Swans and picnicking Parisians

Today was spent reading in the park. I'm reading the Game of Thrones series and just finished the second book today. It was warm outside and the park provided a lively backdrop to my reading. The pond in the center of the park has its fair share of birds lolling about and the park is usually busy with runners and picnickers.

Pretty poppies and picnicking Parisians.

The ducks in the park are quite friendly. I'm guessing that they get their fair share of handouts from the picnickers. Several times a duck or two would strut right up to me, look around a bit, and waddle away disappointedly. Sorry ducks! 

Ducks and swans at the park.

There was also a pair of black swans and a pair of white swans in the lake. They seemed to self-segregate which I found interesting. I guess swans mate for life, so perhaps they were paired up before getting plopped into the pond by some park designer. I like the red beaks of the black swans. The white swans have that black lump that protrudes from the top of their beak that makes them look a little mean to me. The faces of these black swans are a little more elegant.  

Now I'm going to start reading the third book in the Game of Thrones series. This one is supposed to be really good, so I'm looking forward to it. The first one was so gripping that I found myself reading it at the bus stop, during my lunch break, at my desk as my data copied over -- every chance I got really. The second book was a little slower, but still good. 

Well, I'm off to read. I hope you all enjoy your Sunday as well!  

Saturday in the park

It was raining again this morning, and I ended up crawling out of bed around 10:00 am. I decided to do at least one touristy activity today and took the metro out to the Jardin du Luxembourg for a look around. By the time I arrived at the park, the sun had come out and warmed things up nicely. Unfortunately, I left my sunglasses at home, so I walked around the park with my eyes practically closed and thus probably missed much of the charm. Nonetheless, the park was quite nice. It seems like a great place to have a picnic or sail tiny toy boats with your kids.

Jardin du Luxembourg

Conveniently, the LGBT pride parade was today on the street right next to the park! I'm glad I got to experience this. It is good to see how open and understanding people are becoming towards each other. There was even a little love for the USA thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling on DOMA.

LGBT

Well anyway, my internet is being especially annoying tonight so I think I will end it there. Adios!

A decent blueberry tart

Today was spent primarily at work, so I don't have many pictures to show. The most exciting part of my day was the delicious three-cheese sandwich I had for lunch. It had brie, goat's cheese, and some other kind of cheese all piled onto a baguette with lettuce and tomatoes. I'm feeling much more comfortable ordering food at cafes and interacting with people on the street. Most of the people here seem very friendly and are kind when they discover my lingual handicap. 

I've noticed that the part of Paris I live in is exceptionally nice. Maybe I've become so accustomed to the seediness of Berkeley and San Francisco that I'm easy to impress, but goodness, it is posh here. The buses are filled with polite riders, and people on the street are friendly too. I enjoy the respite from the barrage of angry yelling people one inevitably encounters while riding on public transit or walking on the streets around the Bay. In any case, it is probably just a function of the small part of Paris that I spend time in.

I bought myself a blueberry tart from a corner bakery to go with my dinner. It was alright, but I think I can find better. 

A pretty decent blueberry tart.

A posh lunch

Today was a pretty good day at work. By the end of the day I had successfully made a sample that I've been struggling to make for the last three days. Hooray for that! 

Also, the lab was celebrating excellence in something or other so we had a very posh lunch catered. It was mega-delicious. I mean, very-ultra-extremely delicious. I didn't take any photos because I didn't feel like drawing attention to myself, but it was primarily fancy finger food served on little sticks. There were fromage-marmalade kebabs, fois gras mini sandwiches, melon-meat skewers, mini-eclairs, etc. I tried a little bit of everything and felt comfortably full after lunch. My coworkers were cooing over the food and exclaiming about how it was well above average for French cuisine. Therefore, I feel like I've had my first legitimate fancy French food experience!

