Cultural...Similarities?

Until this week, I have never felt so fulfilled by eating cheese.

For awhile, when people asked me what I wanted from the US, I said 'peanut butter' because, while not impossible to find here, it can be difficult and it is invariably more expensive than at home, and often all you can find are jars of Skippy (filled with hydrogenated oils) or cans--cans--of the stuff. Peanut butter in a can must be undead. Or similarly horrible.

Peanut butter is one of the classic American foods here.

But recently I discovered that there is a food I love (I didn't even know this until I was absent from it) that one simply cannot find in Paris, save peut-être at British or American specialty stores. This godly nectar is known in English-speaking countries as "cheddar", and lately, I cannot get enough of it. I recently brought back from London an extra extra strong (No. 7) variant that was quite good...

I've watched Virginia crave and get a lot of satisfaction out of buying and devouring slabs of the strange soft or goopy, slightly malodorous cheeses that one finds here, and intellectually, I've understood that she grew up eating it, she likes it a lot, and sometimes she just wants it. (I've heard other people describe cheese as a 'bonheur'.) But now I think I have a real, experiential appreciation for the French love of cheese.

Good God, does it hit the spot!

Not Married

Just to clarify, nope, I'm not married. V and I got a PACS, as I mentioned earlier, but we're not married. When we do get married (and no, we're not engaged yet, but we have talked quite a bit about it), even if we decide to have a private ceremony, I'll tell everyone in advance. You're my friends and family. (Well, those of you who are, at any rate.)

The PACS is really just an agreement to live together. Anyone can do it except family members, and all it says is "we live together, please give us a small tax break". Lots of friends do it, for instance. However, it is also an option for gay/lesbian couples as a form of marriage. The contract part of it is really flexible, so you can, if you want to, make it more of a commitment.

As it is, for us it's a way to get a tax advantage and help me secure my place in this country and V's right to follow me to other countries without losing her job, among other things. There's also, I suppose, an element of romantic commitment, but not nearly as much as you might expect from a marriage or a civil union (if you expect such things). Basically, the whole dreamy process consisted of getting birth certificates (officially translated, in my case) and proof of address, submitting these with application forms in order to get an appointment, and then, at the appointment, getting an official stamp on the papers before being dismissed from the office. Ordinary administrative transaction, no fanfare, nothing. And if we want to end it, we go down to the Mairie (the town hall) and say "We want to end our PACS" and it's done. That's it.

Return to Paris

As usual, it has been awhile since I've posted. First I went to the US for visa reasons, then we went to India for vacation and the wedding of two friends, and now we've been back a month and I've begun two jobs and my PhD, plus I'm once again taking my writing projects more seriously (good timing, right?)--so there's a lot of news. We'll take it one part at a time.

The visa applications went more easily than expected, given the effort required to arrange appointments, gather paperwork, and even get information. The tourist visa for India took one day to get, and that was only because I missed the morning deadline for same-day processing. The French long-stay student visa took all of thirty-five minutes, of which twenty were spent waiting to be called to present my paperwork and only fifteen were spent processing my dossier and producing the visa. W00t for efficient administration! (I've written a more detailed description of the process, but I am considering creating a separate blog for my foreign PhD experiences so that I can offer help and entertainment for others interested in the situation or hoping to pursue the same sort of path.)

India was a crazy experience, about which I wrote daily journal entries while there. I'll be posting revisions of these in the days to come.

Having returned to Paris, V has begun work at UPMC (Paris VI) again, this time as a tenured, full-time teacher. (Last year, she was a temporary, full-time teacher.) I got my carte de sejour (another story), which allows me to live and work in France, and I began work as a sort of adjunct teacher of English (language) at UPMC. I teach one class a week, and will get paid sometime early next year. I've also begun working for a company called YES (Your English Solution), which teaches English to businesses in the Paris area.

Additionally, my classes have started up. I'm taking my advisor's poetry and poetics course, which so far is interesting, and a short translation course he's teaching as well, so I can practice my French.

V had Lasik eye surgery at the beginning of September, which means that now she can see pretty much as well without glasses as she once could with glasses. There are some small side effects, some of which seem to have faded, but she and I both wish the doctor had informed us more about them, as they may have influenced the decision. (On the plus side, she's very happy to be able to snuggle without removing and protecting her glasses.)

V and I got a PACS (Pacte Civil de Solidarit&eaccute;, or French civil union) on the 2nd of September, so now we're officially living together and supporting each other. Pretty cool. It's such a potentially small thing (the document needs only contain one line about how the two of you agree to support each other, but can have more) that we weren't going to do anything for it, but our friends wanted to have a party, so we threw a small fête and got lots of wine. We don't drink much at all, so typically this means we hold onto bottles for weeks or months, until we have guests over.

