I should prolly mention the reason it was so important for me to go visit Flo that weekend two posts ago. Naturally, it was because I needed to exploit her. Or, more precisely, her kitchen cupboards. Hao?
So during my tutoring session with Charlène two weeks before, we were practicing pronunciation with some reading I had brought along. Because I like to keep the reading material interesting, I gave her some of a Ms. Paula “DJ P Tain” Davis’s (now defunct) blog to read. In it, Paula recounts what she does while on hours-long runs with the dogs. At one point, she mentions that she tries to sing songs. In her attempts, she realizes that she only knows one song all the way through: “Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations. Charlène stopped reading to look at me. “Do you know this song?” she asked.
“Of course. Everyone knows it.”
“I don’t know it,” she responded.
I was certain she was putting me on, though. So I sang a few lines.
She looked at me blankly and kind of frowned a bit as she shrugged her shoulders. And I don’t think it was because of my singing. She genuinely did not recognize the song. STRIKE ONE for American culture’s Imperialism!
The following week, I had put together a worksheet for her. Because I’m the awesomest tutor ever. We were going over expressions of regret. As I was feeling particularly homesick, I put in a sentence about cupcakes. In fact, the sentence was “I wish I had known that my brother was coming to pick me up from school. Then I would not have gone out for cupcakes.” (Okay, so it was a ridiculous fill in the blank sentence, but you try making up your own worksheets!) As we reviewed the sentences and read them aloud, Charlène paused.
“What is this?” she said as she pointed to the word “cupcakes.”
I explained that they are magnificent person sized cakes that are almost better than cakes because they’re all yours. Again I got the blank look. STRIKE TWO for American culture’s imperialism. I was scared to wait for strike three. At the end of the lesson she told me that it was her birthday the following week. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to have an English lesson on her birthday and she was all, “Hellz yeah.” (More like a “yes” coming from her.)
So I set to plotting. I put together a mix CD of American music to commence the education and decided to sort out a way to get some cupcakes in her belly. Naturally they don’t sell box mix for cakes in this area, so I had to find a reliable recipe online. (Please don’t knock my use of box mix. I mean, there’s a reason their recipes were so good that they started to sell them.) Anyway, it was scary and overwhelming so I turned to a friend from high school who is a cake snob (I am too, but her snobbism comes in terms of “from scratch.” In this way, I am a cookie snob.) I asked for her recipe. She sent it to me. The numbering in what she had sent me was a bit confusing because what I discovered in trying to sort it out was that she had copied and pasted the Hershey’s Recipe into a Facebook message but had forgotten to erase some of the sequential numbers.
So that Friday, I set off to the Carrefour to get them ingredients. While at Flo’s, I picked up her former Canadian au pair’s cupcake tray. And she offered me a measuring cup. But not just ANY measuring cup, y’all. An imperial measuring cup! How great is it to make a recipe without having to do conversions? I can’t even begin to tell you.
So on Monday I asked Michele if I could use the kitchen in the internat so’s I could get to baking. She said sure and that she’s open it around 5. Well, when I went down a bit late (because I had been chatting with my folks as it was MLK Day), I was horrified to see that it wasn’t open. Luckily, it was dinner time so I was able to find Michele in the cantine getting her dinner grub on. She gave me the key, and I ran back to get to work.
Quite a massive kitchen. I’m fairly certain that it’s where the students at the lycée pro (professional/vocational high school) have cooking class. They also prepare meals to be sold to teachers sometimes. Because in France, if you haven’t reached your full potential (or don’t seem like you have the potential that they think you need to go to university), you go to a lycée professionnel instead of lycée général et technologique (where I teach). I had to make a few trips back and forth from the kitchen on the ground floor and through a locked door that doesn’t stay open to my room on the fourth floor where I had forgotten a few key ingredients (aka butter and eggs). Eventually, I had everything together and was baking like old times.
