Thursday, December 11, 2008
we apologize for that brief interruption...
we will now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
l'homme nerveux
You can always tell who are the tourists on the metro: those grey-suited businessmen nervously clutching their fanny packs, glancing suspiciously at the other occupants of the car. They never can anticipate the jerks of the train, and they make uncomfortable faces when they inevitably tumble onto the people they previously expected to pick-pocket them, and they check their fancy American watches every minute or so to make sure they're not running behind - to make sure the metro isn't running behind.
But then, that's how we all started out, I suppose. I remember holding tight to my zippered backpack, glaring at anyone who got too close. I suppose the man could have been starting a new job, a new life, in Paris, and was in the first stages of the adjustment period.
And then he got off at Trocadéro. Clearly a tourist.
But then, that's how we all started out, I suppose. I remember holding tight to my zippered backpack, glaring at anyone who got too close. I suppose the man could have been starting a new job, a new life, in Paris, and was in the first stages of the adjustment period.
And then he got off at Trocadéro. Clearly a tourist.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
This is how much I love my school...
Okay, as boring as the following "poll" and subsequent text sounds, read it, and let me know how you feel after you find the blatant back-woods uneducated mistake made by this university supposedly "on the same level as the ivys."
Halloween/Thanksgiving in Paris
-------B
>{()}/"> <----Thanksgiving Turkey
--/ \
Hopefully that turkey turned out okay. I suppose it doesn't really look like a turkey, but, you know...HAPPY THANKSGIVING...en retard. Since (obviously) Thanksgiving is not celebrated over here, there is no word for it in French, so instead my host family just pronounces "Thanksgiving" with a french accent, "tangzgeeveeng" which, in my opinion, is raucously hilarious, and I had to struggle to control my water-up-the-nose laughing reflex at dinner when they said that. Because I don't want them thinking I'm any weirder than they already think I am.
That having been said, our school (being all-American) hosted a "tangzgeeveeng" dinner in a crypt (no joke) at a local church. I almost informed them that they were mixing their traditional American holidays, but I figured it would at the very least be interesting to see how a French Thanksgiving/Halloween goes down.
But as it turns out, the "crypt" was really just a large, echoey basement filled with bats and cobwebs (well, not really, but it was echoey and large), and we got to have a "traditional thanksgiving meal" which consisted of a French take on the most well-known American dishes - turkey, dressing, cranberry jelly, carrot soufflé (though I must admit, I like the soufflé dhall makes better), and, of course, pumpkin pie. To top it all off, a couple of guys I know dressed up as an Indian and a Pilgrim, sporting a fake bow and arrow & a fake gun respectively. I'm sure they got a lot of looks on the Métro. ...I'm surprised they didn't get arrested on the Métro (especially considering a few weeks ago a friend of mine who is black was sleeping on the metro on the way home, and the next thing he knew, a crazy lady had accused him of trying to steal her purse, and he was arrested and brought to the police station. true story).
Anywayyyyy....the rest of Thanksgiving evening passed uneventfully, my friend Maria and I tried to find a hookah bar (unsuccessfully) and instead ended up in a train station after 11, trying to find a phone book to look up hookah bars. But we lacked several key elements: 1) an open news kiosk 2) knowledge of the area 3) how to say "hookah" in French. All of which posed a problem. So we ended up dusting off a Paris travel guide we found in the only open bookstore in the Gare Montparnasse & just looked up bars that sounded like they might have hookah (how racist are we? - judging a bar's likelihood to have hookah by the name - pfft). A scolding from a cranky bookstore lady and a ride on the metro stop later, and we arrived at the Café de la Mosqué.
Unfortunately, the only thing we found there was aladin-boot fabric, 5 middle aged/eastern men squeezed around a table for two, and the best mint tea you can buy for 2 euro. But no hookah.
The next day, Maria and I played tourist and climbed the Arc de Triomphe, and then walked down the Champs Elysées, where I bought the best waffle of my life, covered in Nutella and whipped cream - definitely worth the stomach ache, even though it took me a while to figure out exactly how to eat the mountains of whipped cream without getting it all over myself. Afterwards, we went to a playhouse near the Grand Palais and saw an absurdist play called "Les Diablogues" - which was full of hilarosity (which apparently is a word, as it is not being underlined by Mac auto spell-check...oh, wait....there it goes...drat).
So that night we actually DID find a hookah bar (looked one up online, fancy that). It was in the center of the city, too, so you'd expect it not to be sketch, right? Wrong.. There was a creepy bouncer-type guy standing at the door who moved out of our way as we passed, and a glassed off room for the "smokers". The bouncer man met us at the register & ushered us down a creeky, narrow, winding staircase to a hallway that had a big rubbermaid tub filled with water underneath a leak in the ceiling. After offering to turn on the tv, he took our order and left.