After work I did my laundry and made myself some dinner. Somebody else had unlocked the stove so I could actually use it tonight. Unfortunately, that person was not around, so I wasn't able to ask them how to unlock it so I can use it in the future. Nonetheless, I cooked myself some white fish that I purchased yesterday at Picard and ate it with some cherries, a salad, and a souffle fromage that I bought at the little cafe next to my work. These souffles are going to be the death of me. They are dangerously good.

Dinner

It was tasty. And now, it is time for bed. Bonne nuit!

Rue Mouffetard

Yesterday's evening nap resulted in a groggy morning for me, but I pried my eyes open to blue skies and a beautiful day. I even remembered to bring my camera with me to work so I could take pictures of the food at Rue Mouffetard during my lunch break.

Food on Rue Mouffetard

After working up a healthy appetite taking these photos, I realized I only had €3 ($3.91) on hand for lunch. I searched for an ATM to no avail, and decided to take the challenge of finding lunch for under €3. It turns out that the frozen food store, Picard, has fairly cheap microwavable lunches. I was able to find a tasty bowl of frozen lentil/pea soup for only €2.50! After work, I grabbed some cash near my house and went back to Picard for some more frozen food shopping.

Inside the frozen food store, Picard, and my spoils!

The frozen food from Picard is decent, but it is about on par with Trader Joe's in flavor. It didn't blow me away as I had hoped. That said, I'm sure it would be much tastier if I cooked it in the oven instead of the microwave. 

In the evening, I took a nice stroll through the very crowded park across the street. There were runners galore (still going counterclockwise) and many, many kids. I don't think I've seen that concentration of children since I was last at an amusement park. One of my favorite features of the park is a great big pond right in the middle surrounded by benches where people sit and read, write, or watch the passersby. There were also lots of families picnicking on beautiful, rolling grassy areas. 

Readers in the park.

And just to complete to the barrage of photos that is this post, I took some pictures of Parisian architecture near my school that I find beautiful and classic. It seems very characteristic of this area. I love the wrought iron balconies that are so common around here.

Parisian architecture.

Today was a lovely day, and although my French is not improving much, I am beginning to feel more settled. This isn't a bad place to spend a summer month.

The day of the long, after-work nap

The draw of my bed was too strong for me to resist upon getting home from work today. I think I fell into bed around 7:00 pm and it's already 9:57 pm! Oh my.

This morning I experimented with eating oatmeal for breakfast. First I tried to make it on the stove in our floor's shared kitchen, but I couldn't figure out how to work the stove. Then I realized they have this brilliant contraption called a microwave! I haven't had a microwave for years, so I forgot how useful they were. After a quick google to figure out how best to cook oatmeal in the microwave, I was on my way. 

 

I'm actually very impressed with how the oatmeal turned out, so I will share what I did even though it isn't a unique Parisian thing. I dumped what looked like a sufficient amount of Old Fashioned Oats into a bowl and then added enough water to barely cover the oats. I then let it cook in the microwave for 2.5 minutes on high. Once that was done, I added a splash of goat's milk and a small spoonful of lavender honey and voilà! A bowl of delicious oatmeal was made.

Work was very sciency and fun again. We went to a little street near the University called Rue Mouffetard for lunch. I ordered a quiche lorraine and a 0.5 kg bag of cherries for lunch. It was super! However, I very unfortunately did not bring my camera to work today so I didn't get to take pictures of this street where I bought lunch. I know better than to make that mistake again. It is a very cute street with fruit venders and bakeries galore. I plan to go back to visit this frozen foods store I keep hearing about called Picard. I'll bring my camera next time.

There was champagne and cake at the end of the work day to celebrate a coworker's last day. After that, I came home and fell asleep. Now, I should really go to sleep again. 

Good night! 

Blue skies

Today was my first day of work. I slept pretty well again and woke up when my alarm went off at 8:00 am. My host, Jennifer, met me in front of my house at 8:45 am, so I quickly got dressed and went downstairs to buy a café au lait from the vending machine -- I'm a pretty big fan of that vending machine café au lait. 

