Jean Reno, apples & pears, and my French husband

Posted on by je parle américain

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 …

Posted on by je parle américain

… 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 …

What do you say to a French person on Bastille Day? Nice fireworks!

Posted on by je parle américain

In this post from yesterday, I pondered the appropriate way to wish a French person a Happy Bastille Day.  After last night, I think my friend Nicolas was right: “Bon feu d’artifice !” … “Nice fireworks!”

(You can watch this in high definition by selecting 1080p HD after starting the video.)

Continue reading What do you say to a French person on Bastille Day? Nice fireworks!

Happy Bastille Day?

Posted on by je parle américain

What does one say on Bastille Day to a French person? Having been here long enough to know that the French don’t call July 14 “Bastille Day” the way we Anglophones do, I was in a quandary as to how to wish a happy national holiday to my French family and friends. I asked Michel and he said, “We don’t do that. We celebrate, but we don’t have a sentence like that, like you do in America. It might seem strange, but we don’t.”

Hmm.

Continue reading Happy Bastille Day?

Because it was just too hot to post anything yesterday …

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(That’s 37ºC  for those of you not too familiar with the Fahrenheit scale.)

… and it looks like another scorcher today, though not nearly as hot. I certainly hope that Wednesday’s forecast high of 71ºF (22ºC) is right. That’s the kind of Paris summer I like, and I can’t spend all day, every day hanging out in the frozen foods section of the Super U.

A Bitter-sweet Exile

Posted on by je parle américain

A friend recently posted an article on Facebook about former Manhattanites living in my former hometown of Washington, D.C. Manhattanites exiled to Washington search for fellow sufferers is a humorous piece in the Washington Post‘s lifestyle section reporting on the “stranger in a strange land” lamentations of the members of a group called the Fellowship of Unassimilated Manhattan Exiles. It’s pretty funny because these folks are self-styled “exiles,” as if they had been banished from Manhattan to the hinterlands. And it’s even more entertaining because the article is rife with the stereotypical over-inflated New York ego: Continue reading A Bitter-sweet Exile