Background of arrondissements

Before getting into each of the arrondissements (arrs) I'll tell you a little bit about what they are.  We don't really have the equivalent of arrs in the US; virtually every medium-small town to big city in France is split into districts - the arrs - for administrative purposes.  Their being official is rather modern, but more often than not the arrs are based on long-standing historical borders.

There are twenty arrs in Paris proper and one interesting thing about them is that they are numbered roughly according to when they were incorporated into the city.  So the 1st arr is considered the very oldest area of Paris (although really the 4th and 5th probably are, as they date back to Roman times, but the 1st was the first area of the "French" city), going on until the higher teens, which were considered suburbs only a century ago.

However, their numbering also follows a "snail shell" pattern starting from the first: they make a tight circle around the center of the river, then a wider circle.

In this map you can see how they start from the 1st, which is just on the north side of the river [we consider this the "right bank," and the south side is the "left bank"], and form the snail pattern.  It also shows the more common names of most of the arrs.

When you meet another person who lives or has lived in Paris, the first thing you ask is what arr they were/are in.  Each arr has a distinct history and current atmosphere, different things they are known for.  Usually when you're planning a meet-up with people you'll give them a general idea of what type of place you're going just by saying which arr it is in.

I hope the posts about them are interesting, and please let me know if you'd like me to continue them after I post the first one!

A propos!*

My dad just sent me this article: http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/how-to-order-at-a-french-restaurant-without-sounding-dumb-or-pretentious-2597522.html

Just a couple of silly quibbles: 1) No French person would call a brasserie a bra-ser-ee because they are lazy (like how lots of our words get mangled from laziness).  It's a brah-sree.  I remember when I first started taking French I would read aloud from Le Petit Prince or Les Miserables with my mom, to practice, and she always corrected this in the words "cependent" and "maintenent" and I just couldn't get the hang of it until I heard real French all the time.  Same thing with macaron, it's not mah-cah-rohn, it's mah-croh, with a nasal n.

2) I'm pretty sure not many American people would know what you meant if you said crehp for crepe.  I've only ever heard people say creyp there I think?

This reminded me of an incident just after I came back from living in Paris last time.  I went out to dinner with a friend and we got coffees or something after.  The thing I ordered was hot chocolate with orange flavoring and the menu called it something like chocolat a l'orange.  Having just returned within the week I automatically said it the French way and the waitress didn't understand at all.  I repeated it, trying but failing to make it more English-sounding, but she still didn't understand.  Very embarrassed, I had to just say, "the one with orange."  My friend laughed at me for being pretentious but I really couldn't get my tongue around the English pronunciation! 

Second a propos thing: on a whim today I decided to get a pastry with my daily baguette at my corner boulangerie.  It was still early enough in the evening that there were lots of delicious-looking ones left.  I really liked the look of a whitish one next to a small sign saying "framboisier chocolat," meaning it was raspberry and chocolate.  Yum.  So I asked for that, but the girl grabbed another one, in the picture below it's on the left.  I was confused and pointed to the white one near the sign and said, "No, that one."  The boulangerie was quite busy so after I saw her pick that one up I moved along to pay.  I told the cashier what I got, paid, and went home.  Upon opening my box I was surprised to see both pastries. 

The one on the left seems to be the real "framboisier chocolat" and I have no clue what the one on the right actually is.  It does have raspberry and chocolate but the white frosting-like stuff was almond-tasting and there was some white cream in the middle.  On a good day I can only eat half of a pastry like this at a time so I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to eat both of these in the appropriate time.  A hardship indeed.

* Sometimes I feel like living in France makes my English a lot worse.  This is two words in French but one in English, right?  How embarrassing.

Food, part I

Food is an integral part of French culture, so I guess it's not surprising that I get a lot of questions about it.  Not questions so much as, "Omg the food there must be amazing!"  Or sometimes, "How do French people stay so slim with the kind of food they eat?"

To respond: yes, food here is very good, and overall I would say a higher quality than food in the US; French people don't actually eat most of our stereotypes of "French food" that often, and have generally very different eating habits.

