Güd Stuff

Anthony comes home from work with many cartons of Gü (pronounced "goo"). One of his co-workers has, as far as he understands, just won a lifetime supply of the stuff and had it delivered -- all at once -- to the company break room. Because it will expire and is far too much for one person to consume, even over a lifetime, she has generously invited her co-workers to take as much home as they can carry. 

Gü is fattening and full of sugar, but I have no problem with that in a dessert. And they pass my test as "real food" because at least I recognize and myself would use virtually all the ingredients listed. They even come in real glass containers which, I suppose, is nice in that it saves on plastic, although now we can't figure out what to do with all the glass. Let's just say that, for the moment, all my beads are nicely separated and organized. 

Anthony brings home: 
Lime Tarte
Cherry
Trio Goürmand Chocolate Ganache
and Tiramigü.

Other flavors include Molten Chocolate, Cheesecake, Lemon Cheesecake, Blueberry Cheesecake, Molten Salted Caramel, Molten Chocolate Orange, Mango Passion Cheesecake, Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate-Vanilla Cheesecake, and Banoffee.

The arrival of the free Gü causes a great deal of excitement in our house. The equivalent might be if somebody at your house came back with eight free pints of different Ben & Jerry's flavors. Or, I suppose, if you want to keep the gratuitous umlaut theme going: Häagen-Dazs.

 

There's Snow Time Like the Present

Yes, this looks like the ultimate White Christmas photo. But, in fact, we had a green Christmas, but a lovely, extremely unusual, snowy January weekend. Three days of snow, unusual. Inches piled upon inches of snow, unusual. Roads and sidewalks covered for days, unusual. The Christmas trees in January? Quite normal. They will be, coincidentally, removed by the city just after our white weekend ends.

The excitement starts with the first flurries at night, with the snow starting to fall. Will it stick? Yup, we wake up in the morning, and the view out our window onto the bridge is still all white!

According to Parisians, even our one day of snow last year was rare. But this turns out to be much more than just a one-day snow. It's a thick blanket that lasts for days, covering buildings, sidewalks, streets, parks, cars, and cafe tables. It is so substantial that my life-long Parisian friends say they've only seen a snow like this in the city once or twice in their lives. Don't believe it? Watch these guys (illegally) skiing downhill from Sacré Coeur!

 

The photographers come out in droves. And it's not just the tourists. Locals who never take pictures break out their smartphones and start snapping away. Locals who take the occasional photo with their smartphones purposely bring their point-and-shoot cameras along. Locals and tourists who are normally inclined to walk around with a point-and-shoot bring out their good cameras. And people like me who usually walk out with their good cameras bring out their best cameras, their best lenses, tripods, and make special trips around town just for the photo ops. 

 

 

While it's harder than usual to take cabs, cars, buses, or even metros (occasional above-ground tracks are frozen and snowed over), walking around Paris is even more blissful than usual. The city is nearly silent under its snow blanket, and none of the Parisian drivers know how to drive in the stuff. Suddenly, I can cross large, confusing, seven-point intersections straight across the middle without even worrying about the traffic lights. When I do see a car in the distance, the driver is going as slowly as the accelerator peddle will allow, fearful of slip sliding away. 

Anthony is actually off skiing in the Alps, so he's getting his own share of excellent snow. But the girls and I build this traditional snowman, with a finger-knitted scarf, carrot nose, and avocado-pit eyes (well, almost traditional) in the garden behind Notre Dame. I have to come clean and admit that he looks much bigger than he really is, because I get right down on the ground for the photo. Then, we run into one of Gigi's good school friends and her family and end up having a raging snow ball fight. It's perfect snow to pack and completely, shockingly unexpected.

  

 

We take a tour on the quai, where the kids slide down the banks (but, it goes without saying, not actually into the Seine), and where we discover that we are not the only ones to build a bonhomme de neige, or snowman, or snowghost or snow-river-goddess, as the case may be.

  

As we are in France, there is only one acceptable way to follow up a day in the snow, and that is, of course, with chocolat chaud (hot chocolate).

 

 

Shame on Them

There is an interesting quote I read somewhere -- and I only wish I could remember where -- by somebody, like me, who was raising their children bilingually in a foreign country. The author said, and I paraphrase, "I wanted to give my children the gift of bilingualism. But instead, I've brought upon them the shame of the immigrant's child." Though my French is excellent, they are at the point where they can hear my accent, and they cringe in embarassment when I say the words "huit" (meaning "eight") or "tout" ("all") or a host of other words with the "oo" or "u", which are two different sounds in French. My saying a word like "bousculer" ("bumping into"), which has both of these right next to each other, is enough to make them wish the ground would swallow them up.