Oops. Burned the first batch. Don’t know how that happened. But I just started scraping out everything into a plastic bag. But then I tasted one and realized that maybe they weren’t burnt after all but that they just looked that way. Welp, it was too late at that point, so I just hoped that the second set would come out better. Hedging my bets, I decided to cook them for less time. This meant that they were maybe less than fully done in the middle. But only on some of them. It was basically a hot mess, but I couldn’t get too crazy over it since no one would know any better.
I then went back upstairs with the spare ingredients in my backpack. As I was going up the stairs, I felt like I was sweating a lot on my lower back. Nope! It was the rest of the milk spilling out of its container and into the bottom of my backpack. Good thing my computer was in there too. Maybe some of you don’t know my HORRIBLE history with computers. Let’s just say there was this one time where I spilled an entire 10oz. glass of water on my laptop. It never was the same after that. So I was terrified. I said a little prayer and tenderly wiped it dry as I repeated, “Pleasepleaseplease.” IT WORKED! Thank goodness. Imagining my life in Belley without a computer is actually kind of terrifying. And you can bet your bottom dollar that there wouldn’t have been anywhere for me to get it repaired.
So that was done and the next day, I gave the CD, some microwave popcorn, and a Reese’s peanut butter cup to Charlène with 4 cupcakes. She said they were, “Super bon!” Success!
That weekend, I was off to Paris to visit Maryse. So I got over to the cheese shop to get some Brillat Savarin cheese since Maryse had informed me that she wouldn’t allow me into her apartment without some in hand. Well, of course that meant that when I went to the cheese place, the woman informed me that she didn’t have any ready. This was the second time she’d let me down. That’s when she let me know that she didn’t make it every week. So I got some regular Brillat Savarin without the citrus middle and hoped Maryse would take pity on the poor country mouse.
I was on my way to Paris because when I had been there for New Years, I had seen ads for a photo exhibit at the Jeu de Paume Museum, which is in the Tuileries. So I made a special effort to get back in order to see it since I had FAILED the Larry Clark exhibit. (Something for which I will probably never forgive myself. Or Jennifer.) So on Thursday I took the train to Bellegarde and switched to the TGV to arrive in Paris in the early evening.
Maryse had texted me to say she was in the early stages of laryngitis, or so she thought, and could I please make my way over to her apartment solo? Naturally, I was inclined to acquiesce. On my way over, I picked up a baguette from the boulangerie on her street that makes awesome ones. When I arrived at hers, she wasn’t at her best (as expected) but we just chatted as she prepared dinner. Then she asked me if I could do her a favor and go get some honey and a galette des rois (remember the cake that has a bean in it for Three Kings Day?) and I said that I could for shiz. She sent me to the store where all the food is frozen because she wanted a galette with a strawberry filling instead of the almond one that is customary. I went up and down the aisles twice looking for one, but no dice. So I asked if they had any and they said nah. So I ended up getting both items at the regular grocery store.
Then back up to Maryse’s. She was making a chicken noodle soup, but we did not have a soda on the side. Michael arrived with a salad, and we all sat down for some bread and cheese (including my non-rejected one! and some cheeses that Cécile’s parents had sent her from Strasbourg). Then salad followed by soup. When it came time for the galette, I warned that both times I had had galette, I had won the bean. Then Maryse said that she was the Queen.
As we pulled the cake from the oven, I was told to get under the table. What? The youngest person has to sit under the table to say who gets each piece. That way the kid can’t cheat to get the bean. I had heard something similar when I had been eating with the dessert club the week before (where I had won the bean), so I just asked if they srsly wanted me to get under the table. They said yes. And then Maryse said that I’d have to run around the block naked. And that’s where I lost it. I asked if that was seriously a tradition. Cécile backed her up. Considering that these galettes are usually eaten with families where the youngest kid is probably 4-5, I figured it didn’t really matter if they ran around naked. So I was just super confused and didn’t know what to think. We went back and forth with me being incredulous and them insisting that I was just silly for not knowing the French tradition until Maryse took pity on the gullible country girl and told me that running around the block naked would be a ridiculous tradition but that I seriously did have to get under the table. So I did. But Michael won the fèvre. Sad.