For many years in English-speaking countries, French cuisine was considered the very highest, fanciest level of food.  I just did a quick Google search of French food main courses and came up with: boeuf bourguignon; French toast stuffed with brie; braised rabbit; chicken in cream sauce; beef tenderloin in wine sauce; cheese souffle...

This is very much not what French people eat on a day-to-day basis, but it is more similar to what you would find in a French restaurant in the US.  All those heavy cream sauces and large amounts of red meat, etc, are unusual fare.  What is true: there are LOTS of pastries, all the time.  Many people have a croissant (very buttery of course) or pain au chocolat (basically a croissant stuffed with chocolate) every day, and many people will get a dessert pastry or little cake once or twice a week.  And many, if not most, French adults have at least one unit of alcohol - normally wine, but often beer - per day.  Bread is a huge staple of a daily diet as well; most small families can easily go through a baguette every day.

The biggest difference I see between French and American food cultures is how we eat (approach to food) and the starting point of the food we eat.

Firstly, the French absolutely love their fruits and vegetables.  I've never been in a French home - even of poor college students - that did not have at the very least one or two large bowls full of fruit all the time and vegetables filling the fridge.  The couple I lived with the first time I studied here had almost their whole small patio dedicated to housing their supply of produce, and the family I'm working for now always has a huge amount of fruits and nuts - I'm talking feet of counter space - and two fridge drawers of vegetables.  They replenish a few times a week.

Generally vegetables, while not the highlight of a dinner, take up about half of one's meal.  It is exceptional to have more than a small portion of red meat at dinner and it is much more often chicken or some such. 


In both families, dessert was/is almost always a piece of fruit or a yogurt.  Sometimes with the family I work for there is one ice cream cone per two children after dinner.  More often than that it's a small piece of chocolate, usually dark. 


Overall portions are much smaller here than in the US, even (or especially) in restaurants. 


Finally, and probably most importantly, food is very much respected here.  A lot of time is set aside for a meal - to enjoy it, to chat, to people-watch or read if you're alone.  School children and working people usually get an hour and a half or two hours for lunch and their day ends a little later.  You will rarely find a French person eating while walking or in the Metro. 


Every loaf of bread I have ever bought living here has come direct from a baker and was baked the day I bought it.  The ingredients in these are super simple, with no additives or preservatives - just the way you would bake it if you made it at home.  Same thing for the pastries and desserts you can find in any bakery.  It isn't a matter of principle or pride, like it would be in some shops in the US, it's just the way things are done here.  Why buy a processed loaf of bread when there are delicious bakeries on every other corner?

Cheese/dairy shops, butcher shops, all those places have similarly fresh, straightforward products.  You won't find a load of chemicals in any of them.

The packaged and processed foods here are also generally less so than in the US, I think because they're competing with the products I just described.  There are regulations about how much high fructose corn syrup food companies may use (though I have no idea what those are) such that, for example, Coca Cola uses real sugar instead in its products here.  This might also be a function of the fact that a lot of French overseas departements (protectorates, I guess) rely heavily on sugar production; I'm not sure.

So we end up having higher quality ingredients to start with here, and processed products do not have the same advantage here as they do in the US: if you're buying for many people it's often considerably cheaper to buy fresh foods.

---

Hooray, French food!  Delicious, fresh, and fairly cheap, how can you go wrong?

Well, I've just spent a good amount of space praising the food culture here so I probably shouldn't complain too much.  But!  There are some odd things I just can't find here, and some are a little baffling.

First and foremost: peanut butter!  It just seems to...not exist here.  This came up a couple of days ago when J asked me what my favorite flavor of fudge is.  I said peanut butter and he didn't understand.  I described it and he said he'd never heard of it, though he did say defensively "we do have peanuts, though!"  This is unfortunate because 1) I think the kids would love peanut butter cookies and 2) sometimes you just want a peanut butter sandwich, you know?

Secondly, because they go together in my mind, marshmallows.  I've never seen any here.

