Paris and the three P's: Puppets, Pétanque and Pastis

Yesterday (Friday) marked the end of my second week of my stage (internship). After work, I got to the train station and bought the remaining tickets I'd need for the rest of my semester (at rather wicked low prices, I must add) and then headed back home. After I got back, Trevor and I made some simple quesadillas and watched Gladiator, then went downstairs to our weekly meal with our host family. Christine cooked a wonderful meal, comme toujours, which included a salmon with a citrus sauce and a home-made strawberry tart.

Today (Saturday), those with last names A-F spent quite a bit of the afternoon together, with Elisabeth (our French language professor), Renée (the programme director) and her daugter. We first went to see Guignol, a French puppet/marionette-type show (kind of like a Punch and Judy type of thing) by the Eiffel Tower. It was rather entertaining, but perhaps more so because it was so apparently made for toddlers; their parents sat on the side aisles, while the obviously American group (or at least it was apparent that there was a definite age gap between us and the main audience) sat in the back row (as the children's benches were rather small for us). Before the play even started, one of the mothers and I got to talking; she mentioned that it was rather funny to see us in the theatre, and asked if we were there for a course or group activity. :-P

After the show, we were greeted by pouring rain and made our way to a café, where we had pastis cocktails (i.e., with a flavouring added to the pastis). Pastis, in general, smells and tastes very much like licorice. While we had our pastis, we also broke into little groups and played card games. Elisabeth taught a few of us a game called Kilos de Merde (yup, just as it translates); in turn, I taught her spooons, which is pretty much the American version to the French game.

Rain finally subsiding, we made our way out to the Champs de Mars to play pétanque, the French version of bocce ball. I must say that since day 1, I was looking forward to this one particular activity. And lo and behold, the weather changed (yet again; something that seemed possible only in Michigan) and we suddenly found ourselves playing while hail fell (rather quickly). I'm wondering if I'll be able to carry a small set home with me...

It was now nearing dinner time and somehow Sam, Jill and I got onto a discussion on foods from Grenoble. After talking about it enough, we eventually made our way to a local grocery store and then back to the Fondation, where they cooked a layered dish of raviole, heavy cream, salmon, emmental, I cooked sweetened carrots and Trevor prepped the strawberries. Pat made sure that the ravioles were good... which they definitely were. To my stomach's content, I found the dish to be very tasty and filling; it's also something that I feel would be pseudo-difficult to replicate.

What was for sure difficult to replicate was our jazz experience that followed. The five of us went to Hippocampus, my favourite jazz club (which is securely tied with Duc des Lombards which, I now recall, Trevor and I went to with Pat yesterday). Eating my mousse au chocolat (which quickly jumped to my favourite mousse au chocolat on the European continent so far) and relaxing to the jazz music, I felt extremely content with Paris and all thoughts outside of it drifted away temporarily.

It's a bit hard to believe that we're more than halfway over with this programme and with everything I have planned for the rest of my time here, I feel like it'll be ending sooner than I expect it to. However, I think I'm soon quite ready to go home. Perhaps unless I revisit jazz clubs more often... :)

"Dude, we're in Paris!"

Catch-up…Again, Part II: « You Can’t Stop the Beat » (The Cooking Momentum Really Picks Up)

(N.B. In a similar style as my previous post...)

Thursday (26): After a late night with my paper, I was totally ready for the weekend and the excitement vis-à-vis cooking that we had in store for our dinner guests. Thursday evening, Gerald, Jill and Sam came over for dinner. Ménu: apératifs, pâte de penne avec une sauce de tomates et des boulettes de poulet et en plus du brocoli, la salade, des fromages et pour le dessert, les poires au four avec une sauce de vin blanc (sucré), de la canelle, et du citron. Of course, we also ended with pains au chocolat et chocolat chaud. (If you couldn't pick up what any of that was, make a note and I'll translate it into English, though I think you should be able to understand all of that.) We also played 1 000 Bourne.

