The Brianne and Martha Project.

Last year and I guess more so last semester I decided I was going to make my attempts at baking and try to make a few of Martha Stewart's recipes from her Cookies book. Some of the cookies were a great success, some of the bars worked out, but mostly, just the granola worked...

In lieu of recent events, aka the fact that in France all I make is American comfort food (read: I make chili once a week and eat it every day for leftovers), I have decided to find inspiration in Martha's recipes. I will, over the next year, be like Julie and try to make all (read: try) of her recipes. So, if you were thinking about Christmas presents, baking supplies will be needed in great quantities, or you know, just gift cards to Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and other similar places. I might even have my hand at trying to make up my own recipes (egads!) and then hand them out. Basically, if you live in my dorm next semester, get ready for my baked love to come up to your door.

I suppose all of this is inspiration of the film, Julie & Julia, and the fact that my life has to have greater meaning that just doing homework and studying anti-Semitism in modern Europe...

Aside from all that, there is so much left for me to do in Paris and I have to get it all done! How am I ever going to get to all the things left on my list when there is a freaking grève??? Why do you people always strike in this bloody country? I hate living with all you radical revolutionaries. This whole "Vive la resistance" mentality has got to stop because people have things to do and things to see. I have narrowed it down to three very important things: 1. The Pinocathèque to see the Golden Age exhibition. 2. Les Invalides to see Napoleon's tomb. 3. Climb to the top of Notre Dame. As for food, I have narrowed it down to two restaurants I need to go to: 1. La Bourse ou La Vie 2. Aux Lyonnais.

Also, I would like to stop thinking about my professor at this moment in time and be able to get my work done in an efficient manner. God, please, save the queen.

(or find me the other homme de ma vie.)

Things Not Necessarily Related to Paris

So, the other day I realized I am probably in love with one of my professors. This is something I have always imagined would happen but in all honesty never truly felt it could occur. I was gravely mistaken. I will now divulge into the deepest parts of my heart to express the most ridiculous case of unrequited (and private) love that I have for this man.

First, he is young. I mean I think this is like the 4th semester he has ever taught. But he is beautiful and brilliant, and definitely fits into the category of real human beings (a category into which I do not necessarily fit). Perhaps this is just really bizarre or makes me seem like I have completely lost my mind in Frogland. But then I consider the fact that I only started to really feel this way after he decided to assign an excerpt from The Mandarins. Now, I just want to be like Simone de Beauvoir and fall in love with one of my professors. I can't stand it and I feel like it's actually suffocating me.

En fait, c'est une grande problème, parce que j'ai vraiment besoin de lui en futur. Il faut que je trouve un professeur pour m'écriver un lettre de support pour un programme avancé à NYU à New York. Bof, qu'est-ce que je dois faire? Je n'ai rien de ma tête et ça m'énerve enormément. Comme ça, je déteste ma vie. Ma vie compliqué, ma vie perdue... Et dans tous ces cas là, je n'ai aucune idée comment je peut lui demander de faire des choses comme ça pour moi. Je suis seulment une étudiante perdue dans le système.

I have to get back to New York.

Le Métro

In all honesty, I have grown to like the Paris métro. It tells you when to expect the next train, late at night tells you the time of the last dispatched train so you can decide if you can really make your transfer or not, and generally speaking, it is clean and well-lit. I rarely feel unsafe, except for when it's like 1:30 AM and I'm at Oberkampf or République. Then no one should really feel safe.

The métro is designed so that you never have to transfer more than twice, whereas in New York, more often than not you will just walk to the subway a couple avenues east or west so that you can avoid the idea of transferring, period. The other thing about New York is the fact that the subway runs uptown-downtown, and you don't really need to know more than that. If you can count, you can navigate the New York City Subway System. In Paris, however, you have to know the name of the direction you are going, because it is not necessarily uptown or downtown, or east or West. Admittedly, the subways going into Brooklyn and Queens get a bit confusing, but at least those say Brooklyn-bound or Queens-bound.

But on the subject of transferring twice, I have discovered a métro line that I simply adore and a concept Paris should really jump onto and employ all over the city: the 14. How I love the 14! It cuts out half of my travel time, EVEN IF I have to transfer twice. It skips through have the freaking city and gets me to Châtelet in less than 20 minutes, and getting to Châtelet means I can get to the Marais or the Latin Quarter before I can say "le dernier métro." I think this line, and possibly the 11, are the only lines similar enough to the famous New York express/local system. Paris, get more express trains. Your dépaysés and ex-pats will cry with happiness. In New York, time is money. In Paris, time is spent on the métro or waiting in ridiculous lines, because everyone in this bloody country has to "faire la queue" just to say hello or how are you.

