Makin' Macarons!

Have you discovered macarons yet? Not macaroons, those "eh" coconut cookies. Macarons.

Yes? Welcome! You're among friends here.

No? If you're in Pittsburgh, get yourself to Paris 66 on Center Ave. near the new Target pronto!

Go visit PierreHerme.com!

They are essentially a half-dollar sized sandwich of almond flour (ground up blanched white almonds) based meringues filled with some kind of filling, depending on the flavor and texture you're going for. Some are a little on the crazy side -- check out some of the creations at Pierre Hermé (lychee, vanilla basil, rose).  And some are just plain delicious, like coconut, salted caramel, and my personal favorite, lemon. You'll find the more "standard" flavors at La Durée, which has been around since 1862.



But what was really neat was the opportunity to take a mother-financed (thanks, mom!) amateur cooking class at the school run by Le Nôtre, one of France's premier pastry and prepared food shops. They have two amateur school campuses: one in a beautiful building at the beginning of the Champs d'Elysses, and the other waaaay the heck on the east side of Paris in a bit of a sketchier neighborhood.

When I got the bright idea to sign up for one of these classes, I was, as it turns out, not the first to do so. All the English classes at other cooking schools were filled, as were those at both Le Nôtre campuses. So then, I thought, "Okay. I want to do this, so how about looking for classes in French?" I switched over to the French language class lists, and wouldn't you know, a three hour macaron class at a time I could do it! Sadly, it was at the east Paris campus so I had a super long metro journey, but it w worth it.

Our pastry chef and instructor of the evening, Alain, and his sous-chef led my class of four (which included a pastry chef from Dijibouti) through the recipes for coffee and chocolate macarons. He demonstrated through most of the coffee recipe, giving us smaller tasks like sifting the almond flour and powdered sugar together (which are the solid in the cookie part of the macaron) but we were pretty much in charge of the chocolate.

They are tough little guys to make! I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that they are a genuine mixture of science and art.

The results! Coffee and chocolate macarons made by my class

Science: our recipe includes precise temperatures (the filling for the coffee macarons is heated to 82 degrees C on the stove, before cooled down to 30 degrees through whipping it in the stand mixer) and Alain busted out a laser thermometer (MIND BLOWN!) to check the temperature of the filling while it was mixing away inside the stand mixer bowl. Also, you need a really precise oven to do these things, which means I am going to be co-opting my mom's kitchen because my oven is usually about 25° off...

Art: at each stage of the process, the macaron batter needs to be at a certain texture that you have to know "by feel." Alain taught us some tricks to check the consistency, but it's still one of those things that is probably only going to come with lots and lots of practice and guinea pigs to test them on.

They look pretty good, right? They are, but there's a definite difference between how well the coffee ones turned out (made mostly by Alain) and how the chocolate ones fared (made mostly by the class), with the coffee being better.

Up close and personal with the results

In Paris, I have been on a little bit of what I like to call the Tour de Macarons. As you know, the Tour de France finished up last Sunday (and made for difficult traveling around the city for my visitors and me). While those lads were biking around this fine country, I have been walking around this fine city and sampling these little darlings where and when I find them. I'll be revealing the results of the Tour at a later date!

Au revoir et bon appétit!

Don't Drown Your Fish

More French wisdom rolled into charming idioms starring animals: 


I drafted a short and sweet response to a client about a question. My colleague told me that she wanted a little more meat to the response, but without "drowning the fish." What is "drowning the fish" I asked? 


Apparently, the expression originates from the twentieth century and means to hoodwink, confuse, bamboozle, distract someone from the real issue or make him forget it. It is a reference to the fishing industry,  where fishermen repeatedly pull hooked fish in and out of the water to wear them out, I guess so they don't flap about as much when you finally pull them out for good. (Translated from http://www.linternaute.com/expression/langue-francaise/450/noyer-le-poisson/ with my charming commentary at the end).

Pretty good advice for presidential candidates? I think so. 

Stop drowning the damn fish!!