Friday (27): I went to a cooking class taught by Elisabeth, at the Fondation. We made tartlettes, a salad with warmed chèvre, endives wrapped in ham and topped with a béchamel sauce that I made, and mousse au chocolat (there was an extra one that Camille and I shared, at Elisabeth's encouragement to finish it). Our end of the table (including Elisabeth) talked about travelling and food for much of the time, eventually leading me to the kind of cooking I've been doing since I've been in Paris. (Keep that bit in mind...) It was Jane's turn to come over for dinner, and so she and another one of her classmates, Elise, did just that. (Whoa, weird English sentence going on right there...) For dinner, we had: apératifs, salmon (me) with wild rice and asparagus (Trevor), salad, cheese, and had a duo-dessert (halved mango with brown sugar and cooked in rum and lemon juice, and strawberries that had been soaked in a mixture of orange juice, lemon and sugar; the mangoes were served with a reduced sauce of the leftover liquids from both desserts). As always, pains au chocolat and chocolat chaud ended the meal. After Jane and Elise left, Trevor and I continued talking and we got onto the subject of our favourites about our experience so far. Eventually, we got to thinking about who some of our favourite professors are and after recounting my cooking story from earlier in the day, we began thinking about the possibility of us cooking for them before we leave Paris. To make the night even more perfect, we figured out how to open the windows to the balcony. Paris is such a beautiful city.

Saturday (28): Trevor and I met up with Gerald and Jill at the Jardin de Luxembourg; quite exciting was the fact that the day was absolutely perfect (especially in terms of weather). Afterwards, we stopped by St. Sulpice and Tuileries (another garden in Paris). Our final destination for the afternoon was the Arc de Triomphe, which we found out students get in for free! About 50+ pictures and 500 steps later, we made our way back down and decided to do an impromptu dinner (as we were still up in the air as to whether or not we wanted to go to a jazz club). We ended up just staying inside and having dinner: apératifs, baked pasta, cheese and for dessert, dark mousse au chocolat accompanied by strawberries in various forms (including a nutella-filled strawberry with chantilly crème). As we finished up our pains au chocolat and chocolat chaud, we heard a key and were surprised to find our host family having returned from their vacation. Before and throughout their departure, Trevor and I had thought they would be back on Sunday. We (including Gerald and Jill; thanks for all of your help!) cleaned up the kitchen and dining room in the fastest time I had ever seen those two rooms cleaned after one of our dinners. Our host family was extremely nice about the confusion and told us that we could have just carried on, as if they had never arrived. In any event, the day still remained as perfect as it could be in Paris.

Sunday (1 March... when did that happen?!): After the adventure of finding hostels and what-not for my upcoming trip to Italy, I heard a small knock on my door. It was Elisabeth, our host sister, coming to get me for lunch. Our host parents made a wonderful lunch for us, incorporating ingredients from the mountain region where they had vacationed. (Un)fortunately, the food was definitely regional (including the names of each thing) and was not committed to my memory at the time. I wrapped up my hostel searches, booking everything that could be booked, took a bit of a nap, and then went to Sacré-Coeur to meet Patrick for Mass (finally after my fourth or fifth time being in Montmartre, I was able to get to Mass there). Afterwards, we stopped by a crêperie and ate some crêpes en route to the Comédie Française, where the BU crowd watched Cyrano de Bergerac. I'm sure I'd think it'd be as great a play as everyone else thinks it is, if I had been able to understand what was going on. In any event, it was quite the fortunate experience to be at the Comédie Française. For the first time in quite some time, Trevor and I went back to my room to have our first meal outside of our host family's kitchen.

We Officially Have a Sixth Course

Today was, more or less, perfect. I’m kind of tired, though, and want to jump ahead to the dinner portion of the day, so I’m really going to make every effort to make this a short post.