Canned soup.  You won't find any canned chicken noodle soup, minestrone, etc here.  You might find it in a mix.  You will find boxed vegetable veloutes or cream soups.  This is probably healthier I guess but I'm dying for some of the vegetable, black bean, or pasta soups I love in the US.  Sure, I could make them, but that takes some effort!

Anything spicy.  I've discovered that the French hate spicy food.  Not hate, exactly, but you will certainly not find anything I would call "spicy" without looking pretty hard.  They will say that some (to my mind) mild Chinese, Indian, or Vietnamese food is "spicy" when it's clearly not.  They don't really even do the spicier Italian sauces or sausages.  My mother suggested that this is because French cuisine is all about herbs and they just don't really have a taste for spice or don't like it overpowering the herbs.  Either way, I want some good, spicy Mexican food.

Lastly, this isn't exactly a lack, but Parisians are weirdly obsessed with cookies.  Big, soft cookies generally, but cookies in general.  I would compare it to the cupcake obsession in NYC: there are "designer" cookies and some little cookie boutique-type things.  But they're also kind of regarded as a very special, high class treat that aren't really for making at home.  I find this bizarre because cookies are so easy to make - and they're not eating especially complicated ones, usually chocolate chip or sugar cookies or something.

Their fondness for fudge and brownies is sort of similar, but to a lesser degree.  All of these things are considered very American.  When I talked to J about making them himself he seemed surprised at the idea.

Wow, this has been much longer than I intended.  To be fair, I'm hungry!

A dull life

I just wanted to let everyone know I'm here and I have a bunch of posts planned - but for the moment I have nothing exciting going on at all and I'm having a bit of a writer's block.

I was really and truly planning to do a big post on the food culture tonight but I've been hit with an unexpected wave of tiredness.  I've been sort of fighting off a sickness since the weekend and I want to make it through the rest of this week without getting sick so I'm going to try to go to bed super early.  Sorry, Mother.  I think baby O and I keep trading colds back and forth.  He'll be somewhat sick for a few days and then a couple of days later he'll be better and I'll start to get a cold.  Then I'll get better and he gets it again.  That's been happening for the last month or so. 

I will do an actual post tomorrow, but in the meantime here are a few posts that have been floating around (just to give you a preview!):

- Notre Dame has a Gregorian mass every Sunday morning.  My love of chant is well-known and I'm super excited to see this happen in such an amazing venue.  I've planned to go the last two weekends but things have come up.  I'm hoping I can this weekend, but if I have to work early this Saturday I probably won't go.

- Food.  There are a lot of differences in the food culture between here and the US - how people eat, what is available, and how/where you buy it.  I get a lot of questions about French cuisine so I think this might be interesting.

 - Some museums I'm planning to visit, hoping I'll find some interesting stuff.

- Not sure if this would interest people, but I was thinking of doing a once-in-a-while post on each of the arrondissements of Paris, possibly starting tonight.  We'll see if people like it!

I might have to go to a Justin Bieber concert today

That is all.

Edit:  It's past 7:30pm now so I think I'm safe.  I was completely horrified.  In the mother's words I "look like I could be a friend of theirs [the 14 year old girls going]."  :-O

Through Paris at night

Sometimes I walk home from work, if I have time and am not too tired.  Since our nights with nice weather are numbered, yesterday I decided to stroll home, documenting my progress along the way.  The walk takes about 25 minutes going slowly and it's very pleasant.

I leave their apartment.  I'll be on that cross street up ahead until I'm nearly home.

I think local elections are coming up, and I see political signs like this pretty frequently.   The one on the right says "save our jobs, leave the euro."

There has been construction going on around the corner forever.  This is a nice little area though - I particularly like the cafe on the left with the red awning.  It's a nice place to sit and have a hot chocolate.

 The construction

I leave their immediate neighborhood and head in the direction of O's daycare (about 5 minutes away) and M's school (about 10 minutes away).  Even crappy apartment buildings in Paris have cool architectural details - so many have lovely big windows like this with pretty moldings.

