poste la dix-huitième, dans laquelle our children stop being devils long enough to eat candy and make us laugh

Every Tuesday my friend Andrea and I go teach English to a bunch of extremely hyper, mischievous French children. They are 10, and the past couple weeks they have been little devils. But today a miracle occurred, and we had their undivided attention for an unprecedented length of time. We played bingo with fruit/vegetable/food words, and apparently watching your teachers draw is more fun than recess, because they all huddled around us and watched us finish making the cards in the yard before class. I was told my coloring was beautiful (did you hear that, Andrea??).

Anyway, it was a very successful class overall, and they were behaving really well even before we gave them candy to use in the game, after which we could do no wrong. As we walked downstairs after class, the girls told me that profs who give out candy are very rare and "trop cool" and that we are "très géniale." I hope this means they have forgotten how grumpy we all were after the unhappy anarchy of last week, and that they will continue to behave for another two sessions. Also! They kept calling us "Madame" which I think is a good sign of respecting our authority. So fingers crossed! I learned a bunch of choice phrases for disciplining, including "Tu tais ou tu sorts." so I am prepared, just in case.

A conversation as recorded by Andrea between Rayan, our smart little ladies' man, and Clara, who is well-behaved but secretly sassy:

Rayan: Tu as une 'sheet'?
Clara: Oui. Tu es une 'sheet.'
Rayan: ...
Clara: Tu sais ce qu'est une 'sheet'?
Rayan: Oui je sais! C'est une merde. Je suis pas une merde!
Andrea: Qui t'apprende ce mot??
Clara: Les films...

Andrea to me: We should note that they learned the word shit prior to taking our class. Just saying.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVE, Y'ALL!

- Madame Clare

Poste la dix-septieme, dans laquelle my day is an uphill battle, or, if I were a disney princess, I am doomed to be Snow White :(

So, I think it is time for the renaissance of brevity in this blerg. Which is why I am blergging at exactly 11:41am, before most of the day has happened. And what a day. The first words I heard from the mouth of a real live human being, other than myself or my good friends getting it on in West Hollywood, were "Tu es americaine?" OK, seriously? All I had said to her was "Bonjour!" Honestly, why even try after that?

This was such a depressing start to the morning that I got back into bed and watched another episode of The L Word.

Other super nice things people have said to me in the last 24 hours:

Kristhian: "There's white stuff on your face"
Me: "Where? Did I get it?"
Kristhian: "Oh wait, it's skin."
Me: -_-

Andrea: "Take a bite of my apple"
Me: "I'm allergic! Are you trying to kill me??"
Andrea: "Yes. You're like Snow White!"
Me: "Except I wouldn't wake up after you kiss me..."
Andrea: "What if I kiss you with an EpiPen?"
Me: -_-

And the awesomely intelligent thing I told my host family at dinner last night:

Mere d'acceuil: (in French) "Do you have enough blankets? Are you warm enough in your room at night?"
Me: "Oui, j'ai bien echauffee!" (I have no idea how to spell whatever word it sounded like I said, but I was going for something analogous to "nice and warm", and I think it maybe sounded like that.)

unfortunately, whatever I said can be translated as "yes, I'm nice and CONSTIPATED."

-_-

Clare

poste la seizième, dans laquelle I get ice cream and the anti-rejection! or, yes i am still in middle school, WHAT OF IT?

Hellooooo,

So this one time I studied abroad and hung out in Paris for 3 months and got actual class credit for awesome things. Like staring at naked people while playing with charcoal and ink, speaking English with a bunch of hilarious French kids, and going to a chocolate festival. yes, that's right, a CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL. Featuring a fashion show of CHOCOLATE COUTURE. And it was delicious!

I got to make my own truffle, eat a shitton of free chocolate samples (it was like VegFest, but 100% chocolate). Anyway, after several hours of munching on cacao nibs and olive oil-infused chocolate with the occasional macaron au caramel beurre salé, I decided it was time for some Real Food. So naturally, I decided to get (vanilla!) ice cream (my food options were limited, but let's be real I would always choose ice cream).

My friends and I did not move at the same pace throughout this extravaganza (my spirit animal might be a sneaky tortoise who can't pass up a single sample and ingeniously outfitted her shell with an ice cream machine), so I strolled up to get my frozen and delicious treat by myself. As soon as I made eye contact with the young Frenchman behind the counter, we both grinned (I may have blushed!) and looked bashfully away. Now, my French is not perfect even at the best of times, and when my lips are busy smiling and my voice just wants to come out as laughter, things get even worse. I communicated what I wanted, une boule de la glace au vanille, and he avoided my eyes as he scooped, fighting a losing battle with his face and thus beaming unprofessionally. As he added a final touch, a whole (not sliced into sample sized morceaux) chocolate truffle, his manager, a matronly woman in her 50s, appeared, observed the bejeweled cone, and gave me a significantly raised eyebrow that clearly stated, "you are getting special treatment here, missy."

