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.
You might have been wondering what became of me after my first Fourth of July in Paris since 1989, since I didn’t post anything the next day. I promise I wasn’t hungover, but I was sick. Somehow I came down with some sort of flu that had me completely debilitated yesterday. Thankfully, I’m over it now, just in time for a little weekend jaunt to London tomorrow night.
So, how did I spend my Fourth? Truthfully, it was a little disappointing … aside from the company, of course.
Continue reading Feeling insulted, bad burgers, and good ice cream: a Parisian Fourth of July
Comme aujourd’hui nous sommes le quatre juillet, la fête de l’indépendance américaine, on devrait prendre un moment pour remercier la France pour l’aide que ce pays grand nous a offerte pendant notre révolution : On sait que vous ne l’avez fait que pour embêter les Anglais, mais merci quand même ! En toute sincérité, malgré des désaccords de temps en temps (quelques uns plus sérieux que d’autres, bien sûr), votre aide à cette époque à fait naître les liens d’amitié entre nos deux pays qui ont survécu plus de deux siècles. Qu’ils survivent à jamais ! Continue reading “Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.”
I’ve yet to find a restaurant in Paris where I can get really good American-style pancakes. (Not that I ‘ve stopped looking, mind you.) Of course, France is home to the crêpe—arguably the most amazing pancake ever invented—and I do love a good crêpe (or two) every now and then. But sometimes, you’re just jonesin’ for a stack like they have back home.
(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.
Okay, so that’s not a real headline, but it got your attention, right?
My friend Dan Costello, of Washington, DC, wrote that as a comment to my Facebook status Sunday wherein I addressed what I call “the misappropriation of the kilt” in Gay Pride parades. It got the most traffic of anything I’ve posted on Facebook since my posts about Anthony Weiner, so I figured it was a good hook for this post. (Let me know if you’re interested, and I can expound a little.)
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
Is a tiny French village threatened by 2012 apocalypse sects?
“Bugarach, with a population of just 200, has long been considered magical, partly due to what locals claim is an ‘upside-down mountain’ where the top layers of rock are older than the lower ones.
Continue reading You’ve got eighteen months to get to France … to save your life!
I’ve been spending my day working on my CV, trying to convert my “lawyer” CV into one that screams:
“I TEACH ENGLISH! HIRE ME!”
I spent almost 8 years of my life working as a lawyer for a big firm in Washington, DC. Many of my clients were big financial institutions from Wall Street and most of my work was for them. When I left that job back in 2009, I decided to pursue a different course, but I wasn’t quite sure which one to take. Continue reading What do you mean, I can’t work for myself?
je parle américain 