July 2009
4 posts
Tom Waits - “Anywhere I Lay My Head”
...
aux pays-bas
Just a brief update -
The 14th was Bastille day - fun, but not as crazy as I had hoped. For whatever reason, unlike during La Fête de la Musique (a much smaller holiday, as I understood it) the Metro didn’t stay open all night - or even any later than usual! Très bizarre!
So I went out to dinner, met up with some of the other program alumni to watch the fireworks at Le Tour Eiffel...
plus choses
A lot has happened since last time!
The program is over at this point - sad, but kind of a relief. I managed not to murder my GPA, so, there’s that. And my French is really quite a lot better than when I started - now I’m somewhere around the preschool level!
It was sad to see everyone go. It’s funny how close people get to each other when they have no other choice. The program...
poulet roti, enfin!
“You men eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans, I eat more chicken any man ever seen!”
- Howlin’ Wolf, “Backdoor Man”
Mme. de Sars is out of town for the weekend, so Jerris and I were on our own for dinner, tonight. Typically, when Mme. is out, she makes some sort of under-the-table arrangement with a nearby Chinese place to feed us and send her the bill.
...
June 2009
6 posts
Parisian Hangover Olympics
OPENING CEREMONIES
The temperature in the sleep-deprivation chamber you call an apartment will not dip beneath 28°C until several hours after midnight. Go out and drink.
SPEED
No known sound is more irritating than the tone of your alarm clock, which operates at a frequency apparently capable of liquefying the human brain. Disable/destroy it before you are rendered a vegetable. Do not throw...
les choses importants que j'eusse appris...
List of places where it feels inappropriate to check one’s Ninja Turtle digital watch, regardless of how late one suspects he might be (incomplete):
Basilicas
Cemeteries
Fancy restaurants
Omaha Beach
ma mère française
Jerris and I, I think, have been extremely lucky to be assigned to our particular host mother.
Initially, I had wanted to live with a more traditional “family” - reasoning that having children around would help my French considerably.
This is probably true.
But Mme. de Sars is just so damn sweet I can’t complain. Not only is she extremely patient with my French, and quite...
me donnez la vie simple
One of a tourist’s obligations (others include: gawking, dressing inappropriately, and speaking his native tongue very slowly to the locals) is to visit every marginally-notable building in as short a time span as possible.
This I’ve done dutifully. Already, I’ve been to Notre Dame, the Paris Catacombs, Sainte Chapelle, Versailles, the Pantheon, Les Invalides, the Louvre, and...
au loin de ma maison (trop du Radiohead)
Today I’ve been feeling dangerously sentimental. Maybe it’s a bit silly, as I’ve been in Paris, oh, a week and a half. I wasn’t expecting to be homesick at all, in fact, reasoning that, having been more or less a transient for the last three years, this summer wouldn’t amount to much of a change. But just several days, not as a tourist but a resident in a strange...
nous avons seulement commencé...
Five days in Paris (already?) and I’ve fallen in love. Sure, I’m a skinny American kid, and she’s a series of underground trains, but we were made for each other.
And they said it would never work.
The Metro is a truly beautiful thing. A competent traveler can reach any point in the city proper within half an hour. Even I can achieve such a feat given 45 minutes. And, I’m...
May 2009
4 posts
un nouveau jour
It’s a beautiful, cloudless morning, my first in Paris. With morning comes my first realization that I have forgotten something important (my camera charger, lost somewhere in the detritus of boxes that litters my bedroom floor) and, soon, my first Continental meeting with the other members of my program (in which I’ll be given another precious opportunity to make a fool of myself...
le début
Bonjour à tous!
Like every other student abroad, I’ve decided that, as I’m leaving the country, my thoughts are suddenly worth a damn.
This is, of course, false.
But feel free to check back every once in a while to see what I’m up to in Paris. Pictures, journal entries, footage of my inevitable arrest - if it’s anywhere, it’ll be here.