I want to be Belgian

Which brings me to the next two check-marks on my facebook map.
When I got back from Tunis, Meagan was already in Paris waiting for me. She and I met a couple years ago on the internet on a soccer forum. About a month later, I drove up to Quincy, MA and picked her up. Instead of driving her into the woods and killing her with an axe, I took her to a Revs game. We did that all season. And now, a couple years later, we're traveling Europe together. Good thing I didn't own an axe back then!
After a couple of days in Paris, we hopped a train to Brussels. If I'd known how close it was, I'd have gone for a lunch before now. I could! It's less than an hour on the TGV and the city is little and easy to navigate. It's also suddenly one of my favorites ever visited. "Don't try to be cool here," warned a handy text box on the map our hostel supplied. "People are polite and won't smirk at your low-riders or your swagger, but they're having a good laugh at your expense on the inside."
The ideal in Brussels is to be chill.
I think a lot of people say that, but this is the first time I've really seen a whole city, a whole people show that off. Evidence is everywhere. Meagan and I can't so much as stop and look at a street sign without somebody stopping to offer directions in their friendly Belgian accents, but we see many people strolling at a leisurely pace down streets only to stop at the intersection, turn around, and stroll back in the direction they'd come as if they're thinking, "Right well, enough of that. How about another beer?"
Which brings me to the fact that the Belgians are HUGE foodies. It seems to be the only thing besides soccer that they are avidly concerned about, and everything from the mussels in vegetable broth that one eats standing at outdoor bars in pretty squares before dinner to the fries, which are generally accepted as the best in the world, are prepared with meticulous care.
Meagan and I didn't really notice because we were too full of beer.
Beer is everywhere and it is amazing. We met up with a group of Belgian hashers at the Delerium Bar, which has a beer menu with over 2,000 choices. I'm not making this up. Their menu looked like a phone book. EZ Over, their GM, explained that it was a favorite bar for them because the Brussels hashers have a degree-program based on the number of beers tasted. Two others, a really cute couple, smiled proudly and admitted they'd just gotten their Masters' in May.
This made reason 902 I want to live in Brussels for a while.
The ever-helpful and friendly Brussels hashers -- Belgians through and through -- were perfectly cheerful about helping Meagan and me get home after beer number 9, when I would have been perfectly happy sleeping in, say, a nearby pond.
Except for a very nice hotel de ville, Brussels doesn't really have must-see tourist landmarks per se. No gotheic cathedrals or ancient structures. Apparently in their typical Belgian "meh, whatever" attitude, Brussels inhabitants decked a number of nice buildings in the 70's because they were, you know, in the way or something. It's not uncommon to see neat art-nouveau houses next to dingy convenience stores here. Belgians really don't care if things are ugly, just like they don't care if people are stylin'. The result isn't graffiti and litter, it's little street markets everywhere and a complete lack of zoning. I rather like it.
Brussels also doesn't have much by way of art or museums, so we spent most of our days (pre-beer) walking and enjoying what the city is famous for... chocolate. I know you've had good chocolate. Godiva or Ghirardelli or Leonidas or Lark-you-don't-understand-there's-this-place- in-my-home-town-and-they-make-it-from-scratch-and-it-is-so-good, and I am telling you right now that you've never had chocolate if you've never been to Belgium.
Have I mentioned you should go to Belgium? I'm going back as soon as I can. This time I want to see Brugge. And buy more beer.

Lifeplan and an adventure in Tunisia

My God am I overdue for an update. If you only knew...

Relaxing with a bottle of wine from the hotel bar and sunburned a bit from Tunisian sun, I report! I suppose my emails of late have given an impression that these few months of my epistolary silence have been full of soul-searching and important decisions. First of all, I should say that this is FALSE. My summer job thus far has been to run a youth hostel, and time spent on enabling my future self to, you know, eat... has been squeezed in between piracy, laundry, and the occasional museum visit. 20 visitors since the end of May. That's a lot of people. More importantly, that's a lot of laundry. You know, when its wrapped in a bedsheet, carrying thirty pounds of your sodden clothes down the street to the dryer isn't as hard as you'd think.