Squirrels and Three-Legged Yorkies

My neighbor is enjoying this fine July evening by watching Jersey Shore at full volume with his door open. I figured, might as well write you folks a blog post, complete with two stories. One takes place at the laundromat, the other at the work lunch table.

I. Bastille Day...schizophrenic weather made planning an actual activity rather difficult. Did some grocery shopping with the masses, and heard but didn't see actual fireworks. Bummer.

Sunday, I finally ran out of clean sheets and towels and forced myself to go to the laundromat. It's about a 10 minute walk, if that, and it's in a pretty chi chi neighborhood across from a famous covered market. I read the instructions, written on the wall and surmise that I must pay separately for laundry detergent. I go over to the central pay station and type in the number to have it vend me laundry detergent. I put in my euro, and clonk, out pops a wrapper with a coke brick of laundry detergent. Having never seen a brick of cocaine, and after just googling it, I have discovered that a brick is a kilogram! Who knew? So, it was probably more like 1/16 of a brick of laundry detergent wrapped in foil.

I put my stuff in the littlest washing machine (you pay depending on the size of the washer) and drop in half of my laundry detergent powder brick with my sheets. I set the temperature, trot back to the central paying machine, type in the number of my washing machine and put in my €4.20 (extortion!). I sit back with my kindle and prepare to wait. Then, I notice on the wall, in a different section than where I read the instructions, is a little diagram of a square with four sections, and it says laundry detergent, pre-wash, fabric softener, and something called "javel" (which word reference.com just told me is bleach). I am confused. Where is this little square, I ask myself? I keep reading, hoping that my laundry will get clean.

Then a rather well-dressed fellow arrives and flips this little silver lid on the top of the washing machine. Lo, the little square in which one is to deposit one's detergent! It's a front-load washer, so I was not really paying attention to the top of the washer. Humph. I note that my washer still has another 40 minutes (!) left, and does not look particularly sudsy. Oh well.

I duck out to a bakery I know that's open and get a lemon macaron. They have macaron "individuel" that are larger sized than the half-dollar size ones that you usually buy in batches of 6 or so. Or, as my husband calls them, hamburger macarons. In fact, they are slightly smaller than palm sized, so not really hamburger-size, but close enough.

After going back to the laundromat, I began nibbling on my macaron, at which point A rather iffy-looking woman with numerous missing teeth and a flashy pink hoodie walks in with a yorkie under her arm. She looks at me and says, "Bon apétit," in kind of an unhappy tone...as though I deign eat in her laundromat. All this in front of a sign that says "We remind you that dogs are forbidden." She attends to her laundry, and in follows another yorkie.

First thing I note is his face. He appears to be missing teeth on the right side of his face, so his tongue is lolling out in that direction, no longer confined to his mouth by pesky teeth. He is wet from the recent rain and I hear his owner call out in French that he should stay there and dry himself out. He turns in profile to me, revealing that he only has three legs. He starts to shake himself off to dry, and loses his balance and falls flat on his butt. As my husband aptly asked, "How do you say 'hot mess' in French." Three-legged toothless yorkie in a laundromat, that's how.

Owner puts down the other yorkie, who is clean, fully limbed, and well-brushed with a ponytail on the top of her head. I come to learn that the ponytail wearing yorkie is named Inès, and our mangy friend is Jude.

Meanwhile, this woman in a Prada raincoat looks on impassively. You always get a pretty good cross-section of the population in a laundromat, I guess.

II.
Today at work I had my first really amusing misunderstanding.

My coworker, A, is telling a story about going to the US last fall for an all-firm meeting of the litigation group with a then-pregnant colleague, C. Apparently, the city that they went to just smelled of food everywhere, even in the airport. With all the weird smells, C was super put off of food. In French, I heard the word "ecureuil," which means squirrel.

I'm thinking to myself, oh that kind of makes sense. Squirrels don't eat that much and the French have all kinds of expressions about animals ("poser un lapin à quelqu'un," literally put down a rabbit on someone, means to stand someone up), so be a squirrel probably means just being put off food. The conversation winds down and I ask A, what does "blah blah ecureuil" mean?

