March 7th, 2010
Now that you’ve picked yourself up off the floor from reeling from the shock of seeing a new blog post, let me apologize for the extended absence. Sure, a week or even two might be tolerable, but months?! That’s sort of pushing it, even for we busy professional types. I’d like to say that I’d been kidnapped by angry Argentinian activists, held in a cave where I was tortured for information, only to have clawed my way out, and through some novel worthy death defying adventure (I know that should be hyphenated, but I’ll explain why you won’t be seeing hyphens in a few paragraphs) to have made my way back to Paris, exhausted but posting to my blog. Hell, I’d even take a story about being hit by a car in the dangerous Parisian crosswalks, only to wake up thinking I was Queen Victoria and teaching all the Frenchies proper English etiquette until my memory came back, but that’s not what happened either. No, the truth is, I’ve just been busy. Outrageously so. Maybe I should see if I can contact those angry Argentinians because, if they’d let me bring my laptop and my reading, that quiet cave in the mountains might be ideal for getting through this mountain of academic drudgery. Between the roughly ten (yes, ten, like 1, 0) novels I need to read (not thin ones, mind you) and analyze, the three exposés I need to prepare (those are French oral presentations with very specific and somewhat ridid structures), the papers, and the thesis project all of which need to be done by mid May (damn this lack of hypen!!), I can basically count on locking myself in my apartment and spending so much time hunched over books in the dark, that I’ll return to the US some sort of photophobic mole person. Fantastic.
Anyway, you’re probably not here to listen to me (or read me) moaning (although, if you’re not, you’d think you would have learned by now…), and if you’re like Allie and “over” my blog, I’m probably not going to get you interested again talking about the two main ingredients of any master’s in literature (reading and writing). Instead, let’s take a whirlwind tour of my life since the end of January, shall we?
One of the main social events that dragged me out of my academic isolation last month was Whitney’s “Sabor Latino” party; a shindig of about twenty or so people that included copious amounts of sangria and a smorgasbord of tapas (little latin finger foods if you’re not familiar) which took place at her place in Malakoff. Can we talk about the kind of party you have to promise to get people to take the train all the way out there? I’m not sure exactly what she told everyone but I think I heard rumors of topless belly dancers riding Indian elephants.
It was a tricky night for her as she had to babysit until an hour and a half before her party, which anyone who has ever hosted a party knows leaves no where near enough prep time beforehand. Being my mother’s son and having helped through more than a few parties of this sort, I thought I’d offer to help out. As luck would have it, Whitney and I ended up on the same train to Malakoff and therefore ended up getting to her place at the same time. Both all too aware of the gravity of the situation, we sprung into action. Knives clacking frantically as garlic met its untimely end, tears streaming as onions were quickly reduced to a pile of translucent caustic bits, we were T minus one hour to the party and we needed patatas bravas made, baguettes sliced, and every other type of hors d’œuvre heated, unplastic wrapped (hopefully not in that order), and placed on a serving platter in less time than some of these things were supposed to take to cook. Clayton and Mario came and the unsuspecting duo was immediately put to work. Basically, after using pretty much every dish in the apartment, fighting Whitney for her iPhone which had suddenly taken on near holy importance as it had become both a recipe book and and a doorbell for her guests, and after stirring with one hand, peeling with another, and asking the microwave for all it could give, we all managed to make the food at the party happen. Kat and others were a big help in the whole endeavor too, but there was such a blur of hands and faces in the kitchen, I can’t remember who did what. It was a good time had by all (at least I hope it was), and I think people will definitely be going to Whitney’s next party, should she decide to have one.
Shortly after Whitney’s party, the 14th of February, the day all single women seem to dread, rolled around. Kate, Donna, and I all got together for a little Valentine’s dinner which included champagne rosé which I found at this neat little place down the street from Jess and Nick’s, a fantastic heart shaped cake filled with chestnut confit (which I assure you is amazing), a side of Terre à Delice salted caramel ice cream (which made me sick, but hurt so good), a nice red wine from Spain, an overflowing plate of fresh strawberries, and a case of these delicious little confections called “Millionaire’s Flapjacks” by Gü (thing “ooey gooey”) which were amazing if not assured to give you Type 2 Diabetes overnight. Anthony ended up stopping by later on, which was nice, and all in all, I think we all had an enjoyable holiday. As a side note, I might be the only one and maybe I’m broken or have a heart of stone, but being single on Valentine’s has never bothered me. I’ll have to explore that more later.