So around a month ago I left from my last day of work. The computer Cheniere gave me tucked under my arm, I took the bus home, made myself a stiff G&T and sat down to consider my options. Among other things, I knew at that time : a) I wasn't ready to leave Paris and its blessedly cheap wine b) Cheniere had screwed up royally in my whole visa process c) no company in France was going to hire me without the visa and d) pillows are cheap at IKEA. So I decided that I'd focus on the latter point – the onslaught of visitors. In free time, I could brush up the resume, send some emails and buy plane tickets. ...Because I would never forgive myself for living in France on salary with all the budget airlines and not getting to a couple key countries. I've wanted to go to North Africa since I started taking French in middle school, and the Czech Republic with its family ties, extremely attractive soccer team and infamous nightclubs also beckoned.

So, to sum up, I have hosted ChristinaMattJimmySaraKaraJordanJonathanBlancheWoozySplinterEyeAliRebeccaPatrickPhilMagdaAlecandMeagan this summer. To recap? Heck, the fall would arrive before I finished the stories. Asleep in my twin-sized guest bed amongst IKEA's finest pillows have been a total anywhere between 1-6 depending on what movie is playing on Cheniere's finest computer screen facing us. But we didn't spend most evenings in front of a movie. No, these were more the bottle (or three) and music (or not) on the town kinds of guests. Adventures included gladiator afternoons at the Roman arena on my street, evenings singing on the Seine, many Your Mom jokes, cultural expeditions to the museums, chest thumping competitions (don't ask), less cultural expeditions to the discount wine rack at Champion, ever popular fondue, a couple of HHH adventures including a NAMING, and this one time (NEVER again) when I took Jonathan and Harry to the Egyptian exhibit at the Louvre and they attempted to use what they'd learned from Brown University's infamous EG 101 to decipher everything in the goddamn exhibit. Blanche and I finally dragged them out, but before we did, they did manage to find something that seemed to say, “Cannon's Mom.” I'm not making this up. (I also learned over the course of the visit that SplinterEye's “real” name is Harry. Who knew?)*

>>>

Ok, so I started this email a week ago. It's pretty blathery, so I'll recap. I'm going to stay in France until roughly next spring, living off of my severance package and a bartending gig and spending whatever is left over traveling. This means that you, faithful Life Distribution List, are probably only going to get the odd travel blog or maybe a “Hey I got a job!” kind of an email. If you want off the list, now's your chance. I won't be offended.

If you are looking for a good place to stop reading, this is it. The rest is only BRILLIANT and WITTY and INSIGHTFUL commentary about INTERESTING and EXOTIC locations.

Tunisia

The first thing that you notice about Tunisia is that it is hot. Like, the air-conditioned airplane touches down and you think, “Oh man it's gonna suck when they open that door” kind of hot. Almost all of Tunisia is a massive Death-by-August, Lawrence of Arabia kind of desert, except for the only part of the country that I actually saw. Despite the air, which is clearly 110° dry desert air, grass and tress and lush lawns and botanical gardens all grow happily along a green coast-line in complete defiance, as far as I can tell, of all known laws of climate and botany.

As far as the people, warmth is something different entirely. Everyone at my hotel and the majority of the people I buy water bottles from are terse and rude to me. This is hard for me to stomach because a) I hate it when people don't like me and really try to avoid that, and b) I am buying a lot of water bottles. I carry giant, awkward 2 litre things around with me everywhere and finish them within an hour and have to go buy another. It is SO hot and so dry that I go for stretches of like 36 hours without having to pee. Which is very weird for me. My cab-driver, on the other hand, is so talkative and eager to show and share Tunisia, that I hire him to show me around the old city and even let him rip me off a bit when he takes me to the airport. (That was an “on the other hand” to the rude Tunisians, not that bit about bathrooms.) Najla's family too is gracious and friendly almost to a fault as I try to sneak into Najla's pocket when she's not looking, the 11 dinars they bartered down for a soccer jersey I wanted.

I spent a day and a half with Team Jamoussi, wandering through covered medinas where Mariam helped me act more Arabic so that I'd stop screwing up their bartering abilities, through smaller cities and towns around Tunis with their ornate bright blue doors, blinding against the whitewash of the walls, and through the ruins of old Carthage.

Guide: Here are some Phoenician ruins. Then the Romans destroyed them. Here are some Roman ruins. Then they were destroyed. Here are Byzantine ruins. Then they were destroyed. And there are the Tunisian houses!

