Death by Cheeseballs.

So today I'm writing at the IES Paris Center on a French keyboard- worst little machine in the world. They are so frustrating! Where our shift key is, there is a weird backward slash:\. So whenever I try to type a capital letter, a dash comes before a lower case letter.

Last night we ate le raclette at the Schumachers' house. As you can see on the Wikipedia link I just gave you, le raclette is the name of both a smoky French cheese with Swiss origins and a French meal with Swiss origins. Raclette literally means scraper/squeegee (thanks, Dad). We had this portable grill/oven that came with six little plastic pans. One puts le fromage raclette (raclette cheese) in their individual pan and places that in the oven for a minute so that it fond (melts, like fondue). Then you take your cheese and scrape it out of the pan with a little wooden squeegee onto a piece of viande séche (dried meat) like prosciutto or viande des grissons (I have no idea what grissons means, but I ate it anyway) or pomme de terre (potato), or you could even have a spread of vegetables. We ate this meal with croqs-vertes (little bumpy pickles). It was pretty cool because my dad has been telling me for a long time that the Swiss and French like to eat fondue and pickles in the winter, et voila! I ate just that in the French winter! It was delicious!!

At all the other dinners we've eaten at the Schumachers' house, they have only brought out one bottle of wine for the entire dinner. Last night two were brought out, and it was funny because Fanou and Jean-Pierre got a little more chatty than usual :)

Yesterday afternoon, Nicté and I decided that since we had paid 16euro40 for our Navigos (unlimited metro passes), we needed to use them and go explore some place in Paris. We decided on Notre Dame, on Isle-de-la-Cité. I've been to Notre Dame before, but it still took my breath away. Walking inside and seeing the soaring arches and huge stained glass windows is really incredible, as are the gigantic bell towers and the gargoyle statues on the outside. We stayed long enough to catch the beginning of a mass, and then went back to the Schumachers' place.

Since I've already started this backward description of yesterday, I'll continue with it. IES (my academic program) continued with orientation at a place called FIAP which had an auditorium big enough for all 70-ish of us to sit in together. We took our placement test and they went over courses at exterieur universities (like the Sorbonne and the Catholic Institute), as well as intercultural competence and homestay information. We learned some interesting stuff in the intercultural competence portion:

1. The French don't smile because they were raised not to smile. Mothers constantly keep their children right by their sides and freak out about letting their children wander away or try new and possibly dangerous things (like at the playground). In school, humiliation is a common teaching tool, so French children learn to be extremely humble. On the other hand, American children are told to go slide down the slide, even if they might scrape their elbow. We are also praised for every little thing we do (example: when John brings a leaf to show-and-tell, the teacher tells him how wonderful it is and how great he is for bringing it). These comments about how American children are raised in the eyes of a French person made all of us Americans laugh. I think I was laughing at how idiotically praiseful we Americans can be, but also how absurd it is for a French parent to be so overly-cautious. In the end, we Americans end up walking with our chests out because we have learned to be proud and to go out in the world to conquer it, while the French avert their eyes and keep to themselves because they are more cautious.

2. The French don't talk to strangers because conversation is reserved for good friends. When you're on the metro, NO ONE talks except people who got on together, and they talk quietly. The other day an African man was talking really loudly on his phone, and it was kind of a big deal. The lecturer made fun of both French and Americans by talking about how she might go to a store in the U.S. and an American might make a comment like "Oooh you bought soy sauce! What are you going to do with that?!" and she might think to herself "Why is it anyone else's business what I'm going to do with my soy sauce?" I think this is awful because it prohibits me from learning as much as I can about the French, and they, by nature, refuse to respond. Even though I might be sitting less than a foot away (as I was at lunch today) from a French person, and she might eye me and study me (as she did at lunch today), she won't say a word to me. It's really just bizarre.

3. French showerheads are always on hoses and places towards the bottom of the wall. They can't stand the idea of having water all over them the whole time they shower. They like to have their time out of the water to lather soap on their bodies and then choose when and where to have the water go. I hate this! When I take showers here, I freeze! I'm not going to get into this very much, but this is one thing that seems just dumb to me. Just step out of the way of the water to put your soap on and then you don't have to mess with holding the shower head. Oh also, they have the shower heads at the bottom of the wall to avoid having the water squirt out of the shower head above them and surprise them. I thought to myself, just do that before you get in the shower if it's that big a deal. Weird.

4. The French NEVER use toilet paper as kleenex. To them, this is incredibly dirty. I do it all the time, but I guess I'll have to be on my guard for the next four months.

We were told in the info session about homestays that there were certain topics that are considered taboo to talk about with our French families- religion, salaries, money in general, politics, and sexuality/sexual orientation. Nicté and I have managed to talk about religion, money in general and politics with our family. Maybe they should have done that info session before the weekend. Oh well, the Schumachers still seem to like us.

This morning on our way to school, Nicté and I walked down Rue de Levi to get to Métro Villiers so we could stop at the mini-department store, Monoprix. Rue de Levi is a street that's well known in the 17e arrondisement for its boutiques, specialty stores, and food stands. It's kind of like Portobello Road in London, but without the antique shops (more clothing shops on Rue de Levi). Anyway, I saw something you don't see everyday- a truck full of full pigs and other boucherie (butcher shop) things. I just thought it was interesting. Today I ate my first croque-madame (ham sandwich with melted cheese and an egg on top) on this trip to Paris- so good! I also walked through the Tuileries, the gardens of an "ex-palace," which were pretty bare since it's January. It's supposed to be beautiful in the spring, so we'll see! It's right next to the Louvre, which is always exciting to see since it's enormous.

Afterward, we walked along the Seine to get to the Metro, so we saw the sunsetting next to the Eiffel Tour. Très magnifique!

A bientôt,

Ellie