I feel like relating you this story just because I feel like the lonely Canadian point of view here.

My friend “Lauren” and I went to a part at his house when she was here.  Among various events, one girl “Danielle” made out with this guy named “Pierre”.  Only thing?  Danielle has a boyfriend.  The amazing thing is, NO ONE thought it was strange!  Her friends didn’t pull her aside and say “Danielle are you sure about this?  What about your boyfriend?…” which is exactly what I would do if one of my friends ever was about to cheat on her boyfriend.  Everyone just seemed to find it completely normal.  And I just learned that Pierre has a girlfriend too.  Don’t the French believe in fidelity?  

I recently asked one of the other people who was there, and he just said that yes they believe in fidelity but when they’re not completely sure about the people they’re with, they continue searching for someone better.  Then for goodness sakes, break up already!  If you’re still searching, you shouldn’t be in the relationship you’re in.  And anyway, cheating is cheating!  Gee whiz.  Cultural difference I guess.  I would feel so insecure in a relationship if my boyfriend was still kissing other girls at parties because he was still searching for someone better.  I would rather just end the relationship then and there.  But somehow, my opinion is the minority opinion!  Madness.

The other thing is that public displays of affection are everywhere here, and people move from relationship to relationship in the blink of an eye.  I told my friend “Tony” I found it surprising that couples make out in the parks, on the subways, EVERYWHERE, and he said it was just my Canadian prudishness.  To which I naturally responded that it was actually just the French who have no shame!  Get a room for goodness sakes.  Last year I had a summer job as a tour guide for a group of French teenagers in Canada.  There were these two who coupled up during the trip and were practically glued at the hip/lips/everywhere for the whole time.  Just to let them know, I told them that it was not considered decent and polite to do that in Canada.  The 16-year-old boy just told me that if it was not against the law, then they could and would continue.

So anyway: here’s to being a proud Canadian prude, staying faithful to your significant other when you have one, and keeping private things private.  If I eventually date a French boy, I think he and I are going to have a long chat on our expectations of the relationship!  Ie) I refuse to date someone who thinks it’s normal and acceptable to kiss other girls.  Mistakes and one-offs are one thing, and can be forgiven.  This French mindset I’ve observed?  Not acceptable to a prude like me!

Bisous!

This is actually the first September since before kindergarten that I am not going to school, and I like it!  I have had two more days nanny-ing, and they were far less exhausting.  In fact, I arrived at 8am, napped for two hours till the girls woke up at 10, and let them play together or with their other friends until their parents came home, stopping only to eat!  Lovely.  I read Anna Karenina and sewed.
I’m also learning to cook, which was on my “Things to do in Paris” book.  Yesterday N taught me how to make an easy chicken curry.  It has a lot of whipping cream, so it’s not 
THAT healthy, but it’s also vegetable-loaded. 
The recipe (as I stored it in my mind):  Sauté a diced onion and two diced bell peppers (mine were red and green) in olive oil, add diced chicken and sauté till all cooked.  Add two tablespoons of curry powder, one tablespoon of chili powder, and three bay leaves and mix very well so the spices are evenly distributed.  Add whipping cream by estimate, it doesn’t matter how much of the sauce is left in the bottom of the pan afterwards so just go by the consistency, and then continue to stir the curry a minute or so longer.  I hope you started your rice already.  Serve over rice.
Tonight we may be having dinner near the Île de la Cité, at a touristy alley full of restaurants.  Then we intend to have a few, or a lot of, drinks!  I noticed on the way home a bar that serves my favourite Kriek beer.  It’s a Belgian cherry flavoured beer, which they make by actually fermenting cherry juice in the mixture not by adding the flavour to the already-made beer.  It tastes like a cooler, but without the overbearing sugar taste.  I’ve been looking all over, it’s expensive and the place I noticed yesterday serves it for a steal at 7 euros.
Today’s agenda: Eiffel Tower and Seine Boat Tour

Good news first: my Irish passport arrived at my parents’ home!  I have a scanned copy in my email already, and I’ll print it ASAP.