Lucy: (to Anouar) So be VERY careful.

This left me a couple days to tool around by myself, which is VERY STRONGLY RECOMMENDED AGAINST IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND MAYBE EVEN AN ITALLICS by my guidebook. It's not dangerous, exactly, the guidebook hastens to add, just... there aren't many women who walk by themselves here, and men are much more forward in North Africa.

I raise an eyebrow. “Look, guidebook,” I say, “I live in Paris. I've been clubbing in ROME for Chrissakes. I can handle forward guys.”

Guidebook is offended and hides under a table so that I will not be able to find him the next day and will almost certainly get lost without his handy map.

Guidebook also recommends that I dress conservatively, but since it is 110°, jeans would mean death, so it's big, baggy calf-length pants and a black zip-up shirt with the sleeves cut off but that still covers my shoulders. Men ARE forward, but they aren't gross, and it's kind of fun to hear them guess where I'm from if I don't respond when they speak French to me. Based on my tally, I look Portuguese more than anything else. Who knew? Rob, I think, will get a kick out of this.

Women do not talk to me, but they smile and look at me with great curiosity as I tramp by in my dykie outfits, lugging my awkward water bottle and clearly very lost. Not too many women wear the head-scarf in Tunis – 30% maybe? That's more than it used to be, according to Najla because it's currently... in style.

I'd buy it. As I walked down to my hotel one night from a festival in Sidi-Bou Saīd, I passed two girls in black skirt-top outfits. One was wearing a bright yellow hijab that matched perfectly the collar on her tank-top, the cuff on her skirt, and her heels. The other girl had the same outfit in red. To my eye, it made them look a little like crayons, but not necessarily in an unsexy way... which I thought was the whole point.

Mum was really curious about the food when we spoke, and I'm sure I made up something, but the truth is that I only ate one “Tunisian” meal while there. Mariam explained to me that everyone in Tunis looses weight during the summer because on days where 120° isn't uncommon, the only thing you can imagine stomaching is fruit, ice cream, and ohmygodIneedanotherwaterbottle. This isn't necessarily bad as the fruit is AMAZING. I bought a peach and a bag of figs from a vendor in an orchard, and that fruit was so good that if it game me worms, I'd still call it worth it.

I say “if” because as I finish this, I am currently on a train from Amsterdam back to Paris, and I've had stomach problems since we got to Belgium 5 days ago...

*Grown-ups and others unfamiliar with my stint as a pirate in college, most of us go by our pirate-names and don't really learn until later what our compatriot's real names are. This drives my less nerdy friends crazy. “Your name,” they yell at my answering machine, “is LUCY! Get a life! Get a job!” **

** Ok, most of the time that last bit is somebody else entirely leaving me voicemails.

Part 4: Just That, Said the Fox

First off, a big ol' hallo to all YOU new folks on the mailing list! To you and to people like Grandma (hi Grandma!), here's some forewarning : I'm irreverent and use bad words in this email. But I remain readable! Evan Smith, I'm going to make fun of you in this edition just 'cuz I know you won't read it! Ha ha!
Anyway... Jeeeeeez, months, Walker. It's been MONTHS since we last heard from you! "We thought you were dead, killed in a cage fight in Bangkok!" cry the pessimists among you. "We figured you'd run away with a heart-shatteringly beautiful gypsy with big earrings and could now be found dancing under the shadow of Notre Dame with a goat named Jezebel!" cry the optimists. (All gypsies should own a goat, don't you think? It's bad enough that in France they ruin the bonfire and swirly skirt image by hawking and stealing and generally being a real pain anywhere there's a hope at ripping off a tourist in this city. They should at least own a goat.) No I'm very much alive, having survived Thailand, and I'm still swearing under my breath at the stinking goatless gypsies... and do apologize for my long absence. Credit it to the elephant in the room.
"What is with the animal metaphors?" you hapless mailing distribution list must be wondering. But honestly, isn't that a great idiom in the English language? The Elephant in the Room. The unspeakable subject that is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore. "Elephant in the Room" would be a great name for an emo band. Anyway, there was this unfortunate elephant in the room for ME of late. i could send around the email that was unbearably funny in which i whined about all the blisters I'm getting from running about with beer in my shoes or i could wax poetic about the impossibly beautiful rainbowed reflections of the royal palace in Thailand upon the strange whitewash of the army barracks next door. but the truth is, i've got a lot on my mind that would be really weird to talk around, and as it was, i wasn't allowed to talk about it. But now i am! guess what?! i'm losing my job!
the part of me that is a little too proud hastens to add that they're not firing ME exactly. they're closing the Paris office, and there is no way in hell this little pirate is going back to Houston. i don't feel like discussing the blood-soaked details, but basically my company found itself in a situation that many noted economists and high-ranking energy analysts have described as, "royally fucked." a lot of stuff had to go, and that, unfortunately, included my bureau. there are upsides. i get a decent severance package, and this whole thing happened just in time for me to actually get my visa. so while i may get deported after all, that won't happen until one year from April 23. i have decent contacts and am more or less bilingual, so my job options seem... well, there's a reason to be optimistic. the downsides are obvious. i WOULD have really liked my job. also, in the subsequent hullabaloo in the Paris office, everyone has been stressed, short, and quick to stab each other in the back. i spent some time absolutely convinced that i was going to be completely screwed over (again!) by hr, receiving neither the somewhat comforting severance package of American employees nor the medical coverage and, you know, food and stuff that the French employees will get from the government. some of this has been resolved. what's left is a REALLY nasty aftertaste of corporate America. i knew i should have been a caveman.