She looks at me blankly. I explain, "You said C was pregnant and she was ecureuil because of the food smell." Then, A goes, "OH, ecœuré!!! That means disgusted, grossed out, sickened!" The whole table is cracking up at my misunderstanding, and one colleague, F, I think was crying. I explain that I thought being a squirrel was an expression and how I thought I had learned something new and idiomatic! F said that she really liked the image, so maybe it will catch on as an expression now. ;)

So, in case you ever feel grossed out, just say you're being a squirrel.

Cinéma-ing on the Cheap

Last semester, I took a survey course on the rules governing the  EU common market and the core EU freedoms (i.e., freedom to provide services, free movement of goods, freedom of establishment).

So why am I mentioning it? In the class, we read a decision from the European Court of Justice about selling DVDs (released in another EU Member State) in France before they were officially released in France. France is unique in the EU in that it has one of the longest (if not the longest) delays between when a movie first comes out in theaters and when it may be released on DVD. If I remember correctly, it’s one year.

Madagascar 3, then, will come out in Germany months before it comes out in France.
Trying to rectify this issue, foreign distributors (all the while crying “free movement of goods in the EU!”) wanted to be able to distribute DVDs already release in other parts of the EU in France, and claimed that France’s unusually long delay was a barrier to the free movement of DVDs within the EU. The European Court of Justice agreed that there was a barrier, but sided with France’s claims that the delay protected art and culture and French cinema, entertaining evenings with friends, etc. My professor noted that it really protects the movie theater industry (like a back door subsidy) more than it protects film as an art form, but hey.

Relevance to today, you ask? Well, the French National Cinéma Festival is in full swing this week (until Wednesday, at least) and I am taking advantage of it. Essentially, when you buy a full price ticket (or student price ticket for me), you get a cute little bracelet. Then for every showing thereafter, when you show your bracelet, the ticket is only € 2.50! This means that I went to see What to Expect When You’re Expecting on Sunday, and Madagascar 3 on Monday, and tonight I’m going to a movie, and Wednesday I’m going to a movie…you get the point.

On a side note, I adored Madagascar 3. I will even admit to quietly clapping my hands (and grinning like a fool) when things were working out well for Alex the Lion and his crew of lovable zoo escapees. My personal favorite character, I must admit, was the Italian sea lion Stefano. He's quite cute, although admittedly only of slightly below-average intelligence. The French crowd laughed at the jokes about France, and I had a BIG chuckle when they made fun of French labor law, saying that the monkeys (who work for the clever penguins) now only need to work 2 weeks out of the year. I have had to do a little French employment law during my internship, and although the French definitely work more than 2 weeks a year, it's still definitely a different legal landscape than the US!

What to Expect When You're Expecting was fluffy and I laughed, which is what I was looking for on the rainy, dismal afternoon that was last Sunday. I cracked up at the end because I noticed that the group of spectators in front of me was composed of 4 boys in their late teens -- no girls in sight. Not exactly the demographic What to Expect was expecting.

I'll let you know how my next two movies go. :)

Sixth Sense

The day has come and gone – the day of the business development breakfast that I helped coordinate here at the office. The two attorneys I was working with on the project spent hours slaving away on the invitation list because in Paris, the success of your event can be as much about what you say as who’s there (that's likely true of events in other places, too...). They got input from former colleagues, checked and rechecked the spelling of everyone’s names against prior lists, and wrestled with Outlook distribution lists until they were calling the technology help desk in incredible frustration, etc. (meanwhile, I was compiling the research for the presentation itself). A lot of time was spent on this, and there were some big names on the list, some big general counsels at French companies: all people who could send some business our way.

Except, of course, for the people on the list who are dead.

That’s right. We invited dead people. Unwittingly, they were left in the contact database, and we were calling people to harass those who had not RSVP’d. Turns out, some of those folks had pretty good excuses, being dead and all. I wasn't privy to any of these presumably awkward conversations but I can only imagine what they were like.

