One other fun thing that happened this week was that Laura and I hosted seminar at our apartment because our professor was at a conference in Singapore. We had a guest speaker from Australia who talked about video games as industrial temporal objects. It was really nice to have enough space for everyone to be comfortable. Sam’s office gets far too crowded. He talks about the charm of the space, but almost everyone said we should just start having seminar at our place. I certainly wouldn’t mind. I really started to like everyone in seminar this week, because now I kind of know their personalities and how to expect them to behave in class. I was sitting between Josh and B, and they got into an impassioned discussion. B was making this point and he kept saying over and over, “It’s like the Beastmaster and the ferrets.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded important. So I wrote down “Beastmaster and ferrets,” which Josh clearly found amusing. Afterward I learned that ferrets are central to the plot of Beastmaster, but I have never seen that film. (Now that Rashida and Emily know that ferrets play a central role in it, I’m sure neither of them will be seeing Beastmaster anytime soon.)

On Sunday I went to Versailles with P. and K. We had heard that it was our last chance to see Marie-Antoinette’s private theatre before the end of the season on October 31. When we got to Versailles, the line for tickets was ghastly. Then this woman pointed us to a different entrance, so we waited in that line. While we were waiting in line we decided that we just wanted tickets for the “Domaine de Marie-Antoinette.” We finally got our tickets and figured out that we could have just walked across the grounds to the Petit Trianon and bought the Marie-Antoinette tickets there. But K. and I reasoned that if we had walked half an hour to get there and then weren’t able to buy tickets, we would have been annoyed.

Anyway, K. was reading Proust in line, because that’s how she rolls. (Clearly we were destined to be friends.) And I was explaining that my favorite thing about Proust is that always has these high expectations and no event ever lives up to them. So then we were joking about how we were just like Proust, because we had these high expectations of Versailles, and we were doomed to be disappointed. Fortunately, when we got to the little theatre of Marie-Antoinette, we were not disappointed at all. The building didn’t look like much from the outside, but the theatre inside was gorgeous. It was so great to get a sense of the scale of it. Except that I estimated that it would seat 60-80 people, and the website is telling me that it seated 200. The upholstery was all blue, and there was ostentatious gold detailing on the ceiling, with the queen’s monogram above the stage.

After seeing the theatre, we wandered some, and came across the “Queen’s Hamlet,” which one of my witty friends dubbed the Disney World of the Eighteenth Century. Marie-Antoinette had an architect named Richard Mique construct a peasant village for her entertainment. In Peasantland she could pretend to tend sheep by day and play cards with friends at night. Katie’s initial reaction was, “Is this real?” Clearly this is crying out for a historical performance studies analysis.

We took the RER back to Paris. P. likes to watch NFL football on Sundays at a bar called The Moose, which is of Canadian extraction. So we went there for post-Versailles drinking of beer and eating of chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and French fries. There was this crazy woman there wearing a Chicago Bears jersey and screaming her head off every time there was a big play. She recognized us as Americans and kept asking us where different cities were in the U.S., specifically Jacksonville and Baltimore. (I don’t think she knew where Philadelphia was either, because she was telling these other guys that she prefers the East Coast to the South, but she was rooting for Jacksonville over Philadelphia the entire time.) I’m fairly certain she was from somewhere in Europe. She made a comment about the bartender being a “French fag” (which she clearly meant as an insult). So if she was French there was some self-loathing going on about her Frenchness. Anyway, her performance of Americanness was fascinating to watch. I have to say that I found The Moose to be a little overwhelming. I’m glad to know it’s there, but I think it will be quite some time before I go back.

10/27/06: Laura and I went to the Pantheon this week. There was an installation by a Brazilian sculptor named Ernesto Neto. The piece is called “Leviathan-Thot” and it is supposed to be a visual representation of Hobbes’s Leviathan, combined with the Egyptian god Thoth. There was a video with the sculptor giving some explanation of it. He gave a very good performance of the sexy, misunderstood sculptor. I thought the installation was neat, but the explanation was kind of lame.

The Pantheon has all these remains of important French people: Rousseau, Voltaire, Marie Curie. There was a plaque commemorating Toussaint L’Ouverture, but his body was not there. There was also this kind of weird exhibit about Marie and Pierre Curie. Did you know Pierre Curie died when he was run over by a horse and carriage the day after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906? They had a print of the newspaper from the following day on the wall. The weirdest thing about the Curie exhibit was this natural-history-museum-esque replica of a donkey that was unable to choose between two perfectly equal bales of hay. This was intended to demonstrate some 14th-century philosopher’s principle of balance, which was somehow related to Pierre Curie’s work on radiation. And it was kind of weird that it was in the Pantheon at all.

