Paris in the early days

[English version to come.] [S'il vous plaît excusez mes erreurs!] Pendant les dernières six semaines, Paris était vraiment vide. C´était calme et tranquille, mais pour moi c´était un peu trop solitaire. Ma boulangerie préférée me manquait. Heureusement, c´est le fin de vacances et tout le monde est rentré. Malheureusement, mon proprietaire est rentré aussi; malheureusement car il n´aime pas mes chats, surtout Bird.

Pour être hônnete, je ne lui maîtrise pas très bien. Je le laisse faire tout ce qu´il veut; il peut sauter sur le lit, marcher sur la cuisinière, et (bien-sûr) sortir par la fenêtre. C´est cela qui a créé des problèmes. Je pensais que Bird ne pouvait pas sauter du sixième étage au cinquième, où mon proprietaire habite, mais je me trompais. Il a sauté et est entré chez lui. Il est probable qu´il aie menacé son chat. Il est certain qu´il a tout exploré – les chaises, les lits, la canapé – et qu´il a laissé ses poils.

Donc, après la troisième fois, mon proprietaire était en colère contre moi; après la quatrième, à 4h du matin, il m´appellé et il m’a crié. Ainsi admonestée, je n’ai pas fermé l’œil de la nuit. Le lendemain, je lui ai écrit un message très contrit, mais il n´a pas encore répondu. Aussi, j´ai fait un peu bricolage – j´ai construit une barrière. Bird est très brilliant, aventureux, et déterminé, mais je crois que je l’ai battu. C´est vrai que je préfèrerais habiter ailleurs, peut-être avec des gens français, cependant c´est cher, c´est difficile à trouver une bonne situation, et je n´ai pas de temps à chercher. Donc, je vais rester ici, même si mon proprietaire ne m´aime plus.

À part le stress des chats et mon travail, tout ça va bien. Le week-end dernier, je suis allée à une piscine sympa. C´est un peu sud de Paris, dans un grand parc, et je pense que la piscine est un bon exemple des différences entre la France et les États Unis. Aux États-Unis, les gens sont quelque peu prude. À la plage, les restaurants exigent de tout le monde porter les chemises et les chaussures. Aussi, les enfants ne peuvent pas courir près de la piscine ni plonger dans la piscine peu profond. À cette piscine, personne ne peut porter le short, y compris les femmes. Les hommes doivent porter le Speedo. (Pas mal pour nous filles! Eh bien, ça depend…) Les enfants se jetaient la tête la première, sans crainte pour la profondeur de la piscine. Je portait une robe sur mon maillot, et j´ai été demandée de la enlever! Cela ne se passerait jamais aux États-Unis. Les français sont très rigides sur quelque choses et très détendus sur autres, et, à moi, la rigueur est très arbitraire – comme l´affaire des timbres pour mon carte de séjour (voyez mon article précédent). J´ai des autres histoires comme ça, sur le chauffeur de bus par exemple, mais pas assez de temps…des amis arriveront demain, j´irai Rock en Seine le vendredi, et il y a un double entraînement ce week-end. A+!

Still have lots of time to listen to music, though these days I really try and get my daily dose of French hip hop (and if there’s something French you like, send it my way!) Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been listening to lately, a mix with the very imaginative title of “current2″. Slower and sadder than last time, the end of summer? But I just love the opener, even though I am religious opposed to songs over 6 minutes. I have to thank my usual influences, The Tape, Hype Machine, and the KEXP Music That Matters podcast; I took a bunch of songs from Shannon’s midsummer podcast. As usual, the mix is linked on facebook, or write a comment below, something legit so I don’t think you’re a Russian spammer (i.e., “you’re my Adonis” isn’t going to work this time).

1. Wake – The Antlers
2. Sometimes I Realise – Engineers
3. Russia – Ramona Falls
4. Eyes As Candles – Passion Pit
5. Salt Air – Chew Lips
6. D.O.A. (Death Of Autotune) – Jay-Z
7. Where Do My Bluebird Fly – The Tallest Man On Earth
8. Rock Bottom Riser – Smog
9. Dreamer – Lightning Dust
10. Ashamed – Deer Tick
11. Imaginary Friend – The Plugs
12. Wooo – Vitalic
13. Harold T Wilkins – Fanfarlo
14. Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap
15. Embers – Just Jack

Okay non-French speakers (that is, the vast majority of my readership), I know you were afraid that you would have to learn a new language in order to continue enjoying my piercing insight, witty observations, excellent taste in music, and gorgeous photography, but not to worry, I really haven’t mastered French at all yet and that post took me hours to write. It’s true that certain changes are taking place – I’m losing English words, as Christian promised, and I am not a huge fan of this fact. Getting to know French is also changing my manner of speech in English. For example, I now say things like “it’s true that” and “it’s bizarre”, not to mention “in fact” – French phrases translated directly to English, ones that I would not normally use very much in conversation. (Annemarie said “we’d profit by” the other day, a truly odd thing to say in English but a fairly common French phrase.)