Oh, and there were retired people on the list, and people who have abandoned the practice of law on the list, too. 

Invitation Photo. Heck yes.

And then, of the 80 or so people on the list (I don't know how many were alive, practicing attorneys of that figure), 8 said they would come. Morning of the great breakfast presentation featuring a BEAUTIFUL PowerPoint presentation designed by yours truly (no, seriously, I legit took a cover photo for it and everything with fresh flowers, etc.) however, there were…three.

But!! All went well, the presentation was well-received, our three attendees were lively and asked questions after the speaker’s every point. So, perhaps a new client will come our way. Or three.

We’re talking about turning it into an article, so that would be cool, and I would get a co-author credit, so again, nice for the CV and my upcoming job hunt to end all job hunts.

Apart from communing with the dead, I have been a busy bee, delving into my most recent project: new French export controls on weapons, ammunition, and other military/defense items. 

Oh and default Microsoft Word here is in French, and then when you start writing in English it puts you in English U.K. So, I now (for work at least) spell defence with a c. Baller. 

And now I'm going to see Paul Taylor Dance Company!! Whee!! 

Busy-ness (?), Trains, and Church

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 3^rd 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 the day after I left…same thing has happened in NYC – so I am thrilled to finally get to go!!!

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, which is conveniently close to where I work…and I loved it. I was invited out to go out to dinner within minutes of my arrival by a fellow American (who has lived in 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! 

You've been waiting for it -- first week of work!

Bonsoir mes amis,


Sorry for the delay in posting -- it's been quite a busy week! I started at the firm on Monday and my dad and step-ma were in town Sunday through Tuesday evening, so I had dinner with them each night after work. Today I had dinner with a law school friend, her partner, and their son! It's been a much more socially active week than I had imagined it would be. I pictured myself all alone this first week and how hard it was going to be to transition to living by myself again and not having Husband around. But, although I miss Mr. H. like crazy, I've been pretty blessed to feel like I have a "normal" life here with friends and family. It's kind of just like home but people smoke more (even more than in Pittsburgh, which seems impossible to me) and I speak a different language at work. You know, little differences.

So, work. Which I know you are all dying to hear about. It's very cool and there are several things about which I am DORKILY excited. For instance, I have my own email address with the firm, and my own phone line, and my own key and badge, and there is pretty much all you can drink tea, coffee, Evian, and Badoit (like Perrier).

The environment is so collegial -- some staff and attorneys all go out to find food at like 1:30 and bring it back and we all eat what we've bought in the conference room. Everyone has made a real effort to include me in things, inviting me to go "chercher un manger" (look for food) with them, explaining legal concepts to me, etc.

That's probably been the biggest and most obvious difference -- I'm doing some work in French law but I have a very introductory background in it, so essentially I am starting from a very basic level. But again, people take the time to explain things to me and usually, there's at least some corollary in the US system that I can kind of compare a given concept to, and then things start to click. Mostly I have been working on non-billable business development things, but I have gotten to help on one big lawsuit, so baby steps, I say.

Speaking of business development, the firm is hosting a breakfast mini-conference in June sometime, and for the invitations we wanted to include a picture at the heading to give the e-cite a classier touch. We had some photos done, but the coffee cup with coffee (it's breakfast, get it? We had a croissant too) wasn't on a saucer and the photographer didn't have enough time to re-do because she's was going away for Memorial Day (US based photographer, obviously). The lead attorney on the project was...dismayed to say the least by the lack of saucer. Efforts were made to convince him that it kinda sorta looked like a mug so a saucer is optional, but to no avail.

So, we have a photo shoot the next morning. I am dispatched to find a pretty looking croissant. I complete my mission and we start cleaning the table we've decided to stage the shoot on. None of us have a good actual camera so we bust out our iPhones. After two little shoots, some cropping and some resizing, I can proudly say that I, avocat and budding photographer, took the photo that will be featured in the invitation. Not what I expected to be doing for part of my first week, but we'll just call it resourceful. We worked some fresh peonies into the shot, too. It came out quite well for 2 lawyers and one lawyer-to-be putzing around with their phones. All in the name of business development, I suppose.

