Back when I started this blog, I imagined that I’d have an entire series of posts about my travels around France. As often happens with projects like this, I ended up going off in other directions and I never really returned to the theme of sharing my favorites places in France with my readers. Well, oversight rectified …
Welcome to Saint-Malo!
Continue reading Saint-Malo: Traveling Saints, French Pirates, and the Best Crêpes Around
This post isn’t to announce that I’m quitting Paris to go to school in Dublin. Don’t worry: I won’t be changing the name of the blog anytime soon. Instead, this is about the building right here in Paris where I currently have my French classes.
I’ve been studying French here for a while now, but this is the first semester my classes have been at the Centre Culturel Irlandais (“Irish Cultural Centre”). I was vaguely aware of the Centre’s existence before October, but I never really knew anything about the place.
“Irish Cultural Centre, huh? That’s different,” I thought. “Meh … a cultural center for Irish folks in Paris. They’ve probably got one of those for every cultural group around.”
Since October, though, I’ve learned that the Centre is a lot more interesting than I originally thought. Continue reading Irish College
— William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
Being the American expat in France for most of my friends back home brings with it a certain cachet … and certain responsibilities. When someone is planning a Paris vacation, I’m usually the first person my friends think of to ask for advice about restaurants, hotels, and neighborhoods. I love this role; it’s a bit like being an ambassador, or — more appropriately, I suppose — a scout for an advancing foraging party! Sometimes, though, it gets more interesting than simply giving my expert advice about this city; sometimes I actually go on a mission for someone …
Continue reading “An angel; or, if not, an earthly paragon.”
You all know that I’m a perpetual French student; it’s how I justify to the French government my need to stay in their country every year. In fact, I’m now on my fourth semester of French classes here, the third time at the highest level they teach at my school. I truly enjoy both my grammar class and my French culture seminars. There’s just one class that I simply cannot stand:
[fəˈnɛtɪks]
Phonetics class is where I spend 5 hours a week, every other week, sitting in a soundproofed cubicle, wearing headphones, repeating French sentences … over and over and over … and then listening to a recording of my voice saying these things … over and over and over. It’s a quixotic quest to improve what Michel continues to assure me is a charming American accent. (Of course, I have to take that compliment with a grain of salt, since he’s not exactly a unbiased observer.) Phonetics class is, simply put, a torturous experience … but it’s necessary. I recently had an experience that comically demonstrates why.
Friday afternoon, I took my Swedish friend Helena to my new favorite Paris sweetshop, Sugar Daze. We ordered a few cupcakes and some coffee and sat down to chat and catch up with each other. Incidentally, Paris schools were on fall break this week, so the children of Sugar Daze’s owner, Cat, were hanging out in the store as well. At one point, Helena and I started talking about our phonetics classes, I pulled out a page of my phonetics exercises, and I started reading them aloud. That’s when Cat’s adorable, bilingual five(?)-year-old daughter — who apparently had been listening to us — interrupted in a completely serious, inquisitive tone:
“Why are you speaking Spanish?”
<ba-dum-dum>
Classic! I just couldn’t stop laughing!
And voilà, folks: a case in point for why phonetics classes are in – di – spen – sable (pronounced with the proper French accent, stress, and rhythm, please)!
<sigh>
Back to the soundproofed cubicle.
© 2012 Samuel Michael Bell, all rights reserved
I’ve been wanting to write about this French expression for a while now, and I finally have the occasion!
Nuit blanche is the French expression for an “all-nighter” — literally “white night.” It refers to a night when you don’t sleep at all, and it could result from any of several reasons — including, importantly for a student, staying up all night cramming for a test. But for most French, I suspect, a nuit blanche is associated with partying all night long!
<cue Lionel Ritchie>
Since 2002, “La Nuit Blanche” has been used to refer to an annual all-night arts festival in Paris. Every October, the city’s museums, art galleries, and cultural centers open to the public free of charge for an entire night. In fact, the City of Light truly lives up to its nickname by turning itself into an outdoor art gallery with performance spaces and art installations all over the place. The history of La Nuit Blanche is long, but it seems to have been inspired initially by Helsinki’s 1989 “Night of the Arts” and the subsequent wave of such nocturnal arts festivals across Europe. You can click here for some of the history of La Nuit Blanche, and here for a guide to Paris’s most recent festivities on October 6 of this year.
My nuit blanche this week was just a bit different, though …
If you know me well, you know that I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time learning things that I haven’t necessarily parlayed into gainful employment. I graduated from a high school specializing in science and math, but I didn’t become a scientist or a mathematician. Then I went off to college to study architecture, but didn’t become an architect. In fact, I changed my major to political science, but I didn’t become a political scientist either — even after following up with a degree in foreign affairs. Instead, I ended up working as the marketing director for — of all things — a professional society of pension actuaries! I guess the only time I’ve actually put all that book-learnin’ to practical use was after law school when I became a lawyer for seven years. Thank goodness for that, too, because my savings from that time in my life helped me move to France without a job and start a new chapter here as … <drumroll> …
a student.
