poste la vingt-quinzième, dans laquelle we look toward the future

soooo, here is the mysterious special wonderful surprise i promised all you internetsters out there: I HAVE ANOTHER BLERG. that's right! the fun is not over, no no, THERE'S MOAR.

I want to tie up a few loose ends on here at some point, like the harry potter and apocalypse posts I promised a while ago, but in the meantime, my life is continuing and the adventures* just keep coming!

So here you go:

Clare on the loose! It might be more than you can handle.

You're welcome. Blergging wouldn't be blergging without a little self-love, after all!

and a Joyeux Noël to you all!

- clarebear

*this is a loose definition of adventures, since most of the time i talk about either nothing or very mundane things, or things that are not even real but merely my misinterpretations of reality. anyway.

poste la vingt-quatrieme, dans laquelle we were there to learn, so here's what i've got.

In no particular order, the first 10 things I thought of:

1. date a bartender or waiter, or be friends with someone who's dating one, or just go out with cute flirty girls. you will get free drinks.

2. clothes dryers are SO convenient (because you can wake up and realize you have no clean clothes, and just be like, hey let's hang out 2 hours later I need to do laundry, instead of like, hey let's hang out 24 hours later or in our pajamas/birthday suits bc I need to do laundry), but it is nice not to have to re-break in your clothes every time you wash them.

3. it's not that hard to turn off the shower except when rinsing, and once you get used to it you will feel profoundly guilty every time you don't.

4. avoid trying to replicate american idioms in french. it gets awkward. (see the last section of this post)

5. everything is better with sesame seeds, including nutella paninis and spaghetti. just sayin'.

6. you can speak authentic french indefinitely without actually saying anything: 

7. sometimes when a creepy guy asks if you and your (girl) friend are a couple, it's not a bad idea to say yes.

8. i am probably not the next adele. or beyonce. however, that is measured in terms of talent, not in terms of how much heart i put into feeling the music. if that were the contest, i would win.

9. the french make pretty tasteless french fries. (the greeks, on the other hand, know what's up!)

10. dancing is best when done on tables and when you have lots of feelings, and when you know the words if there are any. (but we knew that one already!)

I'm home now, and I have a few more posts coming, things I meant to write about but never got around to but are so hilarious or significant I feel it would be a grave disservice to deprive you all of these stories. Also I had big adventures on my way home including a surprise stay in Iceland. Stay tuned, THERE'S MOAR! (potentially including some fahncy media stuff like PHOTOS, VIDEOS, and a special surprise really wonderful thing! AH PROMIZ!)

love from Seattle at last,
Clarebear

As I fell asleep finishing my French vocab list last night...

To appreciate the following, it is not necessary to understand french; they don't make much more sense even if you know what the words mean!


adouber – intégrer, adopter, we chatted, but the class sis not move quiet en

Tu as eu a borrne weekend !– un mauvais reinse

le sang neuf – personnes qui quie sont morte.

un feuj – personne juif (personée in English) 

=> this one is impressive because I have no idea how to make that little box thing when I'm awake!

...And the accompanying email to the prof (take 1):

Voila mes vocabulaire. Desolee our no fair voetre consiocnsiouc

(take 2):

Voila mes vocabulaire. Je suis desolee parce wu'ils seon tun boe thinee1

and finally:

Voila ma vocabulaire. Je suis désolée parce elle est en retard.

...close enough. For those of you who don't know, I have a history of typing nonsense as I fall asleep working and not noticing when I wake up that I did not in fact fill that last half-page with intelligent writing. This spring I ended a reading response in my language and gender class with a half page of nonsense and then the winning quote "Thanks for all your coaching! :)". Thank goodness that professor had a sense of humor!

Love y'all,

Clare

p.s. please observe the increase in content production the farther i get into finals week. enjoy it, because i am suffering over here!

p.p.s. i just checked out my final version from last night...uh-oh. sending in corrected version before my prof reads it i hope!

poste la vingt-deuxième, dans laquelle we revisit some of "our" "favorite" topics.