There are little signs like this all around the city, set up in places of historical interest.  This one, right around the corner from the daycare, marks a building that used to be a Carmelite convent.  The church there is still active and I see nuns around so I'm not sure it's completely separated from its history.  The sign notes that the convent was disbanded in 1792, reinstituted in 1797, a school was founded there in 1845, and from 1849 to 1867 monks lived there.

Just past M's school is the Luxembourg garden.  Since I was here around 7:45pm it's closed and because of the dark I couldn't get many good pictures.  Suffice to say, it's very large and very pretty.  It will take me about 10 minutes walking to pass it.

I pass some pretty streets across from the gardens.

The buildings that made up the Luxembourg palace are now used for a variety of purposes.  This one is now the Luxembourg museum, which has an exhibit at the moment called "Cezanne and Paris."  This whole side of the garden is guarded by armed police because... (it's coming in a couple of pictures)

Another pretty street, this one cobblestone and very narrow.

This sign discusses the history of the smaller palace on the grounds...

 ...which is now...

the French senate.  That's why there are armed guards throughout this area.  They were giving me the side-eye as I was taking pictures of the building so I hurried away.  You can't see it very well but above the door it says "Senat."  In the corner you can see the French and European Union flags.

Almost past the gardens now, I walk through the entrance way to the famous Odeon theater.  Lots of the most famous French plays premiered here, and it set a precedent for this area to become a mini theater district.  There are also like five different movie theaters within a few blocks.  It's also kind of the border between the Luxembourg neighborhood and the Latin Quarter (where the students of the Sorbonne and other schools live and hang out - and have since the 1200's). 

 On the next corner I pass a little restaurant that claims to have been founded in 1791.  Dubious.

Now I'm really in the student neighborhood, and it looks a lot like what I'm used to in NYC.  You can see an open-nearly-all-night mini grocery with some guys, probably university students, hanging around outside.

One of the first Sorbonne buildings I come across.  I don't really know what this building is but it has a square all to itself.

The Latin Quarter is known for its very rich history of famous writers and philosophers who have lived here.  I pass a number of similar plaques along the way but here is one saying Gabriel Garcia Marquez lived in this building while writing "No One Writes to the Colonel." 

Getting very close to home now - around the next corner I can see the top of the Pantheon.  I pass Lycee Louis le Grand, the second most prestigious prep school in France, after the one I've featured here before, Henri IV.  They're about a three minute walk from each other.

You know you're in the heart of the Latin Quarter when you start to see tons of random, bizarre political signs.  This particular building is covered with them - unsurprising I guess since it's a block away from three different major political science buildings and the law school. 

This one argues that no one should use the term "mademoiselle" anymore.  I assume because it's somewhat less respectful than "madame" and connotes youth and inexperience.  I've had people instinctively call me "mademoiselle" (because I look young I guess) and then apologize profusely for it.  Anyway, men only have the option of being called "monsieur" so this feminist group feels women should only be "madame."

 

I walk a bit more up the hill and come into the familiar Place Ste Genevieve: on the left is the the library, far off in the middle is the church St Etienne-du-Mont, and to the right of that is the tower of Lycee Henri IV.

This picture shows you nothing, I'm sorry.  This is one of those times I wish either I carried my camera around with me all the time (these were all taken with my phone, which explains the poor quality) or that I had Photoshop on my computer.  This little sign is next to a door of a building right next to the library, and it says that until 1950 that door was the entrance to the Collège Sainte Barbare, founded in the mid 1400's, and whose entrance is now next to my street.  To my knowledge "collège" means junior high/middle school in French, but somehow I doubt people were founding middle schools in the mid 1400's.  It definitely means an education facility of some sort but I don't know exactly what.  For now I'm going to think of it as the oldest middle school ever.

And I turn onto "my" street - not really mine because it's actually the street that leads to the back entrance of my building, but it's how I get in most of the time.

The actual back entrance is on a little dead end called the "Impasse des Boeufs."  Boeufs means cattle or beef, so this means "dead end of cattle or beef."  Many people are highly amused by this little street - coming back from the airport last time my cab driver declared it "magical."  Google translate will tell you that the whole name means "dead oxen."  I wonder when was the last time my little street saw any cattle. 

And then I'm home!

