My jogging locale

The restaurant

It's interesting working as a hostess in this restaurant. Overall it's good. I think. Generally unpretentious staff with the exception of one french waiter but he can't help being proud and pompous - he's french.
I try to remember that when he tells me, "you must be the sunshine of Fogon."

1. I get to watch french people and their [insert multiple contradictory adjectives here] behaviors.

i.e. Watching french people delicately eat their charcuterie, firstly, with a *knife and fork,* and secondly, cutting off some of the fatty parts of the iberico ham (half of the meat is fat, usually), and then picking off the tiny tiny tiny speck of meat that's left on the fat - perfectly.

Many moments like these I have to hold back laughter, really hard.

In general, the crowd looks like it is almost entirely composed of architects and people in ID from helsinki.

2. I have to stand there and look pretty and smile even when I'm not talking to anyone or doing anything but waiting nervously for the next batch of 8 reservations all for the same exact time, all with giant wet coats because Ella Fitzgerald reallyyy understated Paris's "drizzle." It's more like torrential downpours complete with hail. Sorry, Paris, but I do not love Paris in this part of the springtime.
I'm supposed to be "the sunshine of Fogon." Now I understand why they needed to hire me!!

Yes. I've always been quite the shiny one. Shiny shine-shine!! Let's think back to how much Natasha likes posing for pictures...............





BOO!!

Per recommendation of Ehjeen, will start posting photos of all the delicious pastries I'm eating here...

First of all, I want to start off by saying that I'm eating lots of delicious things other than pastries as well, but that they happen to be my main food group at this time......

Delicious produce = delicious salads = I haven't gained the 30 pounds I thought I did due to a technical difficulty with a scale (I didn't know I was supposed to calibrate it to 0 first so it was at 14kg = 30.86 pounds - I was completely obsessed that I gained all this weight and fully convinced until Andreea looked at it. Yes, I'm a moron.)



Almond meringue.... it was actually twice as big before I realized I should take pictures of it.... it was a long walk home from almost next door!

Hopefully the internet won't explode from its future full of delicious pastries!!! And if I take pictures of everything, I mean REALLY full!


On other subjects...

Miss Andreea, that was fun (check out the pictures, here).

Also - I definitely love how great Paris is for cinema. Particularly for old American movies. Went to see "Gaslight" last night.


It was excellent but I can't remember who recommended I see it.... Was it MaryBeth?

Going to movies are always a good way to improve ze french. What I learned from this movie:
French version of "I would love to sneak a peak..." "I would love to throw a punch of the eye...." YES!! Love it.

Definitely prefer the smallish theater, big comfy red seats, lots of really cute old and young people (the theater was almost full) and the movie starting around 25 minutes after schedule NOT because of previews, but just because. I don't remember the last time I felt so at home and relaxed. Finally feeling out Paris and finding my niche.... cinema & pastries. I really don't need anything else!!


Lastly!

Got a new little job - at a really chic Spanish restaurant on the Seine downtown. Here's the site.
Really excited.


The woman that hired me was really sweet, AND I was too broke to dine extensively in Spain so I'm glad that I will learn about spanish cuisine afterall! And THIS job doesn't require any slippery metal trays! Oof that was a disaster.... definitely not a waitress haha :) Here I'll just be a hostesse (reservations, taking peoples' coats, etc.) couple of times a week which is just perfect.

Had a few really warm spring days... a gorgeous preview of springtime in paris. some of the cherry trees are already blooming :)

pix finally...

pictures from both paris and a bit of spain...

Moo

In france, cows are considered pretty. Here, filet mignon actually refers to pork, not steak - because pigs are "cute" (mignon), cows are pretty.

I'm really excited to see some pretty cows on sunday, during this giant major agriculture festival - a big deal here! Apparently, France is the 2nd largest agricultural exporter in the world, after the US. I'm excited. There'll be 4500 animals there!