After deciding to go to the laundry place some other day (because we were still tired after working on our homework for about 5,5 hours last night), I got ready for my day and got to school on time. I had the best class with Elisabeth (Travaux Pratique) to date, as well as a great class with Odile (the immigration and citizenship in Francophone cinéma course). Throughout Odile’s class, she was able to help us all make sense of the movie we viewed last Friday, Touki-Bouki. I’m really enjoying the classes so far. Then, we had to stay for a group conférénce, this time focusing on French politics. Olivier, the political science professor gave the talk and was quite entertaining and informative, and the fact that I could understand everything he said was surely a positive sign. During the day, I was able to find a nice boulangerie near the school, and we were also told that we would be experiencing our first grève in Paris. A grève is, generally speaking, a strike; in Paris, this means an almost complete halt of all transport systems in Paris. The situation is anticipated to be bad enough that they’ve cancelled our classes for Thursday. It should be quite interesting to see how the city operates without such means of transport as the Métro not being in service.

Straight from class, Trevor and I walked to the Dupleix Métro stop, only to find it wasn’t working. So, we headed for the La Motte Picquet Grenelle stop and, en route to the stop, did some supermarché shopping. Finally back at home, I began preparing our dinner, which was yet another five-course meal. I’ve titled this entry as us having a sixth course, but we did only have five courses, with one of those courses being a possible sixth one in the future (hope that makes sense). EntouK (texting shortcut for En tout cas, i.e., In any case), our first course (i.e., the new one) was an apératif, followed by our first plat being a rather unconventional round for us: eggs. Trevor had a bunch of them, some scrambled, a few sunny-side; while I had cooked whites with sugared ham. We then finished off the leftover baked pasta, to which I melted Leerdammer and Gouda into an additional portion of pasta sauce, for round 3. Round 4 came in two parts: our cheese plate, alongside fresh mango slices. Finally, we had our dessert round, which included a special (and may I say, favoured) form of chocolat chaud: the 86% cocoa form. :)

I Will Now Forever Think « Beuf ! »

Friday was an awesome day to be a part of BU’s Paris programme. The school divided us in half, alphabetically and took us on a French dégustation, i.e., a tasting of French foods. Elisabeth was our culinary guide and told us to try different foods and then make a decision on whether we liked it or not. Our first course was focused on meat: a trânche (slice) of dry sausage, and rillettes and boudin-noir pâtés on baguette slices. From the fromagerie, we tried chèvre (goat cheese), fourme d’Ambert (a kind of bleu cheese), comté (which kind of tastes like Trevor’s favourite, emmental), and tried two types of camembert, an artisan and an industrielle form. This sort of tasting allowed us to know what to look for when going to the grocery store, when price and quality are usually in the forefront of American students’ minds. Artisan forms reveal that someone actually took the time to make the food, as opposed to the industrial form that could definitely be seen as uniform and more generic looking. This is quite apparent when it comes to go to the boulangerie and comparing baguettes. Speaking of the boulangerie and other inventive bread and sweet creations from the patisserie, we tried a bread that I had never had before (and still am not sure of the name), croissant au beurre, baguette vennoise, palimier, pain au chocolat, profiterol, baguette vennoise du chocolat, and for dessert, a chocolate mocha cake, (I think) mille feuille, and chocolate éclaires. They also taught us how to choose between two bottles of unopened wine and how to serve the different foods to guests.

After the conclusion of our French tasting experience, I joined most of my classmates from my 469 class and somehow made it through a movie from the 70s called Touki-Bouki. It didn’t seem like any of us were fans, nor did we completely understand what was going on. From the sound of the voices (and there didn’t seem to be much dialogue at all), people were speaking in French and either in Arabic or Wolof (the movie takes place in Senegal). What made it even more difficult was that the subtitles were in English but also in white, which made it quite a challenge to understand how the translation worked.

