Jean Reno, apples & pears, and my French husband

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Photo: US Airways 787 © 2012 Samuel Michael Bell, all rights reserved

It was the first time that my husband and I had traveled across the Atlantic together: US Airways 787 from Paris-Charles de Gaulle to Charlotte Douglas International on Saturday. Michel has visited me in the United States before, of course: the first time was in December 2009 to meet my friends and family, and the second time was in July 2010, when we got married before my departure for France. But Saturday was a particularly interesting travel day: Jean Reno and a jackass immigrant officer at CDG, an obnoxious flight attendant with an apple and a pear, and a surprisingly warm welcome at immigration control in Charlotte. Continue reading Jean Reno, apples & pears, and my French husband

Scooters — they’re so cute …

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… and so unsupportably annoying!

Okay, I admit it. I’m rapidly becoming a grumpy old man and there’s no use denying it. Michel has even called me “grumshy” — a word he apparently coined as a hybrid of “grouchy” and “grumpy” while searching for one of those two words but failing to find either one. And he’s right. I’ve found that the older I get and the longer I stay in France (two things that are coincidental at the moment), the less I can stand sustained buzzing, screeching, whining, high-pitched noises.

Case in point: Parisian scooters

© 2007 Spidernet
© 2007 Spidernet

Continue reading Scooters — they’re so cute …

3 months and 3,000 views

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Three months ago, I launched je parle américain in its current form: an online diary of my life as an American expatriate in France. Since then, I’ve published 47 posts, of which 27 are what I’d call substantial pieces. (The rest were short observations or posts sharing videos or photos.) I’ve written about everything from my immigration woes to how to make good pancakes at home, from how I met the love of my life to the history of “not” in French. To mark the “quarter-birthday” of je parle américain, here are a few interesting observations gleaned from the blog’s stash of stats, as well as links to my top ten posts by traffic and by commentary. Oh, and don’t stop reading before the end, because I’ve included a catalog of the top ten strangest search strings that have brought Internet surfers to my blog. Continue reading 3 months and 3,000 views

A Walk in the Woods

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“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” — John Muir

Last week, I went with Michel, my mother-in-law, and my father-in-law for a walk in the woods—not in La Courneuve, certainly, and not even in the woods close to Paris (the Bois de Boulogne or the Bois de Vincennes), but in Picardy, about an hour to the north. There’s a trail in the Forest of Compiègne near the village of Saint-Jean-aux-Bois that we know and love. It leads you into a world that’s far away, one that’s quiet, peaceful, and full of simple wonders.

Continue reading A Walk in the Woods

You don’t say!

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Registering for my fall classes this morning got me thinking about what it is that I really love about learning a foreign language. It’s certainly not conjugating the pluperfect of the subjunctive mood! Instead, it’s linguistics and etymology: how we say the things we say, and why it is we say them that way. Today’s musing:

pas

For anyone with even a basic knowledge of French, “pas” is a pretty easy word. It means “not” … right? Well, I’ll get back to that in a minute but, more importantly for now, “pas” also means “step” — as in the motion we make when we place one foot in front of the other. Hence, we have the expression “faux pas” — one that we’ve adopted directly into English — meaning a mistake or, more precisely, a “false step.” So, how exactly did a word that means “step” also come to be the most common word in French to mean “not”?

Continue reading You don’t say!

“The Pain of the Country”

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Tomorrow is September 11, but this blogpost won’t focus on the tragedy of that day 10 years ago that will forever mark me and those who witnessed or were personally touched by the events and their aftermath. I could never do it justice—I could never adequately put my sentiments into words. Silent reflection is how I plan to mark this somber moment tomorrow.

But this anniversary necessarily brings home to mind. Being a stranger in a strange land is never an easy thing, and at moments like this, the disconnectedness is amplified, the distance is more expansive, the ache to go back is more painful. The French have an interesting expression for what we call homesickness. They call it le mal du pays (literally, “the pain of the country”) and, somehow, it seems appropriate this weekend to speak of a yearning for something much larger than even my family and friends—a yearning for my home … my homeland … my country.

Continue reading “The Pain of the Country”

Carrot Cake!

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Photo: the ingredient that makes it what it is © 2011 Samuel Michael Bell, all rights reserved

Yesterday, we went for a long walk in the countryside with the kids. We searched out the neighborhood farm, where we saw THREE TRACTORS and smelled COW MANURE! Then we walked out into the fields and saw a DUST DEVIL and got shocked by an ELECTRIFIED LIVESTOCK FENCE! It was a big day! So what could the uncles think up to top a day like that?

The answer?

CARROT CAKE!

This morning, we told the kids that our project for the day would be to make very special American cake: a gâteau aux carottes.

Carrots?! Carrots in a cake?! Ugh.

Well, yes. There are little pieces of carrot in the cake but there’s no carrot taste. Tonton Michael doesn’t even like carrots. There are little pieces of nuts, too. You’ll see! It’s good.

I don’t like nuts.

Tough crowd.

Continue reading Carrot Cake!

Tonton Michael

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Photo: “Buzz l’Éclair” © 2011 Samuel Michael Bell, all rights reserved

This week, I’m in Doncourt-lès-Conflans, a village in the countryside of Lorraine, just west of Metz. Michel and I are babysitting our niece and nephew, Tiphaine and Romain. They’re the ones I referenced in this post about a child’s imagination … or was it about my rusty drawing skills? In any case, vacation is over for their parents, but school doesn’t start back for them until next week, so it’s Tonton Miko (that’s Michel) and Tonton Michael (that’s me) to the rescue!

Continue reading Tonton Michael

Châtelet-Les Halles

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Photo: Le Grand Châtelet after 1684

Châtelet-Les Halles is not only located at the very geographic center of Paris, it is also the transit hub of the city. It is actually a complex of two Métro stations (Châtelet and Les Halles) and a pôle d’échange, or central exchange station, for the RER (Réseau Express Régional or Regional Express Network, Paris’s commuter light rail system). The RER station services three of Paris’s 5 RER lines: A, B, and D. Métro station Châtelet services 5 of Paris’s 16 Métro lines: 1, 4, 7, 11, and 14. Métro station Les Halles services the 4 line.

The first notable thing about Châtelet-Les Halles is that it’s huge! The southern end of the RER station connects to the Châtelet Métro station and the northern end connects to the Les Halles Métro station. The walking distance from Châtelet to Les Halles is almost half a mile (750 meters)—a distance 50% longer than the average distance between stations in the Paris Métro system! Thankfully the transfer is facilitated at one point by a nice, long people-moving conveyor belt … or you can just take the 4 line and save the shoe leather.

The second notable thing about Châtelet-Les Halles is that it is the busiest underground transit station in the world. Each weekday, Châtelet-Les Halles hosts about 750,000 travelers (more than the average weekday traffic in the entire Washington, DC Metro). During rush hour, 120 trains arrive in and depart from Châtelet-Les Halles each hour! That’s a lot of people scurrying here and there. No wonder Châtelet-Les Halles is, in my opinion, the most overwhelming and disorienting Métro station in Paris.

So, the question that I initially set out to answer: why is it called Châtelet-Les Halles?

Read the rest of this entry for the interesting, in-depth backstory »