Mind you, the actual French people don't mind, and have repeatedly complimented my "charming" accent, but my children are mortified. Now this is partly of course because they are my children and are therefore contractually obligated to be embarrassed by me in general. The following are the kinds of horrible things I do: say "merci beacoup" to the guy who stamps our passports as we come into the country; offer to take photos of families together; give directions and answer questions to confused tourists -- sometimes proactively, without having been asked for help. And let's not even bring up the recent political protest scenario. I'm a nightmare.

Interestingly, because Anthony's French is so much worse than theirs and mine (sorry, hubby...), the girls find his grammatically-challenged attempts and extreme accent perfectly acceptable. Even cute. Or maybe it's just because he's the dad, and I'm the mom.

How I see my girls: And how my girls see me:

photos from: http://glam.co.uk/2011/03/fashions-next-stop-the-residence-mauritius/ and https://sites.google.com/site/mswesselswebsite/introduction

 

I would like to point out, on the other hand, that the girls are taking guitar lessons, and the first song Gigi has written is about California, and contains what may be the all-time least cool lyrics: "It's a great place to be, with a beach ball and your mom." I'm just relishing this, because I know it's only the blink of an eye till I am, literally, the last person on Earth she'd want to be seen with on a beach. Especially speaking French.

Class Kidney Bean

Gigi comes home from school one day and tells me, "Ugh. There's this boy in my class. And I just want to punch him."

Somebody bullying her? Teasing her? No, she wants to punch the chouchou, or teacher's pet -- a little boy I'll call Agnan in honor of the character made famous in le Petit Nicolas stories.

So Gigi tells me about this nauseating boot-licker, ass-kisser, brown-noser, or, in French, "fayot", which literally means "kidney bean" but is used here as slang. "Ugh," Ginger groans. "We started reading out our book reports today. And after every single student reads, he raises his hand to comment. Then when the teacher calls on him, he tilts his head, puts his finger on his chin, and says the same thing every time: 'C'est très tentant...'" ("That's very tempting...") Within days, she reports that she and the other kids who sit in the desks surrounding Agnan have taken to raising their hands and using this exact same comment if called upon. Agnan then moans and lowers his hand so dramatically that even the teacher has tried to put a stop to it. I guess the desire to poke fun at the chouchou is très tentant, indeed.

He's the kid who tells the other kids to be quiet in the stairwell and frequently gets the class clown in trouble by playing the victim. Whenever anybody accuses him of being the teacher's pet, Gigi reports that he does this horrible fake acting thing and looks around saying, "Who, moi? Teacher's Pet?! No..." The kids, of course, mean this as a mortal insult, but Agnan takes it as high praise.

Gigi adds, "Every time Agnan talks, even when he's talking to other kids, he looks at the teacher to see if she's paying attention to him. Yuck. It just makes me want to throw up."

The funniest part is that it's not exactly like my bespectacled, bookworm of a daughter is a wild rebel. But nothing makes her more aggravated than watching Agnan polish the teacher's apples.

In case you've never read Le Petit Nicolas, it's easy to spot Agnan in this Sempe illustration above. While all the other children are running around wreaking havoc and enjoying themselves on their field trip, Agnan stands demurely with his teacher and contemplates the art. What a kidney bean.

 

Thank You? No Thank You

We attend birthday parties and give birthday presents here in Paris and not one of the children -- and I mean not a single one -- has ever written us a thank you note. But it's not just the kids: Hosting a New Year's party for a dozen families, inviting friends over for dinners -- not one thank you card, not one thank you note, not even one thank you e-mail.

After many events, we have finally figured out that it is not, in fact, rudeness and that there is a perfectly logical explanation. This is one of those cultural differences where, truly, I don't see one side being "better" than the other, but they sure are different.

For example, after hosting friends for Thanksgiving, there is radio silence for nearly a week and, despite the name of the holiday, no thanks. Six days later, I happen to run into my friend Béatrice, and she is effusive and warm, and gushing about how much she enjoyed it.

So why no formal "thank you"? It's not for lack of enthusiasm, as the e-mails and conversations leading up to the Thanksgiving dinner prove. Many exclamation points are used and appropriately excited questions are asked: what to bring (a bottle of wine), what to wear (whatever they've got on them at the time, though yes, it is perfectly OK for the little girls to dress up as Indians in honor of the holiday), when to arrive (7:30 and I pointedly tell them we will start eating at 8 promptly, because I know that otherwise they are socially obligated not to even show up till 8 or 8:30).