Last night I had dinner with two professors emerita from UMASS. During my last year in Amherst, I lived in both of their houses while they were living in the south of France for five months and three months, respectively. I killed all of Virginia’s plants, and I broke Sara’s washing machine and flooded her basement. But both of them still thought I was a pretty good house-sitter. With Virginia I think I redeemed myself by cleaning her house better than her long-standing once-a-month housekeeper (whom she had told me to hire before she got back, and whose cleaning skills were singularly unimpressive). And when I spoke with Sara’s husband on the phone and explained about the washing machine, he said that they knew they needed a new washing machine and they were sorry it had died on my watch. He was also impressed with my problem-solving skills, because upon discovering the flooded basement I called a company that was listed under “Basement water damage cleanup” (or some such) in the yellow pages, and then called their homeowner’s insurance company. And when he kept congratulating me on being so calm and clever, all I could think was, “What did you expect me to do? Run down the street screaming ‘The basement is flooded! The basement is flooded!’?”

Anyway, V. retired after my first year at UMASS, so I had a few classes with her. (Including “Theatre in Society,” which featured one of my favorite memories. One of my colleagues did a presentation on Symbolism, in which he read Poe’s “The Bells” in its entirety, for the sole purpose of killing time because he wasn’t prepared. And as he kept turning pages we all figured out what was going on, and we just kind of supported him in his non-preparedness. And then we went to happy hour at Rafter’s. Or to lunch at the Newman Center. Now I’m just being nostalgic.) V. and S. are in Paris for a few weeks, mostly working in libraries. It was kind of weird to see Virginia in Paris, and to kill a whole bottle of wine with her before Sara got back, and then to go to dinner with them and drink a lot more wine with dinner. We gossiped a little about the Montpellier conference, especially this one professor who had told me my dissertation sounded boring. I explained my fellowship to them, and Sara was impressed that I get to be in this seminar with Sam, whereas Virginia viewed the seminar as my once-a-week three-hour obligation to show up somewhere. Anyway, we had a high old time, and Virginia told me that I must go to Versailles to see Marie Antoinette’s little theatre before October 31, and she is going to get tickets for us to see Beckett’s Happy Days at the Vieux-Colombier with a famous French actress, and I also just have to see a new play called Le Moliere imaginaire at some tiny theatre.

My trip to Montpellier was very fun. I took the TGV. There is this new division of cars if you book online, IDzen and IDzap. On the way there, I was booked for IDzen, the section for quiet working and sleeping. (IDzap is billed as the party train, which it totally is not. I rode in IDzap on the way back to Paris. There were a few crying children, but mostly people were sleeping and working.) The conductor was not pleased with the people who were sitting around me, because the one guy answered his cell phone, and the young couple had a baby. So there was a whole discussion about IDzen and respecting the silence, and how none of us really cared, but the couple with the baby should probably move to another car. So they did.

I had called ahead for a reservation at the one-star Hotel Central, passage Belugou, very close to the train station and the Place de la Comédie. The phone conversation had been a little weird…I spoke to an elderly woman who asked me a lot of questions about how I had found the hotel. (It was listed with some other cheap hotels online, and I had already tried one other place that didn’t have any rooms free.) I found the Hotel Central pretty easily. When I went in, there was a young woman who greeted me, and I said, “Bonjour, j’ai une réservation.” And she called her mother, clearly the elderly woman from the phone. So I say “Bonjour” to her mother, who replies “Bon SOIR,” which was totally unfair because it was 5:00 PM and clearly on the borderline between day and evening. But I’m game, so I say, “Ah, oui, bon soir.” And I gave my name, and she says (in French) “Are you sure you have a reservation?” And I said, “Yes, I called on Tuesday,” and she said, “I’m just teasing you.” And I didn’t get the joke, but then I figured out that I must have gone up in pitch when I told her daughter I had a reservation, because that’s what you do in English. But if you do that in French it makes it a question. I guess it’s a question in American English, too, but culturally it means “I have a reservation [Now you’re going to take care of that for me, right?].” Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to eat breakfast there for 4 euros a day, and I figured, “Why not?”

So she gave me the key to room 13, on the third floor. Oh, I forgot to mention, this woman looks exactly like the grandmother in The Triplets of Belleville, only she doesn’t have a limp. She couldn’t have been taller than 4’6”. Anyway, room 13, for 25 euros a night, has two nice comfortable beds, and a bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower attached to the room. So I’m thinking, “How is this a one-star hotel? Is it just the price? Is it because there’s no TV?” After exploring Montpellier some, I went to bed and slept pretty well. The breakfast was well worth the cost (coffee, orange juice, a warm croissant, and a big piece of bread with butter and jam). The weird thing about the hotel was that I never saw any other guests. Everyone seemed to be related to the owner and her daughter. And there were all these dogs. There was a big German Shepherd who sat on the front steps and sort of glared at me every time I came in. And there were two little white dogs who kept bothering me while I was eating breakfast on Saturday morning. The other “one-star” aspect of the hotel was that I had to pay in cash when I checked out, as there was no credit card machine. Overall it was a very good hotel experience. Any potential shady dealings didn't seem threatening at all.