But honestly, the biggest "little" problem has been my computer keyboard at work. In case you didn't know, the French do not use the "standard" QWERTY style keyboard that we have in the US.

Instead, it's AZERTY.

Just pause, and think about it.

All of a sudden apple becomes "qpple" and Aztec becomes "Qwtec." Also, the enter key is in a weird spot so I keep hitting the *. That's not a frequently used thing, so why is it there!!!!! Like why wouldn't you have to shift to get an asterisk? Having it be a basic keystroke is ridiculous. Anyhoo.

I am determined not to ask for a QWERTY. This is my hero quest, my Everest, my wilderness journey: become an AZERTY-proficient typist. I am getting better already, and it is quite handy for French because the commonly used accented letters are there already. So that's nice.

Well, I'll update more with some of the sight-seeing stuff later. Just thought it would be better to share some of this first week of work stuff while it is in fact still my first week of work.

Ciao ciao,

Cate

PS Everyone says ciao ciao and all I picture is the dog, chow chow. I have to stop from laughing every time. I have a feeling that breed has a different name in French...

Museum and Lunch with the Big Boss

Hi there,

Let's see. Tuesday, I sent a quick email to my boss in Paris to let him know that I had arrived, found my apartment, etc. and then Hubbiekins and I went to the Musée d'Orsay, which is probably my favorite museum in Paris. This statement does not mean much, as I've only been to Paris once before and I think I've only been to two museums. So, I guess I mean, d'Orsay > Louvre because, although the Louvre is très cool on the outside and has many of the world's masterpieces, it's SO freaking huge that I get the illness my family affectionately calls "museum head" very quickly after entering. Also, I'm not so much into antiquities and the Louvre has quite the collection of that stuff. So, d'Orsay it is.

We had to stand outside in line for 20ish minutes to get in and buy our tickets, and it was COLD. And started to rain, and neither of us had brought rain gear. But we made it inside to the ticketing area before the heavens really let go. I got us the reduced rate for being youngins under 25, so that was a nice use of my French as I like saving money.

We were kind of already a little worn out and frozen by this point from walking to the museum and standing in line, so we stopped at the cafe on the ground floor of the museum and took a little break with some water, Fanta and 2 "petits pains" or little breads, otherwise known as dinner rolls.

After our snack break, we started on the ground floor and worked our way up to the top of the museum. In hindsight, the opposite path might have been the better choice because by the time we got to the fifth floor -- which is room after room of Impressionist masters, we were kind of done. Anyways, I was particularly excited about a painting my Millet (another greatest hit is "The Gleaners") called L'Angelus, or I think something like "morning prayer" in English. It depicts two farm workers in the field gleaning after the harvest (I think) and they pause as the sun rises and the church bells ring for morning prayer. The map of the d'Orsay has a convenient legend of where to find its most renowned pieces, and Angelus is on the Millet hallway. Husbie and I walk the Millet hallway. Spot the Gleaners, but I can spy no Angelus. So, I go to information and (in French) say how we have just walked the length of the hallway, no Angelus, what's up. Response: it's on exhibition in Moscow and won't be back for two months. So I didn't get to see it this time, but the good thing about my extended stay is that I will still be here in two months, so hopefully I will see it when it returns.

After heading through the rest of the galleries that I was interested in, we walked to Les Invalides, the site of Napoleon's burial because I was under the impression that it was free. Wrong. The burial site in the church, and the entire church itself, has been incorporated into the Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum) and entrance to the whole museum was included in the fare. I may be completely wrong about this, but I thought that the last time I came to Paris (2004) it was free because it's a church and churches are free. That is no longer the case and Husband and I decided that we didn't really care about Napoleon that much. So, we took the metro home.