I have also discovered the reason for why the métro is so hot here, and why it reflects the real temperature in New York. The trains here do not go straight. They turn and as a result, the air flow is limited and the heat is not released. It gets trapped. I also don't think there are many street grates (is that what they are called?) in this city. In New York, it's a direct line. Some of the stations, like Times Square, are hot but that is because they are hubs and a bunch of lines are coming together. If only this city didn't try to hard to keep its snail mentality.

Worse comes to worse, I will continue to take the 14 n'importe où, and I encourage all of you to do the same.

But, I don't really encourage anyone to "faire le queue."

Pensées

So, when I initially started this blog, I planned on writing in it multiple times a week about things going on in my life, in Paris, and specifically of general thoughts I had concerning the city and the new life experiences I have here and those I have in New York. The posts have turned into a laundry list of things that I do over the weekends, and I feel like there are a lot of little charms of things that I have done that I have never really written about. So, to make this somewhat therapeutic and somewhat more consistent, I will begin a series of posts about things involving Paris and life that I have yet to write about.

There are a lot of things about New York that I miss; that being said, I am still unsure if I am fully homesick. I am so envious of people who are in New York right now, and upset with every new, exciting thing I hear about going on there. I miss Brooklyn, I miss going to The Fiddler with Meredith and dancing on the bar - even when still somewhat sober - and I miss driving my car up Mount Airy Road to go to babysit Palmer. I miss TJ and Caroline, and playing with the animals, and even getting into fights with Caroline because she is learning a new sense of rebellion. I miss Chanci, and her unplanned humor, because she can be so funny, just like her sisters. I miss my parents more than I ever thought I would. I skyped with my father for the first time the other day, I was crying from general stress of papers and midterms, but I think I cried because he finally did something for himself and finally went out and got himself a gift.

On the flipside, I love this city. This morning, I woke up in a friend's bed after we had had a truly lovely dinner party - which I fell asleep through halfway - and realized that I am not so alone. I had a really good week, as everything has calmed down and I can finally breathe here. My Vichy class has inspired me and reminded me why I am in college and what I can do with my education if I just keep working.

Every week I go to a new museum with my Art History class. Last week we went to the Orsay, a museum I have visited before, and the paintings we saw were ones I had seen in the past but they still moved me. There is something powerful about this city, about the art, the architecture, and even the street signs, that warms and fills my heart until sometimes I feel like it might just burst. Alexandre Cabanel's Venus, almost always brings tears to my eyes. The idealized woman finds herself in the idealized city. Two of my professors here inspire me every day. One of them reminds me of a passion that I have a large fear of pursuing, the other reminds me that the path I have chosen and am making and taking for myself is going to bring me right where I need to be. To be moved by such beauty on a daily basis makes me realize what a beautiful place Paris is and what a beautiful life I have here. What beauty is it that gives us such warmth? I wonder about this constantly. A couple weeks ago I found myself in the Louvre and I saw, for the first time, Vermeer's The Astronomer. My eyes filled with tears. The color were still so vibrant after all of these years, and the man's robe was still so green, still so beautiful... How those colors remain so full of life is a mystery to me.

I have heard from Parisians that there are places in Paris where they go that still touch them. Aygline, Madam de Ribier's daughter, told me that every time she comes to Paris she goes to Place de la Concorde, to be reminded of just why this city is called the city of lights. For me, every time I see the Eiffel Tower, as cliché as that sounds, I stop in awe and marvel and I just stare at that construction, that glorious tower on the river, and when it sparkles, I am moved. Every chance I get, I go to the Trocadero and just sit and stare at the tower. It fills me with this sense of rootedness, much like the feelings I get from going to the Met while in New York.

Ceux qui sont mes pensées pour aujourd'hui. Et, avec ça, tout va bien.

Things Not to Do in Paris: #2

Do not leave a nightclub unless you have already requested a cab. Especially if the Metro is closed. Especially if you are with 20 other NYU students who need to find cabs too. You will freeze on the side of the road at a "taxi stand," because you cannot hail cabs in Paris the way you can in New York.

