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