right, enough of that. there are fun things too. i have gotten really into hashing. (new folks, look up the Hash House Harriers on wikipedia. meanwhile, a quick explanation : a social running group that involves tromping around in the woods, lots of yelling, and even more alcohol.) i am running at least one and often two hashes a week now. i hared my first one last weekend and went through the naming ceremony two weeks ago. this requires kneeling in the middle of a circle while the r.a. solemnly pronounces you by your new, incredibly embarrassing hash name while simultaneously pouring flour over your head. then everybody else sings a song and pours beer on you. the result is that you smell like a bakery, get really weird looks on the train back home and find yourself picking dough out of your hair up to 5 days later. and no, i will not tell you my hash name. you'll just have to WAIT and learn it when you go on a run with me. unless you are a close family member in which case, you will simply never know. get used to it.

the summer is rapidly approaching and with it come enough visitors to make me invest in a box-spring and stock my fridge with things besides mustard, vodka, and club soda nicked from my office. (this actually is all i have in my fridge right now. i would take a picture to prove it, but my camera is out of batteries.) IF you are coming to visit but have still not given me dates, i need them soon. i'm not pointing fingers unless your name starts with R and ends with Ebecca El-Saleh. [Shannon Bedo, you're not off the hook either.] my calendar follows at the end of this email.

i have an adorable apartment in the Latin Quarter. i even have the ability for a landline, but since i don't have a telephone yet, i'm not going to give you the number. for now, my new address is : 33 rue Monge/Paris 75005/France. my apartment is more or less empty of the 8 billion cardboard boxes it had about 10 days ago and i'm intent on making it mine. i have put things on the walls, and it now has things as interesting and diverse as a huge hovering ufo-looking floorlamp that nearly killed me trying to get it from ikea to the 5th on the metro, a Chelsea towel set, and a freezer that reaches temperatures at which vodka actually freezes. i'm not making this up. i didn't even know that was possible. still need to buy : a telephone, fans for upcoming hot summer months without air conditionin, food.

if you miss me like mad, it's probably a good idea to send me love tomorrow before 10 pm. tomorrow, as you are doubtless aware, Chelsea takes on Manchester United in the Champions League finals. i intend to be loud, clad in blue, and rather obnoxious. if we win, i may be killed by rabid English hooligans. if we lose, i may have to kill myself. or go sulk for the subsequent couple YEARS. go play tag with a bullet train, Christiano Ronaldo, you whiner.

