Tomorrow marks 12 weeks here in Paris, which means that I'm one week away from tying my record of longest consecutive time spent outside the United States!
Since my family left last Sunday, I've been back in the academic grind. Unlike at home where the majority of school work is just reading for class up until exams begin in December, here the assignments I have for my classes - only one of which has an exam - have kept me busy throughout the semester but will make November the tough month for me. I've got about 60 pages worth of papers to write in the next few weeks; fortunately, these are all in English! It's going to be a challenge to get all of this done without my usual carrel in the law library at home, but I'll be very glad to reach December and have only the one exam in front of me.
Still, I've had quite a lot of fun over the last several days. (Today is a national holiday in remembrance of the end of World War I, similar to Veterans' Day in the US, so the three-day weekend has helped!) On Thursday night a group of us Americans (plus a Swiss and French-British friend) gathered in a friend's apartment to do a wine tasting. One of the girls in my program is incredibly knowledgeable about wine and actually competed in a wine tasting competition last year, and we've all decided that we want to finish the year knowing as much about wine as she does. Armed with some aroma/flavor charts and guided notes, we worked our way through a number of rieslings and pinot noirs, with much sniffing and sipping in search of those subtle details that tell you the story of a wine. We hope to make this a regular event!
Friday night I met up with a new American friend who is working in Paris for six months. She had heard about a bar in the 12th arrondisement called Le Calbar where the bartenders wear boxers rather than pants, so obviously we had to go check this out. It's about 10 minutes east of the wild and crazy area around Place de la Bastille, and though it's on a quiet street, this bar is full of both people and energy. As is the case in all of the specialty cocktail bars I've visited here, the bartenders view themselves (rightfully so) as artists. You simply wouldn't order a vodka soda or a gin and tonic in a cocktail bar in Paris. Instead, you have options like "the Single": whisky with spicy syrup, fresh mint and raspberry, and pear nectar. We also couldn't pass up the "Surprise Me," which is exactly what it sounds like. The bartender asked us if we wanted sweet, savory, or spicy; we went with spicy and got something with a very pleasant, gingery heat. We also witnessed drinks that were set on fire and/or that contained unidentifiable ingredients from mysterious, unlabeled bottles. It was a bit like watching a witch put together a potion! Despite this haute level of alcoholic artistry, the bartenders there (as at the other cocktail bars I've visited) were very friendly - much more so than in most typical American bars, which is all the more impressive since a) this is Paris and b) these places are always crazy busy. Oh, and yes, the bartenders were wearing boxers (along with collared shirts, bow ties, and high-top sneakers). :)
We wandered back towards Place de la Bastille around 11:30. Bastille, if I haven't mentioned this before, is the clubbing district of Paris. (What a change from when it housed the famous prison back when the Revolution began!) We just picked a street and random and joined the throng. This particular street turned out to have bars and clubs that shared a Spanish/Latin/Cuban theme. We weren't dressed for clubbing (plus I'm really too old for that to be my thing anymore, at least not on a regular basis), so we just walked along. This was a fairly small street, and everyone was walking in the road, so imagine the shock when my friend suddenly pulled my shoulder about five seconds before a speeding car would have slammed into us (which apparently would have been no problem at all for the two drivers, who seemed to find our expressions, words, and hand gestures entertaining). At that point we decided to backtrack to a less crazy street where we'd seen an Irish pub, because... why not? Apparently all of the bars and restaurants in this area turn into clubs at night; we walked into the pub to some very welcome music from our late high school/college years and had a very nice time dancing in that casual atmosphere. Note that this Irish pub continued the surprising trend among Paris bars of offering caipirinhas. Brazilian cocktails in an Irish pub, now that's globalization for you!
On Saturday night one of my friends invited me to be her plus one to a small dinner with two of her French friends and a couple they knew. We met her two friends at one's apartment and had some very nice wine before heading over to the restaurant. Our conversation was all in French, so I didn't contribute that much, but I did enjoy listening to the two guys, who spoke very quickly but whom I was able to understand, which is always a small triumph. Once we got to the restaurant, the conversation switched back to English since one of the other people didn't speak French. Dinner was delicious (pizza, approved by the two Italians in our group) but ended fairly early, so my friend and I found ourselves with nothing else to do at 9:30 on Saturday night. We decided to go back to one of our favorite cocktail bars (the Prescription Cocktail Club) and that this time we would speak to each other in French to see if that impacted our interactions with people.
It really is amazing how different one can feel while speaking another language. I went on a date with a French lawyer a few weeks ago and survived a three-hour conversation entirely in French (I am still proud of this!), but I find it very hard to convey personality when speaking French because I have to focus so much on putting together the words and pronouncing them correctly. It's much easier to speak French to a non-native speaker because I am less focused on accuracy and generally less self-conscious about the whole thing. So, although I'd been fairly quiet during our pre-dinner wine, I was able to keep up a steady conversation with my friend while at the bar. Ironically, we had decided to speak French in the hopes that some French men would approach us (after realizing we were not typical Americans, or Americans at all!), but just before we left, the three Americans who'd been sitting behind us and speaking in English the whole time were the ones who attracted the interest of a couple of French guys who'd been standing nearby! Go figure. At least it was good practice!
On Sunday morning one of my other friends trekked out to the Bois du Boulogne to run with me. The Bois du Boulogne is a massive park on the southwestern edge of the city; it's on the same side of the river as my apartment, but I swear it feels like the furthest I've traveled within Paris since I arrived. It takes three metro lines to get there, in about 45 minutes total! I'd wanted to check it out for a long time, not only because I'd read that it was a good place to run but also because a) it's sort of the Parisian equivalent of Central Park and b) it also shows up in The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langston notes the presence of many prostitutes as he and Sophie Neveu make their way through the park). Unfortunately for us and our running shoes, it had rained heavily the night before, transforming the mostly dirt trails into a series of interconnected puddles. There is something slightly satisfying about just giving up and then splashing and squelching obliviously through the mud, but it didn't make for a particularly easy run, especially since I hadn't run in about three weeks! There also weren't many useful signs to direct us, leaving us guessing about which of the many paths and turns we were meant to take in order to effect a loop around the perimeter. We did pass some beautiful scenery - the leaves have changed color, and the sky was sunny and blue; we could see the Eiffel Tower to the east, and the park has a series of lakes in addition to its woods. ("Bois" means "woods" or "forest.") I was too busy avoiding puddles to try to take pictures, unfortunately, but I'll make an effort to trek back there one more time before I leave to get some good photos. We did manage to do a 10K, but man was I a mess at the end!
I hope to be able to share some pictures in my next post. :) Bonne semaine! (Have a good week!)
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