What a day

I had a super long day on Wednesday - I left my apartment for work before 8am and got back a little after 9pm.  The end of the day wasn't that interesting but the beginning was kind of a disaster.

I was supposed to take the two oldest children and 3 year old M to Disneyland, which is just outside Paris.  When I got to their house it turned out I would only take the oldest, 14 year old D, and M.  That was okay, as I knew D would be more helpful in looking after M if her brothers weren't there.  We planned what rides to go on and where to stop, and M was super excited as she doesn't go very often.

They have special passes for the older kids that makes it cheaper for them to go several times a year but M and I would have to get tickets of our own at the normal price...or so I thought.  The mother gave me 100 euros for the tickets and lunch; I thought that was strangely little for the two tickets and food but I figured the tickets for little kids must be very cheap.  Upon arriving D told me that children two and under actually get in for free, so we were supposed to pretend M was two.

She doesn't look two.  She's three and a half, and decently tall for her age; she just does not look like she could be two.  But it ended up that my ticket was 51 euros and if we were to get one for M it would be 48 or 49 (D's pass gave us a discount of some percentage, I forget).  Meaning if we did that all the money the mother gave me would be gone and we'd have to use my 10 or so euros for lunch for all of us - not possible at Disneyland.

So I went along with it, not getting a ticket for M, but inevitably they stopped us going in, wanting to see an ID card for M.  When they asked her how old she was she held up two fingers but then said three, so we were pretty much screwed then.  We had a dilemma at that point: buy M a ticket and see what we could find to eat or leave before lunch?  Get a refund for my ticket and go home?  We'd traveled about 45 minutes to get to Disney and we'd been gone over an hour at that point and M was getting impatient.  Not to mention since we were there she was even more excited, seeing we were just about to get in.

After some fretting and discussion with the mother we decided we wouldn't be able to go into the park.  M was absolutely inconsolable and cried hysterically for almost a half hour while we tried to calm her.  Eventually D remembered that there is a movie theater attached to the Disney complex and we decided to take her there instead, and buy her some souvenirs.

That was actually a pretty good turning point, and she was really happy to see the movie.  I ended up liking it a lot too: it was a French animated kids' movie, Un Monstre a Paris.  Here is the trailer in French: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et1T4c-BNUk and English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfMcbsE-kf8.  Vanessa Paradis, a very famous French singer and actress, voiced the lead role and the music was so good!  I'm actually sad I can't find it to download anywhere.  I would definitely recommend it if you want a good kids' movie.

We got her some lunch, bought her a stuffed animal, and left.  They're going to go back in a couple of weeks I think but I'm not sure if I'm going.

This week has been really long in general but I am much happier now that the kids are back in school.  Thank you to everyone who sent me messages while I was upset earlier in the week!  I really like hearing from people and you brightened up my day!

Anyone?

Okay I know I haven't been very interesting lately but I hope people are still following.  It's been super quiet and pageviews are basically non-existent.  It's been a rough week and I would be really happy to see people saying hi!  Emails or comments or whatever, really. 

You all know that I've done a lot of traveling, even from when I was pretty young.  I love traveling, being in new places and cultures, seeing new things.  In all my travels - including the semester I spent in Paris before - I've never once felt homesick or really felt the urge to go home.  This week has been the only time I've ever felt like I really just wanted to go home and stay in New York for a while with familiar things around me.  I wasn't homesick exactly, because I didn't miss specific things, but I just wanted to leave.  So I could use some cheering up if anyone feels up to it!

A week and a half of Toussaint

All Saints' Day.  You might have heard of it, mostly as the day that comes after Halloween.  Or possibly that day that honors all the saints, but at least as far as I've seen that's not been a big thing.

And yet in France, school kids get a full week and a half off from school for All Saints' Day (Toussaint) - last Friday was their last day and they go back to school this Wednesday.  I think that's more than I used to get even when Easter and Passover fell close to each other.  Wikipedia tells me it's one of only four "holy days of obligation" in France (the others being the Assumption, Christmas, and the Ascension) but it does not tell me why different countries get to choose their days. 