The night before, Trevor and I basically planned out our weekend and we met up with Erin, Liz, and Meredith, and headed for the Louvre. After navigating through the Métro, we made our way to Les Pyramides, the entrance into the Louvre itself. We were told that since we were registered through BU as Art History students, we could get into the museum for free; we didn’t quite understand, however, how to go about getting the student card. After many redirections and instructions by various staff members, we finally made our way to the card centre and received our student passes. [This, along with the Carte Navigo passes made some of us feel like we had tons of power, haha.] We then spent the next two hours going through the museum, including our visits to the « beuf » (pronounced bof) pieces, pieces which in their own right are amazing, but left us asking why everyone makes a big deal out of them, the clearest one being La Jaconde. After our trek through the museum, we headed for the Fondation, and once there, we all ate dinner with Gerald, Jill (hope you’re feeling better!), and Sam. I finally got the formula right and only spent 2,85 €!).

The Louvre group then left the Fondation and headed for Centre Tchèque which, as you may have guessed it, translates to the Czech Centre. Permission to preface (that’s for all the wonderful Model UNers who have somehow wandered onto this blog): Trevor loves jazz music and we’ve been looking for the best jazz group in France. Anyhow, he stumbled onto a website that lists every jazz concert and somehow happened upon the Czech Centre. We were a bit skeptical about going to the Czech Centre, primarily because the photo on-line made it seem like too modern of a place. And really, because it was a French-Czech establishment. (Haha, I don’t know why, but I kinda « czecheled » at that one. Okay, I’m done.) En tout cas, we decided (more like I started moving and there was no turning back) to go in and I asked a guy outside of the door if there was a jazz club performance inside. Through the window, we could only see a few folks chatting away. Still a bit anxious and unsure of what to expect, we were greeted by an über-enthusiastic guy who told us that the entrance was only 3 € and that the bar downstairs didn’t accept cash, but we could buy a set of tickets equivalent to 2 glasses of wine for 4 €. Now, you may be thinking « downstairs, why do you have to go down? » or something to that effect, right? In any case, we go down the stairs and the room begins to appear; the place definitely looked like a converted dungeon. At any rate, it would’ve been a cool dungeon if that’s what it’s purpose actually was; otherwise, it’d be a great wine cellar. EntouK, it was the site of the jazz concert. The music and company were great, but we couldn’t see the band from where we were sitting. We all got quite hungry after the concert and made our way to the crêpe kiosk that was conveniently right next to our Métro stop. I got a crêpe mixte (ham and cheese). I love Paris.

Let's Play Catch-Up! (Part III)

To continue with the brief points of the day, our first weekend flew by and was definitely action-packed:

SATURDAY
Only two things were listed on our schedule: a voyage to an assigned part of Paris and a comedy show. My group was assigned Le Marais. It’s a pretty eclectic part of this wonderful city, marked in general terms as the home to gay, Chinese, and Jewish communities. We finished our self-guided tour of the area and, having finished early, we took a break from the cold and found a café in close proximity to the comedy site. En route to the meeting site, we came across two demonstrations in the streets. At the Comédie République, we saw a comédie française about the cross-cultural clash and rent between a French Catholic woman and a French Muslim man. It was completely in French and after a long time walking around Paris in the cold, it was a bit difficult to pay attention or to just even understand the play completely. Afterwards, Trevor and I had our first prepared meal that ended up only being a pseudo-dinner (which consisted of a baguette, some cheese (of which Trevor found emmental to be his new favourite), and red wine), as a result of a rendez-vous with Gerald, Jill, and Sam. With little difficulty, Trevor and I made it to our meeting place with them; Jill spoke with a woman at a jazz club (Chez Papa), who told us to come back later that evening, as they were still serving dinner. Having about 2,5 hours to get through before we could get back to Chez Papa, the five of us were basically lassoed into a restaurant. After eating another croque monsieur, alongside my carafe of water, I ended the dinner with a very rich and dark chocolate mousse. As I ate it, I had to keep pushing myself to finish it and eventually triumphed. It was that chocolate-y. Following dinner, we returned to Chez Papa, with Trevor being extremely giddy, particularly through the first part of our stay there. Gerald, Jill, and Sam got a bottle of rosé, while Trevor and I had a 2005 red of some kind, alongside a cheese plate and baguette. The music was amazing and Trevor and I especially were enthralled by "the guy with the dreads." During the break, our waiter moved us closer to the jazz trio and we ended our stay there perfectly satisfied with the evening. As I type, Trevor is still looking for his perfect jazz trio of stand-up bass, drums, and clarinet.

