Tuesday, March 13, 2012



I’m sitting in Starbucks with thirty minutes to kill (read: pretend I don’t have real work) before babysitting and I thought I’d update a bit. Also I’m sitting next to this couple that must be on a first date or something, and it’s pretty hilarious. It’s an American girl and a french guy and they’re currently talking about their favorite colors. I kid you not. His is maroon (weird, right?) and hers is green. I keep thinking they’ve left because I don’t hear anything (my back is to them) but then I realize they’re just having a awkward quiet moment... isn’t it fun when you can look and laugh and say thank god that’s not me?? 


On this topic, one thing that is really different here than in the United States is the dating culture. French guys like to date. Honestly they love it! They’ll go mooney over you, ask you out to drinks, coffee, dinner etc, date you for a couple of months during which you’re their sun, their moon, their everything... And then move on, or it fizzles, or it can turn into something real (I'm not that much of a miser, I swear!) But the two month getting-to-know-you phase is much more formalized, you’re definitely seeing each other and not just “hooking up” - an idea that does not make very much sense to them in the first place, unless you are just a horndog looking for a petit d’amour pour la soirée. Whereas in the U.S. to be “hooking up” with someone can often indicate that same beginning period of a potential relationship, you would never casually say you’re dating someone! Goodness no! Facebook official usually waits a good 6-12 months until a relationship has been established. We certainly do not like to jump the gun in the U.S. While I don’t mind this “system” if you want to call it that, and dating/hooking up/getting to know someone never really follows any rules, I do enjoy getting to go on dates! Something about it feels very sweet, kind of old-fashioned, and usually you’re less drunk, or in an environment of copious drinking, than at a typical night out in college, at a house party. I don’t mean to glorify the french approach to dating, for its very easy to get trapped at a bar with a french man whispering sweet nothings into your ear until you physically have to remove him and watch him walk right up to the next girl and start in on her, but it is a very nice alternative. Grass is always greener. And maybe this does exist in the U.S. post-college?  I’ll just wrap this up and say that dates are gr8 and since you have a pre-ordained goodbye gesture (the bisous on the cheeks) you have an easy out for no kiss at the end.  And in €-strapped lives in paris, a free drink is always appreciated. I’m just glad that mine aren’t as bad as this one I’m listening in on. This guy just told his date that he “has total control of his brain” and then compared himself to the movie inception. Oh boy. Too far for the first, dontcha think?

Back to ma vie. It’s finally nice here!! 50 degrees and sunny today, I took off my coat from the heat for the first time in maybe three months - discounting Spain. I think the Winter Blues had everyone by the throat a little bit because all of my friends here seem just so much chippier! On that note, Summer fashion is quickly approaching and Spring fashion is underway - and just as I had my Winter Paris look down, too! Apparently I have to go buy a jean jacket, a jean shirt, and wear them together with a pair of jeans and big sunglasses. All the rage. I forget what I was going to talk about here, but I think it was along the lines of my babysitting yesterday. It was so cute and funny I thought it would make a nice little blog post. 

So I went to pick up Neal, age 11, and Julieanne, age 7, at school yesterday as I do every Monday and Tuesday at 4:30. This time, Neal wasn’t going to go to English class, just sat with me to wait for Julieannes, and so didn’t have any homework to do. When this happens it generally means Neal gets extremely bored, thinks its the end of the world and wanders around the American church as I follow behind begrudgingly - I’m usually perfectly content to just sit for an hour and watch all of the babies (for some reason there are always a million French babies and toddlers running around, it provides very nice entertainment). However this time I got out my french homework and started it - it was a preposition worksheet. Neal looks over my shoulder, reads the first line and goes, “that’s wrong” and then laughs. I whip the paper out of sight, cheeks red, and tell him to bug off  (we have a very fun relationship). But then I calm down, tell myself he’s only 11, and ask him to help me - why not? This is for another day, but I have developed a little bit too much pride in French, making it harder to progress since I hate making mistakes and blush furiously every time I do. I just oh-so-want to sound like a smart, quirky Parisian girl, and haven’t yet conceded that it’s hopeless. Anyways, what proceeded with Neal was a veritable French lesson, from the 11 year old in broken english to me. Not on the prepositions, Neal and I were struggling equally on this, but for some reason he started telling me about the passé simple. The passé simple is a french verb tense that does not have an equivalent in English and is pretty old-fashioned, so none of my French teachers ever taught it to me. However I do come across it a fair amount in French writing and it’s pretty frustrating to not even be able to identify the tense. Neal, very calmly and concisely, walked me through the endings of the passé simple, and explains why they are so strange and accidentally kind of funny. For example, the ‘pouvoir’ form in passé simple is “put-” so for the I form, ‘je’, you say, “je putes” which means, in regular verb form, “I stink”. We had a good laugh over this one and commiserated over the horrible inconsistencies of French grammar. Just a little moment that made me smile, and honestly helped me out a fair bit in my french comprehension. Then we moved on to a 45 minute conversation detailing every single family in the Yu-gi-yo card deck, their good and bad characteristics, and which ones I would like and why. Strangely enough, this was a much more familiar topic for me having done this with Neal for every Monday since November. 

Alors, je pense que c’est tous mes amis. Oh! That’s a total lie. I have an internship now! Just for my last few months in Paris. I’m so happy to have it, if just because now I have a grand total of 1 thing to put on my resumé that doesn’t say “nanny for tons and tons of random kids for the past 8 years”. Even though I know how much nanny experience lends to politics... 


I’ll fill in on the internship another day, it’s time for work! Which is good because I’ve already forgotten at least 3 of the yu-gi-yo rules I learned yesterday. Neal is always frustrated with me, I’m a terrible yu-gi-yo student. 

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