• 650 chèvres, boucs, moutons, béliers, brebis! (Sheep and goat category)
• 610 lapins! (bunnies)
• 600 vaches, taureaux (cow category)!
• 100 chevaux, poneys, ânes (PONY CATEGORY)!
• 60 porcs (pigs)!

and so on... Hoping I'll get to sample some cheeses and butters.... mmmmmmm

In other fun and exciting news, the other day, President Medvedev was on an official visit to France. Because our classroom is across the river from the Notre Dame, we heard the "special type" of official sirens as pointed out by our prof, ("I'm a Parisian, I know really well the normal sirens of police") so after class my russian friend Vikka and I went to hang out by the barricaded site to see what all the commotion was all about.

Being in Paris, though, the only real commotion of the excited and energetic variety belonged to my friend, who sporadically would yell things like, "RUSSIA FOREVER!!!" with a heavy accent, to which the Gendarmerie responded with amorous smirks. Everyone else was very calmly, quietly, and patiently watching behind the metal grates, just waiting to see what would happen. I'm pretty sure most of them didn't know what was happening anyway, but as I said to my friend, even when he did show up, they'd probably continue patiently waiting for the exciting thing to happen, because Medvedev is generally pretty unimpressive-looking; I don't think I'd recognize him on the street.

The two of them are quite cute together though, Medvedev, ironically, the root of the name meaning 'bear,' and Sarkozy, known around these regions as "le petit nicholas," in reference to Le Petit Prince...

Nonetheless, of course, he had a 20-car motorcade minimum. He jumped out and into the 'dame the second the limo stopped, and that was the end of a 45 minute wait.

Fortunately we capped off all the anticlimactic excitement with a Bertillon icecream (orange and liquor in chocolate for me) down by the river side on the sunny but somewhat chilly day, and followed that with a nice hot irish coffee with thick thick cream on top, cigarettes, and dinner a few hours later (same cafe). Mmmm.

(Still don't have a functional camera, but it looks like this minus the leaves. The stone wall on the right is the seine way down below. I'm capturing what I can with my phone's camera which really didn't do the super intense full rainbow over the seine by the "Pont Neuf" justice the other week... so google imaging or doodling it is).

Cher mes amis

Paris doesn't have to be as expensive as you think... Some wonderful things are actually really cheap!

For example:

Package of 24 biscuits (the kind on the bottom of petit ecoliers): €0.52
+ 1L carton of nectar from 5 kinds of citrus fruits (delicious): €0.97
+ Thing of bonne maman plum jam: €1.47 I believe?
+ 12 or so plain yogurt things: €2.90
+ 1 Kilo oranges = €2.40

=

Breakfast for a week+ yeah!!


Price comparison shopping a la Paris?

CitizenK magazine (<3!): $14 US; 1€ Paris.

DING DING DING I think we have a winner!

and definitely enjoying the dollar rising against the euro....

Miss u xoxo

Cleveland Rox,
Cleveland Sux

Weeee my life is a rollercoaster! (Cle being the worst place in the US and France being the best place in the world yeah yeah yeah)

highlight of the week, compliment of the life, YES YES YES

I step out of my placement exam for phonetics and registration for the civilizations courses, or what they call 'conferences' here, beaming and excited like a newly-minted freshman in college on the first day (a hypothetical freshman. not me. i was enjoying the purity and innocence of youth by skipping orientation activities and smoking with Yaya). I was beaming because I was placed into the advanced level for phonetics AND got into the 2 classes I wanted: 19th & 20th french literature, and France & Europe: société (aka politics, economics, etc).

2 steps later, an 80+ year old, refined-looking grandma with biiig round glasses, the kind that take up an entire old persons face and are double-paned, long coat, woven hat and a cane, stops in her tracks and angrily points said cane at me, yelling with a thick german or maybe austrian accent,


'You must learn english you damned french!!!'


loves. it.

Edumacation

I learn lots of new words and slang words everday but so far this is my favorite one that I learned today from my 50-smthing year old prof in leather pants and a biker jacket (bc he rode his moto to class today... yes!).