Anyway, delighted as the kids are to have a vacation it's been rough for me.  I've had to work long days almost every day the past week and I worked yesterday evening.  This is mostly because with J filming Masterchef outside Paris one of the parents had to always be with him so it left me with the other kids.  Also baby O was sick enough that he didn't go to daycare Tuesday through Friday, so I kept him at home, thereby keeping little M home too.  That doesn't go over very well because M needs to go out to run around and play - when she's at home she mostly just picks on O, watches cartoons, and throws tantrums.  Also it's impossible for me to put them down for naps at the same time, so the only way I could get them to sleep was if one of the two oldest kids was around to watch the non-napping little one; if they weren't around I would just have to put up with difficult, overtired kids.

My power went out Wednesday night - apparently because my neighbors and I were all using too much electricity at the same time, although I wasn't using that much - and I was not able to get it back until Friday evening.  I ended up sleeping at the family's house Wednesday and sleeping here in the cold Thursday.  It was a very bad end to an extremely frustrating week.

They're still off from school tomorrow but O will go to daycare and M has a class trip thing in the afternoon so I will be better off.  Tuesday I'm taking the two oldest ones to Disney, yay!

Preliminary reports from Masterchef show that J is not doing well at all.  The other kids pretty much are all children of chefs and the parents prepared the recipes.  They have a huge advantage over J, the poor thing.  Also he both cut his finger and dropped a pan of foie gras on himself, burning his hand, all on the first day!  I got a tentative report of what place he came in but I won't say until it airs.

Lastly, Aurelien visited my apartment for the first time today and spent more than five minutes just laughing at it.  He says it should be advertised as an apartment specifically designed for midgets.

Worst week ever

For a few reasons, but for now I'll just say my power has been out for over a day now for no apparent reason. No idea when it will be back. I'm lucky it suddenly got about 10 degrees warmer!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Classy lingerie

I had a request for the rest of the Bon Marche windows.  The last ones I took were in the late afternoon and they came out bad so today I tried in the morning.  These might be worse.  Maybe I'll try nighttime later?  I think they light up the windows.  Anyway, here they are, sorry about the awful glare and the weird angles - if I took them head on the glare would have been much worse, but it makes it so that some of the legs don't align properly!

Okay I edited this because most of the nighttime pictures came out better, so I've replaced some.

Note the watch on the above too!

I like that they added the ends of her hair to this one.

If it's loudly sung and in a foreign tongue..

I haven't really had much to write about recently, so I'm sorry for the lag between posts.  Mostly I've been running around to cooking classes and taking care of the baby, who is a little sick. 

This weekend I was very productive and got a bunch of things for the apartment that I really needed - and spent pretty much all of last month's pay in the process.  Sigh.  But!  I was able to get: more pillowcases, a sheet, and duvet cover (I only had one of each and since it's too cold to leave the windows open now they take forever to dry); another pillow; a throw blanket (again, too cold for me to just have a comforter!); an electric tea kettle; a spatula and flipper thing; two more bowls (I hated the ones that were here, they were huge and shallow) and a mug.  I also got a bunch of Christmas presents for my pack of nieces.  Yay!  I just need to get another big pot with a cover; a larger saute pan; if I can find a cheap one, a toaster oven; and maybe a drying rack.  Then I will really feel like I live here.

A few pictures from my wanderings.

First, J had a class at Le Notre, a very well-regarded restaurant/tea room based on the Champs Elysees.  It turns out that if he wins Masterchef he will get 5 days of classes there as part of his prize, so that's pretty cool.  Anyway, I've noticed that when people visit Paris everyone wants to "go to" the Champs Elysees but no one is sure what to do there.  It's just a long avenue with lots of designer shops and other expensive things.  If you walk the whole way it will take you from the Place de la Concorde (you might remember that from last time I was here - it used to be the home of the guillotine), past the president's residence, past the "Large Palace" and "Small Palace" (both built for Napoleon and they are now art museums), the shopping area, and finally you would end up at the Arc de Triomphe. 