Love, Take Care, and On On!,

Lucy/Lark/Alouette/----

p.s. as PROMISED : when Evan blows his nose, i am constantly reminded of the cannon fire in the last 2 minutes of the 1812 Overture.

p.p.s. my schedule :
May 23 - June 1 : Lucy to RI for Commencement and Related Insanity
June 5 - 9 : She volunteers to put up 2 Jabberwoks as they travel through Paris on some official a-capella tour of wussy. Also of Europe. The Jabberwoks are an all-male fancy-shmancy a-capella group from Brown. We pirates used to use them for cannon fodder. They will never know what hit them.
June 14 - 17 : Jake visits from England! (June 16 : Fraternity party in Lucy's apartment)
End June : Tootles, Cheniere. Have a nice life.
June 21 - 27 : She goes to California to be with her family! And be in the Redwoods! Yay!
June 27-29 : Her friends get married and she and Pat get scared and thereby drunk! Yay!
July : Jonathan. Also, unemployed. There are not words enough.
Early July : Blanche and Alianza and Woozy and Lark and Cannon and maybe even Blackheart and Karlotta live in one apartment. This means a lot of hot, blond potentially single pirateness sharing a bed. I am, of course, talking about Woozy.
Either late July or Early August : She [and possibly J] jet off to Tunisia to bother Najla. Hi Najla!
August 4ish - 10ish : Alec! Insanity Ensues!
September sometime or maybe October : Daphne will stay in exchange for "washing your floor." Whatever that means!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of summer I am expecting.

p.p.p.s. i am going to backlog old distributions on blogspot : http://corsaireaparis.blogspot.com . you new folks can find my past adventures there. you old folks can stop asking me for that funny story where i told off the Parisian rugby fan.

p.p.p.p.s. I hope Butterbur sends this probptly. A worthy man, but his memory is like a lumber-room : thing wanted always buried. If he forgets, I shall roast him. (Kudos to those of you who get the reference. Without google.)

Part 3: l'aventure, 3/3/08

Every reply I have gotten to these has fueled my epistolary ego a bit, and those of you who have actually emailed ASKING FOR ANOTHER UPDATE... ah, such endulgence, sweeter than chocolate. (It isn't of course, as I still have 3 weeks of Lent to go.) Now, I'm sure you're all reading the title of this email and thinking the same thing.

"Where does a young professional expect to find ADVENTURE in a lifestyle of stockings and shoulder-pads? well any of you who have known me for any amount of time know that adventure generally has no problem finding me, and I'm used to near brushes with things like lost shoes and hypothermia.

i actually didn't manage to do my usual Sunday adventure today because on Thursday's edition, i cracked a rib. don't panic, Mom, if it were bad i would have called you by now. i was fencing and just got SLAMMED in this one bout. (and since i know at least Pat is wondering this, no i didn't win it. i did get a toe-touch though.) i've gotten whacked pretty badly fencing before, but this was the first time i woke up the next day and realized it hurt to inhale deeply. i, of course, dealt with this in my usual mature, stoic fashion. namely, complaining loudly and bitterly to anyone who will listen while simultaneously refusing to do anything even slightly inconvenient to change the situation. (the practice is founded on a complicated and systematic prioritizing mechanism that exists only in Lucy's brain and cannot really be explained to anyone else. in fact, I'll probably change the subject and start talking about figs.) for other evidence of such action, please see the chapters of my life entitled Lucy Runs With Shinsplints or In Which She Decides "Calibration" is for Wusses. on Friday i went over to Fariba's for dinner as she'd invited over a bunch of fencers. Fariba also lives on the island, but the whole of my apartment can basically fit into her kitchen. for serious, it is the most beautiful living space i have seen in this city. also cool: shoes are forbidden; she keeps spare slippers by the door for house-guests. Fariba is among the kindest person i've ever met. she took me out for dinner my first week here and lends me her puppy whenever I need some dog-walking time and periodically calls me up to make sure i'm doing ok in this great big city all by myself… and is, quite obviously, not French. anyway, one of her guests is a doctor and another is Christophe, the fencer responsible for my current condition. i am politely and sweetly whining to Christophe when Dr Guy (his name is not Guy. I have no idea what his name is) says with some concern, "where was the hit?" and proceeds with an impromptu medical exam. after some minutes of "Does this hurt?" testing (of the sort a doctor can perform while you are all standing around awkwardly in fluffy slippers in somebody's living room) he says that he is pretty sure the rib is cracked, but not broken. ribs heal, so i don't need to worry, but, he says, i should be careful running outside because shallow breathing, especially in cold weather, can cause pnemonia.