In a sweets- and Frenchboy-induced euphoria, I went off to find my crowd of non-tortoises and figure out how to get my new friend's number. I finally convinced my friend Andrea that what she most needed to make her happiness complete at that moment was ice cream, so we came up with a sort of game plan, and after spying on the booth until the manager disappeared as well as the other customers, we approached the target.

IRRELEVANT TANGENT:
As a side note, I felt then and feel now as I am writing this, that this is basically what a lot of middle school (and high school, especially if you go to a school where real boys don't exist) is like. Having feelings and watching your crush (or your friend's crush) from afar and whispering about how nervous you are and how cute they are and plotting grand schemes to make them fall in love with you and maybe or maybe not actually carrying them out. Or maybe that was just me. Or more specifically some of my compatriots to whom the term "boy-crazy" has occasionally been applied.

ANYWAY, we went back, she got ice cream, he and I couldn't look at each other or our faces would have split in half, and every time he turned around or bent to scoop more ice cream, she whispered intelligent things I could say to keep the conversation going. (THANK YOU Andrea!) Very intelligent things, like asking his favorite flavor of ice cream, which was actually perfect because it was mine too, coconut. So he gave me a business card with the addresses of all the store's locations around Paris that sell coconut ice cream. And we left.

So, armed with the business card, we marched away, when suddenly I decided to carpe that diem and marched back to speak to him directly. He was bemused to see me again, and I said something along the lines of (I was nervous and French was hard that day, so it was pretty rough), "I am going to go eat that ice cream, do you want to eat it with me?" And he (1) SMILED (duh), (2) said "well if you come to the store then I don't know why not" (!!!!) and (3) CIRCLED THE ONE HE WORKED AT SO I COULD FIND HIM THERE. Not quite a telephone number, but overall a success. Definitely more successful than the first time I was direct about asking someone out, which resulted in a no and some bad decision dinosaurs, although that time I did have their telephone number.

And no, I have not gone to the store to eat coconut ice cream with him, for a host of reasons, actually. (1) It's far, and not actually in Paris proper, so transportation is less convenient (aka I'm lazy). (2) In retrospect and after consulting with other people who were not wearing rose-colored glasses, he may be a bit too young. (snatch!) (3) I am busy, with things I can't even stop doing long enough to blerg about, let ALONE chase dreamy French boys through the ice cream shops of Paris!

...and here I am, in all my post-no-rejection glory:

...exciting, no? As a comment on this photo on facebook reads, "look at me. no wonder he said yes. :P"

I mean, we've already been over my narcissistic tendencies, so I might as well let it all out now, right?

love,

CLARE the ice cream tortoise who goes for it, apparently!

poste la quinzième: a day in the life, dans laquelle I sort of talk about Halloween but mostly talk about nothing. except myself. just sayin'.

Note: jeez this was an incredibly trivial post, but it felt so important at the time. I wrote this on Halloween.

Preface:

I have (clearly) been an apathetic blogger lately. I am tempted to apologize, but then I would be guilty of the hubris* of thinking that this blog matters to anyone, (this assumption on my part is perhaps implied by the fact that I am blogging in the first place, because otherwise I could just use my gurrrnal), and since I really just want to drag everyone I love into the procrastinatorial vortex that is the internet, it would also be a lie. And since I have already admitted my vanity and hubris, let's just continue in that vein by going step by step through my day today.

Good morning, hot vater?:

First of all, I will spare you the details of the highly "relevant" and "interesting" dreams I was having when I woke up, so you should begin this paragraph feeling hopeful that I will be omitting all subsequent inconsequential details as well: this is not the case (cue image of soft feathery hopes being dashed against barnacley shore).

I woke up in a very good mood. This was high point number one of the day, because lately I have been waking up feeling somewhere in the range of neutral, glad-I-didn't-die-in-my-sleep-but-wish-I-didn't-have-to-get-up-yet, to exhausted-by-the-idea-of-looking-at-my-phone-long-enough-to-figure-out-how-to-snooze-it.

I spent the morning pretending to do yoga (unsuccessful because I am sore from climbing*), gurrnaling, and playing with my hair in the mirror while debating such pressing issues as whether or not to cut it at the next (at least 6 weeks distant) opportunity and whether or not to taint this new growth with fuchsia (another extremely pressing decision that will have to be made by sometime mid-winter quarter). Also, eating. I made a chevre and tomato sandwich for breakfast (how Columbaen) that was 18 inches long, and that was only half the baguette (how French)!

(and now we switch into the voice of me a week later finishing this up):

Since it was Halloween, I naturally needed a costume, but since it was Paris I also needed to be stealth*. Parisians do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. I looked in the mirror and realized I was halfway costumed already--wearing a Columbae shirt and looking both very American and very hippie (ie, probably exactly how you picture me in your fondest memories). So, I decided to claim my roots and just dress up as American. (Please don't judge me for this, my insides already have permanent damage from the self-inflicted cringing.) Anyway, I was feeling very good and Clare-y in my most commonly worn outfit (not this quarter but in life these past 3 years)*: my favorite tie-dye Cbae shirt, black jeans (I would have worn gray but the city life had not been kind to them and they were dirty), purple sneakerz, my wonderful effective raincoat instead of the f-ing umbrella, my beloved backpack, and giant emo free store headphones.

