Happy Noel!

Christmas in gay Pareeeee! The lights are up everywhere and Paris is looky mighty fine these days. We recieved our first snowfall which I have to say was breathtaking although nothing like the blizzard we've been watching our East Coast friends get buried in. They tell me the snow doesn't stick in Paris because of the heat generated by the extensive metro system underground and I sort of believe this (am I gullible idiot?) but I couldn't find any confirmation online which makes me suspect. Everything true should have at least one wikipedia entry, no?

Our exciting news is that our torrent of holiday visitors has started. My sister, Hennessy arrived last week, and Jessica's brother Gene along with my best friend Buddah and his wife Molly come in on Christmas eve. I feel like we're recreating one of those spring break How-many-people-can-you-fit-in-a-Volkswagon-Beetle contests. We have exactly 323 square feet of space in our apartment and that includes the shower and the stovetop, so I'm not quite sure where we going to put everyone. But I'm sort giggling in anticipation of the summercamp bunkhousesque quality our house is going to have for the next week.

We're also currently in the midst of the apartment hunting blitz as we have to leave our current apt at the end of January. My poor sister has been getting dragged along on a number of visits with us which is probably not how she planned on spending her Paris vacation (surprise!). But if anyone has some incredible Paris apartment connection they want to hook us up with, that would be the best Christmas present ever! Otherwise Happy Noel everyone!

Back in the U.S.A.!!!

... Well not exactly back in the U.S.A. But we did land on U.S. soil... technically. We went to Normandy in the north of France over the weekend and visited the American memorial overlooking Omaha beach where the Allies charged the beach on D-Day. We tried our best version of the run up the beachhead. The American military cemetery is actually owned by the U.S. so for a small time we were back in U.S. territory. It is really hard to imagine this idyllic little corner of France being overrun by tanks and artillery shells with Allied forces attacking from every angle. But it has a really nice solemn tranquility.

The real purpose of the trip though was to visit Le Mont Saint Michel. I included the stock photo since it's better then the night photo I had. Jessica, myself, and our friends Tal, Tomer and Sara (So two Israelis, a Spaniard and two Americans take a trip...) rented a car and had a ball roving around the French countryside.


But the highlight was undoubtedly Le Mont Saint Michel. What a cool crazy-ass castle on a mountain on an island. You've gotta give it to the monks for building something this impressive. Saint Michel is actually the patron saint of most things war-related and Le Mont Saint Michel apparently earned its name when it successfully resisted multiple British onslaughts during the 100 years war. We spent the better part of a day just walking the alleyways of the walled city at the base of the island and wandering the old church topping the mountain. Oh and it was also used a prison for a while and my French teacher refered to it as "the Alcatraz of France" but I think it was a tad nicer than Alcatraz. We stayed in a neighboring town Pontorson and I threw in some photos from the town at the end.

Lastly, apologies for the slow posting. Ironically, the more that is going on in our lives the less we seem to be able to get around to posting about it. So take it from our slow pace that we've been busy over here.

Metro Music

I will confess, I have never felt great about giving homeless people money for reasons not entirely clear to me. As a result though I've just never done really much done it. I've always felt like a Scrooge for this. So to make up for it, I like to give money to the musicians and the street performers. In Paris, this is super easy because a musician comes complimentary with nearly every train! They'll hop on, play a few tunes, and then hop off a couple of stops later. And you get a sampling of everything, from your traditional accordian players to aspiring rappers. Le Parisiens hardly seem to notice, even when the guy is blaring a trumpet right into their ear on a crowded train. But, for me it's another one of those little Paris things I absolutely dig, and now I try to make sure I have some coins on me whenever I ride the Metro.

Note: I've never waited more than three minutes for a Metro train here. It's incredible. Jessica, who plans her entire life on the assumption that all travel time will be executed perfectly and without delay, is actually showing up on time for things now. Somebody from the T in Boston should come visit this place. Dare I say... I like the Metro in Paris even more than the S.F. BART system, and that is saying a lot.