"Look," I say quite frustrated by the whole situation. "It's bad enough that the day before I have to move everything i own up four flights of stairs, i injure myself to the point where putting my left arm through a jacket sleeve hurts and blowing my nose is next to impossible... now i have to worry about diseases scary enough to warrent three syllables and a silent P?" there is, of course, an upside to this. fencing SOUNDS pretty cool to your average american. i mean, if i tell somebody my sport is sword-fighting, your average conversationalist's mind will immediately jump to Errol Flynn swinging majestically from a chandelier with a rapier in his teeth. once you've actually seen regular fencing, with its stupid outfits and whiny participants and lots of stopping, you realize it's actually kind of a prissy sport. but you know what? i got HIT WITH A SWORD HARD ENOUGH TO CRACK A BONE. yes, i AM a bad-ass. still, it meant i had to skip my usual weekend adventure.

you're probably getting sick of my referring to it like that, so i'll start talking about hashing now. i recommend wikipedia for those curious, but basically, this is how it works at HHH Sans Clue (because we run in the woods around St. Cloud. get it?) a couple of people, the "hares" lay out a track in flour. the "hounds," i.e. the runners, meet up at a given starting point and follow the flour trail. so that all athletic abilities stay together, there are often obligatory meet-up points, and false trails (everyone has to wait for the slower runners at a given point and then branch off in multiple directions, looking for the real trail). there are also Beer Stops. if you find one blot of flour, you might be on the right track. you then yell "On One!" so that the rest of the hounds know you might have found the trail. "On two!" if you've found two blots. "On on!" means three blots, i.e. the real trail, and all the hounds go yelping along in the direction you've found yelling "On on!" as they go. at the end of the hash we have a Circle. this involves things like beer, dirty songs, beer, and pouring beer over the heads of "virgins," i.e. new hashers.

all i can say is that it is an extracurricular that involves a) exercise b) adventure c) yelling and d) beer. in other words it is the best thing ever.

i didn't go hashing this weekend because, frankly, pneumonia really doesn't fit into my whole plan to go to Asia this week. nor is going to a doctor. (you know what's really delicious in France? Figs. For serious. Add that to the list of Things that Taste Better in France...which includes just about everything except domestic beer...which is kind of cheating since everyone in France drinks Belgian, which is practically French anyway.) i did wrap a scarf around my nose and a bicycle lock around the chariot (whom I have named, in continuation of my tradition of naming my vehicles after celebrated ships, "The Golden Vanity") and wandered all over the 1^st and 2^nd arrondissements. adventure this weekend meant finding a Laundromat.

see, I can be responsible in the face of injury. this is possibly my first real lesson on the grown-up side of things. sometimes "adventure" has to be redefined a bit. next week I'll even know that the little packet of soap my landlady left me was actually meant for the dishwasher.

Love and Figs,

L

Part 2, le weekend, February 11

Salut tous,
"The Weekend," you say, "but I want to hear about everything!" Well the truth is mes amis, I don't have anything even remotely resembling a life during the week here. I have never worked so hard in my LIFE; I'm actually getting up and going to the gym in the mornings because chances are about 50-50 that it'll be closed by the time I leave the office. Not very French, but then again, neither am I.
If any of you haven't heard about my ongoing "battle royale" with HR in my company, I'll gladly rant about it to you, but I'm not going to take up any space with that here.
Anyways, by the time the weekend rolls around, I am damn ready for it. I am selecting this particular weekend to describe to you because it was a) full of once-in-a-lifetimes b) pretty standard and c) awesome.
I didn't get out until about 9 pm on Friday (working 11 or 12 hours a day is rough. Working 11 or 12 hours on a Friday sucks.) which was guilt-inducing because I was supposed to meet Ken around 8 to go out. Ken is fantastic. He is an American who fences at the same salle that I do. He's thirty-something, and a Fulbright scholar studying the perception of Time and The Hour in the evolution of Human Thought particularly during the Middle Ages. When he was my age, he was a gothy-inclined vegetarian recovering-SCA dork, which makes for fun conversations. (As a grown-up, he's a better fencer than I, but my French is better.)