The conference was interesting. It was not bad for my first European conference. I was very glad I went as an observer before trying to give a paper at a conference here. Here are my observations:

1) Every single person went over time. Significantly. When moderators tried to keep presenters to time, the presenters made a big show of being offended. And going over time wasn’t built into the schedule, so it ended up being a problem, especially on the second day when some people had trains to catch in the afternoon.
2) French academics do not speak as clearly as French newscasters and game show hosts. There was one speaker who spoke very fast and had a southern accent. I understood the name of the playwright she was working on, and the title of one play. Beyond that, I was pretty lost.
3) The Q&A period is not about drawing connections between the papers presented. I tried doing that twice, and it really freaked people out.
4) Academic culture is otherwise not so different in France than in the U.S. There was a really pointless disciplinary argument on the first day, with this one theatre historian complaining that another person was looking at plays and dramatic criticism as a literary critic. And I was like, yeah, that guy is a literary critic. That’s what he does. There’s a philosopher here too. Are you going to be mad at him for being trained as a philosopher?

I made a little faux pas on the first day. The conference organizer got up and said, “OK, we’re going to lunch now. Follow me to the restaurant.” And so I got up and followed everyone to the restaurant. When I got there, I realized that lunch was just for the people who were presenting. So I made sure that was the case, and then I went elsewhere and got a sandwich. This one professor came up to me when they all got back from lunch and said, “You disappeared at lunch. What happened?” And I had to explain that I wasn’t invited. Then on the second day both organizers made a point of inviting me to lunch. So that was nice. It was pretty obvious that the reason I got invited was that some people had left in the morning, but I was fine with taking the free lunch.

The discussion at lunch was mostly about departmental committee assignments. And there was lots of gossip about other professors. I wish I had known who they were.

The trip back to Paris was uneventful. But it was nice to get back and feel like Paris was familiar. I tend to feel that way about the first trip away from a new place. When you come back, it starts to feel like home.

“Crepurritos”

I made crepes tonight! It was surprisingly easy. It’s just flour, eggs, milk, water, butter, and salt. I was inspired to make them because yesterday I had fried eggs on the crepe pan. Laura saw the dirty crepe pan and asked me if I had made crepes, and I had to admit to my utter laziness…I had used the crepe pan because I didn’t feel like washing the frying pan she had used to make her eggs earlier. But then today I had crepes on my mind, so I looked up a recipe online. I went to the store to buy milk and flour, and then came back and started mixing ingredients. Then I let the batter sit for an hour before I started cooking the crepes. The recipe was supposed to make 8 crepes, but I only managed five, which was more like four and a half because I failed miserably at flipping the first one and ate most of the forlorn (but tasty) little pieces while I was cooking the others. Laura thought it would be nice if we each had one savory crepe and one sweet crepe. For the savory angle, I came up with “crepurritos”—red beans, cheese, tomatoes, and onions. They were very tasty. For our sweet crepes, Laura used store-brand Nutella (which tastes just the same) and I used peach jam. I have to say that I feel very proud of my crepe-making.

Clearly I need to learn to edit and stop feeling the need to write something about every day I’ve been here. Here are some highlights from the past week:

Tuesday afternoon I went to the BNF and got my reader card. My interview was with a laconic male librarian, tall and thin with red hair. I had printed out a brief description of my dissertation in French, as well as a bibliography. He gave me access to the Arsenal, the Opéra collection, and the Richelieu Arts du Spectacle collection. I started reading that afternoon in Salle V, the French Literature room. I quickly discovered that I really need to go to Salle Y, the Rare Book room. But there’s also plenty I can do in Salle V, so that’s good. That night I went to an audition for a student production of An Ideal Husband in English. P. had told me about it. I emailed the director, who scheduled me to audition with P. We had fun.

In seminar on Wednesday, we finished discussing the foreword of Politics of Friendship and started to talk about chapter one.

Thursday evening I went to a lecture on Diderot at the Collège International de Philosophie. It was excellent. I had trouble figuring out how to get into the building, but one of the security guards pointed me in the right direction. A scholar named Annie Ibrahim spoke on Diderot to a very collegial audience of about 15. It seemed like mostly everyone else knew her. I was one of the youngest people in the room; I would guess that there were three other grad students there and the rest were professors. The lecture was scheduled to last two hours, and she spoke almost the whole time, with about ten minutes at the end for questions. One interesting thing was that she discussed Diderot’s Letter to Madame Riccoboni as dripping with sarcasm. I’ve only read that letter through the eyes of Riccoboni scholars. When Diderot tells Madame Riccoboni that she is a bad actress because she is such a sensitive person, they place the emphasis on her being a sensitive person. Ibrahim was placing the emphasis on “bad actress.” She also called Mme Riccoboni a bad novelist, which I didn’t think was completely fair, especially given how much Diderot loves Richardson. Anyway, I had such a great time at this lecture. Afterward I figured out that the reason I enjoyed it so much was a question of language. In the past ten years, most of my opportunities to speak French have been in academic settings. So I’m really comfortable talking about literature, history, philosophy, theology, and eighteenth-century dirty words, but buying a stamp at the post office makes me feel like an idiot.