Also, do not wear cutesy dresses to Australian bars in Chatelet because most of the men there will have huge noses and will not want to let you go even if you insist that you have places to go and people to see.

Paris is not a city that easily accommodates its night owls.

Rage hard, work hard.

Chez de Ribier.

So I am finally in Paris and finally starting to get settled. On the way here, I realized two things: I can watch a lot of movies on a flight to Paris and that the Irish secretly love to shop. Has anyone ever been to Dublin airport? Talk about a shopping mall inside an airport. Seriously. Shops all over and good ones too, a huge makeup store which may or may not have been Sephora, and a STARBUCKS. American commercialism at it's finest, bien sûr. It was a rather stressful experience at 2AM USA time, after having not really slept in quite some time.

Now that I am here, there are a series of other things that I have noticed about Paris and about my outlook on most things. First, I compare everything to New York. I was in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, and kept complaining about how the city didn't have subways and how it was grey and how there was barely any grass, and really the only nice thing about it was its suburbs and littler cities (like Pasadena).

It's hard to distinguish what is simply Parisian or European and what is simply New York. For example: Le Métro. Why must I make so many connections all the time and why is it not a grid the way New York is? The answer is obvious, but the complaint resonates. It's just different. Thankfully, the trip to the NYU center is very easy. Also, it seems my homestay parents vote on taking the métro everywhere. I asked how far the Champs-Elysées was, because I obviously wanted to shop or SOMETHING with all the time I have been spending alone, and they said a 30 minute walk and just to take the subway. I just asked how far it was, and wanted to walk. Also, this morning, I am pretty sure there 40-year-old daughter told me putting sugar in my coffee would make me fat... Not sure how I feel about that.

Other differences include things that I didn't realize would bother me. Eggs are not sold in a cold case/fridge like they are in the US. WHAT???!?! This is not ok. Eggs are supposed to be cold and you are supposed to warm them up. I put them in the fridge when I got home and hopefully they will not explode...

Also, there is an entire aisle dedicated to yogurt. Yogurt. And let me tell you, if they didn't sell Activia or a yogurt called "Taillefine" which pretty much means "good size/shape" implying that it is a light yogurt, I would not be eating yogurt with my baguette for breakfast. Aycline, the 40 year old daughter, said "France is the land of yogurt." Truer words have never been spoken. So, France is the land of yogurt, wine, cheese, and bread.

However, one thing that is AMAZING: Special K Red Berries here has RASPBERRIES too! WHY IS IT NOT LIKE THIS IN THE US? Having those little freeze dried berries has made breakfast so much better. There are also a couple fantastic bakeries that I have found that are apparently chains, so maybe they will be in the US when I come home.

One thing that struck me the most is how paranoid it seems the French are. For example, Madame de Ribier told me that if I ever go to pay with a credit card, I have to insist they bring the machine to me at the table, or just do it right in front of me, because places are known to photograph the cards. Seriously? Also, apparently almost every phone shop has a security guard because cell phones are stolen constantly so that gang members cannot be tracked. She also told me that if I ever see 3 people approach me on the métro to move quickly because two of them will try to squish me and the other will steal my purse. Aycline then made a comment about the Bronx and how people steal stuff there and I defended my state and the current population of the Bronx by saying that no one really steals stuff on the subways that frequently because 1. people in New York will get involved unless the person has a gun and 2. people generally mug people later at night or if they are just plain nuts. we don't have "gypsies" so to speak. And according to the de Ribier's, no one in Paris will help you on the métro or anywhere if you are having an issue with having stuff stolen. No one. Uhhh... C'est incroyable! Mais pourquoi?! The French are pretty helpful on the street though the judge me when I give up in French and switch to English after many failed attempts to buy various things.

And fleas in the métro? No thanks... I have bites all over my face and I cannot believe that they are from fleas. Aycline insists there are no mosquitos in Paris. I disagree but will continue to sleep with my window open because it can be hot in a chambre de bonne (maid's quarters or little bedroom in the attic.)

Otherwise, the food is good, the people are friendly, the students at NYU so far are nice, but I am simply DYING for everyone else to get here so I can go on an adventure. The sidewalks and streets are gorgeous and there are trees and parks everywhere. I have to adventure over to my park, but everyone insists it's beautiful. And, it is not difficult to eat well CHEAP here, no matter what anyone says... I think I will eat smoked salmon and fromage blanc sandwiches for the rest of my life.

À tout à l'heure.