Anyway, Ken and I had Thai food in the 11th around the original Chinatown and then bar-hopped through little Vietnamese-owned local bars where family members of the bartenders brought left-overs from local restaurants where they were employed, through hot-shot British bars where I saw no less than 3 fights break out, and through young French bars where one bartender were so impressed by my accent, I got a free shot of whiskey. (I gave myself away as a foreigner because I didn't know how to say "straight up" in French. Helas.)
Anyway, Ken and I made a mad dash and caught the last Metro at a quarter to 2 am to head towards our respective neighborhoods. Since I had to make a connection, I missed my last ride home and strolled instead through a boisterous Marais evening. I wandered home and wondered why so many Irish guys seemed to congregate in the Marais in one night...
The next morning I woke up late and ate applesauce and chatted with my brother on Skype and bought fruit at the little market that appears in a square not far from me every Saturday (all normal). I have purchased one of those... uh oh, Franglais moment. So the French grocery shop with these rolling things that are somewhere between a grocery cart and a suitcase because nobody has a car here. They look like this: http://www.lost-cow-city.com/images/cow-parade-vache-caddy-course-cadl.jpg but they aren't usually covered with cows. Mine is leopard-print, actually. Found it on sale at BHV. Honestly. I didn't just buy it because it looks like I went hunting in the Amazon so that I could buy cabbage on Saturday mornings in Paris. Anyway, in French, they're called "chariots," ("shah-*guttural -noise*ree-oh") but there's no real English equivalent. I told Jonathan on the phone that I'd bought my first "rolling food bag" and he laughed at me for a good 2 minutes. I think I'll stick with "chariot." It sounds epic, doesn't it? Maybe I'll glue gladiator figures all over it or something. Then whenever I go grocery shopping I'll take my chariot. Heh, I crack myself up.

Anyway, the markets here are lovely. Every time I've been to Paris, I've fallen in love with the arrondisement where I live because of the nice people who sell me fresh vegetables or home-made pasta or whatever out of their stands on the weekends. The little market in the Marais is no different. Also, I had the most amazing strawberries ever.

In the afternoon I went to the Musée d'Orsay. It's been a while since I went to museums by myself with any regularity (or to a museum with any regularity for that matter) and I had a really good time. I suppose when you live in Paris, you stop going to the museums... it's just something you do when you visit Paris, but they make me happy and inspired to go home and get pencil led all over my clothing again. But yes, the museum was full of foreigners speaking English. Odd, I thought, that most of them appeared to be Irish.

Now, as some of you are doubtless aware, (and by "some of you," of course I mean "Ellen") the Six Nation Rugby tournament is currently underway, and this weekend brought the Irish team, and apparently also the entire population of Ireland, across the channel for a match against les Bleus. I was NOT aware, but I figured it out pretty quickly, and suddenly the bar fights on Friday made more sense. While I was in the metro to go home from the museum, I watched a crowd of about 40 Blue-White-Red striped young teenagers eagerly waiting for the train to the stadium and BOOing enthusiastically every passing hapless group of green-white-orange striped people who had the misfortune of choosing this stop to catch the train. They launched into a rousing chorus of "La Marseillaise" and got all 300 people on the platform singing. It was pretty cool, though I know I'm supposed to root Green.

Even though I don't understand rugby, I went to a bar to watch a bit. As luck would have it, I WAS wearing green, but since it wasn't an actual Irish jersey or anything, I figured it would be ok. I still don't understand rugby, but I did have an interesting conversation. The guy behind me at the bar said to his friend (in French, assuming I wouldn't understand him) "Every time we play Ireland, they bring their [word meaning "women" that I'm not going to use in an email going to my grandmother] over with them but leave them in our bars while they go to the stadium."

I turned around, smiled sweetly and said in perfect French, "Don't worry yourself, I root for South Africa and have no vested interest in this match."

It was the best. moment. ever. The guy turned an odd shade of purple, and I turned back to the tv before he recovered. I also snuck out at half-time just in case he tried to apologize or something. I know jack about rugby and couldn't name a South African player if my life depended on it.

[I'm currently at work, and I write in between moments when I'm waiting for my computer to upload files from the server in Texas. Since this is getting long, I'm going to skim the rest of the weekend.]

Celia, the assistant at the Paris office, and I went out on Saturday night for food and drink at the Lizard Lounge, a hot spot in the Marais known for its chic clientèle and its cocktails that cost approximately what you might expect to pay for, say, a small car. Celia was right, though, the atmosphere was pretty cool.

