My Family Reunion

Sunday, February 17th was the day. My great-tante Marcelle's Paris aparment was the place. The event= a super-awkward but still fun family reunion. Tante Marcelle's passion is music, and her apartment is a veritable museum of instuments and other symphonic periphenalia.

Two pianists played on Marcelle's 100-year-old (as of this year!) double-piano. Well, this is a picture of them on one the sides, but for some of the pieces they each took a side. I remember they played Rhapshody in Blue, and some West Side Story.

Marcelle's hallway. Brimming with interesting stuff!

My cousin Frederique and her new son. Cute!

My Tante Elizabeth. That kid is also related to me, but fuck me if I know how.

Mamousse! She's another "tante", but more distant.

Drink and chat!

My tante Nicole made me a family tree so I could try to place people, but it was basically futile. Most of these people are descendents of like my great-great grandmother's brother, or some such thing.

Marcelle and Mamousse

I love that Marcelle is totally not wearing bras anymore. I can't wait to be old.... She's my hero. I want to be just like her one day.

Best part of the thing= chocolate cake.

There's a first time for anything

So I'm at the movie theatre yesterday (to see Jumper, in which Hayden Christensen's hotness was the only highlight) and I tried to get a medium-sized cup of Kit-Kat balls. And the guy encourages me to get the SMALLER size as it is part of value deal. SMALLER! And it worked! I was persuaded!

This *idea* of encouraging the customer to buy less goes against everything I grew up beleiving.

Hold me.

Valentine who?

Another Valentine's Day come and gone. You know, in my heart I feel like this day is a complete scam. I subscribe to the belief that it's a marketing ploy concocted by Hallmark. I agree with Ze Frank that saying "I love you" on February 14th is, if anything, much more meaningless than saying it on any other day. But underneath all that reasoned thinking, I just really want to have a romantic dinner with a special someone. Someday...


Happy Valentine's day, for all the lovers. And the for all the solo cats too.

A long overdue post about my apartment.

I should have done this post soon after I moved in, but whatever. I just thought you guys might want to have a vague idea of where I live, although it's been almost 6 months that I've been here.

As you may know, I don't actually live in Paris, but just south of the city limits in a working-class town called Gentilly. There isn't a lot of restaurants, bars, clubs, tourists, or anything like that, BUT I still think it's a great place to live. I have 2 grocery stores, 2 bakeries, 2 butchers, a laundry mat, a post office, a flower shop, a newspaper store, a convienience store that's open all the time, and an open-air market that happens 2 mornings per week, and all this is within a 2-minute walk. (I think I used the number 2 a little much in that last sentence.) Regardless, Gentilly is a practical place to live, and the people here are very friendly.

This is a sticker someone put on the back of a stop sign. It says "Sarkozy is watching you!" There are a lot of anti-Sarkozy posters in Paris.

This is a map of the town located just outside the mairie, which is just by my building.
Some grafitti I pass everyday alongside some left-wing political posters. This "walk" sign is not the typical one for paris. Le petit bonhomme vert here is more chill looking.This is what I see as I walk into my place: my little kitchen. You can see my little 2-burner stove (the tiny fridge is below it), my microwave/oven, and my water heater that lets me 10-minutes hot showers, if I'm lucky.

Another view of the sink area. Once you leave the kitchen, you're in my room! Here you can see my Ikea fold-out bed and Moulin Rouge poster.

Here is the fireplace that's been converted to a store space. It's my cave a vin.

Here is my desk, which I never actually work at. The chair is now mainly used to hang my towel on (it dries better that way), and the desk covered with random crap I really should put away.

Here's the view from my bedroom window. The neighbour has a garden! I can also see the courtyard of my building, where we keep the garbage bins.

This is the view from the kitchen's window.

I didn't take a picture, but I also have a decent bathroom with a shower, toilet, sink, mirror.... you know, the usual.

In conclusion, I love my little apartment! It's a little out of the way, but I can walk to school within an hour (which I had to do during the metro strikes), and the RER will get me there in a couple minutes. YAY!

Gumbo!

I missed a party this weekend. I was invited to a Chinese New Year party which I was really looking forward to. The hostess cheekily asked all people born in the year of the rat (which means me, Miss. 1984) to wear red underwear. Not owning any, I actually bought some pretty crimson underthings specifically for this purpose. In my mind the party was on Sunday, but I realized too late that it actually on Saturday. FRUSTRATING! On the plus side, I do have some sexy new underwear, as well as 2 new dresses and a black turtle neck, all of which will allow me to better blend in with the chic natives.

The other day I went to see a really fascinating exhibit at L’Hôtel de Ville called “Paris en couleurs.” It featured photographs of the city since the advent of colour photography, around 1918, to today. That means pictures of Paris when people were still getting around with horse-drawn carriages, as well as pictures from the German occupation, all the way to Paris celebrating the turn of the millennium. You know, this video explains it a lot better:


Expo « Paris en couleurs » à l?Hôtel de Ville
Uploaded by mairiedeparis


I also hosted a party chez moi the last weekend. I made my first Cajun gumbo, which turned out surprisingly good. The small crowd, which included some friends from the exchange as well as some friends of my co-host Erin, made the party very lively and fun. Here are some pictures:

This is the picture we put on the Facebook invitation. We look hot, right?

School starts Monday. I am taking a course about Cubism, one about German art from 1945-60, one about movements in modern Western art, and one about the History of Paris. I’m actually pretty excited! I just hope they aren’t too hard or stressful, as I am allergic to hard work. I also don’t have any school on Fridays (hurrah!) and the earliest I start is 10am, which is only on Wednesday (double hurrah!). So, to sum up, my schedule kicks some serious ass.

I'm really feeling the blogging bug lately, so I think I'll start posting more regularly. I have no idea if the posts will be quality, but regarless.

Lesson of the day: don't mess with the metro

I was looking at the Globe and Mail's website today and came across this sketchbook slideshow by cartoonist Brian Gable. I love the depictions of Paris in January, and they are very true to life. Click on the picture to check it out!

In other news, I passed my Goya class! 13.5/20 baby! I also got "controlled" on the RER. I fucked up and took the wrong train, ending up in zone 3. My metro pass is only good for zones 1 and 2. On-the-spot fine of 25 euros. What can you do? Stupid life.