Saturday morning I intended to go to a conference at the Sorbonne, but it took longer to get there than I had anticipated. And I could see a bunch of stuffy old men in suits in the back row of a room on the main floor, but I couldn’t figure out how to get into the building. Then I thought that since this conference was not really my period, and I was so close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, I might as well skip it and read some Diderot in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Especially since I’ve taught French using French in Action, and Mireille is constantly reading in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Unfortunately, the Jardin du Luxembourg was crawling with schoolchildren because it was “La Fête de la Science” or something. So I didn’t get much reading done there. I wandered over to the Jardin des Plantes, near Rue Buffon. Buffon was a natural scientist who did lots of experiments during the eighteenth century. We read parts of his Histoire Naturelle in one of my graduate seminars. I was shocked and appalled by this one experiment where he tried to make newborn puppies amphibious by having them birthed into milk and then taking them out of the milk for awhile and then submerging them in the milk again. Of course all the puppies drowned. My professor was amused/annoyed that I was upset about the puppies when the French were doing such awful things to other human beings at the same time. Anyway, after the Jardin des Plantes I walked over to the BNF, where I resumed my reading in Salle V. I finished reading the erotic novel I had started on Tuesday. It was full of references to theatre, so it will be very useful for chapter one of my dissertation.

Katie’s party on Saturday night was a lot of fun. She has a French roommate, and most of the guests were his friends. I spent a lot of time talking to newlyweds Florian and Caroline, mainly about things I used to watch on French television in Angers that are no longer on the air.

On Sunday I booked a train ticket to Montpellier for a conference on Theatre Spectatorship in sevententh- and eighteenth-century France that is taking place this Friday and Saturday. I’m really lucky I found out about it in time to go. I don’t have a hotel reservation yet, but I’m sure I can work that out tomorrow, or even when I get there.

Saturday, October 7: Tonight was the Nuit Blanche in Paris, and I was very excited about it. It’s a big arts festival with installations in major Parisian buildings. Laura and I were planning to meet up with K. from our seminar, and P., my fellow eighteenth-century French theatre specialist who I met at ATHE this summer. We started our Nuit Blanche with some wine and conviviality at P’s apartment, and then headed over to the installation at the Bibliothèque Nationale. That was pretty cool, with fog surrounding the “trees of knowledge” and ethereal music playing. Then we got on the Metro and headed to the Archives Nationales, where there were ostensibly theatre performances. The Marais was insanely crowded, and when we finally got in to the Archives Nationales complex, all we saw were shrubs wrapped in plastic, a band playing, and people waiting in a line. So we got in line behind them and ended up in a building with some guy doing calligraphy and an audience leaving a staged reading that had clearly just ended. Since we had no idea when the next reading might start, and we were kind of done with the Nuit Blanche, we decided to get on the Metro and go home. I was a little disappointed, but Katie pointed out that waiting in line for something unimpressive is part and parcel of the French cultural experience. Well, she didn’t say that. She said, “We had our Nuit Blanche. It was an experience.” And she invited us to a party at her apartment the following Saturday.

Friday, October 6: Laura and I had Stefka’s friend Martin over for dinner. I haven’t met many Bulgarians, but it seems like they are all beautiful. Martin is a filmmaker, and he is currently working on a feature film that is shooting in Paris and in the suburbs. He had some very interesting things to say about being one of the few men in the Gender Studies program in Budapest. He was kind of alarmed by how much I knew about him, in particular about his short film, Le Cornet. The three of us had a very nice dinner, with fabulous French pastries for dessert (a choclate éclair, a religieuse au café, and an Opéra). Afterwards Martin drove us to the Bastille district in his luxurious studio car, an Alpha Romeo. We went to a bar, where I drank several “Long Islands,” which were not appreciably different from American Long Islands. All in all, it was a very fun evening. Laura and I are hoping to see Martin again soon.

Monday 10/2-Wednesday 10/4: On Friday afternoon I had gone to the Commissariat de Police for my carte de séjour, but they were closed. So I went back on Monday and waited in line to get into the Police station. Then I waited in line to see the person to whom I had to show my documents. When I got up to her, I announced that I was an American student, and she said, in a nutshell, “You don’t belong here. Go to the Cité Internationale Universitaire.” Well, even though I was interested in seeing Emily’s old stomping grounds, I was a little bit annoyed that I had to wait in line so long to be told I was in the wrong place.