So, what is happening? Well, my schedule is crazy still. French is going well, work is suffering a little, probably also because what I’m doing right now is really very boring, but very necessary for the project to progress. I am much more comfortable in the language than I was. I’ve finished my first French book and begun another. I’m talking to strangers in French. I still miss a lot, but it’s getting better.

Deirdre and Claire came for a visit and it was wonderful – some pictures here, more on facebook. They loved Paris and we did lots of fun things together…picnicked, met up with Deirdre’s cousin, heard her boyfriend play in a nice bar in St Germain, next day got dressed up, went to a club, went to Basilica St Denis (which was fascinating, all the French kings are buried there, I need to write a post about French vs English history and my understanding of how events 1000 years ago created the differences that exist today), went to Montmartre, had some wine, some beer from a guy selling them illegally there, took lots of pictures, pretty sure tourists were taking pictures of us, slept, went to the Marais, had fallafel and dessert and got to experience rude French waiters, had a lovely picnic at Champ de Mars, went to a bar near the Pantheon and played spoons. All in all it was fantastic, despite some drama involving the cats and plumbing problems. I always think it’s funny how people love Flotsam at first, then after a while realize how annoying he can be, and grow to love the more-intelligent-but-less-friendly Bird more…

This visit followed a surprise visit from Luke and Manny, who I didn’t know very well before but who are extremely cool people and yet another reason to return to Seattle. Right now there’s a pause in visitors, and then a slew, Nodira next week, Nate and Jenny the following, Marie for a couple of nights, my mom and Bill, I go to London, Liz, then I go to Victoria, then Schuyler returns with me. It’s really nice to be able to show people the city. I’m especially looking forward to nice long French lunches and dinners with Mom.

And at this moment, I’m sitting at the bottom of Rue Mouffetard, in my favorite park – favored because it is close to my apartment, has nice benches under the shade, has working free wifi, and has tons of cute kids frolicking in the playground. They remind me very much of my niece, another visit I’m looking forward to, though it won’t happen till next summer. Adorably, the kids are obsessed with the water pipe for washing their hands. Everyone speaks French, of course, and I’m finally starting to eavesdrop instead of tune out when I hear French. A neat evolution. Mais ne vous inquietez pas…I’ll still write in English, I promise.

If you’re temporarily traveling to a foreign country and want to make calls out, I recommend getting a calling card (PennyTalk and NobleCom are both good sites) and using pay phones or whatever available landline you can find – the calling cards are super cheap, way cheaper than actually using a mobile phone to call out.

If you are in a foreign country (say, France), and have a mobile phone, people can call you direct through a cheap service such as Mobile Caller. But if you want people to be able to call you without incurring any charges on their side, here is what you do.

1. Get a Google voice number – currently only available by invitation to people in the US. You can get around the US requirement by using an IP address masker such as Anchor Free Hotspot. As for the invitations, request one, it shouldn’t take too long.

2. Sign up for Localphone. Localphone is a service that gives you a local phone number to call for each of your contacts in a foreign country. So if I were to use it normally, I would put in my location as France, and add my mom’s number, and it would give me a French number that connects me to mom. And that call is very cheap. The only catch is, I have to tell it where I will be calling from. So, I put in my location as France, give it a French landline number, and have to call the French number for mom from that landline – this is so they know who to charge.

For my friends to call me, I started out by using this service backwards. That is, I listed my location as Seattle, and added my own (French) mobile phone number as a “friend” I wanted to call. Localphone then gave me a Seattle number to call that rings my mobile. But I needed to put in each friend’s number that wanted to call me, so localphone would know to charge me. For example, I gave my mom the localphone number, and added her number to my list, and then she was able to call the localphone number and ring me. But this isn’t a great solution generally.

With Google voice, I can have just one number to give everyone, and I don’t need to individually add them. I list the Google voice number as my phone number, and my French mobile as the friend I want to call. Google voice routes to my localphone number, which rings my French mobile. And voilà, my friends can all call a Seattle number and my French mobile rings, and it costs me only $0.11/minute (which is very cheap by French mobile standards).

The really nice thing about Google voice, for those who travel regularly, is that you can change what number it rings. So you could set it up this way for when you’re traveling, but then have the Google voice number revert to ringing your US cell when you’re in the States. Which, come to think of it, is what I will do when I visit…

I got a Google voice number, it’s in my info on facebook, it’s Seattle-based. I’ve connected it with my Localphone account and now if you call my Google voice number, it will ring my mobile in France, costing me 11 cents/minute (not bad, I promise). I would have done this back in June, but it took a while to set up the whole thing as they disapprove of IP addresses outside the U.S. To get around that, I used Anchor Free Hotspot Shield. Which might allow me to watch Hulu, too.

You can send texts to that number and it will go to an online account where I can read them (but I basically still prefer texts to go directly to my mobile, if it doesn’t cost you too much). Google voice will also transcribe voice messages you leave and I can read them, kind of curious to see how well this will work.

If anyone wants to know how to use Google voice to dial your international mobile phone, leave a comment and I’ll write a post about it.