What fantastic day comes just a week after Valentine’s Day? Which day am I petitioning the French and American governments to recognize as the special, day off worthy occassion that it is? Why, it’s Lise’s and my birthday, of course! She and I had planned to do some big combined extravaganza but as we both took so long to plan the thing and it fell on a Tuesday night just before a week of vacation, we ended up having a thoroughly enjoyable smaller group out for dinner and dessert in the 13th. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about the choice of venue when I first showed up, bedraggled after teaching on my feet for 5 hours straight and seeing this little empty restaurant named “Gladine’s” on the corner. It looked pretty, well, délabré (run down) and there was no one inside. Still, I trusted Lise, and hoped for the best. Yahaira showed up shortly after I did and we had a nice chat until Lise, Eric, and Whitney joined us, we did the Paris shuffle to get a table, moved to a bigger table so Kat could join us, and added an oddly folding chair when Jess arrived a bit later. Despite the exterior, it was an excellent choice for a restaurant with extremely generous helpings of Basque cuisine which, after it opened, had lines out the front door and around the corner waiting to be seated. Dinner was nice, and though I wasn’t as adventurous as Eric was ordering tripe, I had a good time.
As the restaurant was pressed for space, we decided to have dessert up the street at Place d’Italie at a small place called O’Jules (presumably named after the French bastard son of an Irishman). We all had ice cream, or in my case, vodka soaked lemon sorbet, coffee, and enjoyed ourselves despite the irritating know it all (really missing those hyphens) waiter that informed Eric that people don’t say “en fait” (actually/in fact) unless they have a speech impediment (totally untrue, EN FAIT) and who was generally rude. It’s amazing how many French servers become assholes when you have the audacity to openly speak English around them.
I also had my first visitors since I got here! My friends Hayden and her boyfriend Nick who I know from my Burlington and UVM days came to visit in February after a month working for an agricultural exchange program in southern France and eating altogether too much poireaux soup and crappy bread, butter, and cheese sandwiches. Nick had never been to Paris before and Hayden had only been long enough to do the touristy whirlwind sightseeing tour. I did my best to show them around while managing to get my work done and allowing them a little time to themselves (it is the city for lovers, after all). I really enjoyed having them here, and not only because they brought me fantastic mint tea from their recent trip to Morocco, but as I saw them getting on the train to Charles de Gaulle (the big Parisian airport) on their way back to Vermont, I was hit by my first major twinge of homesickness. There’s nothing like friends from home that are part of an existence totally seperate from Middlebury to provoke “le mal de pays”. Ah well, such is life.
That pretty much wraps up the exciting goings on in my life. Aside from that and shortcircuiting my keyboard during a rather unfortunate cleaning accident (thus the lack of hyphens and my ‘p’ key also acting as mute) which brings my tally of laptops killed or severely maimed since I started college up to five or six, it’s all reading. Not that I can complain too much; most of my reading is fairly interesting as it’s about prostitutes or other equally exciting populations of the francophone world. Still, this lack of posting is inexcusable, and so I’m going to try to resolve to write at least a paragraph a day. Well, as soon as I replace this damned keyboard because this muting my music every time I type a word with ‘p’ in it is getting all kinds of old. If you don’t hear from me, don’t worry too much; my brain probably just exploded all over the walls of my apartment after it exceeded it’s maximum capacity.
Joy El, can you please work on either a) extending the day to 36 hours so I can get everything done or b) creating a few adult clones of me that have a copy of my brain (I don’t have time to raise and teach them)? I could really use the help and I’m not really sure why you’re dragging your feet. We paid off those ethics people, right?
PS, if you need to send a greeting card, check out Hallmark’s new SmileBox service. It’s kind of cool and (mostly) free!). Take a look below at the card I sent my sister to see what I mean.
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Tags: 13th, Anthony, birthday, Burlington, Clayton, Donna, Epitechp, Eric, Gladine's, Hallmark, Hayden, Jess, Kat, Kate, latino, Lise, Malakoff, Mario, Middlebury, Nick, Paris, parties, research, Sailor, SmileBox, UVM, Valentine's, Vermont, Whitney, Yahaira
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