I'm thankful she met me there because it turned out that buying a bus pass to get to work was a more complicated ordeal than it ought to have been. We had to go to the machines and purchase a token ticket which we then exchanged at the front desk for a transit card. We then took the transit card back over the machine to add value to it. Weird.

Armed with transit tickets, we hopped on the bus to go to ESPCI. After about 10 minutes we arrived.

Front door to ESPCI

We had a group meeting from 10:00 - 12:00 where four people presented in French. Their meetings are typically in English, but today the four who presented were practicing for their master's defense which they will have later this week - and they get to defend in their native language. Surprisingly though, I was able to follow along fairly well considering it was presented in a foreign language. Thank you science words for being fairly consistent across languages!

After the meeting a small group of us went to a local cafe where I ordered for myself in French! This was a pretty big deal for me. Last night I sat down and wrote out a bunch of phrases I thought would be helpful in a little notebook that I now carry around with me everywhere. It has phrases like, "I would like your favorite dish!" and "I want that one." and "Pardon me, my French is terrible. If I'm staring at you with a very confused look on my face could you please write down some important words that could help convey your ideas to me? I understand written French much better than spoken French. Thank you!"

One of the other group members recommended the ham sandwich and a cheese souffle which is apparently a specialty of the area. **Yes, I realize that I am a vegetarian, but I have a clause in my unwritten vegetarian agreement that says I can eat meat while traveling abroad** While I was waiting in line, I pulled out my notebook and practiced saying, "Je voudrais un sandwich au jambon et un soufflé au fromage." I butchered it horribly, but the woman at the counter seemed amused and in good spirits. The other people in my group were also amused and seemed appreciative of my effort. "A" for effort! Yay!

The cafe where I had my first French ordering experience.

After that, I spent the afternoon doing typical sciency work things. It was fun and I came home in fairly high spirits. 

Once I arrived home, I realized that I was pretty much out of food, so I decided to try out one of the snootier grocery stores I found on Saturday. I bought some oatmeal (which will hopefully balance out all of the fromage I've been eating here), milk, apples, yogurt, and honey. It was uber snooty expensive. However, those apples were delicious. I was also reminded that milk isn't really a thing here in Europe. I had forgotten that when I lived in Spain, my host mom would always buy cartons of un-refrigerated milk to cook with, and she thought it was really weird that anyone would want to drink it straight. Fortunately for milk-loving me, the snooty store had a tiny collection of refrigerated milk -- goat's milk no less. 

On my walk back, I worked up the nerve to stop in a little bakery and order two croissants and a raisin pastry. My little notebook really helps with my nerves since I know I can just look down and read off the page if I forget what I'm saying. 

Success!

All in all, today was a pretty solid day. I didn't even mention that the sun was out today! Hopefully the clouds will take their leave for a few more days.

Au revoir!

Too shy for a cafe

I slept well last night. The sun woke me up around 5 something, but I quickly fell back to sleep and didn't get out of bed until 10:30 am. I decided to do a short run around the park across the street. I haven't been exercising very much lately, and I thought that a little run would lift my spirits a bit. It was cold and rainy again today, but the park was filled with intense looking runners. The strange thing was that everyone seemed to be running around the park in the same direction, except me. Now, I understand that typically there is a defined running direction on tracks, but I never knew that such a thing existed in a park. I did see one other person who was running the same direction as me, but there must have been hundreds going the other way. Nonetheless, I didn't want to cave to the norm halfway through my run, and nobody yelled at me, so I just kept going the "wrong" direction until I had done a full lap.

A rainy day.

When I got back home, I ate an apple and a yogurt for breakfast and worked up the nerve to go out in search of a cafe. First, I stopped by the cafe in the Cité Internationale to see what they had to offer. I waited in line for a few minutes, but noticed that the coffee was served in little paper cups. I have nothing against little paper cups, but I really wanted a coffee that was served in a cute ceramic mug. The mug is half the experience of coffee drinking for me. So, I stepped out of line and set out to find a more charming cafe. I found that a surprising number of cafes were open for a Sunday. Très bon!