So I walked through the Parc Montsouris and out the other end and down to the Cité Internationale Universitaire. It was much nicer than the campus of the university where I studied in Angers. I found my way to the building that housed the “Accueil” for the carte de séjour, and I went downstairs and stood in line some more. When I got to the front of the line, the woman behind the desk was fine with five of my six documents: passport, birth certificate, visa, the lease for my apartment, and a letter from the School of Communication that said I have a fellowship for the year. She was not willing to accept my letter from the School of Communication as both “inscription” and “resources,” and told me I needed a letter in French to prove “inscription.” So I left, figuring I would email Sam to ask for such a thing. (Which I did, and he gave it to me on Wednesday…on letterhead and with a big gold seal.)

The big accomplishment of Tuesday was getting the internet to work. Our landlord had gotten us a “Livebox” that gives us a wireless network in the apartment. But it was supposed to be up and running seven days after the order was placed, and it had been ten days, so Laura and I were stymied. Laura was nervous about negotiating a phone call to tech support in French. So I called. And I got this nice guy and I explained, “Notre Livebox ne marche pas. Les lumières clignotent.” (Our Livebox isn’t working. The lights are blinking.) So he asked me if it was plugged in, and I said yes. Then he asked me if we had put DSL filters on all the phone lines, and I said yes, except the one downstairs, but we had unplugged the phone. And he said that was fine. So then he asks about the wire connecting the Livebox to the phone jack, and if it is plugged in correctly in the white slot. And I said that, no, it was in the yellow slot, next to the pink slot, and I didn’t see the white slot. And as he said, “the white slot is on the bottom,” I found the white slot and vocalized my epiphany. He laughed at me, and I got off the phone. So we were #3 on his list of basic errors stupid people make when they don’t follow directions.

On Wednesday we had our second seminar meeting. Laura and I got on the Metro and when we were switching from the 4 to the 6, I noticed a sign that said there were delays on the 6. So Laura suggested walking from Denfert-Rochereau to Place d’Italie. Which sounded like a good idea, until we started walking and three trains went by. We walked for a very long time, and figured out we were going to be late. Laura said it felt like we were on The Amazing Race. Apparently she knows someone who was actually on The Amazing Race, but I didn’t recognize the name. It must have been a season I didn’t watch. If the challenges involved running to find an apartment near a large university and trying to catch your breath in order to say intelligent things about Derrida...well, that would probably make me less likely to watch it. Anyway, we finally got to Place d’Italie, and we got on the other Metro line and made it to Sam’s apartment at 10:05. Our guest speaker for the day was late, so it turned out we were sort of on time. Gail, who also lives in our neighborhood, told us that taking the Metro was dumb and we should walk with her. It’s a half-hour walk, but it takes 45 minutes on the Metro. So we walked home with Gail and planned to meet the next Wednesday morning to walk over together (which we did today, 10/11).

Wednesday evening I wandered around the city. I had been feeling very frustrated about getting lost every two seconds. And I had made a philosophical decision to stop being frustrated about being lost, and to enjoy being lost in a new city. Kind of like the Bonnie Tyler song, “Lost in France,” except she is in the country and there are birds singing in a field. So not really like that song at all, but of course I can sing that song to myself when I'm lost in France and maybe that will make me feel better. Naturally, I got lost again. And frustrated. And I totally forgot to sing "Lost in France." But then I started to discover things. I found a sign directing me toward the Opéra and I started walking in that direction. On the way I found the Opéra-Comique, on rue Marivaux, with a “Theatrical Bookstore” across the street. I walked into the Musée-Théâtre Grévin, which seemed interesting. And then I walked past one building and on my right was the Opéra Garnier, practically out of nowhere. It was very cool. And I had concrete proof that my philosophy of being lost worked, because who knows what exciting building I might find around the next corner?

So then I headed for home. I was walking along the street (I think it was rue Montmartre) and this guy walked out of a pizza place and started staring at me. He was wearing an apron, and had stepped outside for a cigarette. And he just kept staring at me, like I should say hello. So I said, “Bon soir.” And he said, “Ciao bello!....Americano?” And I was like, “Si. Oui. Yes.” Then he started getting all handsy and asking me where I was from and what I was doing in Paris. He spoke English with an American accent, but I think he was Italian. Anyway, I’m not sure when I became culturally intelligible to him as an American. Was it the second he saw me? Was it the way I was walking? Was it the fact that I greeted him once he had stared at me for a while? Was it my accent when I said “Bon soir”? Was it all of these things? Maybe I will have to go back and ask.

I was a little tired by then, and the next Metro I found was Etienne-Marcel. To my delight, I discovered that it was on line 4. My Metro line. Perfect.

Here is a cheesy picture of me in front of the sparkly Eiffel Tower. (Photo by Dave.) I priced digital cameras the other day, and I think I probably should have bought one in the U.S.