This is what about half of the avenue is like - lined with trees, wide, lots of cars, not many buildings or anything to look at.  If I turned in the other direction you could see the beginning of the area with the shops.

Next - Bon Marche is well known for its creative and elaborate window displays that change about every month or so.  The newest ones, for their lingerie, amuse me: they took lots of very famous paintings of naked ladies and put lingerie on them.  I only took pictures of the last two, but there are many other famous paintings done up in this manner, like Botticelli's Birth of Venus.  Sorry about the glare, I couldn't really get any shots without it.

This is mostly for Kerry, since she is both awesome and a dedicated reader.  I thought you might like some pics of the opera house! 

I've been spending a lot of time at the Galeries Lafayette lately, and those are right behind the old opera house.  Today I took the long way and got some pics.  If anyone talks about the "Paris opera house" this is it.  Not the current building of the Paris opera, which is a modern monstrosity at the Place de la Bastille.  This is the Opera Garnier, finished in 1875, and where the Paris opera was immediately before moving to the Bastille in 1989.  It was without a doubt THE place to set fashion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - rich bourgeois came to see and be seen and whatever the most fashionable ladies wore to the opera would appear later as the new fads within a few weeks.  The French onion soup that is so famous?  It's said to have been created for people coming back at 2 and 3am after the opera and looking for something to eat in the area - restaurants were out of most things by that time of night so scrounged around and created the soup.  I don't know if that's true.

Of course, it also housed the most famous and renowned opera company in the world at that point, and it is the setting of the novel and musical Phantom of the Opera.  Comparisons: in 1896 a counterweight fell off the giant center chandelier and killed someone (though the 6 ton chandelier itself apparently did not fall); the building really was constructed on an underground lake; and during renovations they supposedly did find some very strange things in the vaults, though I can't really find out what.

It's huge.  The side views were attempting to show that but it's hard to get good pictures while in the crowds of this area.

Now it is only used by the ballet contingent of the Paris Opera, but it also is home to Paris' opera library and they run tours.  I will do a tour at some point because the outside is really nothing to the crazy opulence of the inside.  Not so much "darkness deep as hell." 

Bienvenue!

Mini post!

I occasionally peruse the blog traffic statistics.  Mostly it's kind of depressing because not that many people read here, but hey, sometimes it's entertaining!

A couple of weeks ago I got 18 hits in one day from the Netherlands.  Cool!  Except they must not have liked what they saw since they never came back.  :(

Other interesting countries recently have included Russia, Lithuania (this one comes back it seems - and I don't think it's the one Lithuanian I sort of know since I'm pretty sure he's in London?), Georgia, Denmark, India, and...Saudi Arabia.  Hm.  Okay.  Mostly these people never come back so I assume they're random visitors.  But, hello, if you're out there!

Also it makes me nerdily happy to see the occasional visitor coming in from Googling historical stuff.  Last week someone found me while looking up stuff on the Commune of Paris.  I hope you got some decent information!

Masterchef

First - thanks to everyone who makes an effort to comment and/or give me feedback!  It's no fun feeling like I'm talking to an echo chamber so I really like hearing from people.  :)

Second - I am pretty much better from being sick this weekend.  The cold is nearly gone and the stomach thing went away on Sunday.  I still can't eat a lot of things though, which is annoying.

Okay, main post.

As I've mentioned before, J, the 10 year old boy of the family I work for, is very into cooking.  He had taken some cooking classes here and there before I started and when he first met me the first thing he wanted to do was make me a crepe.  When the mother and I are busy around the house and/or taking the other kids places we can always count on J to make dinner just fine on his own - I think that's pretty great for a 10 year old, especially a boy (sad to say).

He also loves the show Masterchef, which is kind of the equivalent of Top Chef in the US - an elimination reality show type thing with weekly challenges where the competitors have to make certain dishes with specific ingredients or create their own dish, things like that.  In August J applied to be a contestant on Masterchef Junior, they interviewed him shortly after, and accepted him.

