It’s always easy to take whatever it is you have in your life for granted. This weekend, I had just the opposite experience. I realized just how good I’ve got it. It started on Thursday afternoon. Suzie had to do some “real” work (i.e., work for which she would be paid in real money, rather than in personal-satisfaction credits), so after having a quick lunch with some of my classmates […]
I went to the Franprix just down the block this afternoon to get a few groceries. I had a problem buying apples. Most grocery stores in France require you to weigh fruit or vegetables that are sold by the kilo at a electronic scale, which then spits out an adhesive price tag that you stick on the outside of the plastic bag holding the fruits or vegetables. To get the […]
Silly, funny, and slightly scary and sad poll this weekend in the Femina supplement to the French paper Le Journal du Dimanche. The poll, carried out by the French polling firm Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP), asked 1006 people in France various questions about the United States. Not all the news was terribly bad; for example, 62% of the French (and 68% of those under 35) said they appreciated the […]
On Saturday, Suzie and I, craving the outdoors, took the Metro to the Bois de Vincennes, the huge mostly natural park on the east side of Paris. It was an absolutely glorious fall day: Cool but not too, a blue sky with a few puffy white clouds, a warm but weakening sun. The trees here are in the middle of turning color and losing their leaves, which made the walk […]
In an amazing, in my view, example of the efficiency and courtesy of our county government in Sonoma County (not that I’m biased), we received in our mailbox at our apartment in Paris our absentee ballots for the upcoming election, along with all of the necessary other documents (such as the state and local ballot guides) exactly one week after requesting them by e-mail. I have no idea how they […]
Big controversy here in France this week. During a so-called “amicale” or “friendly” soccer match at the Stade de France on Tuesday between the national teams of France and Tunesia, a large number of the Tunesian fans decided to whistle (the equivalent of booing) during the singing of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. This caused a strong reaction (one could say, an overreaction) from the French government, as noted […]
It’s Sunday night, time for a quick post. We had perhaps the most relaxed weekend we’ve had since we’ve been in Paris, thanks mostly to the fact that the boys have found a new friend to hang out with, a boy in Andrew’s class named Kory. They spent the night at Kory’s house on Friday night, which gave me and Suzie an entire afternoon and evening alone together, which we […]
I feel a bit guilty posting this, while the markets are crashing, but there’s nothing much we can do other than go on doing what we are doing, which is enjoying our time here. Friday was a French-intensive day. Four hours of class in the morning, plus three hours of tutoring from 5:30 to 8:30. In between, Suzie and I took a walk around the town on a very windy, […]
As you will remember from this post, we had gone to the Prefecture of Police in the 14th arrondissement to apply for a carte de sejour, which was necessary because we were spending more than three months in France. After going through all of the documentation in July, the folks in the 14th gave us an appointment in late September for yet another interview about our carte de sejour, this […]