Saturday 9/30-Sunday 10/1: My first weekend in Paris was kind of a bust. On Saturday night I was supposed to go out with Laura to meet some other American grad students. She took a nap in the afternoon, and I decided to go exploring. We planned to meet at Place de l’Odéon at 7:00. Well, I wasn’t too far from Place de l’Odéon at 6:45, but all of sudden it started pouring rain, so I took refuge in a Metro station briefly. The rain let up, and I ventured out to try to find my way. It turned out that I walked in the wrong direction entirely. Then it started pouring again and I stood in a doorway for a while. I finally got to Place de l’Odéon around 7:45. There were a lot of people going into the theatre for a show that started at 8:00. (Side note: the streets near the bigger theatres are mostly named after playwrights. Rue Corneille and Rue Racine are near the Odéon. Rue Molière is by the Comédie-Française, and the Opéra-Comique is on Rue Marivaux.) I stood around there until everyone had gone inside, correctly figuring that I had missed Laura and company. When she got home later that night, we lamented our lack of cell phones. But I still haven’t gone to get one yet. I’m beginning to understand why Jacob doesn’t have one. It’s sort of nice to be able to disappear completely.

After the rain and the missed rendezvous, I wandered up to the Marais. I discovered the Centre Pompidou, which I enjoyed very much. I was hungry, so I went to a Kebab place and ordered a “sandwich Grec,” which is similar to gyros. It came with fries. I was full before I finished the sandwich, so I asked to have it wrapped “à emporter.” The waiter picked up the rest of my sandwich with his bare hands and took it over to the grill to wrap in foil. The owner, who had gone outside for a cigarette, came back in and said, “What, it wasn’t good?” And I said, “Oui,” it was very good, but I wanted to take the leftovers home for lunch tomorrow. I was a little bit annoyed with myself for saying “Oui” instead of “Si,” which would have been the correct affirmative response to his negative question.

Sunday evening Laura and I had a visit from a guy named Aurélien, who was hitting on Laura quite aggressively. He had interesting things to say about the upcoming French elections, and how Sarkozy won’t win because Chirac, and by extension the conservative party machinery, isn’t supporting him. He also thought Sarkozy’s anti-immigration stance wouldn’t play well because “Sarkozy” is very clearly not a French last name. Based on the right wing being split, and the fact that he thinks people will be excited to vote for a woman, Aurelien predicted an easy victory for Segolene Royal.

I haven’t been following the French news so much as I’ve been watching French game shows. There is a whole block of them from 5:00 PM to around 7:00 PM every weekday. The first one is called La Cible (The Target ...I vaguely remember an American gameshow called Bullseye and can't help but wonder if they are related). It involves people listing things that fit in a particular category. Like “adjectives that start with R.” In the second round the host lists three things and you have to figure out what the category is and then list more things that belong. Verb conjugations come up a lot. I can do pretty well with those. Teams get eliminated along the way until the final round, which involves bidding on a contract. The bonus round is complicated. My favorite thing about this show is that after each category they pan to an “expert” who is set up in a study like the narrator from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he tells the contestants other things they could have listed. He also flirts with the host, and if the category was songs (songs by Vanessa Paradis, or songs that include the word “boat,” or whatever), he plays short clips of songs they missed, and the audience claps in unison and sings along.

Around 5:30, you can switch from channel 2 to channel 3 and watch Des Chiffres et des lettres ("Of Numbers and Letters"), which has terrible production values. There is a male host of impish grin and ambiguous sexual orientation, who looks vaguely like Dave Foley and serves very little purpose. This one also has experts, a female expert for letters and a male expert for numbers. In letter puzzles, the players take turns asking the letter expert for either a consonant or a vowel. Then they try to create the longest word from the series of letters they end up with. In number puzzles, they have to use arithmetic to manipulate several one and two-digit numbers to come up with a particular 3-digit number. Members of the studio audience all bring notebooks with them and work the puzzles along with the contestants. With the math problems, if the players don’t come up with the answer, the experts sometimes ask if anyone in the audience did. There is also a “Duel” segment, where the contestants try to be the first to solve puzzles sent in by viewers at home. The ending of the show is really anticlimactic. The host just kind of says, “OK. It’s over, and you have more points so you win.”

When I lived in Angers, the LeMénagers loved to watch Questions pour un Champion at 6:00. It’s still on. I think the graphics have changed a little bit. The host looks pretty much exactly the same as he did ten years ago. They start with 4 contestants, and the first three to get nine points move on to round two. They choose categories to try to answer four questions in a row. The two who do the best there move onto the head to head final, where questions start out being worth four points and gradually decrease in value as the host continues talking. The winner gets 500 Euros, or the chance to come back and try to win five times in a row, at which point they would get the big jackpot. They always decide to come back, and they almost always lose the next day. So they get an encyclopedia from Larousse for their trouble.