At home, I checked my email again only to discover that my boss had emailed me not 20 minutes after we left that morning asking me to call him so that we could set up a time to meet this week to go over my internly duties as he will be traveling for most of my first week of work. Problem: I didn't have a phone and the Skype test call I did over the 3G on my iPad didn't go so well, so we ventured back down the many stairs to the SFR store where I acquired a cheapo pre-pay phone. Then we tromped back up the stairs so that I could make my phone call. Set up lunch for the following day.

Wednesday, May 16 -- Lunch with the big boss

I am a little fish in this office that I will soon call my workplace, so boss is an unclear term because apart from the other interns, everyone is in some degree my boss. So by lunch with boss, I mean big boss, and by big boss I mean managing partner of the Paris office of the law firm. Husband and I took the metro out to my workplace, which was good to do because I have to change trains twice and this lunch presented a good opportunity to practice. We practiced a little too well and arrived an hour early, so we stopped into a restaurant so that Husband could eat as he would not be joining me for my work lunch. After a quick lunch for him, I headed to the office and he set up shop in a little ice cream cafe nearby.

The office is very very nice and it's in a very stately building with quite an impressive door. The firm has the entire second floor for its office suite. I introduced myself at reception and sat down to wait for lunch. I ended up going with both the big boss and a senior associate to lunch at a nice restaurant. I had the seared sesame soy tuna --yum! We had a good chat, and I got the new intern spiel over lunch. The three biggest points were to ask questions about anything at all that's unclear, to integrate myself with the firm, and to ride herd on my time sheets (which I will have to fill out to keep track of what time I am spending on which projects, etc.). After lunch, I got a quick tour of the office and was introduced to everyone who happened to be there, so several attorneys, some support staff, and a fellow intern.

After the tour, I wrestled with the stately door. It said to "ring and push hard." My apartment door is like that too -- there's a button that you push to unlock and then you shove on the door and out you go. Problem was, I could not f or the life of me find what I was supposed to ring/push. So I tried the other door with a big turns handle. I opened it, sort of, and shimmied out throught the crack. I discovered Hubbie turning the corner to come and find me. While we were chatting about what to do next, the building manager came over and fixed the door that I had opened incorrectly. So oops. I will have to figure that one out quickly. We ended up just heading home so that I could change out of mu suit. Did not end up going to church because by the time I got changed we would have been late to the English service and H didn't seem all that keen on going to the later French service.

Avocado has Arrived!!!

Bonjour mes amis, My husband and I have arrived in Paris! He's staying with me for a week before heading back to the States to do his summer internship. So, unfortunately that means I'm going to be all by my lonesome for 10 weeks after he leaves. :(

We took a direct flight (!) and arrived this past Monday. Remember all of my concerns about visas, uncomfortable border questions about interning and stuff? Yeah, that turned out to be a non-issue: we went through what is easily the least-questioning entry process I've ever seen. I handed the border police my passport and didn't say anything. He scratched his quite sunburned arm, looked at his watch, flipped through my passport and didn't say a single word. No "how long are you going to be here?" or anything, so I (likewise) didn't volunteer anything. He stamped my passport and I moved on. We did see the border police shuffling an African fellow into a back room, so they must be interrogating someone...just perhaps not US nationals as attractive as yours truly.

We journeyed our way to the RER (local train) station part of the terminal, which was a HIKE. But, we made it, up and down several escalators, some stairs, etc. We had a wee fight with the automated ticket purchasing machine -- either we couldn't get it to read our credit card or the machine was having a bad day. We changed machines, I tried a different card, and presto! tickets popped out. We hopped onto the waiting train and set off through the graffitied suburbs. The train was pretty empty, filled up a little bit with some school children and then some working types as we got closer to the city. Husband studied the graffiti as we went by and was telling me the most popular choices along the walls -- some repeating themes (or gang signs?), I suppose. 

We got off at our station and set forth on the 15ish minute walk to my apartment. The morning was really fresh, and there were lots of people jogging and speed walking in the the Luxembourg Gardens as we walked by. Looked like fun, and made me glad I brought some running shoes and clothes just in case. 