This time, for obvious reasons, I became a student of French. After all, when I moved to France in 2010, I only remembered a smattering of the French I’d studied two decades earlier in high school. Initially, I anticipated a year of French courses and then, of course, I’d be gainfully employed in France doing … something. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, though. I even got certified to teach English back in March, but I’m still looking for what I’ve started to describe as “the ever-elusive teaching gig.” As a non-EU citizen, I need to find an employer who’s willing to sponsor me for a work visa, but no one wants to jump through the hoops of French bureaucracy when a qualified EU citizen can do the job just as well. Another option is to become an independent contractor, but that involves a complicated process that isn’t guaranteed a positive resolution. I’m keeping all options on the table, though. In any case, don’t worry about me too much. I do have a few irons in the fire at the moment, so keep your fingers crossed. Continue reading Perpetual Student
Putting aside my recent frustration at the post office and the continuing saga of my immigration headache, I’m having a fairly entertaining couple of weeks hanging out in Paris theaters. Tomorrow night, Michel‘s musical theater troupe returns to the stage with their September reprise of Pas de Gondoles pour Denise. I’m obviously partial, but this amateur troupe’s latest production is, quite simply, top-notch fun … and the Paris theater critics agree. A fun and uplifting tale about the search for love, the story of Denise unfolds on stage through powerful vocals and impressive choreography, with a musical score set to the melodies of popular songs. I’ll be there Friday night (with friends) and Saturday night (with Michel’s family) for my third and fourth times seeing the show.
As much as I’d like to encourage you to come out and see Denise, there won’t be any available seats for the September shows by the time you read this. They will go on tour around France, though, in the coming months, so stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, how about this:
That’s right! Sister Act … the Musical … in French!
While sitting on the tarmac in Charlotte last Sunday, waiting for my return flight to France to take off, I was flipping through the pages of the duty-free magazine and I happened across an ad for Grey Goose. And I thought to myself, “Now there’s an interesting subject for my blog: the French vodka that French people don’t drink.”
You may know that Grey Goose is the second-best-selling imported vodka in the United States, and the number one super-premium vodka. But what explains Grey Goose’s success against other vodkas, including other super-premiums like the Polish Belvedere? Certainly it has to do with Grey Goose’s exceptionally smooth taste, but it also has to do with its exceptionally smooth marketing. Grey Goose has created a certain cachet that is based almost entirely on its French origins. In short …
Grey Goose is a French goose.
Grey Goose is a chic goose.
Grey Goose is a goose de grande qualité. Continue reading That Grey Goose doesn’t actually speak French?!
It’s appropriate that I’m publishing today’s post from the United States, because September 6 is the birthday of one of the greatest heroes of the American Revolution: the Marquis de Lafayette. It’s also appropriate that I’m publishing from South Carolina, because Lafayette not only was a Franco-American hero, but he had a special connection to my home state.
You should know by now that I’m a big history nerd. I’ve been one all my life, and the older I get, the more convinced I am that somewhere along the way I got sidetracked from my destiny to become a history professor. The people in my life closest to me can attest to that fact. Just Sunday night, at dinner with Michel and our friends Leigh and Dwight in Columbia, I was heard correcting a Frenchman’s account of the role of the French Revolution in the birth of French laicity. What can I say? It’s a passion. So it came as no surprise when, during my first semester of French classes at the Sorbonne, I chose to do my 15-minute oral report on the life of the Marquis de Lafayette. It also came as no surprise that my 15-minute report ended up lasting half an hour! I’m pretty sure that most of my classmates’ eyes start to glaze over after about 20 minutes because … well, not everyone can be as into Franco-American history as I am. In any case, je parle américain‘s homage to the Marquis on this, the 255th anniversary of his birth, is based on that long oral report … but today, at least, I’ll be telling it in English and not broken French. So, hopefully your eyes won’t glaze over before you get to the bottom of the page.
Ready? Here we go … Continue reading The Hero of Two Worlds
Photo: Ah, Camembert! © 2006 NJGJ
Well everyone, this is my first post from the American side of the Pond since arriving on Sunday afternoon, and have I got news for you! In fact, as far as I’m concerned, this is a “CNN Breaking News” kind of moment, so I can only apologize for not publishing it as soon as I got to a computer Sunday evening. But I had jetlag, you know, and it took me a couple of days to get back into the right rhythm … plus I had to find the right images online for the blogpost that wouldn’t end up infringing someone’s copyright and, then, WordPress started having formatting issues. Anyway, enough about the jetlag and the bloggers’ headaches, right? You just want to know what this juicy tidbit of information is. Well … <drumroll> …
Despite everything you may have heard or believed up to now,
you CAN bring smelly French cheese into the US! *
* Make sure to read the disclaimer at the end of this article.
Okay, so you know how I joke all the time about how U.S. Customs thinks unpasteurized cheese is a chemical weapon? The last time I did that, in fact, was just 9 days ago. I was saying that if I ever wanted my parents to taste a real Camembert, I’d have to smuggle it into the country under the noses of those luggage-sniffing dogs they have. Well, as it turns out, I was wrong … completely and utterly wrong … and I owe my current status of “harbinger of good news for American expats in France and their friends and family back home” to an unexpected encounter with a Customs agent at Charlotte Douglas International Airport Sunday afternoon.
je parle américain 