Bastille Day

Two hundred and twenty-two years ago this past Thursday, angry Parisians tore down an empty prison.  OK, they were going after guns or something, but regardless, it ended up being the French national day.  And so this American couple did our best to honor France on July 14th.

Mon mari, le chef de cuisine

Last night we had duck for dinner.  Not just any old duck, but pan-seared with a honey citrus glaze...a recipe made up entirely by none other than Thomas J. Hunt!  As any of you who have visited can attest to, Tom has really become quite the French chef over here.  Besides duck, his specialties include: pork chops with a red wine mushroom sauce; crispy potatoes and sausage with creme fraiche gravy; roasted garlic, egg and warm goat cheese sandwiches (on a fresh baguette, of course); and frittata with fresh market vegetables.  Are you drooling yet?  It becomes even more impressive when I tell you that this is all made on a terribly finicky two-burner electric stove with one frying pan and one pot. 

"How does my cooking always turn out so amazing?!"

Tom has always been a creative and skilled chef- especially with meats- but being here in the land of "gourmandise" has really inspired him to take it to a new level.  (That, and the fact that I don't get home in the evenings until 9pm, so he is automatically relegated to dinner-duty.)  I have really enjoyed reaping the benefits of his talent and just wanted to take a moment to brag about it. :)  Thank you, mon mari!

Boulangerie haikus

We love the French bakeries.  As our homage before we leave, we wrote haikus to describe our feelings.  Enjoy.

Fête de la Musique

Sometimes you get really terrible free music experiences (as we found out already) and sometimes you are absolutely blown away by the amazing-ness of free music.  A couple weeks ago was "Fête de la Musique" in Paris (and all of France) and we were not prepared for just how awesome it would be!  This festival is held annually on June 21st, to celebrate the longest day of the year, which is a pretty big deal here because it stays light out until 10:45pm.  Public transportation runs all night long, which is also a pretty big deal because our train normally stops running at 1:30am on weekends and often cuts the night short.

Tom enjoying some hip hop and beer on the street

Some of the highlights from that Tuesday night:
-Music- literally- on every corner...DJ's mixing hip hop, string quartets, drum corps, acapella groups, rock bands, 80's bands, reggae, brass...you name it, and it was rocking the streets.
-Open containers everywhere...we walked down the streets of Paris with a cup of beer. Paris, the capitol of France!  Felt kind of like we were back in college.
-French people singing American song lyrics..it will never get old.

An ironic sight, with a band rockin' out to "My Sharona" in front of this street mural

Last weekend, we went to another amazing music festival in La Defense (the sky scraper/business district of Paris) and danced the night away with...George Clinton and P-Funk!  In case you were wondering: Yes, he is still rockin' out at age 70 (we did notice that he had to sit down several times, and his voice sounded pretty terrible, but you gotta respect his enthusiasm). 

This music experience was particularly special, because the first time we danced all night to George Clinton and P-Funk was 8 years ago (our freshman year) at W&L's Fancy Dress ball, when I was Tom's date. :)  I don't think either of us would've guessed that we'd be dancing to the same music in Paris, France as husband and wife!  We've come a long way since then... 

Fancy Dress, March 2003

Don't Leave Home Without It

It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but circled next to the magazine is undeniably a Torrey hair.  IT HAS BEEN SIX MONTHS SINCE WE DROPPED HER OFF WITH FRIENDS IN COLORADO!!!!

(Torrey, for those of you that don't know, is our very, very hairy dog).  I found this on the floor today while sweeping.  All of our clothes here have been washed multiple times.  We sweep daily.  We are ON A DIFFERENT CONTINENT.  Yet we can't get away.

I guess there are some things that will be rough to come home to.  On a related note, thank you again to Nathan and Lydia, and Sarah and Ryan.  We probably owe you new vacuum cleaners, as well as our gratitude.

Concrete Ping Pong

 

That, my friends, is an outdoor ping-pong table.  It is in the park across the street from us, and it is 100% concrete.  Margaret bought me a set of paddles and balls for my birthday, and we go play a few times a week now.  It's light enough out to play till almost 10 PM.

As you can probably imagine, wind has a huge effect in outdoor ping-pong.  You definitely want to be hitting upwind- you can hit it as hard as you want and it lands in.  Even more fun is having a concrete net.  You can have little games with yourself if you want, and all sorts of sweet bounces 10 feet in the air if you hit the top of the net.

It's a pretty delightful way to make up for being in a tiny apartment.  I'll miss our outdoor table when we go home.

Defeated by the French...

...and their extreme fear of rain!

Margaret and I went to have a picnic in the park on Monday.  We staked out a lovely place underneath some giant trees and were having a grand ol' time, as seen in picture below.

It even began to drizzle a little bit, which was nice because we were dry under the trees and got to sit and watch the rain fall.

Now, all the parks in France are completely fenced and gated, and most have signs on the gates that basically say 'this park will close in case of storm'.  I always assumed that meant, you know, a storm.  Maybe they are worried about people being in open fields during tornadoes or something.  Never mind that we haven't seen any weather more intense than a soaking rain since we've been here.

It turns out that what those signs mean is that the park will close in the instance of any sort of liquid falling from the sky.  After about 20 minutes of rain, a park ranger started driving his scooter around all the paths in the park, honking his big bad scooter horn constantly.  He eventually came up to us and told us that we needed to leave immediately out the main gate!

I have no idea what they are trying to protect by closing parks when it rains.  You aren't allowed to sit on the grass or play sports in most parks anyway.  I would say that it is to save the park rangers from getting wet, but they all have shelters to stand in.  Maybe it is just for job security, to justify having a person staff the gate of a park that is free to enter.

Anyway, we enjoyed the rest of our evening at home.

The park ranger in the distance, off to honk his scooter horn at other innocent picnic-ers