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