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.