Later, some friends met up with us (took a while, though, since the place seemed like such a hole-in-the-wall) and we played that game where you write down the name of a celebrity or somebody everyone knows and then pass it to your neighbor and then you go around doing a "guess who" type round of questions until everyone guesses who's on their card. Yeah, it was muchos fun. Particularly since I'd never played before.
Anyway, that's how my Thanksgiving weekend went down - not particularly eventful, but fun nonetheless.
>{()}/"> <----Thanksgiving Turkey
--/ \
Hopefully that turkey turned out okay. I suppose it doesn't really look like a turkey, but, you know...HAPPY THANKSGIVING...en retard. Since (obviously) Thanksgiving is not celebrated over here, there is no word for it in French, so instead my host family just pronounces "Thanksgiving" with a french accent, "tangzgeeveeng" which, in my opinion, is raucously hilarious, and I had to struggle to control my water-up-the-nose laughing reflex at dinner when they said that. Because I don't want them thinking I'm any weirder than they already think I am.
That having been said, our school (being all-American) hosted a "tangzgeeveeng" dinner in a crypt (no joke) at a local church. I almost informed them that they were mixing their traditional American holidays, but I figured it would at the very least be interesting to see how a French Thanksgiving/Halloween goes down.
But as it turns out, the "crypt" was really just a large, echoey basement filled with bats and cobwebs (well, not really, but it was echoey and large), and we got to have a "traditional thanksgiving meal" which consisted of a French take on the most well-known American dishes - turkey, dressing, cranberry jelly, carrot soufflé (though I must admit, I like the soufflé dhall makes better), and, of course, pumpkin pie. To top it all off, a couple of guys I know dressed up as an Indian and a Pilgrim, sporting a fake bow and arrow & a fake gun respectively. I'm sure they got a lot of looks on the Métro. ...I'm surprised they didn't get arrested on the Métro (especially considering a few weeks ago a friend of mine who is black was sleeping on the metro on the way home, and the next thing he knew, a crazy lady had accused him of trying to steal her purse, and he was arrested and brought to the police station. true story).
Anywayyyyy....the rest of Thanksgiving evening passed uneventfully, my friend Maria and I tried to find a hookah bar (unsuccessfully) and instead ended up in a train station after 11, trying to find a phone book to look up hookah bars. But we lacked several key elements: 1) an open news kiosk 2) knowledge of the area 3) how to say "hookah" in French. All of which posed a problem. So we ended up dusting off a Paris travel guide we found in the only open bookstore in the Gare Montparnasse & just looked up bars that sounded like they might have hookah (how racist are we? - judging a bar's likelihood to have hookah by the name - pfft). A scolding from a cranky bookstore lady and a ride on the metro stop later, and we arrived at the Café de la Mosqué.
Unfortunately, the only thing we found there was aladin-boot fabric, 5 middle aged/eastern men squeezed around a table for two, and the best mint tea you can buy for 2 euro. But no hookah.
The next day, Maria and I played tourist and climbed the Arc de Triomphe, and then walked down the Champs Elysées, where I bought the best waffle of my life, covered in Nutella and whipped cream - definitely worth the stomach ache, even though it took me a while to figure out exactly how to eat the mountains of whipped cream without getting it all over myself. Afterwards, we went to a playhouse near the Grand Palais and saw an absurdist play called "Les Diablogues" - which was full of hilarosity (which apparently is a word, as it is not being underlined by Mac auto spell-check...oh, wait....there it goes...drat).
So that night we actually DID find a hookah bar (looked one up online, fancy that). It was in the center of the city, too, so you'd expect it not to be sketch, right? Wrong.. There was a creepy bouncer-type guy standing at the door who moved out of our way as we passed, and a glassed off room for the "smokers". The bouncer man met us at the register & ushered us down a creeky, narrow, winding staircase to a hallway that had a big rubbermaid tub filled with water underneath a leak in the ceiling. After offering to turn on the tv, he took our order and left.
Later, some friends met up with us (took a while, though, since the place seemed like such a hole-in-the-wall) and we played that game where you write down the name of a celebrity or somebody everyone knows and then pass it to your neighbor and then you go around doing a "guess who" type round of questions until everyone guesses who's on their card. Yeah, it was muchos fun. Particularly since I'd never played before.
Anyway, that's how my Thanksgiving weekend went down - not particularly eventful, but fun nonetheless.
I am so sick of parisiens
The good thing about failure is that it makes me work hard enough to prove them wrong.
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