Ten French kids, ages 9-13, will compete over next week's vacation (French schools have all next week off for Toussaint - All Saints' Day) to gain the title of Masterchef, Jr.  I have no clue what they win other than bragging rights.  J is, of course, super excited and nervous.  That's also why he's been taking so many cooking classes lately, to get experience cooking diverse things in a professional setting and limited time.  I think it will air sometime around Christmas, as one of their challenges will be to create a Christmas-themed dish.

One of the parts involved in the show is a visit to each contestant's home to film them cooking their favorite dish and to interview them and their family.  J was the first kid to get a visit, and it happened a few weeks ago on a Wednesday, while he was off from school. 

The whole family was worked up, of course, and there was an enormous amount of bustling about, cleaning, equivocating about outfits, and fretting about keeping the little ones quiet during filming.  Since I was not going to be filmed I was assigned to entertain and shush M, who was going out of her mind with excitement and tiredness, and baby O, who didn't care about the crew but definitely picked up on the atmosphere. 

Neither kid got their nap that day so by the end of the filming session, around 6:30pm, they were both nightmares.  Early in the day M spent almost two hours staring out the window and running, shrieking, to J each time a car pulled up, saying that the crew had arrived.  The poor boy was already terribly stressed and this did nothing to help.  M knew she couldn't really talk to the crew but was determined to be as cute and charming as possible.  She drew pictures for each of them and won all their hearts.  I must say, I wish I had a film crew there every day since it seems to put her on her best behavior.  When I took her to the park with O, though, she was terrible!  He really wanted to sleep, and he would have if she didn't keep poking and pinching him, yelling in his ear, and trying to take off his shoes while he sat in the stroller.  We had to get out of the house for a bit - firstly, to try to make O sleep, but secondly because they had to interview the mother for the show.  Meanwhile D, 14, was plotting about how to work her desire to be an actress into the interview about J.  Sigh.

Anyway, they spent a long time in the kitchen filming J as he made a cheesecake (of course not the cheesecake they eventually ate for the cameras, which was made the night before and had to chill).  After the individual interviews they moved into the dining room where they staged a scene of J presenting the cheesecake to the whole family (I've never once seen everyone in the family eat together) while they made enthusiastic comments about his cooking abilities.  Even little O cooperated, demanding more after the piece he shared with his mother was gone.  M made some hilariously overacted "mmmmm!" noises and faces.  I got some afterwards and I will agree it was delicious.

Since I wasn't around or shut up with the little ones during most of the filming I don't really know what kinds of things they discussed on camera.  The crew was very nice, though, and I talked with them some between "scenes."  They suggested perhaps I could be in the eating scene but I really did not want to do that.

It was an exciting day for everyone, but pretty exhausting.  I think, though, that since they've come J has mellowed a little, becoming more excited than stressed about the whole thing, as he was before.  Now that the actual challenges are coming up, though, he's getting stressed again.

He will have three challenges to complete: one is just making a dish from a set recipe - something to do with scallops I think; the second is to create a dish using all of a list of ingredients, the main one being eggs; and the third is to create a Christmas-themed dish using their choice of a long list of things.  I have the descriptions and ingredient lists of all the challenges and if anyone is a cook and interested in helping young J become the next Masterchef Jr he could use some creative ideas about what to make.  PLEASE feel free to email me about it if the spirit moves you!

Sick!

I'm sick again (I was the week before I got my internet back too).  Baby O had a cold earlier in the week and I came down with it Thursday/Friday.  It's just your standard cold but the congestion was making me nauseous - as it often does - so I didn't think much of it when I threw up...the first time.

Then I continued to throw up, almost every hour since about 5am today.  I'm pretty sure I have food poisoning on top of my cold at the moment.

If you read my mother's comment on an earlier post, about how food regulations are much more lax here, you might surmise I got it from one of the specialty shops here that have handmade stuff all the time.  But no!  The only thing that could have done it (the only thing I ate within 9ish hours of starting to vomit) came from Franprix, one of the main supermarkets in Paris.  Go figure.

Oh and PS - I hit my head hard on the beam exactly as I predicted I would a couple of months ago: running to the bathroom to puke in the middle of the night.  I am psychic!  Or I just know my stupid propensity for puking.