1. UMBRELLAS. (points for not swearing!)

So on Friday night, I went up the Eiffel Tower. Awesome, sparkly, obnoxious PDAs, etc. Also, a gift shop. Several actually, on each level of the tower. Obviously one of the worst places to buy something if you care about not getting ripped off, right? Well. Guess what? The freaking EIFFEL TOWER/PARIS -THEMED umbrellas (cuter/more interesting/a better souvenir than my plain black one) AT THE TOP OF THE TOWER were CHEAPER than my dumb boring overpriced MONOPRIX one! GRRRAAAAAGGGGGHHHH! and the difference was significant; at least two nutella paninis worth. but I am done.

2. DOORS. Sometimes a challenge, sometimes AWESOME.

AWESOME:
Many many weeks ago, in the distant corners of this blog and my mind, I didn't know how to open the door of my apartment building. WHATTT?! I realize this is absurd, je me smh.* Anyway, one day I came home and waved my weird little key thing at the weird little key thing reader, reaching for the handle to pull the door open. Suddenly, BEFORE I TOUCHED IT, the door swung open towards me! ALL BY ITSELF. Naturally, the first thing that comes into my Roald Dahl-reading, Harry Potter-loving brain is that I moved it with my mind! I am Matilda! My Hogwarts acceptance letter delivery owl really did just get lost in the Seattle cloud cover! This approximately 2 second period (which is 1.75 seconds longer than it really should have been) was one of the greatest moments of my life. Unfortunately, then reality caught up to me (or I caught up to it), and I realized that en fait it was the weird little key thingy that now triggered the door to open automatically because of our neighbor who uses a wheelchair. What a letdown.

CHALLENGE:
So, just when I thought I was really getting good at going in and out of places using those flaps they call doors, I have a really embarrassing moment. Or just like, how do I function in the world when I am une centimètre from doing things like this ALL THE TIME? Good question.

So half of last week was this awkward time where my NaviGo, my metro pass, wasn't usable because November had ended and I didn't want to pay the weekly price for 4 days. So I bought a carnet and just tried to beat the system whenever no one was looking. (don't tell!) Well, I really wanted my (rawther expensive) tickets to be reusable, so I put an old one into the machine, and after some fiddling around, the turnstile let me go through. Success! you might be thinking. No my friends, not success. There is a flap thing (enough like a door to be in this post) on the other side of the turnstile to thwart stingy people like me, which did not believe my invalid ticket and did not open. But I had my bag and (6 21 3 11 9 13 8) umbrella with me and was generally taking up space inconveniently, so to put it simply, I was stuck. I couldn't go backwards, I couldn't go forwards, and I couldn't move around enough to go over or under. Hmm.

This was the relatively quiet stop of Assemblée Nationale, so there was no one around to swipe their funtional NaviGo and give me a hand...even the ticket window was empty! I spent a good 30 seconds in this position. Evetually I managed to turn around to face the window and realized there was someone in the room behind the booth, so I threw away all dignity and began yelling "EXCUSEZ-MOI!" until she came into view and pushed a magical button to release me (sans billet!) into the underground kingdom of the Paris Métro. In retrospect, I could have coughed up another ticket from my carnet and gotten the door to open that way, but (1) I wasn't going to do that unless it was an emergency and (2) I was only interested in glamorous escape strategies, like shouting at strangers until they come to my aid.

Always use the buddy system,*
Clare

* franglinternetish for I am shaking my head at myself.
* ask me in person for a non-blog material (this was another low point in terms of my dignity level) story about why we use the buddy system. potty humor included.

ALL OF THE MUSIC, all of the wine, and a little bit of cornstarch.

