ao & derek in paris: November 2008

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Cheery Evening

We're much better now. We feel fine. We just went for a walk.

To be more precise, we walked down the Boulevard St. Germain, then crossed over to the Jardin des Tuileries, then down the Champs Elysées, turned off on Avenue Montaigne to head toward the Eiffel Tower, and then finally came back home. A nice 4 1/2 hour walk (with a long stop for hot chocolate and pie). We have pictures to prove it.

It was a very nice and refreshing outing, if i do say so myself. And apparently as Christmas approaches, the Champs Elysee turns into something not unlike a state fair, with merry-go-rounds and games for kids, as well as arts, crafts, stuffed animals, and food stands (though we're still in France, so the food is crepes and gauffres in some stands and oysters and champagne in at least one other). So that was pretty awesome.

In short, when feeling homesick, go outside and remind yourself why you're not home. It helps.

Other noteworthy facts and/or moments from our walk:

- The French either really enjoy irony or are completely tone-deaf when it comes to symbols of amity. Just next to Place de la Concorde - where the guillotine was set up during the French Revolution - are a series of sculptures called "Welcoming Hands" that depict what can only be described as collections of dismembered arms gathered into small piles.

- In France (or at least on the Champs Elysées), Santa Claus's sleigh is pulled by a single white pony. And the pony clearly doesn't like its job.

- As I was taking pictures of the Christmas lights on the Champs Elysées, a random French women tickled me under my underarm.

Now we're going to have some homemade soup with a baguette. Holy crap Ariel makes the best soups.

Mopey Day

We're feeling a little down today. Don't exactly know why. We think we have a solution, though: walk around the city. I'm thinking we head west toward the 7th and/or 8th Arrondissements, that way we'll be near the Eiffel Tower or the Champs Elysées (depending on our route) by the time it gets dark, so we can see the Christmas lights. Christmas lights cheer everyone up!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

A demi-Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I hope you're all having a great day today. Personally, mine's been a bit weird. It started off strange, since Ariel and I woke up later than usual - I forgot to set my alarm, and so we arose to the sound of many-a-church bell ringing at precisely 7:39 a.m. either from the nearby church or the seminary school next door. Then, after a too-long, too-lazy morning, I was briskly walking to the archives through 37 degree Paris when I stumbled upon the sight of six grown met in bright red wetsuits walking along the Pont Archeveche near Notre Dame. Well, needless to say, I had to stop and take a picture.

Of course, it gets better. As I started to cross the street for a closer look, the red men started jumping off the bridge and into the Seine. Do I have photos of this act of lunacy, you ask? Oh yes, I do.

Now, some of you may think that watching six human tomatoes leaping thirty feet into freezing cold water might be enough oddity for one day, but I'm not done yet. I mean, I haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving lunch yet.

I didn't really think about it at the time, but I now believe that subconsciously I was craving some semblance of a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Unfortunately, I was in the Marais, which is not exactly a bastion of Americana. In the end, I probably got the closest thing to a Thanksgiving meal available: a schwerma sandwich. Wait, wait - hear me out. It was a pita "roll" with an eggplant, tomato, and onion "stuffing," the titular schwerma - a combination of turkey and lamb, the menu claimed - and topped with a white "gravy." Okay, it was more of a tzatziki sauce, and there's no way that the pita could be confused for a roll, and there were no bread crumbs in sight that would make the vegetables into a legitimate stuffing, but it's the best I could do.

The archives were pretty much the most normal thing about the day: both elevators connecting the basement (where all the documents are kept) to the reading room upstairs were broken yet again - this is the third time in less than 2 weeks - which meant that if you had not requested your documents yesterday, you weren't going to get any for the rest of the week. Fortunately, I had, so I set to work until the archives closed at 4:45 p.m. Why do they close at 4:45, you may ask? I have no idea.

Finally, on the way back home, I walked through not one, but two movies being filmed on the walk between the archives and our apartment.

Now, I'm back in our cozy apartment with Ariel, getting ready to celebrate just about the only holiday France has not yet tried to adopt. On the menu tonight: lentil soup with turkey and a pumpkin-ginger dessert risotto. Again, not exactly the most traditional of Thanksgiving meals, but we work with what we can. I tried to get an autumnal pastry from our local baker, but the closest thing I could find was a mocha colored cake called "noir desir." Pilgrim-y, it is not. Plus, on my way up the stairs, I dropped the box it was in and sorta smushed it. Now it looks like a cross between a work of abstract art and a five-year-old's drawing of a puppy.