'Les bo-bos'

It means 'bourgeois-bohèmes.' In explaining which parisians this was in reference to, he basically described your average NYT reader.

on the slang front another tough thing - txting. txting lingo 'whole nother language' yada yada... we hear our old people saying that in the states but. when its in another language it sux bc u can't look up the words in the dictionary cuz u have no idea what they are or are combined or are substituted like instead of 'qui' its 'ke' arggghh haha


On another note...
I've decided it should be illegal to sell packages of pre-made crepes from Breton (their home town) and nutella in the same supermarket. Maybe the solution is to just buy all of it from all stores so it will no longer be in the supermarket when I'm shopping and hungry...

other delicious things... almond yogurt... mmmm. all yogurt here in general of course, but the crème almond is great.

RIP

Favorite designer, Alexander McQueen... :(

YES

Thank you to Tara for sending this...

The hood

I am now settled and content. I live in a chambre de bonne, or essentially, a maid's room in the attic of a really nice appartment building in the quartier latin. Fortunately everything in my little shoebox is new and redone so its not really like living in the roof....My favorite part about it is that its called a chambre de bonne (bedroom of good), and then the sign on the door to the 7th floor says 'étage superieurs' or something, but you get up there, and its a whole slew of tiny apartents with numbers stenciled on jail-style and the whole floor looking like maybe its a step up from alcatraz, bc at least the cells have doors not bars.

Observations thus far.

Mad Props. I don't know why but I'm seeing canes everywhere! I was thinking god why are all these (mostly women) young and old needing canes is it the whole 4 inch heels on cobblestone ruining your knees thing is that the direction that im going too?? but then i saw one lying on the floor in the corner at a nightclub over the weekend, and i realized that theyre probably all just a bunch of fakers, and remembered that it does take a lot to get any pity out of a french person, nevermind a kind word or a door held unless they think you're attractive. so i give them props for their props.

Macarons at McDonald's. Ok so this is kind of brilliant. I know Charlisse said Starbucks in Seattle has macarons (the ones here do not but they DO have pancake specials...???) but, its sort of brilliant that not only do the french McDonalds have your everyday fatty grease-dripping meat burgers, but also, they sell petite light-as-air and multicolored pastel pastry burgers... genius. Some places in the US call macarons 'luxembourgers'... I'm not sure if thats what MickyD's calls them here, but bravo macdunaldz, bravo!

Flower shops. I think the most common types of businesses in my neighborhood are 1. flower shops 2. bakeries 3. cheese shops 4. butchery. How can a country like this NOT be #1 for quality of life??

Le job. My neighborhood is a cobblestone square with a notre dame style cathedral and a windy cobblestony street with markets and little shops. I got a job at one of the tiny tiny restaurants on this tiny windy street, but I don't know anything about the pay, how often, or anything else. I know its called Chez Nadine.

After being completely berated by a stodgey irish woman in the 6th arrondisement for speaking french to her ('Yer stoopid yeh know dat??' for introducing myself and why I was there in French not in English, as apparently this was an IRISH bar despite all the french people)I've filled my job hunt with more smiles than actual words.

So... when the ity bity restaurant around the corner, Chez Nadine, said to me, 'Come saturday,' I said 'Ok.' And then I turned around and left. And on saturday, I will do as I'm told.

Classes start tomorrow! I'm in the intermediate level... though I'll have an extended review period because I don't remember much french now!!

After being sick all week upon arrival to paris, i finally did some house - hunting; today i visited a rich old woman in her palacial apartment near the eiffel tower (fancy area) to talk to her about renting a maids room in one of her buildings.

lets see so other than being sick, ive done a fair bit of what youd expect a natasha in paris experience would be (ahem, *broke* natasha)- spinning my wheels, eating macarons, freaking out. i was completely sure that the preagreed upon 5 day stay was firm (with my couchsurfer) so when saturday rolled around and i was sick and homeless, and sunday rolled around when i seemed to have misunderstood him to have said something lke 'ok so you're out by 5 pm tomorrow got it?' i started to freak out a little. mostly bc i have a very large suitcase too big to fit through european doors it is full of shoes = heavy!! so i msged lots of couchsurfers with little success until i finally posted a major SOS on the paris group bulletin board sunday night (on the couchsurfing site). monday at 5 im like out the door and he comes home and hes like oh ur already leaving? u can stay another day or 2 if u need to u know.