The Point of No-Turning-Back

In one or two of the past posts I mentioned that our neighborhood is heavily ethnic and heavily Muslim. To get to the metro in fact we walk right by the local mosque where there are usually 10-20 men in traditional garb milling about. This past Friday morning though, when I set out for work, there were a few THOUSAND milling about. About 10 meters from our front door I made the turn off our little sidestreet onto the larger rue and was presented with 2000 men praying in the middle of the street and chanting "Allah akbar!"

WHOA!!!!!!!

Being the idiot that I am, I sort of just kept wandering towards it, both impressed and a little in shock. After I was about 100 meters further into the throng, I suddenly realized the mob kept going and going and going on down the street, but by this point it was too late... I had passed the point of no return. It was easier to push on through then to turn back. To be clear, there was still some sidewalk available so I wasn't stomping their prayer mats or anything, but the "Damn infidel!" looks I was getting were a little disconcerting. On the upside, while I doubt I could tell you which way is North while standing at my front door, I can certainly now tell you in which direction Mecca is. But I think next time the Eid al-Adha festival rolls around, I'll take a different route to the metro.

Dinde-Day in Paris

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year with a pretty international crowd. One of the American's from my language class (a rare occurrence, you're getting Jessica today) invited us and a few others over for a FEAST! We were stuffed just like any other Thanksgiving with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pie, and all. Ashely, the American who hosted, insisted that we bring nearly ALL the leftovers home. When she offered the first time, I was polite and declined, at which point JR quickly interrupted "HELL YES WE'LL TAKE THE TURKEY." So, sitting at home now are the remnants of 7 kilo bird! She also forced us to take some Dijon mustard she got during her trip to Dijon last weekend. JR is tres happy and I am tres full.

Three Cheese Break

Going back to work has been startling in that I forgot how much Monday - Friday gets compressed into the work-eat-sleep routine. Add to this that I've started taking a French class Mondays and Wednesdays from 7-9PM and by the time I get to Saturday I'm often wondering where all the time went. This isn't actually a bad thing right now. Work is challenging, largely in good ways, and the language, at least for me is just one constant learning experience. School never lets out. I learn French riding the metro. There's a lesson to be had in going to the store for groceries. Lunchtime is a lesson (a huge one actually. Most days I want to nap after going to lunch with all my coworkers as I'm just wiped out from speaking French the whole time). It is non-stop.

So the one reprieve is dinner. Just about every night these days Jess and I cook up a little something, whip out the cheeses and the lox and the prosciutto crack open some wine and just for like and hour, think in English. I can feel my brain exhaling.

Le Tres Cool Jazz

Our friend Bridget visited this past weekend from Boston. Nice to have someone from home drop in. And to sweeten the deal she brought along her French friend Mirriam who was uber cool. We went out for Crepes down by the Fontaine Saint Michel, and then they took us along to a Jazz bar they knew about over in the 5th arrondisement over on the Left Bank. It was one of those tiny little pubs you never find unless someone takes you there, and the band was tres cool which is my favorite new bastardized French term I'm claiming credit for (I create a lot of bastardized French terms, but largely by accident).

The drinks were tres chere (expensive) however, but pretty much there is no escaping that in Paris. Usually I just block it out of my mind, but when you stop for a second to consider that the tiny beer your drinking just cost you $15 bucks, it can give you a moment of pause. Actually, this has been less of a problem lately, as I recently had a mysterious blood test during my routine work physical (a requirement for joining the French health care system... Sorry America, but I prefer being covered to our "excellent" system which covers you know... only healthy people, and for about ten times as much) which showed I have some high enzyme levels that should be low. So until they figure out just exactly what I'm dying of this has been my excuse to tamp down my drinking habits just a tad.

Weekend Update

OK, this is only a little teaser, but since everyone has been clamoring for pictures, I thought I'd put a few up from our weekend walk around Le Marais (the Castro district of Paris) and down by the La Galleries Lafayette/Printemps shopping malls where Paris does it's best imitation of Macy's Christmas windows. The Parisiens eat it up. It was mostly families and I think we were a tad old for the crowd, but still, it fun.