Finally is the French version of Deal or no Deal, which is called A Prendre ou à laisser (“Take it or Leave It” might be a better translation). I get the impression that it predates the American version. The American version is glossier, with the models and briefcases, but the French host, “Arthur” (one name, like Cher or Madonna) is prettier and more charismatic than Howie Mandel. The money amounts are in gift-wrapped boxes, and the people who open them were also potential contestants, one from each region of France. It is perhaps even more unwatchable than the American version, primarily because the contestant can run up and kiss the person who opened a box with a small amount. And they play upbeat music when the contestant is doing well, and sad music when the contestant is doing poorly. And Arthur is all sympathetic and rolls around on the floor in agony when the contestants inevitably piss away an offer from the bank.

I expect to spend less time watching game shows as my social life and my ability to write my dissertation improve. I don't think I will miss them very much.

Wednesday 9/27-Friday 9/29: We had our first Critical Theory seminar on Wednesday morning. Laura and I underestimated how much time it would take to get there on the Metro because we had to transfer twice. We also went in the wrong direction when we got out of the Metro. So we ended up being about 15 minutes late. There were twelve of us crowded into Sam’s study/exercise room. We went around the room and talked about our dissertation projects. And Sam talked a lot about Paris and space, and Parisians having a sixth sense about space and never bumping into each other. I don’t know where he’s been walking, but I want to walk around in that place. My impression is that Parisians just don’t give a shit where they’re going, or at what speed, or who they inconvenience on the way. But maybe that’s particular to the 14th, which is where I do most of my walking.

We had a very nice lunch at a restaurant across the street from Sam’s house. For my entrée (appetizer), I chose the “Terrine St. Jacques,” thinking it would be some kind of paté. It was actually the fish jell-o thing that I used to hate when they served it to us in Angers. But this one was very good. And then I had lamb with mashed potatoes for my “plat principal,” followed by flan with pears for dessert.

For the next three days, I did laundry. Someone had suggested to me before I left Chicago that I could save time by packing dirty clothes. And I was resistant to that idea, but I ended up doing it in the end, because I knew we would have laundry facilities in the apartment in Paris. Now, mind you, I only did two loads of laundry, but it took three days to do them. Well, the wash cycle only took about two hours for each load. But the dryer doesn’t dry the clothes at all. I ran the load with the jeans through the dryer three times, and everything was still soaked. So I ended up hanging things all over the house. There is a drying rack over the bathtub, and I also found a baby gate that worked well as a second drying rack.

On Friday, I decided it was time to try to get my carte de séjour, the residency permit I need to stay in France for the year. I had to make copies and stop by the post office before I could go to the Commissariat de Police to wait in line. The copies took forever because the copier didn’t like my American paper. (French paper is a little bit longer and possibly wider than 8.5” x 11”). It ended up printing them on legal size paper, and the guy who owned the copy shop/internet café totally made fun of me. Then I went to the post office, where the asshole post office dude pretended he didn’t understand me when I said I wanted one pre-stamped envelope and a book of stamps. He annoyed me. Then I got lost trying to find the Commissariat. By the time I got there it was 4:00, and the carte de séjour office was closed for the day. So I was to go back Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Laura asked me if I would want to go to the movies that night. She thought it would be fun to see Le Diable s’habille en Prada. And it was playing in English with subtitles at the theatre near our apartment. I enjoyed Meryl Streep, though sometimes her vocal tonality was uncomfortably TCD-esque, and I really didn’t want to go there with that comparison. Laura pointed out that the story continues the unproductive social narratives of “successful women are unhappy” and “following your boyfriend will make you happy.” I had trouble sleeping that night. I think I ate too much candy at the theatre.

Monday, 9/25-Tuesday 9/26: Our building has a little tiny elevator, which was helpful for getting my massive suitcases upstairs. But usually we come up the spiral staircase, because it’s only one floor, after all. When you come into the apartment, there’s a little foyer area with a coat rack, and double doors that lead into the spacious living room/dining room area. In one corner of the living room is a tiny wooden spiral staircase that leads to the master bedroom and a bathroom. (We aren’t renting the master bedroom, because the owner comes back about once a month for business. But she encouraged us to use the downstairs bathroom, because it has a “superior” shower.) Our bedrooms are at either end of a hallway that is behind you and to the left when you first come in the door. Laura’s is done in pink, and mine is done in blue. And we have matching desks, bookshelves, and wardrobes that are clearly from IKEA. In between the bedrooms, on the right side of the hallway are a “salle de bains” with a sink and bathtub, and a separate “WC” with a toilet and the washing machine. The kitchen is on the left and features lovely appliances. Anyway, the apartment is very nice.

Monday afternoon, Laura showed me around our quartier. There are several boulangeries where we can buy bread, a Monoprix supermarket, a fair number of neighborhood bars/brasseries, a fromagerie, a pharmacie, some tabacs, and a big church. There are also two MacDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, and a Domino’s. We are near the Alésia stop on the #4 line of the Metro.