I passed about three cafes before I worked up the nerve to go into one of them. The one I chose was filled with people drinking delicious looking coffee in quaint little mugs and eating tasty looking pastries. When I went in the front door, I noticed that there was a line extending out of a side door to the cafe. So, I went back out and took my place at the end of the line. As the line progressed, I noticed that none of the people ahead of me were ordering coffee. They all seemed to be ordering bread of some sort -- the place was also a bakery. That's when I started to get anxious. What if this was the bread only line? What if I tried to order a cafe au lait to only have the cashier politely tell me that this was the bread only line? Maybe she would tell me that I needed to go to a different line to order coffee. I did notice another counter that had a shorter line. But what if she was actually trying to tell me that I needed to take a seat and then order coffee from a waiter? I felt so helpless because regardless of what she might say, I would just have to stare at her blankly without any understanding. And then, all of the bustling French people behind me in line would surely be perturbed that I had slowed their Sunday baguette-purchasing ritual. My imagination went wild with an angry mob armed with baguettes yelling at me in French and me screaming out from the corner, "All I want is a cafe au lait!" So, right before it was my turn to order, I chickened out and left. 

Oh well. I'm a bit too shy.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I guess the cafe experience left me feeling a bit defeated. It was rainy, so I didn't feel like wandering around outside or reading in the park. I watched the season 3 finale of Downton Abbey and talked with German Tina on facebook for awhile. I'm planning to visit her in Hamburg next weekend so we chatted about the best ways to get there. I think she may even come out to visit me here the following weekend. It would definitely be nice to have a travel buddy for a weekend! In the meantime, work starts tomorrow. We'll see how that goes!

Settling in

I woke up this morning at 4:30 am to the sound of a heavy door slamming. Since yesterday was the summer solstice, most people were out very late celebrating. I however didn't make it past 9:00 pm. After waking up, I laid in bed until the sun began to rise around 5:30 am. 

Early morning view out of my window.

At about 7:00 am my growling stomach convinced me to head out in search of some food. Google maps suggested that there was a cafe on the corner of the park that typically opens at 7. I walked over to the cafe on deserted streets and found it closed. At this point I started getting really hungry. I wandered around for another 20 minutes without finding much of anything really and headed back to the vending machine at my place. The vending machine had a pretty decent selection of pastries and coffee. I settled on a raisin swirl pastry and a café au lait for a grand total of €2.10. Not bad!

Once I wasted sufficient time on the internet, I decided to go out exploring again. There are so many people who live around here, surely there is a decent cafe and grocery store around! First, I walked over to the main building of the complex I live in and stopped by the ATM. I was worried that my bank would block my withdrawal so I was holding my breath a bit, but it worked! Hooray for being able to withdraw money! The complex is actually a tourist attraction in its own right. The Cité Internationale is like a small community with 40 houses, each representing a different country (or set of countries). The architecture of some of the houses is quite stunning.

The main building of the Cité Internationale.

 

Houses at the Cité Internationale.

Someone had mentioned to me the location of a good grocery store so I ambled over to it and bought some food. The store was decent but not great. It was definitely a step up from the place I bought sardines and cheese last night, but their baguettes came in plastic bags. That left me a little disappointed. Where is the French cuilinary pride? I mean, Berkeley is also known for its food, but surely the grocery stores in Paris are superior to those in California. I started to get worried that I lived too far away from the city center to have access to good food and bustling Parisian streets. 

Anyway, I bought some fruit, cheese, bread, smoked salmon, yogurt, and salad which will hopefully stave off any fits of starvation like that experienced this morning. The grocery shopping went almost without a hitch, except that when I went to pay for the food, I couldn't find the total price written anywhere on the checkout screen. The woman at the register was impatiently speaking in French to me as I confusedly pulled out some Euros and looked at her. I finally found the total hidden in the corner of the checkout screen and said, "Oh!" and handed her the appropriate number of Euros. I really ought to learn my numbers in French. 

