. for babysitting.

Kids' clothing -- lovely French fashion, and while prices can, of course, be astronomical for high-fashion, the basic play-clothes kind of stores are no more expensive than the U.S. And with sales, prices get quite low indeed (3-7€ for regular play/school clothes, for example, by the end of the sales).

 

Medical care -- Pippa hurts her foot badly enough at one point that we decide to get it X-rayed for stress fractures (none, it turns out). Before any insurance reimbursements, the full cost we pay for it is 75€, around $100. Quite affordable. And then we get nearly all of it back from the insurance company, anyway. And a month of prescription levothyroxine which costs $10 in the U.S. after insurance costs only $3 here at full price.

Coffee -- if only I liked it. Quick coffee (espresso) nearly anywhere is 1.5 - 2€. A slow, lingering espresso at a lovely French café? About 2 - 2.5€.

Bread -- roughly 1.5€ ($2) for an incredibly great loaf of bread, and less than that for a fabulous pain au chocolat or croissant. Bread products here are subsidized by the government in the way that milk is in the U.S., to keep prices reasonable (and regulated). Better and cheaper than in America. Sigh.