11 septembre 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything amusing, so today’s focus will be emptying off the post it note where I’ve been writing down little funny “trucs” to include on this blog. They’re hardly related and are a little disjointed, but then again, that’s the way my mind works.
Chapter 1: Milk and Me
As my family can tell you, I love milk. I could practically live off milk (and other dairy products) if I had to. I don’t really know why stock brokers instruct people to diversify their portfolios at all. Here’s the honest truth from me: buy stock in milk distributors. At the rate I buy it, the price of dairy stock will never go down. My milk madness in Paris, however, has been a sudden change. The French don’t drink milk like most Americans, and certainly they don’t even begin to put a dent in the quantities that I enjoy. Here, milk comes in plastic bottles of about a liter (about a quart) and here’s the kicker: it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. In the grocery store, it sits on palettes in the middle of the aisle. For the first couple of days, I didn’t realize this; I opened the refrigerator in my kitchen and there was the milk on the shelf. A damned tiny bottle, but hey, it was there. That’s a good start.
It wasn’t until my host mother was showing me space where I could store things in the kitchen (as though I’m actually going to cook! Ha!) when I saw the three extra bottles just sitting on the shelf. Red Flag: Raised. I just pretended that they were empty bottles, or maybe that she’d reused them for other things… I’m still telling myself that today, 2 weeks later. (It’s a different set of bottles now.) Not long after the introduction to milk storage, I came across the milk aisle in the MonoPrix store. Like Wal-Mart in America, Monoprix has the answer for everything. There, smack dab in the middle of the aisle was a mountain of milk - luke warm. All around, on the shelves, was more milk. Did you just read anything about refrigeration? I thought so.
Back at the house, I had a Q&A with my host mother about milk. She said that real milk is offered, but she doesn’t get it because it goes bad so quickly. In my head I was thinking: Hmmmm, a quart of milk: 1 bowl of cereal and one glass of milk. Yeah, that’s about right. Anyway, she thinks the stuff she buys tastes better cold, so she keeps the milk that we’re using in the refrigerator, while the stuff in storage gets to stay in the cupboard. In my goal to be more French, I’m drinking this “milk,” but I can honestly say I don’t know what the Hell I’m drinking. I keep telling myself it’s just like those little creamer things that restaurants give to people they don’t like for their coffee. In actuality, I haven’t the foggiest clue if it’s really that or just chalky water. And I don’t want to.
Chapter 2: Living with the next Barbaro
I’ve already mentioned my charming host brother a few times on here, but he really is a funny duck. He’s backed off on checking on my bodily functions, but I do listen to him as he talks to himself (well, lectures himself) throughout the house. The other day he was very wound up and talking very loud so, sitting on my bed, I was able to get a play by play of his toilet-room activities. (Remember, toilets are rarely found in the bathroom in France.) He also gets very riled up in the bathtub. I don’t know if he has toys or not, but he sure as Hell splashes around. One of my favorite times of the day is when the phone rings and Alexis runs out to find the cordless phone. He has a regular phone in his room, but there are times he runs for the others. I swear to God it’s as though I’m living in Churchill Downs. I don’t think Barbaro could ever run as fast as Alexis for the phone. I’m hoping to find a jockey and enter him in next year’s Triple Crown.
We might have work, though, on decency. I woke up from a little snooze yesterday and walked toward the kitchen for a cold water bottle. Well, I turned the corner into the hall way just as Alexis decided he wanted to retie his bath towel. Now, when I want to retie my bath towel, I just do it. (I almost just ended that sentence with … like a normal person. Glad I caught myself). Well, I guess that method was not going to work for Alexis who just dropped his towel on the floor just in time for me to turn the corner. Thank god for a slightly darkened hallway and the fact that sheer shock blurred my eyes, because that would have been a horrible way to go blind.
Chapter 3: The differences between getting screwed, getting lucky, and getting raped - in terms of drinking
Luckily in the past three weeks (well, actually 20 days), I’ve had the opportunity to check out a bar or two in Paris, and a few things have made themselves perfectly clear. One of the most important things, however, is the difference in drink quality found throughout the Paris. Some days you feel as though you’re getting screwed, some days you really get lucky, and in other cases you just got raped and ended up with a shitty, overpriced drink. That’s absolutely the worst. You go in, hoping for a nice cold beverage, you hand over the money questioning yourself in the process because, well, the price seemed a bit steep. Nonetheless, you want it, so you do it. (Famous last words, I’m sure). You get your glass having just watched the bartender mostly fill your pint glass from the pitcher of foam which has about 8 inches of perfectly flat beer at the bottom and then splash some fresh beer from the tap on top. Getting screwed is sort of like going to a Trinity Frat. You know what you’re in for, and sometimes it’s decent, but most of time it’s mediocre at best. Hey, but it’s better than nothing. Most importantly, it was a fine price. It’s nothing to write a blog entry about, but it’s fine. “It gets the job done,” as I was once told by a Duty Free Liquor Store Saleswhale in London. Obviously getting lucky is finding the perfect bar during happy hour, a truly magical moment.
Chapter 4: Wine and Cheese > Fire
One final funny thing surrounds a recent event in for some of us studying at Trinity. As part of our Welcome Program we went to a wine and cheese tasting. Everyone knows that wine and cheese go together better than Oprah and a slab of bacon, so I could not have been any happier. Well, we were 2 wines in, and eating cheese like it was our last meal when there was a pop (I’m not going to lie, I didn’t hear it - my excitement for the camembert left me deaf). Anyway, a few minutes later a screaming girl caught our attention as she pointed to the smoke rolling out of the walls. I almost didn’t react - smoke and screaming girls is just part of another late night at Trinity, so it almost seemed normal. After the director the program and the wine lady discussed the appropriate next measure, they decided to call the Pompiers, Paris’ silver-helmeted firefighters. Well, being Americans, we thought we had to evacuate, so I made a couple “chevre sur baguette” sandwiches and went into the courtyard. After everyone had eaten the little bit of food they brought out, we started getting restless. Stupidly we didn’t bring out our wine. Live and learn, I guess. The sommelier, embarrassed by the fact that we had stop before finishing the tasting, decided that we should go back inside and get back to drinking. (This woman had her priorities in order.) So, without lights and with the door open to get the smoke out, we had some more wine and cheese.
May I just mention how great the French are? The sommelier didn’t know if there was a fire in the walls, or not, but since she didn’t see any new smoke coming out of the electrical panel or any other orifice, we went back to our dégustation… before the firefighters arrived! The best part was that when the pompiers arrived, they apologized for interrupting our wine and cheese tasting. They never asked us to leave the building and we kept on eating and drinking through the next round. Unfortunately they did want to look in the ceiling, so we had to leave before round 4. We were assured, however, that we’d come back to finish another day.
In America you would have evacuated the minute you saw the smoke and if you were lucky you’d make it out before those damned stupid sprinklers started going off. You’d never even consider going back in the building (2nd grade teachers like to inflict the fear of God into their students with stories about the people that go back into burning buildings). Finally, the firefighters would never apologize for interrupting your wine tasting in a burning building. I love the French.
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