On Sunday, I went to the gym. The French, in general, don't exercise. There are gyms, but not many. Everyone inside, of course, is ridiculously gorgeous. It's intimidating, and I generally keep to myself. That is also very un-French, as most people work out in big capoeira or step or kick-boxing classes with pounding music and lots of yelling and lots of black spandex. Sunday, the "espace cardio" was closed for renovations. Since I didn't have the time to go to a different location or anything, I figured I might as well try one of their classes. Long story short- Techno Tai-Bo, I think, just isn't my thing.

Sunday afternoon, I went to a Fulbright party near Tolbiac to watch the giant Chinese New Year's parade. I took a lot of pictures, but otherwise not too much to say about it. It was a parade. Fireworks are still legal in Paris. I did meet a really fun chick named Amélie with whom I had a rollicking conversation about politics. She's more "gauchiste" than I! She has promised to introduce me to "real Parisians" in the future. Hope that works out; she was cool and thought my French was good.

I have a bunch of pictures, which you can go look at here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=iiulkpe.7k9z3lga&x=0&y=1rh042 . I've put some of my favorites on facebook, but there are more at this site. Just... leave me comments ok? I feel out of touch enough as it is!

Much love! Only 41 days left of Lent!

Lucy/Lark/Alouette

Part 1 : le devoir, January 16

Salut tout le monde,
So I cut my distribution list down to you guys. Knocked out the old professors and distant fraternity relations. You're either somebody I really care about or somebody who I really want to visit me. Either way, clearly I like you. That said, if you're not interested in this kind of an email, I won't be offended if you want off the list. I'll probably send these little trinkets every month or so.
Anyway, I made it to Paris! Now, a day later, I've gone so far as to make it to work! Here's a super-quick overview of my first workday in Paris:

- Didn't get in until 9.45 because the Metro was down. I still beat everyone else in the office in except the receptionist. No kidding. 10.15 before the next exec showed.
- I spent about 2 hours looking through the 900 cords in my office (Mine! I have my own office! With a window and high ceiling and closet full of computer cables!) for the single cord that would make the internet work. At 5 am Houston time, I called IT who told me just to go steal one from the conference room. Whatever. Now I have a computer.
- Went out for lunch with 4 colleagues (a "Bienvenue Lunch") (it means somebody else was paying) The highlight was Jean-Michel's "babar" (sp?) which was his dessert. The waitress brought him this nice-looking pastry and, i kid you not, a bottle of rum from which he could take as much as he wanted. This would never fly in the States. Now, I have a bartending license. I learned a little trick so that by repeating the unforgettable chorus to Ludacris's timeless classic "Move Bitch, Get Out the Way," I can pour more or less a perfect shot without measuring. Jean-Michel poured 3. 3. Then went back to work. I have a new hero.
- Worked until almost 8 pm because there's a War Conference in London tomorrow and people in 3 cities were asking me for stuff. Then I walked home since I'd been inside all day. Took a couple pictures of the Louvre, Invalides, l'hotel de Ville, and Notre Dame since they are ON MY WAY HOME.
- I needed tissue so I figured I'd go for a short run and stop by the convenience store on my island on the way back. I'm still recovering from a cold, so I thought I'd just run the perimeter of the two islands and call it a night. And then at the point of Isle de la Cite, I saw the top of the Eiffel Tower glittering. (Whitney, it still glitters every half-hour at night! Hooray!) Since I hadn't actually laid eyes on the thing since I got here, I thought I'd run a few extra blocks south to try to get a look at it. Naturally, I got wonderfully lost.
- At the end of my much longer run, I found my convenience store and thought I'd buy a bottle of red wine to knock myself out tonight, rather than take a sleeping pill. (No offense, Mum.) I learned that a) soy sauce is ridiculously expensive. Two really small bottles of soy sauce cost more than my bottle of (decent) wine, b) I still don't remember how to say "bottle-opener" in French, and c) despite the fact that half of the store was wine, there were 3 kinds of smoked salmon, 80 kinds of pasta and 16,000 kinds of cheese (this store was MADE for you and me Jonathan), AND one could purchase the complete, unabridged Proust from a special shelf in the back... convenience stores in France do not sell tissue.

Love, snuffles and red wine,

Lucy/Lark/Alouette