(the old naming convention was constricting so i flexed the gray thing in my head that is stronger than any of my muscles except maybe my heart or my tongue depending on how you are measuring, and my skull cracked in two and the title template was written under my hair and now the words are just floating out)

seriously people, who needs drugs when you've got music? and that music doesn't even need to be drug-induced-experience-inspired? NOT ME. that's who. (and now you have the blog entry i carved out of a very trippy train of thought while listening to some crazy music last night. i think it is mostly coherent and empty of awesome synesthetic imagery)...

so tonight, i left french class, full of wise thoughts, namely the realization that my current french professor's teaching style reminds me of one of my high school teachers' teaching styles, and consequently i find myself actively having to fight the urge to turn into the mischievous nightmare i used to be in some of my classes. i have driven more than a few teachers absolutely crazy...

anyway, my destination was another magical exposition at the Porte de Versailles: an exposition of vignerons! a giant room full of ALL THE WINE. all the winemakers were there, over 1000, and my friend's host mom had a bunch of free tickets, so we went and had a little pre-dinner drink. I learned some fahncy wine words and tasted several actually tasty wines, including a fantastic (read: very drinkable) rosé. we got there towards the end, and unfortunately no one met another ice cream boy, but it was fun and now that i like wine, tasty.

life update: the parents leave tomorrow morning early, (well now it is tomorrow...tuesday morning) and i leave on the 11th. i think. SEATTLE: i will be there dec 12-jan 4ish. HOLLER AT ME!
also finals are next week -- what??

well without my musical ramblings, i feel like this is a sandwich with no guts, so, empty bread...oh well. i'm sure you have many other fun internet things to amuse yourself, so i'm not worried. if anyone is lacking in this department and likes cute things, queer things, music, or musings, i've got connections...

and now i am off to dream happy dreams...or else more apocalyptic dreams where tiny crabs take over the world (hello saturday night)...

CLARE

OH p.s. I JUST REALIZED WHAT WAS MISSING! the cornstarch.

on friday during our mad cooking frenzy, dad sent mom and i to the store with a grocery list including cornstarch. since we have not yet covered obscure food items in french 23 this quarter, he helpfully google translated it and gave us the french. OH THANK YOU. so when, after scouring the first franprix (that's right, there's MOAR), we enlisted the lady a la caisse to help us, she had no idea what "amidon de maiz" was and neither did any other french person in the store (she asked them all). Dear Dad, Google Translate is a Bad Idea. as someone who has not taken a language class since it was created, you may not be aware of this, but the french people you talk to will be. so we called the padre and he used wordreference.com (good decision dinosaur) and we learned (remember, we are here to learn) that en fait they just use the most common brand name, Maizena. at this point mom and i decided we could not set foot back in the first franprix for at least a few hours til there were different people working, so we walked like 5 blocks to the next one (they are everywhere; there are two within 3 blocks of my apartment) and when i asked for the Maizena, it was as though we spoke the same language, and i was in and out of the store in under 3 minutes. SUCCESS!

also, mommy ingeniously remarked that it "seemed to her" that if we took the diagonal road instead of one that went down straight and then made a right-angle turn, we would get to the same place and it would be faster, and guess what?? SHE WAS RIGHT.

mind == blown.

(i love you mommy!)

poste la vingtieme, dans laquelle we conclude our liveblog

11:15 pm: All our guests voted for our home-cooked pumpkin pie over the ridiculously expensive pumpkin pie from the Thanksgiving store (even if our crust did stick to the bottom of the pan).

11:45 pm: Mom: "Clarie! where's the blog?"
me: "ummm, on the internet?"
mommy: "No I know but is it in the bedroom?"
me: "well, it is if there is a computer in the bedroom..."
mommy: "oh good. I need to go defend myself, I'm just sure of it!"

12:30 am: I fall asleep while Mom sits on the next bed "rebutting" and laughing to herself at all her clever jokes.

11:00 am: WOW we slept in. Also I had nightmares and scared mom. Also we have a lot of dishes to do!

SUMMARY:
Success! We wined and dined (thanks to a bottle of wine from each of my frands and some delicious cheese from the host fam, and oh yeah, everything we made), and generally had a grand affair. Some of my favorite parts were mom's French phrases and the pie competition. I actually could not tell a difference between ours and the one we bought once they were covered in ice cream, although as my host mom said, "There is a very big difference between them. Yours is better!"

poste la dix-neuvieme, dans laquelle we do THANKSGIVING!

