Chers amis,
Whew.
It’s been an odd combination of busy and not busy at work.
Sometimes, I’m running around working and gathering stuff, and end up skipping
or postponing lunch or staying later than usual. Other times, I’m a wee bit
bored and end up surreptitiously doing what I call “professional development
reading” on law blogs, news sites, etc. because no one has an easily delegable
task for me to do.
Toughest of all, however, is holding out everyday until the
French-approved lunch time of 1:30. It has even surpassed the keyboard
dilemmas. I’ll have you know I have become quite competent on the AZERTY
keyboard, and then I get confused when I go home to my QWERTY iPad.
What have I been doing for the past week and a half? Let’s
see:
I’ve worked on some commercial lease negotiation stuff, some
research for the upcoming firm-hosted breakfast conference that I mentioned in
my last post, and some French memo writing for a big lawsuit going down in French Polynesia .
Biggest and coolest of all though is being the unofficial
point person for outside counsel on this one matter (a corporate reorganization
in Eastern Europe ). Essentially, I get to call
and ask counsel in different countries whether they’re going to make our
deadline, ask and answer follow-up questions and generally liaise between my
office and theirs. Then, I compile their submissions on their country’s law
into a memo to our client, and I edit their English along the way. So far, it’s
been a very cool cross-border experience.
As I mentioned in my last post, generally everyone has lunch
together in a conference room. The variety of lunch discussion topics has been
pretty amusing. It’s ranged from attractive male and female tennis stars (not
being all that familiar with tennis stars, it took me a while to pick up on
some of the names being tossed around), soccer (of course), childbirth (usually
it’s all women at these things), really bad reality TV shows (did you know that
Ice-T has a show with his wife Cookie, or something like that?), the incomprehensible
celebrity of the Kardashians (enough said), what high school everyone’s kids are going to (in
France, I think it’s an application process even for public schools where you
list your first through 3rd choices, etc.), to the Queen of England
and her Jubilee this week (with some Kate and Pippa gossip thrown in). Also,
having read the Game of Thrones series, I was asked to give some spoilers,
haha.
On the sight-seeing side of things, I went to the town of Chartres on Saturday to
see its renowned cathedral and just explore. I took the train from my nearest
train station, Gare Montparnasse, which is only 2 metro stops away. I arrived
at the train station and made my way from the metro area to the big main line
train area, and tried to get my e-tickets from an automated ticket withdrawal
machine.
After 5 failed attempts to withdraw my tickets, I ended up going to
stand in line to speak with a real person. I was in line for *quite some time,*
nervously glancing at my watch as my departure time grew nearer and nearer.
Once I was able to speak with a representative, I discovered that picking up
your tickets at the automated machine does not work so well if you have a
foreign credit card. The machines apparently only take cards with “puces,” or
those little shiny SIM card looking things that some credit cards have. So, my
lowly little PNC Bank debit card didn’t cut it.
I got my ticket with, oh, 4 minutes to spare until
departure. The platform was clear at the other end of the station and the
representative asked if I had a suitcase. When I replied that I did not, she
kindly suggested that I run, unless I wanted to wait around an hour and catch
the next train. I decided that waiting was not really that exciting of an
option, so I booked it from platform 1 to platform 22 (of like 25). I ended up
getting a little turned around and looked at platform 21, but the train sitting
at it was dark and locked, so another Cartres-bound traveler and I headed on to
22. I saw that the first car was down to pretty much standing room only, so in
great wisdom, I ran down to the next car and leapt aboard literally as the
automatic doors were closing. It was somewhat of an exhilarating morning.
The train took about an hour, and after my arrival in Chartres I headed
straight for the cathedral and wandered about inside checking out the stained
glass. I honestly did not notice the famous labyrinth on the floor of the
cathedral – I think it was pretty obscured by the chairs/pews – but I got my
step-mom an oversized postcard of it anyway.
After touring the cathedral and gift shop, I had lunch at a
restaurant just outside so that I could see more of the cathedral’s exterior. I
read some and then someone was doing a mini-organ recital in the cathedral, so
I got to enjoy that as well. By this point, I was kind of running out of ideas
of what to do, so I toured the more touristy streets and perused some different
shops. I ended up passing some time in the small park just in front of the
cathedral where I read some more, and unbeknownst to me at the time, ended up
getting a pretty impressive sunburn. The weather was warm but there was such a
breeze that I never felt uncomfortable – ergo, how I never noticed that I was
burning. Oh well. Ended up catching an earlier train back to Paris than I had originally scheduled.
This Thursday, I’m considering going to see a performance of
Verdi’s Requiem (I did a paper on requiem masses in high school, so I kind of
have a radar for them now) at a theater outside of the Louvre but I don’t want
to get a ticket in advance because I would hate to miss it if something came up
at work. I.e., last Friday I was supposed to go to a lecture on arbitration and
the media at a local university from 5-7. I cleared it with the managing
partner more than a week in advance, but by the time I got phase one of this
Eastern European corporate reorg memo out to the client, I would have been late
to the talk, so I didn’t go. I don’t want to tempt fate with Verdi.
I’m also excited for Friday, June 22 because I bought a
ticket to see Paul Taylor Dance Company (a modern American company) perform at
a theater here in Paris .
I have never gotten to see them in the US
– one time, I was in DC and they were performing at the Kennedy Center
I know this is turning into a mammoth post, but I have to
mention church, too! I went to First Church of Christ, Scientist, Paris last
Sunday and it was nice, but it didn’t feel like *home* for the next 10 weeks.
So last Wednesday, I tried Second
Church Paris for more than 30
years). I arrived at church carrying a small tubular kind of fan that my friend
had loaned me for my apartment – it ended up being quite the conversation
piece.
After the service, I spoke with a few people and everyone
kept asking about the fan and wanting to write down the make and model because
it’s a unique size and they like it. Kind of odd, but I definitely felt
included. Dinner after the service was great, and I’m looking forward to going
again.
Hopefully, I’m going to get better about posting more
frequently!
Bisous!
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