SUNDAY
I joined Christine and Elisabeth in their walk over to the church for Mass. The church pamphlets list the names of two saints, but I think the chapel we had the service in was devoted to Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus. Christine dropped of Elisabeth with the other Sunday school children in another part of the church, and soon joined me. I couldn’t quite understand all of the scripture readings, but was able to get through most of the priest’s homily with little difficulty. I was able to pray the Notre Père with everyone, but soon realised that I haven’t committed the Creed to memory just yet. Afterwards, Trevor and I ate dinner with Antoine, Christine, Elisabeth and Stanislas. Christine told us that she was up until about 3 or 4am preparing our lunch. She made pintade, a cooked guinea fowl in an amazing sauce, as well as a galette de rois. Literally, a galette de rois would be translated as a kings’ cake. On the Epiphany (La Fête des Rois which, this year, was on the 7th of January), a little bean (la fève, usually in the shape of a shepherd) is cooked within the cake. The cooked version is then cut into slices and (usually) the youngest child goes under the table and randomly calls out people’s names to whom a slice of the cake is delivered. Whomever has the fève is crowned king or queen. As Christine made the cake, she said that she put two fèves inside. Stanislas got the first one, while I got the second. Stanislas chose Elisabeth as his queen and, as I couldn’t possibly let Trevor escape from the experience, made him court jester (though, I don’t know if I ever told him that) and said he had to wear a crown, too. At the end of the meal, Elisabeth gave me a drawing for her skiing in the mountains.

Then, I FINALLY got to see my host family from Noisy-le-Roi! Just on time, Marie-Léone and Paul drove up in front of the building; for some reason or another, I didn’t quite seem to recognise them at first, but as soon as I got in the car with them, it was as if I had never really left (one difference being that Paul’s voice has definitely gotten deeper). At the house, I gave them some gifts from the States (Marie-Léone loved the Target bags), and soon found out that Paul received a Mac and basically converted the rest of the family to it. (Errghh…) It’s quite brilliant, though, for the work he does with music. After I pretty much had enough of Paul’s showing off of what his computer can do, we went downstairs and had some wonderful hot chocolate. I took mine with some baguette, just as I had done about two and a half years ago in that very kitchen. Wow, time certainly has flown by! Following this wonderful return to memory lane, Marie-Léone brought me to a few of the host families that hosted students when my seminar class stayed in Noisy-le-Roi. To my pleasant surprise, they all remembered me, especially my faux hawk. For some reason or another, they speak much quicker French there than in Paris; yet, I understood them a bit more easily and was quite able to carry on a conversation with them. Following a couple exchanges (of which Marie-Léone pointed out that telling the same stories, particularly of my time in South Africa, was giving me good practice), we returned back to the house where I had dinner with Marie-Léone, Paul and France (who has also grown up since I last saw her). It was then time to leave and after being reminded and encouraged to come back to visit for a longer period of time, made my way back to Paris. En route to the building, I got a text from Trevor saying that he was at yet another jazz club. I soon made my way to a jazz club called Sunrise Sunside. It was a bit more cramped than Chez Papa, but it definitely felt more like a jazz club. Apparently, Trevor, Jill, and Sam had been there all day, and were back for the jam session. People from the audience joined in and people swapped places every now and again. It was rather hectic but great to see how everyone gelled together once they started playing.