Eventually Maryse and Cécile went to bed. Michael and I stayed up chatting for a while until he headed out.
The next morning, I was hoping to meet Maryse at school so that I could meet her favorite mixed students, including a little girl named Canelle (which means Cinnamon). (Which prompted me to respond with a story of a teacher with a friend who had named her children Vanille/Vanilla and Myrtille/Blueberry.) But, sadly, Maryse wasn’t feeling well enough to go to school so I just sat around drinking tea until about noon and then got on the metro to meet Michael at the Jeu de Paume for the photo exhibit.
He was a bit late so I took some photos of my own. I think I’ll be ready for my own showing pretty soon.
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| How Parisian. |
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| It's all about severed arms and teamwork, mah dawg. |
Here’s the photo that was used to advertise the exposition (exhibit. Be careful to not say exhibition because that has to do with being naked. Learned that the embarrassing way.)
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| Just keep swimming.. |
But dis one wuz mai (and Michael's) favorite:
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| Well, not actually, but it's close. And they were next to each other. |
Then his photos got really weird. He used funhouse mirrors to take nude photos of women in strange ways. Like, there was a photo of a single leg with two feet. Obviously an illusion, but I just wasn’t sure why you would do that. And I couldn’t imaging someone buying the magazine in which they were published being happy with those photos. But anyway, we finished with that and then went to meet Maryse at a vintage store.
We spent some time perusing ridiculous clothes as well as some time with Michael and Maryse trying to convince me to get a fur bomber jacket before deciding to go in search of a book that Maryse wanted to get her girlfriend for Jesselyn’s birthday. It was some lesbian historian book for which we’d have to go to a bunch of American bookstores. The first store we went to had typically French service upstairs and the British guy who worked there was like suuuuuuper annoyed to be helping us. So we went to the next store, which had this American with the most horrifying French accent working there. (He was also not that interested in helping us but was much more concerned with the French customer who was looking for some science fiction books.) It was an overwhelming store with what seemed to be no organization but heaps and heaps of books. All of the books were double shelved with general signs that would say behind this row was this category of books. Really frightening. But I got an Anais Nin book there since I know she’s important but I’ve never read anything by her. It was 6€ so I felt pretty good about that.
As we were going down the metro steps, Michael turned to me and asked, “Wanna take a chance?” I was confused and then he and Maryse were like, “You should just push through instead of using your ticket.” I was like eehhhhhh but I did it. MISTAKE. As soon as we got through, a police officer stopped us because that is my life.
She asked, “Where is your ticket?” I pulled out one of my ten and showed it to her even though I knew I had been caught because she had just watched us go through the turnstile. She looked at me full of skepticism and said, “Why did you just push through with him?” And I responded that I didn’t know. Because I legitimate DIDN’T know. I mean, I had already bought a book of ten tickets so I had already paid. What was I doing with my life? Flushing it down the toilet. That’s what.
She took us over to another officer so we could pay the ticket. She started talking to us. At first I was responding, but then I noticed that Michael was playing the dumbest American ever and was just cocking his head back and forth and saying “What?” over and over again. So I switched to do the same. Then she asked if I spoke French and I said no. So she started speaking English but I just kept acting like I didn’t know what was going on. So then she asked Maryse if she spoke French and she explained the deal to Maryse and how I needed to pay the 50€ fine with cash or carte bleu.
But then she turned back to me and said it again (in French). And I pulled out my wallet and said I didn’t have carte bleu and I only had 30€. Which is true and false. I had more money, but I don’t have carte bleu. So then she said that since I was traveling and since I had actually bought tickets already I could just pay the 25€ fine. So what would have happened if I had just not pulled out my wallet and been like, “I ain’t got no money, woman!”? And what would have happened if I had just trusted my instincts and not “taken a chance” on the Paris metro? I wouldn’t have come out looking idiot. Needless to say my mantra as we walked to the train itself was “Never again. Never again.”