Bad news: vacation is at an end, and even though it is still August for a few hours, the leaves are already falling in Paris.  Still, I have a week left of my friend N’s company, and it is good to know I’ll be making money!  I’ve pretty much arrived at the end of my savings, so after I receive my first month’s salary I’ll be very happy to do some house shopping.  I still don’t have curtains or a proper garbage can, and I would also like slippers, a water pitcher, some house plants…

Other news:  N and I ate at a restaurant called “Le Relais Gascon” in Montmartre (6, Rue des Abbesses) and had the 15,50 midday combo of starter, entrée, and dessert/coffee.  (In French, that’s entrée, plat, dessert/café.)  I had a wonderful salad (crudités), a giant lamb leg with the most delicious gravy and potatoes (gigot d’agneau), and a giant banana split (N had a large crème brulée).  For reference, the lamb on its own was 15 euros, the salad 6, and the banana split 7.  I highly recommend this place!  If I have guests again in Paris, I will be taking them there!  Don’t go at dinner though.  Go at lunch and trust me, your lunch will be enough for the rest of the day.

Yesterday I had my first day babysitting.  The little girl, 8 years old, adores me already.  I like her too, but my goodness she is energetic!  My full attention was taken with her for 9 hours, except for while she played in the park and I sat and read.  She didn’t play for long alone though!
Today my friend N and I went to Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, and the Luxembourg Gardens, and tomorrow we’ll go to Moulin Rouge (just the outside because a show is 100 euros) and Montmartre and Sacré Coeur Cathedral.  True to my prediction I’m spending quite a lot of money because I can’t allow her to pay for any groceries although she’s offered and we do eat out normally once a day because of course she would like to sample the French cuisine and I can’t exactly cook boeuf bourgignon at home, but I’m glad she’s having a good time.  I’m still not shopping until I get paid, other than food.  Speaking of which, in order to get paid I need a bank account but I found out today that I need my social security number to open one, and for that I need my Irish passport.  Ah, the complications.  Since I’m only working one day in August the family offered to pay me in cash for that day so I believe I’ll take them up on that.  
I’m quite excited to get started on all these arrangements, and once I have the passport I’ll have perfect legal rights to everything here!  It will be like that time that the American border people were giving me a hard time about having booked one-way ticket to my aunt’s house in New Jersey, suspecting that I was intending to stay illegally and become a burden on the state, until I pulled out my American passport and they realized that they had no right to refuse me entry after all and that if I was going to become a burden on the state I had every right to do exactly that.  (Why anyone would choose to become a burden on the state in America instead of Canada is beyond me…)  Except the difference is that the Americans were really rude to me, while everyone here who I spoke to about the situation was very kind and apologetic but couldn’t do anything about it.  In any case I’ll be so relieved to have the Irish passport.  Once that’s accomplished, a social security number and bank account will not be far behind!

I’m back in Paris now with my friend L.  I guess I really feel at home here.  It was just lovely to spend time with my relatives in England though.  I got some great deals on clothes at Primark, and saw all the sights I really wanted to.  I do dread to see my credit card statement.  The UK was unbelievably expensive!  The London Eye ferris wheel is 20 quid for a 30 minute ride, so over $30 Canadian.

My mother has now told me that the Irish passport won’t be here by the end of September, which is when I first need it to be paid, so I have to do the Canadian work visa anyway.  Today: fill in forms, get official photos taken in a photomaton in a subway (5 euros) and mail those along with my Canadian passport back to my parents.  Sightseeing with L as well, maybe a picnic in a park somewhere…

News today: my Irish passport has officially been approved, my Libyan birth certificate verified, and I will be receiving it soon.  That means I don’t need to go to the trouble of applying for a one year youth work visa.  For the record, it IS possible.

Other news: my friend L and I had a great romp around London.  Being a tourist is a great way to make friends!  As soon as we got into the city a mother with two sons around our age invited us to eat lunch with them (and even paid).  This may seem like a sketchy thing, to accept this invitation, but she seemed so friendly.  The boys invited us to a Friday pub night they were going to, and we met several people (guys, obviously) just thanks to our Canadian accents.  Apparently Brits like our accents as much as we like theirs!  It was a really great day.  Poor L was exhausted the whole time.  We kept stopping to recaffeinate her (which does get expensive!)  I didn’t eat properly.  Lunch, yes, but dinner was a cheesecake and later a McFlurry, followed by two beers.  Oh well - vacation!  Bottoms up!

For some reason, I never sleep when I know I have to get up early.

Two nights ago, I barely dozed all night, got up at 6, and walked to Paris Nord for my Eurostar train to London that left at 7:13 am.  The British customs officer asked me all sorts of questions about my living arrangements in France, made a bunch of notes on a paper and stamped my passport with a code linking to the paper so someone can look it up if they need to.  She was worried that if France doesn’t let me back in, I would become Britain’s problem.  Not true, because in that case I think I’d be heading back to Canada to sort myself out!  Luckily, I’ll be travelling back to France using my American passport instead, which won’t have any notes.  International spying in action!  (Also lucky no one really reads this!)