I ended up not even needing the rain jacket because it was Stanford weather. I'm not sure what other supposedly blog-worthy stuff happened that day. I went to French class, hung out for a while, and then came back to a night of watching tv in bed. The L Word and I have made amends.

There were some French kids out making noise, I think trying to trick-or-treat...seemed unsuccessful. As I was walking home from the Metro, I was on a particularly dark block and looking at my feet (navigating the minefield of canine and human secretions), when I glanced up at someone approaching me in full witches' robes and hat, and I nearly contributed to the sidewalk sewage before remembering it was Halloween.

And then I ate chocolate pudding in bed and celebrated not going out.

THE END

-Clarebear

* I would like to thank Oedipus and my 9th grade English teacher Ms. Shaddy for teaching me this word.
* This is technically true, but the bigger issue is that, well, I am no longer the class champion in the Sit and Reach...standing up straight is practically a stretch these days.
* Not ninja stealth, more like meta-so-stealth-you-don't-even-realize-I'm-a-ninja stealth. Hypothetically speaking. If I were a ninja, I mean.
* I am blogging about an outfit. WHO AM I??

poste la quatorzième, dans laquelle you peek into my brain and I pretend this is tumblr

Today I found this little gem, The Intimacies of the Urban, which basically captures my trains of thought every time I ride the Metro (aka I think about this general theme A LOT) and how I feel about Paris.

Bonus points if you noticed my pun!

Even moar if you liked it!

Clare the cuddle vaccuum

Poste la treizième, dans laquelle HAI I STILL EXIST AND I HAVE STORIES FOR YOUZ!

HELLO WORLD (<--recycled joke, that was completely unoriginal to begin with)

I AM STILL HERE! IN PARIS! I have lots of fairly valid reasons why I have not written lately, but the most suspense-inducing is that I have been out having adventures to write about on here. And write I shall! I have a midterm next week which will require a Herculean amount of effort to prepare for which means that I am in prime position to be productive on basically every other thing I can work on. So don't give up yet!

I will finally explain the mysterious hints I left a few posts ago, about HARRY POTTER and the APOCALYPSE. and CLIMBING! and PEOPLE, including one real French one of the male persuasion! :P I hope you have not been waiting with bated breath, because you would certainly be dead by now.

A toute a l'heure!
Clare

p.s. I am better at typing without looking at keys now! and this was on a French keyboard no less!!!!! WHEE.

poste la douzième, dans laquelle I HATE IRONY.

I don't like umbrellas.

I did not use them before I lived in Paris where only Americans wear Northface raincoats and everyone and their mother uses an umbrella. But when the forecast turned to Seattle weather but rainier for the foreseeable future, I followed the dripping French crowd to the nearest Monoprix and bought one. MISTAKE #1. Apparently Monoprix (a grocery/clothing/school supply/umbrella/makeup/etc store), which I assumed would be cheaper than someplace like H&M or another clothing/accessory brand store, likes to RIP OFF hapless individuals caught out in the rain. And it was NOT EVEN RAINING yet when I made this purchase. Anyway, the Monoprix brand umbrellas are certainly nothing special, but I could not find one for anything less than 14.90 Euro. Now, since I had never bought an umbrella before because I think they are worthless, I did not have anything concrete to compare this too, but I was pretty sure it was more than I wanted to pay. However, I was wearing a lot of leather (Baens, please forgive me, that is another story and I think it is called The Pearl (or something featuring a hypocrite)) and the weather looked threatening, so I decided to suck it up and buy it, because maybe umbreallas are worth it, I wouldn't know.

When I got to school (dry without help from the umbrella) I asked around for other umbrella-buying experiences, and discovered that the H&M around the corner from school was selling a virtually identical umbrella for the low low price of 6 Euro! Merde!

I ranted about this for a while, but not being familiar with the nuances of returning things in France, I didn't actually do anything about the situation. (Although this weekend I saw an umbrella for only 3 Euro. Damnit Monoprix!) But since then, I have been carrying around that umbrella in my bags, leather or not, so I can at least make use of it. And then today, the first day I forgot to transfer the umbrella between my bags (Mistake #2), IT RAINED. And I, in my soggy down jacket, carrying my mom's leather bag, got soaked. Comme mes enfants français m'ont dit, il pleurait des chats et des chiens.

Aside: Mommy, I would like to take this moment to mention that I sacrificed my left foot to keep your bag dry(ish). I was trying to keep it covered and not looking at my feet, and I stepped into a giant puddle that was really more like a lake. I love you!

And there you have it: irony for the win. I need to go wring out my socks again.

Clare