I did some of my own wandering around the neighborhood on Tuesday. I got a little bit lost and I was hungry, so I decided to get a sandwich. I walked by a couple of sandwich places and spotted a bar with a sandwich menu. So I went in and looked at the sandwich menu. The bartender (it turned out she was the owner) asked me what kind of sandwich I wanted, and I asked for a sandwich au pâté, since they seemed inexpensive. And then I asked for a beer, and I did not understand the next thing she said at all. It sounded like “mm-Lef-womp-wa.” So this guy who was sitting at the bar pointed at his beer and said “une Leffe” and I was like, “Oh, sure, I’ll have one of those.” I had not heard of Leffe before, but it turned out to be quite good. The bartender then says to the guy, “Merci, Monsieur le professeur.” Then she went to get me a sandwich. She came back with this enormous long roll full of pâté, and she told me it was “pâté Grand-mère.” I assumed that was supposed to be evocative of having been made by a grandmother rather than being made of grandmothers. The sandwich was very good, but of course the minute I started eating, the bartender wanted to have a conversation. So she asked me if I was Canadian, and I said no, I was from the U.S. She asked where. I said Chicago. She told me she has a sister in Ohio and that her sister is coming to visit soon. Then she talked to the other guy some more, and when he left she decided to make a phone call to complain about her neighbors to their landlord. I wasn’t really clear what the issue with the neighbors was. It sounded like an extra person had moved in. She was definitely annoyed about it, and couched her annoyance as concern for her business.

I don’t really remember what else happened that day. I probably went to bed early because I knew I had to get up the next morning for our first seminar meeting.

I am a Ph.D. student spending the year in Paris to work on my dissertation. I set up this blog to communicate with the folks back home, so you can check in and read about what I'm doing without actually having to send me an email and ask me.

The first entry is about my flight to Paris:

Monday, September 25: Arrival in Paris at 8:30 AM, after a bumpy flight during which I got very little sleep. I was in the very last row, on the aisle, sitting next to another student who had purchased a ticket through STA Travel. The last row was good because we were close to the lavatory, but we had to listen to this one flight attendant’s constant complaining about how she was on probation. I never could figure out why she was on probation, but it sounded like the easiest way to land on probation was to be late for work. We also ended up having to wait for our meals. I chose the beef, but the pasta looked like a much better choice. My seatmate, a recent graduate of Truman State College in Missouri, was on his way to Strasbourg where he is going to spend the year teaching English. I hope he has fun. I told him my story about going to English class at a middle school in Brittany when I studied in Angers ten years ago. Maybe you don’t know this story. I was talking to this group of three 12-year-old French girls, and the first thing they asked me was, “Do you know any drag queens?” When I was 19, I did not know any drag queens. The girls were very disappointed, but they proceeded to show me what appeared to be drag queen trading cards. In telling the story to my seatmate, I theorized that the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert had probably come out just before I went to France in 1995-1996. According to imdb.com, my theory was correct. But it was still kind of bizarre, because why were 12-year-old French girls collecting drag queen trading cards? Were they even allowed to watch that movie? Later that day, I led the school assembly in singing “Imagine,” and my fellow Americans joined in for the Notre Dame Victory March. It was all very surreal. Anyway, my seatmate was a little bit freaked out by the story of the drag queen trading cards. While I expect there are some drag queens in Missouri, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know any of them.

I watched The Family Stone as my main in-flight movie. We had individual video screens and could choose from seven channels. For a while I watched the French language programming, which was about Senegal. There was a woman who talked about Senegalese identity being part French, part religious, and part something specifically Senegalese. It made me think of Emily and cultural intelligibility. Another in-flight movie option was Poseidon, which the woman in front of me chose to watch. I wasn’t really interested in watching a disaster movie about a boat while flying in a plane. (Of course, I did watch Speed on a moving bus once, which definitely made it much more exciting.) But when they restarted the movies, I watched a few minutes of the beginning of Poseidon. The dialogue was terrible, but not quite bad enough to be campy. And Stacy Ferguson (Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas, formerly of Kids Incorporated and Wild Orchid) sang something that was not “The Morning After,” at which point I was done with Poseidon.

The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. When we landed, I just waited for everyone else to leave, because I was in the last row. That was actually kind of nice, because I didn’t feel any rush to get off the plane. I showed my passport to a policeman, who stamped it and sent me on my way to baggage claim. I had so much luggage. And it was so heavy. But there are free carts in Charles de Gaulle, so that was cool. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi to my new apartment. The driver said that it was unusual for an American to speak French at all, let alone as well as I did. I’m sure he said it just so I would give him a nice tip. It worked.

When I got to the building there was a number keypad on the front door, and no buzzers. Laura had not warned me about this. So I waited outside for a few minutes and thought about just yelling “Laura.” But then some guy came out of the building and held the door for me. I dragged my luggage in and eventually got up to the “première étage,” which means first floor but really means second floor because the French start numbering the floors with 0. This is one fabulous apartment...

I think I will end there for now and try to post this. More later…