On a side note, there is a picture of me in front of the Tour Saint Jacques. The church formely associated with the tower was long ago torn down, but the tower was kept around for making buckshot. They would haul molten hot iron (maybe lead??) to the top of the tower and then srpinkle it off the side in little drops down into buckets of water where it would cool, harden and viola! buckshot. How cool is that?! I tried to find a picture of said operation, but all I could get is this artist's rendering of what the tower might have looked like back in the day. Sorry.

Football Fanatics

We live in an extremely ethnic part of Paris with tons of Northern Africans, and apparently Egypt is playing Algeria tonight to decide who goes to the World Cup. As a result, our neighborhood has been nutso since last night. Thousands of people are out in the streets draped in Algerian flags, honking horns, dancing, yelling, singing.... and this is all in ANTICIPATION of the match. It's wild. I can't even imagine what's going to happen if they win.

The match is in Cairo, and apparently the Algerian team bus was attacked by a mob when they left the airport the night before the game. Literally half the team had bleeding head wounds from bricks being hurled through the bus windows. I guess you would call this homefield advantage for Egypt. The last time these teams met in a World Cup qualifier was 1989 in what has since been dubbed the "Match of Hate." A fan lost an eye in the fighting that broke out and an Interpol arrest warrant was issued for an Algerian player after the game. Yikes!

I think I'm rooting for Algeria so that my neighborhood doesn't get burnt to the ground.

Update: Algeria lost 2-0 and while my neighborhood remained relatively quiet thanks to the hoards of riot police (some of which you can see in the pic below) apparently things were a little more chaotic in Marseilles.

You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party

I have had an interesting start at work. Or more correctly, a false start. I'm finishing up my third week and I haven't done a thing... because I'm not allowed to. Apparently they don't want me handling bacteria, pipettes or anything of that nature until I complete a safety course. Which wasn't available for three weeks. So I come to work everyday and sit around surfing the web on the computer (at least until I managed to burn out a capacitor on the motherboard yesterday, probably caused when I started typing a tad too hard out of frustration with the confusing French keyboard). Ahh, welcome to France, I guess.

Speaking of the welcome though, each morning when I've showed up the past week I've had to wade through a throng of strikers to get to the lab. Seriously I thought the stories about French greves! we're a joke, but apparently they do love to strike. And French strikes seem like a party. Everyone is dressed up in matching orange vests, banging pots and pans, and dancing around like it's a grand ol time. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly they're striking about, but I'm not sure you need much of a raison here. In fact, two of my coworkers spent the better half of this morning moaning about their troubles getting to work due to the fact that the drivers of the train line they come to work on are also out on greve this week. Anyways, as I have nothing to do in the lab, I've been strongly considering joining in. After all, when in France...

Note: We should apologize for being a little slow on getting the camera up and running. So the first post or two is going to be a tad light on photos, but they're coming soon!

The First Experiment

Bonjour from Paris! Figured, we'd use this space to send out the haps from across the pond. Hope everyone enjoys our little blips. And without further ado... onto "le blogging!"

Oh the differences!!! As most know, I came to France to work at Le Institut Pasteur, an institution whose name gives tribute to the famous Frenchman responsible for unearthing the secret lives of microbes. So it was with a just a little bit of irony that I found myself the other day, shuttling between the two milk sections of our local Carrefour supermarket fretting about pasteurized milk. There was the pasteurized stuff, all two bottles of it, and then there was everything else. Fermented milk. Goats milk. Ewe’s milk. (All unrefrigerated I might add). Frankly, I had never realized there were options before.

What exactly is lost in the pasteurization of milk anyways? Maybe this is one of those vital natural ingredients the French diet is heralded for, and would I be losing out on it by sticking to my American guns and playing it safe, I wondered? Judging from the amount of shelf space afforded by Carrefour however, Le Francais seem to hold Louis Pasteur, or at least his contribution to milk sterilization, in slightly lower esteem than Le Americains.

Update: I took the plunge, and while I haven't died, I say stick with old faithfaul. The other stuff tastes funny.