Then we headed to BHV (a department store) to get some tea and cookies for Maryse’s birthday gift to her lady. Michael and I perused the kitchen section. After we left, Michael actually went back in to look for some grey suede oxfords that he had been wanting while Maryse and I went back to her place to eat some dinner before heading to this American’s surprise birthday party.
We made it to the party well after the surprise. OH. So Cécile works for the Wellesley Paris study abroad program. She made the mistake of introducing some of her French friends to some of her students and one of them (Cédric) took a shining to of the filles américaine and now they’re dating. Cédric was throwing the party for the girl. We walked in and were offered some beers. Since Maryse had told me she wasn’t drinking, I was like nah. But then she said yes. So I was looking like a dumb and I went to the kitchen to get myself a beer. A beer I had brought in offering to the party hosts. And it tasted disgusting.
Good thing it was time for the champagne toast! Which was about as good as a toast that I would give at my birthday party with a bunch of strangers. Afterwards, I found myself, as usual, near the music, chatting with this kid Matthew. He asked me what I (an American) was doing in France. I told him I was being an assistant. Then I asked him what he was doing in France. And then he told me he was French. And I didn’t believe him. This kid spoke perfect English and used regular slang, American intonation, the whole bit. No way. This was another prank to make me run around the block naked.
I insisted he was American. He insisted he was French. That he’d been born in France. NO way. Maryse was like he’s American. No. He’s French. No. He’s American. MAKE UP YOUR MIND. Matthew could probably be the best prankster ever with Maryse at his side and if all of his pranks were about his nationality. Anyway, it came out that he actually IS French. But his family had spent some time in the Netherlands where he had gone to an American school (and Dutch people’s English is always top notch anyway) and then he had lived in Miami for a bit. So you can see why I was supes confused.
Anywaaaaay we danced and ate cake and sang and I was a fool. Dancing like it was my birthday. And then they broke it down the way Americans do to “Sweet Caroline” or “More Than a Feeling.” Except apparently French people do it to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which is waaay more annoying and depressing.
Maryse, Cécile, and I left to get the last metro back to their ‘hood. As last time I was in Paris, my carnet of 10 tickets stopped working. So some drunk blonde French girl came up and had me push through with her. WHEN WILL I EVER LEARN? But this time I got away with it. But srsly, though. This shit’s ridiculous.
The next day, I had plans to meet up with Lili Mancini from NDA who is currently studying international politics at the American University in Paris. So I went online to agonize over finding a restaurant. In the end, I just asked Cécile for a recommendation and took it. Lili and I met for some good eats and then decided to head over to Galeries Lafayette for some shopping. I had never been before so I had no idea what kind of madness I was walking into. It was basically a madhouse as the Soldes were still going on. Best story ever is that Lili didn’t understand what Soldes meant when she first arrived and thought that it meant that all of the stuff in the window had already been sold. So she didn’t go in a bunch of stores thinking that “30% Soldes!” meant that 30% of the merchandise had already been sold. Love her.
But I did not love the Galeries Lafayette. We went in and went through the first level together before deciding to split up. About an hour later, we were both on sensory overload and met downstairs at the Chanel counter. Except, of course, there are two Chanel counters and we were at different ones. We sorted it out and peaced. It is, however, a lovely building.After I got back to Maryse’s, Maryse and I went for a bit of a stroll. It wasn’t aimless, though. We were going to Thanksgiving! The wildly overpriced American foodstore. It’s super charming inside, though. Maryse said that she heard that it used to be normally priced but then something changed. There is flippin’ folklore about this store! I came away with a box of Lucky Charms (for 13€, but it was to give as a gift to my host for the following weekend) and a box of Domino (East coast brand…) light brown sugar so’s I could fatten up all the Frenchies with chocolate chip cookies. What’s funny about that store is that they don’t even try to hide the real prices. Like, they were selling Rice Krispies cereal. On the box, which was British, it said like “So much food! Only £2.64!” but then they were selling it for 13€. Hmmmm….. Pretty sure that’s not the exchange rate. Anyway, the store made me happy for a while.
