Saturday, January 26, 2008

PICTURES!


Eiffel Tower at Night, from across the Seine



Shortest Skirt EVER, aka 100th PICTURE IN PARIS YAAAAAAAAAAY



I'm not drunk, I promise....


Coffee cups are TINY here.



Le Moulin Rouge!





Montmartre



Nothing says "Congratulations on surviving your first week in Paris" like McDonalds on the Champs Elysees.



Versailles



Valentino Fashion Show, Rodin Museum



This lovely starlet is Blake Lively, of "Gossip Girl" fame. Check the dress on any celeb website.



Devon Aoki



Lucy Liu!



Uma (or as the French called her, "Yuma") Thurman



Claudia Schiffer



Moi



Plaque



The house was lit in red in honour of Valentino and his signature colour.


C'est ca que j'aime (ba da ba ba ba...)

I am writing from a McDonald's in Porte St.-Cloud, Paris (hence the title, which is the French translation of "I'm Lovin' It"). A funny thing happened on the way to the McDonalds: I was stopped by a girl (black coat, long scarf and Longchamp purse as is common among Parisian girls) who asked me for directions as to how to get to a certain street in French. I helped her to the nearest exit in nervous, stuttering French... but lo and behold, as soon as her phone rang ("Last Night" by P. Diddy and Keyshia Cole... I hate that song) she began to speak in slightly accented (to me) English! So I waited until we got to the stop and she got off her phone. As soon as she started asking me again how to get to the proper street, I was like, "wait, you speak English?" And she was like, "where are you from?" I said, "California!" We had a good laugh over that, as we were both Anglophones speaking to each other in nervous French when we could have conversed much more freely and easily in English. However, I thought she was French and she thought I was French, which was pretty funny because everyone can tell that I'm Not From France (especially now that I'm dressed as Comfy American Joanne instead of Haute Parisienne Joanne) and she looked pretty Parisian and spoke good French. She barely had a North American accent, as far as I could tell; and it was just as well, since she was from Canada (Winnipeg). I told her I had cousins in Ontario (WHAT'S UP KEV) and she was like "cool!" So she went to the left, as the map told us to, and as she turned away I said "Good luck eh!"

I'm not sure if she heard me but I hope she gets there okay since it's like 10:20 at night here.

La Belle Fille et "Merci"

So my host mom probably thinks I'm a total weirdo for being so polite, but I'm still navigating the treacherous waters of French society. According to every authority at AUP that's spoken to us about interacting with French people, this society is a very polite one in which it may take you months to be called "tu" (as opposed to the more polite "vous") by a friend. However, Abby, the previous boarder, told me that my host mom is a lot more informal than other host families (even if I had already committed several faux pas IN THE FIRST DAY which Abby helped smooth over by explaining that I'd never gone to France and was not used to it at all). Still, I can't help but use "vous" and overusing the words "d'accord" (okay) and "merci" (thank you) as well as always greeting her formally. (To lessen the tension, though, I tend to greet her in a funny way, like "hel-looooooooo" and "good-byyyyyye" just so I don't feel so dorky about being formal).

I just mentioned this because I used "merci" like five times in the last conversation we just had, which was about doing laundry (I'm lucky in that she'll even do it for me) and my borrowing the iron. As I said the last "merci" she just kind of laughed and I'm not quite sure how to take that... is she thinking like "this girl is really overly polite and should loosen up" or "this girl is a complete dork" (which isn't too far from the truth)? She has been very, very generous and welcoming but I still worry here and there whether I'm crossing the line or what; the cultural minutiae and language barrier are really doing NOTHING to alleviate my neurosis.

Like foreals.

I left America for THIS?

I find myself saying this a lot, because (like in many parts of the world, thanks to globalisation) traces of America are EVERYWHERE in Paris. Every time I get on the metro, there's at least one banner overhead that blares "SAUVEZ BRITNEY" (Save Britney!) and a tabloid picture of Miss Spears in a straitjacket. The first day I arrived at AUP, the tabac next door had a huge poster advertising Britney's breakdown in the window. Also, my host mother likes Ne-Yo (NE-YO, for God's sake... I like him too, but it's so much funnier coming from her); there's a McDonald's on the Champs-Elysees (which I HAD to eat at) and a Pizza Hut down the street from my school; French girls in cornrows and tracksuits pushing their similarly corn-rowed and track-suited toddlers in strollers always show up in TV documentaries about The Troubled Youth of France; MTV France is essentially the American channel but with French people speaking over the English (which you can still hear underneath); and my host family always watches a TV channel that exclusively plays American films (the last one I saw was "Meet The Parents") dubbed (mercifully, without the English track playing underneath) in French. The worst offense, though, is the music.

I love, love, LOVE Euro-dance music and hoped that I would hear much more of it in the clubs and on MTV France. I'm talking Bob Sinclar, Yves Larock ("Rise Up" is my official Paris anthem), Cassius, Daft Punk, etc., etc. But when I went clubbing last week and yesterday, it was the same old undanceable American (c)rap that I hear at home. Now, I love hip-hop; I grew up in the milieu and heyday of gangsta rap (WEST COAST REPRESENT!) and I have a special place in my heart for 1980s rap, freestyle, and breakbeat music. And while the first club I went to was kind of OK (they had a Eurodance period, a Reggaeton/Hip-hop period and a disco period) the club I went to yesterday felt like a high school dance and even played the kind of stuff I used to hear at my high school dances (example: they played Chingy's "Right Thurr". CHINGY. When the hell did Chingy last come out with a hit? I remember "Holidae Inn" playing on the way to my post-debut party... which was indeed at the Holiday Inn. IN 2005.) which disappointed me because I was hoping they would play better, more danceable club music here. I think it was because this was an AUP event and so they were trying to cater to the American audience that they played a lot of rap, but also the DJs kind of sucked on a technical scale: specifically, they kept trying to crossfade two songs with different BPMs (beats per minute) so the rhythms overlapped and sounded kind of discordant/off-beat.

I did, however, find some amusement in trying to teach a Swedish girl (who was a very enthusiastic learner) the Soulja Boy dance. And in the fact that there was a black guy in a Superman t-shirt at the club doing the Soulja Boy dance as well.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

HAY GUYZ MOAR PIKZ YAAAAAAAAY

Having way too much fun in Paris to type out full posts yet. Also, the lab is closing in 30 minutes. :D