fucking language barriers.

david sedaris humor has been quite comforting for this experience lol.

but anyway. got myself a cute little shoebox with a view of all of paris (in the quartier latin) and everything inside is new which is nice. and it has an elevator up 5 of the 7 floors... major plus! now after spending all day going to banks of scotlands all over paris to find out theres no banks for doing banking, im trying to figure out how to get nearly a grand by the morning, and what i want for dinner.

lol.

on a more normal note (or perhaps less normal), saw a movie of serge gainsbourgs life it was cool.

Paris is my Mecca

I don't understand miracles and happy things that happen to good people and all of that. i understand irony.

so when i announce to the world that i never get sick, and therefore am not getting a flu shot, and then get sick the day after everyone gets their flu shots, im an ass. but when i announce to the world that im going to go move to a foreign country and get away from the mundane the palid the baren and go live LIFE, and then I get sick when I get there*... That's when I think; yeah, there must be a god actively doing this to me right now. I just hope there's a god so he can really be enjoying a good laugh right now. Cuz if I can make god laugh well shyet gawd damn! I'm generally much better at making people angry, but maybe it would open my eyes to a new calling... in french the word smile and laugh are almost the same - sourire and rire, respectively. thought id throw that out there. anyway whatever i am going to do its probably not going to involve being a corporeal mechanic, just hoping for pts NOT to die rather than working to have someone LIVE happier or smile or whatever...





pictures will come when i actually found a place to live and my mother can mail me my entire sack of electronics shit i left at home for connecting and charging and converting every heavy piece of electronic I brought. for now, im just ill, homeless, and wasting your time with my delusional sick hobo musings.






*Other possible source of irony here***: I stopped smoking after leaving the clinic, where its not allowed, and before going to France, where its basically required. So God makes me sick after I stop smoking. He probably thought 'why would she do that before going to France?? the idea that i created such an idiot makes me sick' so instead he made me sick. well for your information god i really only stopped because cigarettes in boston are rapeass expensive.

my host's reaction to the situation: 'Cee you drop zis bad zsing you gain enozeur'** and he did one of those french pout-n-pouf things with his mouth, while a hand previously near the head flimsily dropped apathetically at the wrist (with a cigarette between the fingers) accompanied by a head tilt and eyebrow lift; vatevehr.

LOVE love LOVE the French.


**Dramaticization. This conversation happened in French. Or half french (him) and half charades (me. involved fake smoking, pointing at throat, pointing at sky...).


***OR MAYBE.... Did I at some point sign over all rights to my thoughts, mind, and body for the rest of my life when I agreed to work at the Cleveland Clinic and they're totally wreaking the most hardcore intensely subtle revenge known to man of all time???? IS CLEVELAND CLINIC.... GOD???? til next time...

Lutina, Corsica. September 2008.

First morning..waking up looking out the WWOOF house's window...


Tiny village... built around the 1300s... maybe 9 people live there year round, 20 in the summer.

You know it's technically a village because there's a church!

Can you see the ocean? This is from the top of the mountain that is corsica.






Hanging out, having lunch...


Playing the game where you have to guess what famous person is written on your forehead based on answers to yes/no questions... I was andy warhol. Got it at "social, but awkward"


Le petit boxer!


The WWOOF house's common room...

Heading to work...

Work break hangin with our buddy, l'ane.

Picking figs on the way home from the fields....

2 different kinds, both totally delicious in completely different ways....

mmmmm. Imogen (the blond curly one) is an art major at u.edinburgh - she spent an entire year painting nothing but figs. She was in HEAVEN!


Hanging out around the house...

Preparing lunch with Felipe (from Columbia but a local depuis 5 ans). Videos for you to hear the fabulous classic Corsican music.

willoughby hills