Foods.

Once I had eaten my fill, I decided to venture out to the local telephone store, Orange, to buy a mobile phone. I was hoping that this part of town would be livelier than the other parts I had visited. And finally, it was! There were cute little cheese shops, amazingly snooty looking grocery stores, and an endless supply of cafes, sweet shops, and bakeries, people selling flowers on the street and making music, and lots of bustling people going about their bustling ways. It was wonderful! I feel like I've found the heart of this part of Paris.

Fromagerie (cheese shop) display.

I think Donny would go insane upon the sight of some of these sweets.

Before leaving for Orange, I used google translate to write out, "I would like to buy a prepaid mobile phone and an international calling card to call the United States." in my notebook. Thank goodness I did that. As soon as I entered the store I forgot the few French words I know but was thankfully able to get by with only the words bonjour, merci, and au revoir. The woman who helped me was very patient with me and seemed to know exactly what I wanted. She directed me to the cheapest phone and set me up with a local number and SIM card. There are plenty of foreign students around here so she seemed used to it. Anyway, thank you Orange for your wonderful service.

Now it is 9:00 pm, but the sun is still high in the sky. I think I'll go to bed soon anyway. I wish I had a travel buddy to explore Paris at night with, but right now I still feel a little wary of wandering around alone at night. So, I will sleep and when I wake up I will search for a little cafe that is open on Sunday where I can read for a bit. Also, the weather is supposed to be better tomorrow, it rained all day today, so I hope to spend more time checking out the park by my place. I'd also like to head over to ESPCI so I know how to get there for work on Monday.

Bonne nuit!

Arrival

After a wonderfully relaxing three days in New York, I flew off to Paris and landed at the Charles de Gaulle airport at 10:30 am. The terminal that houses United Airlines is really modern and neat to look at. Instead of escalators, they have moving walkways that go up and down like you are walking over rolling hills. The center of the terminal has a bunch of these walkways that cross through an atrium making it feel like something out of the mother ship in the movie Independence Day.

The flight was smooth, my bags arrived on time, and my host, Jennifer, was at the terminal waiting for me. That part went about as well as I could have hoped. 

The two of us took a stiflingly crowded train from the airport to the RER stop next to the place I'm staying. I was worried that I wouldn't have a room reserved since I hadn't heard anything from the housing office after I sent in the reservation form. However, when Jennifer and I arrived, she spoke some French and all of a sudden I had a room! Language is magic. 

My room is tiny and has an even tinier bathroom, but this was quickly forgotten when I saw the beautiful cast iron balcony covered in ivy and grape vines. It is quite stunning. There are also two big (French?) doors that I can open in from the balcony to let in the fresh air. 

View from my balcony.

Tiny bathroom.

I unpacked my bags and took a short nap before figuring out how to use the internet here. Once that was done, I wandered around the area a bit to see what it is like. There's a nice park across the street that I would like to explore more tomorrow. Unfortunately, I was feeling hungry and tired so my exploring ended pretty quickly when I found a little corner market with sufficient food to get me through the night. I bought a can of sardines, an orange, and a triangle of Roquefort cheese. I ate the sardines and orange but haven't worked up the nerves to eat the cheese yet.

Several people stopped me on the street to ask where stuff was, so I guess I look passably Parisian. I quickly disappointed them however by not even knowing how to say, "I don't speak French" in French. I taught myself how to say, "Pardon me, I do not understand you. Do you speak English or Spanish?" but I quickly realized that that takes way too long to say. So my phrase to learn for the night is, "Je ne parle pas français." Maybe someday I will speak French.

The shower here is warm, (hooray!) and the sun is shining. Today is the longest day of the year so there will be lots of music and festivities going on until late in the evening. Despite that, I imagine I will turn in early. I feel like I've done well by staying up past 7:30 pm. My goal is to make it to 8:30. We'll see.

"Je ne parle pas français."

"Je ne parle pas français."

"Je ne parle pas français."