It's not "bad breeding", as Béatrice is descended from French nobility, and I am descended from Russian Jewish peasants escaping persecution in the shtetl.

It's not for lack of manners, as she thanks me repeatedly before the event. It's also worth noting that this is the woman who teaches her children to eat peaches with a fork and knife. Her five lovely kids say their pleases, thank-yous, clear their plates, and look adults in the eye during conversations.

It's not for lack of generosity, as they show up with a hostess gift for Anthony and me, headbands for each of the girls, and six bottles of wine. Six! Granted, they come with a total of seven people, but as five of them are 14 years old or younger, it's not like we need the extra alcohol.

So the simple reason that people here don't send thank you cards is that the French show their appreciation on the front end of the transaction, where we show our gratitude at the end. Even the children: They open their gifts at the party in front of their friends, and thank them on the spot. I think the party favor bag is the thank you. Our thank you cards must actually seem like quite a delayed reaction to them.

Béatrice hosted us for almost a week last summer -- and has already invited for next summer -- at their vacation home in Bretagne. Last summer, I was very American about it: I showed up with one very nice bottle of wine, helped with shopping/prepping/cooking/childcare, bought treats, and followed up with a very sincere thank you card accompanied by a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. But note (and cringe with me, folks): I showed up at their door for five days with one lone bottle of wine.

So this year I'll know to do better with my hostess gifts on the front side. But I'm still not sure I can forego the official card at the end. It's not the dissaproval of my countrymen, or even my parents, that I fear. The disapproving voice I hear in my head belongs to my brother's wife, who once mailed my parents a formal thank you card for some toilet paper they had brought in their luggage to her and my brother in India. My sister-in-law is, of course, far too polite to actually scold me for any lapse in my manners, so the disapproving voice I hear is purely imaginary.

We plan to invite Béatrice, H-O, and their lovely family over for future dinners and evenings together (for instance, they've expressed a real curiosity about true New York style cheesecake...). And certainly they need to come over to share one of the many bottles of wine we now have in our collection. But this begs the question, how do we prevent them from bringing six more?

 

Gaze Wistfully into the Distance

That French stereotype we all love to hate: over-philosophizing and gazing wistfully into the distance. Often with a black beret. And a cigarette.

The first of two perfect examples of this is a very ill-advised 1968 song and video by two legendary figures --Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. I can't decide whether my favorite part is the "woo-oo-oo-oo" vocalized record-scratching sounds in the background or the fact that this was meant in all seriousness, without a trace of irony. If the humor lies entirely in its humorlessness, is it really the actors we are laughing at? Or are we laughing at a shadow of our own humanity reflected, as Sartre describes, through the existential...Oh what the hell. Just watch the video.

The second video is, in fact, created to be humorous. Though I am not at all a cat person, I think this captures a certain "je ne sais quoi" about the French perfectly. Yes, I know Henri has an atrocious French accent and sometimes translates idioms word for word, but I think this is a winner whether you read the English subtitles or listen to the "original" French soundtrack. Hey, can seven million youtube viewers be wrong (why yes, yes they can; just look at "Gangham Style")?

 

When Life Gives You Lemonade

A word of warning. If you order a citron pressé (meaning "pressed lemon") in a French café in the hopes of having lemonade, think again. Just as an orange pressé is a fresh-squeezed orange juice, a citron pressé is fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Just the juice, and nothing but the juice. They will serve it to you in a large glass (too small for delicious fresh-squeezed OJ, but much too large for pure lemon) without anything else, and you are expected to drink it. As is. They won't make you pay any extra for a second glass of plain water and some sugar, but they will make you work for it; you'll have to get your harried waiter's attention and ask for it specifically, then messily mix like a mad scientist.

photo from: http://www.thetastefullife.com/blog/2010/06/14/fresh-squeezed-lemonade/

Alas, the sugar won't really dissolve anyway, so it will only be sour at the top, and powdery and cloying at the bottom. The good news is, ordering citron pressé is a mistake you only make once.

You won't fare much better if you order a limonade, by the way, unless you like Sprite or 7-Up. And in case you're wondering, I don't.

What you want is a citronade, but since that basically doesn't exist at any French café or restaurant that I've ever seen, what you actually want to is to be magically transported back to the fresh-squeezed lemonade booth at the Minnesota State Fair.

Puckering up in Paris: It's not just for kissing, anymore.