When we left, we stopped by a vintage store and an American bookstore all on the walk back to Maryse’s. Ridiculous=the difference between our living situations. After we got back to her apartment, she set to making cookies with my secret recipe. (This recipe is not at all secret and I’ve given it away many times.) She made them even though when I told her the ingredients she was tremendously dubious.
Then she took her cookies and left for her dinner party. A bit later, I peaced out to meet Michael at this concert that Maryse had invited me to but then disinvited herself from. So Michael and I didn’t have tickets to the show, but we figured we could sweet talk our way in. We went up to the ticket window and asked for some tickets. But the show was sold out. Guy (who looked like James Franco) took our names and told us to come back a bit later. So we walked aimlessly around, stopping into an international market and just going up and down streets. When we went back to the theater, what had been an empty street was now full of hopefuls just like us. We just got in line and when we got to the front, I told him we’d been there before and he gave us tickets. At the student rate! Which was great because he had asked us before if we were students and since my student ID was in my wallet, which was stolen (and which thus also stole my possibility of getting student discounts into eternity), I had to admit to not being one. But I guess he forgot because I’m so pretty.
We went in and sat for a bit just waiting for the fun to begin. This is a group whom Maryse had previously seen in concert. They’re called Les Franglaises (which is like calling them The Frenglish), and they take songs sung in English and translate them, literally, into French. It’s awesome if you know the English well enough to catch the translation. So it was the perfect concert for an English Teaching Assistant in France.
The concert started with an energy amper: Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get It Started”—or, as they sang it “Il Faut Commencer.”
They sing everything from The Beach Boys to Queen to Madonna to Black Eyed Peas (as mentioned) to some songs that I’ve never heard of! At the beginning of each song, they speak the lyrics in French so that the audience can guess which song will be sung next. Because I’m an old soul, I managed to get two of the oldies but goodies first: “Locomotion” by Little Eva (written by Carole King when she noticed her baby sitter dancing around the living room) and “So Happy Together” by The Turtles. Michael guessed one of them correctly, but they heard someone else over him. Even though Michael was 100% first to say it. I think he guessed “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas and the Papas? But I could easily be wrong. I wouldn’t put it past me. They had some really good presentations and some that were forgettable. My favorite was when they insterted part of “Smooth Criminal” into this medley with “Hotel California.” The repeated line (“Annie, are you okay?”) translates to “Annie, est-ce que ça va?” which I find really funny for some reason.
At the end, we clapped and encored and they encored for us. But then the French did what they do best, which is cheer to the tune of a normal pop song. I’ve seen this done at the lycée’s sporting events. They basically just sing the base line of “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes. DaaaadaDAdadadaaaaadaaaaa. Or they do “OMG” by Usher (a song for which Usher is being sued), and they sing the “OhOoOhOh” part. It’s strange that they don’t have their own cheers, but whatevs. So that kind of worked. They came out and sang, Black Eyed Peas again, but this time, they sang, “Il Faut Se Terminer!” Stuck it to us!
Then Michael and I walked back to the metro and went in opposite directions. When I got back to Maryse’s I hopped straight into bed because I had a train to catch at 6:34 the next morning. And that’s exactly what I did.
When I got to Lyon to make the transfer to my train to Virieu, I called a cab, but the woman was all, “Oops! Can’t pick you up today! I’m busy.” Because cab companies here are usually like one person per day or something and it still doesn’t make any sense to me. So I called my good cab driver friend from before and she gave me that hook up. And it was back to Belley with me!
Bibbidy bobbidy boo,
Jessica
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