Since I got here I’ve had a lovely time catching up with my mother’s family.  They have really made an effort to show me a great time.  I owe them a big thank you of some sort, I’ll figure that out.  It’s also a relief to understand the language and be understood, even if my accent marks me as a foreigner the second I open my mouth.  I feel like the British are fairly welcoming to tourists.  I’ve gotten far less aggressive stares from men too.  Maybe the aggressive staring and comments are a French thing, maybe a continental thing, or maybe the suburbs of Britain are just free of it.  A nice change, anyway.

L arrives tomorrow!  She’s bringing me some key documents, including the American passport, as well as some clothes and OMG peanut butter!  We have a day planned of London sightseeing tomorrow and Saturday.  That poor girl.  I’m all settled into England already, not to mention was already adjusted to France time that’s just an hour off, but she’ll be hopping off a plane at 9:30am feeling like it’s 4:30am and plunging into full-blown sightseeing.  Anyway we’re planning an easy day on an iconic red tour bus. 

Night-night!

I spent the day packing and planning, planning and packing.  Add some laundry to that list too.  I’m heading to London tomorrow very early via Eurostar train and thankfully my relatives there will pick me up from St. Pancras station.  I was trying to figure out the London transportation system online and it looks very scary indeed to a girl from such a small town as Toronto!  On the subject of public transportation, the Paris Métro is just so easy.  Tickets are easy to buy, the fare is the same no matter how far you’re going, and the directions are clearly indicated.  I only once had trouble finding my train in the Gare Saint-Lazare, but that was because I was going outside Paris and the system is a bit different.  

I think London will be a nice break from all the French.  I’m most excited for the National Gallery (so many famous painters housed within!) and for shopping.  I am a little worried because of the recent riots, but I will be careful.  The trip is also expensive, and my wallet will hate me at the end, but some things are just worth it.  I’m glad I’ll be spending a full six days there.

Good night!

Today is a public holiday in France.  I heard it was for the Assumption, and even though I’m Catholic I have no idea about this.  The Assumption of whom?  Anyway, I went to an event I found on Meetup.com, which basically allows people who don’t know each other but who have something in common to arrange get-togethers.  This was an Americans in Paris Meetup group (but non-Americans are also allowed) that arranged a picnic in the Parc Monceau, which is where people go to sunbathe in their swimsuits on the ground.  We didn’t know that so we were fully dressed, but I did catch an eyeful of French bum in a thong swimsuit.  No big deal.

There were about thirty people there.  t was nice to chat with everyone, but hardly anyone was of my age group.  I did meet a lawyer who went to Harvard Law, who may later invite me to a poker night.  She’s older, but still cool.  The day was well spent anyway, and free.  Later I went to a bar, Guinness Tavern on the Rue des Lombards near Châtelet Métro that plays live rock music.  The music was excellent.  Great evening.  Great day altogether.  

Tomorrow, my day consists of suitcase packing, planning, and eating all the produce in the fridge before my six day trip to London.  

Bonne nuit!

I did nothing but laze around the house today and do some grocery shopping at Monoprix.  I can’t even talk about meals because mine were so boring.  I finished off the day by watching three and a half hours of the first season of How I Met Your Mother.  It came with very high recommendations from a great friend of mine and my brother, who happened to have pirated DVDs of all the seasons.  (He lives in China, enough said.)  I had planned to see a movie at the open-air cinema, but the weather forecast called for a lot of rain.  Or maybe that’s just an excuse for my laziness.

So I wasn’t going to post anything, but I couldn’t sleep.  I still don’t have curtains on my window, and it seemed unusually bright so I grabbed my laptop and looked up the phase of the moon and it’s a full moon tonight.  I know, I could have just stood up to look out the window, but laziness won again!  Anyway I started thinking of all the times I’ve had trouble sleeping and I realized that I have full moon insomnia.  I googled it - it’s not a real medical condition, but loads of people experience it.  Naturally there’s no cure unless you’re the pill-popping type, which I’m not.  Maybe I should try to arrange my schedule so that full moon days are filled with extra-tiring activities.

Good news - my parents arrive home in Canada in just a few hours, so we can start working on my visa ASAP.  My sister is not so happy about this fact, as she’s been having loads of fun and parties in an empty house!

Night!  (In my case, I’ll be reading Anna Karenina until 4am or so…)