Finding the apartment wasn't too bad -- I had taken a couple of screen shots of some maps on my phone, so I checked those and they have maps posted at the bus stops so we checked our progress as we went along. The apartment door and lobby are pretty cool, but then to get to the actual apartment unit we have to go up the service staircase up 6/7 flights.

I've decided not to count. And looking up or down is really unpleasant. So you just have to keep trudging up indefinitely. You can kind of tell when you're halfway up because the lights are out for one flight, so that's nice. Not.

The staircase is a pretty narrow spiral one, so I was really glad I had Husband to lift the big suitcase up the stairs. I handled the little one and my purse, and I was still wheezing when I got to the top.

When we finally reached the top, well...it's not pretty. It's fine, I mean, but this is not a glamorous part of the building. It's a choppy, turning hallway that has been carved up along the way into little units, so there are doors up and down the hall, but only some have doorknobs and numbers. I think some have been combined into bigger units. Anyhow, our landlords there to greet us and show us around the apartment. They gave us some towels and there were sheets on the bed. It's pretty much as described in the pictures that I received a while back -- loft bed, funny shower in the corner, etc. There's all kinds of pots and pans, a little electric toaster oven thing, and a toaster. No microwave or actual oven. We settled everything in, I asked the landlords a couple of questions about where to get a phone and stuff, and Husband helped them get a storage unit door unstuck. And he fixed the window shade. He's a very handy person to have around.

Once the LLs left, I got unpacked and put my clothes on hangers and all that kind of stuff. The LLs had said we were welcome to use anything in the pantry (i.e. 3 shelves by the sink) so Husband cooked us some pasta on the stove while I did my unpacking.

Then we went out to investigate getting me a little go phone prepaid deal. We headed down the street to a little Orange store and were kind of surprised at the prepay prices. The phone is like €24 and it comes with a €5 credit of minutes on it, but that's only 10 minutes, said the store girl!! So, we didn't end up getting one there. We did, however, ask (and by we, I mean I) about getting a sim card for my iPad so that I would have 3G Internet access. And those plans were surprisingly cheap! But...we had left the iPad upstairs...so we went to get it and went back to the Orange store. SO MANY STAIRS.

But, as I said prices were not bad: SIM was €8 and the monthly plan (2GB, I think) was like €25. They were out of the 25 Euro credits so we bought the SIM, and headed down the the street another few blocks to the next Orange store where we got the credit, or the "recharge" as they say in French, and had the sales lady set it up for us because you have to call to activate it. Once I start work I can just call the activation number from there, but since I don't have a phone currently it was nice of them to do it for me. The sales person had just finished setting up another American's blackberry to pretty much do the same thing, so she was happy to do mine too, haha. We spoke in French though, and she kept throwing in some English (I think because she had just been speaking it with the Blackberry lady) and then she told me, "I don't know why I'm speaking English to you." So that was nice -- my French was good enough that she didn't feel like she needed to speak English to me! 

After that, we walked ourselves to Notre Dame, which was fun. Went inside and sat down for a little bit because it was a longer trek than I had thought (although we may not have taken the most direct route). We walked all around it, the Hubster thought it was really neat, and then we walked back and got lost a bit, but found our way by recognizing stores we had past before, haha. It was actually pretty warm by this point and we had both shed our coats. We went to the grocery store that's essentially next door to me and got some bread to toast, jam, goat cheese, cookie crackers, and 2 baguette sandwich things. By this point, it's 4pm and I am really really fading fast, so we get to the apartment and I head to bed. Husband emailed his mama, and I fell asleep immediately even though it was pretty bright in the room (there's a skylight in the room over the bed that you can open for air, and block off to keep out the light if you want).

Overall it's been good. I've had a few freak out moments where I want to go back home because: a) I'm petrified that I am going to absolutely BLOW at this job, and b) I don't know what I'm going to do by myself for 3 months, but I'm working on it. Husband is being very supportive. He reminded me that my butt is going to be quite awesome (he actually said, even more awesome than it already is, hahahahahah) at the end of the summer from all these ridiculous stairs...so that helped.