I've also found a dojo that teaches Ki Aikido, and I had begun going, but our finances were low this month and last due to India+French admin fees+Lasik, so I'm holding off for now. But once things get underway a bit more and I get my paycheck, it's back on the mat for me!

I'm also learning how to better organize myself so that I can do everything I want to. I've made myself very busy, which is fun, and now I'm learning how to manage it all. I'm also teaching myself a bit of Ashtanga Yoga.

That's pretty much the update for now.

All the World's a Stage

Something that we've been working on for a long time, but that I have neglected to post about (FAIL) is the play that just finished its performance run last night. V and the rest of the cast have been working on it since last September or October; I've been involved since I came over mid-November. So really I should have written something about it. Sorry.

Anyway, the play we've been working on is Kindly Leave the Stage by John Chapman. Cast/characters:

RUPERT played by Micky Filhol
MADGE played by Marie Dubois
CHARLES played by Yann Fuchs
SARAH [CULLEN] played by Maëva Vincensini
DOROTHY CULLEN played by Amandine who has a last name somewhere
EDWARD CULLEN/FROBISHER played by me
NURSE played by Barbara LeLan
ANGELA played by Virginia Fumagalli

We're almost all pretty much rank amateurs; only Virginia has acted and directed quite a bit, and otherwise Yann has done one play (with Virginia), Barbara has done a little bit of improv, I've taken one general acting and one improv course, and everyone else just started this year. And everyone has done remarkably! Okay, I can't speak for myself really, but at the very least I've had fun and people seem entertained by my part; and everyone else has made huge acting strides, which is amazing and wonderful, and it seems like, by and large, our audiences have all been pleased with our performances. We still have a lot to learn--at the moment, we still perform best if we do a run-through before each show--a trait that, ideally, wouldn't exist--and we need to work on loosening up a bit, finding our characters more quickly, punching up the energy of our acting, following on the ends of each others' lines, stuff like that. But these are all things that will go away with practice. And the bottom line is that we pulled it off, and pulled it off well!

In fact, in order to secure our performance dates, we had to form an official association, "Hark Who's Talking", so we're a theatre troupe, or perhaps a club, now. And we're looking forward to our next year--now that we have had some small success with a few places, it'll be easier to secure those venues again for other performances. And we seem to have impressed enough of our friends and families that they'll spread word a bit and we might get a bigger audience. We don't do this for profit (we might pass the chapeau in the future to help recuperate the production costs), but we'd still like to get as much of an audience as we can.

I posted pictures of backstage at our last show online. Check 'em out.

New Apartment

As recent posts sort of imply (and the one before that blatantly states), V and I have been searching for apartments with a friend. We've found a really nice one and will be moving into it on the 1st of July. It's located near the Buttes Chaumont, which is a lovely park that completely bucks the French tradition of neatly trimmed, flat, geometrically arranged gardens with small bushes, tiny flowers, square trees, too many statues, and grass that you can't walk on. (This is much to my relief--French gardens are pretty, but I prefer some wildness in my caged nature.) It was built over an old quarry and includes some bluffs (topped by pavilion), a small lake/large pond and a waterfall, hills, winding paths, grass that you can (gasp!) sit on, and many many trees.

The apartment is furnished (pictures here), and is well-situated for all of us. For Marie and V, it's near metro lines that go quickly to their workplaces. For me, there is ki aikido (Ki Federation, not Ki Society, but same thing, really) not far away. For all of us there is the park down the street and right next door to us a pool. For V and I, a rock gym. Plus a nearby organic cafe, a fruit/veggie open-air market, and plenty of other neat things. All told, yay! We're excited to move in!

Caution, c'est pas cochon (mais ca peut etre con)

That is to say, "'Caution' isn't 'cochon' (but it might be 'con')."

Your "caution" is the security deposit you pay before renting an apartment. It's rather huge here in Paris, and in addition to paying that, you have to pay your first rent and typically also the equivalent as a fee to whatever rental agency you had to go through to get the place, which is why it can be "con", a multipurpose swear word that can mean something like "idiot" or "idiotic" or "seriously annoying" (kind of like saying some turn of events is "a bitch", perhaps a bit stronger), or it can mean "damned" as in "that damned gerbil!", or it can mean "cunt", in which case it's (obviously) pretty offensive. A "cochon" is a pig. In French, "caution" and "cochon" are pronounced similarly (the former with a bit more of an "s" sound and the latter with an "sh"), and in my head I'd been spelling the former a lot like the latter. When I thought about it a bit, though, it didn't make a lot of sense to have to give your landlord/lady a pig before moving into one of his/her properties.