For this special event, we will be liveblogging throughout the day, a combined effort from Toodles, mah mommeh and me.

So, to give un peu de background infoz, my parents arrived in Paris Wednesday afternoon, and after a delicious dinner of Indian food on Thanksgiving proper, we are now in the process of creating an American Thanksgiving feast in this awesome (but completely empty of all relevant foodstuffs) Parisian apartment they are staying in, for my host family and a few Stanford friends.

10:30 am: Madre et padre wake up late, freak out that we don't have enough time, and go shopping. (I was in class) Mommeh here:  Make that wake up at 10:30, realize that we have  overslept by two hours and now only have 1 hour to do all our shopping because we are supposed to meet Clare at 12:30 across town to go to lunch with some friends  We race to he market where we hunt for things like cinnamon which is not called cinnamon but cannelle...so no store personnel knows what Paul is talking about and we have to search the entire spice section until Paul finds a picture of a cinnamon stick on the  front of the jar.  We race back to the apartment, unload the groceries, then race to the metro and rush to meet Clare.  Whew! We meet up with her as planned only to learn that our lunch with friends has been cancelled. Next trip we are bringing a cell phone that works in Paris.

12:30 pm: We meet up near the Thanksgiving store (it is literaly called Thanksgiving) and get some key ingredients they don't sell at Franprix, including a can of pumpkin guts, and an actual pie in case Mom and I are as bad at baking in French as Dad expects. So, thusly armed, we make our way back to the apartment with a couple other critical stops: ice cream for Mom, YOP and cookies for me, and a sandwich for Dad.

2:15 pm: Having decided we are taking too long to eat lunch, Mom comes in with the pie crust wrapper asking confusing questions to make us think she knows what she is doing, but when asked if she read the (French) directions, she comes up with a million ways to avoid saying no without actually saying yes either. Dad to the rescue, while I started the blog. I'm off to make sure the oven didn't explode when they turned it on to preheat. [Excusez-moi...for the record, my questions were not confusing.  Clare and Paul were just not following my quick thinking and talking. I blame it in on the fact that Paul is still jet lagged and Clare has has been speaking French for the past several months and can't follow my sophisticated brilliant English.]  (for the record, the brilliant English speaker just had to ask me how to spell "brilliant" to form that insulting and evidently false statement) For more record--the Stanford student has spells literally interestingly, ne c'est pas? pff. (1) you were rushing me, and (2) both your French and your English are questionable in that sentence.  BTW, I hope all readers take note that I was the only person not dilly dallying eating my lunch but was instead out in the kitchen starting the pumpkin pie...the first real work in the kitchen today in preparation for this feast.  Just saying.

2:25 pm: me: "Mom, can I show you how to do the blog?"
mommy (in her focused voice): "I can't right now honey, I'm at a CRITICAL JUNCTURE in my pie!" [And a fine looking pie it is, if I do say so myself...so far anyway.]

2:35 pm: mommy (gleefully): "Honey, I'm being a chef!!"

2:40: Paul: Your mother has pie on the wall! [Note: great cooks have to be creative and free form in the kitchen. So says the master pie maker]

2:45 pm  Indigo girls playing as our Thanksgiving background music.

3:00 Panic moment--4 hours till people arrive. Clare and I are off to buy some missing ingredients for the gravy, wine and something else that I have already fogotten. (This was a bit optimistic, we have not left yet 15 minutes later) (3:22): They've yet to leave--Annie is headed to the shower....well, yes, looking presentable for company is just as important as cornstatch for gravy, wouldn't you agree?

3:07 pm: Mommy has started talking like a blog. I remarked upon the fact that she has been sitting at the computer for a while (as the cooking gets going) and she shrieked (excusez-moi encore: I do not shriek--ever!), "Would you write that down so I can rebut that, please?!" And after saying we need to have a sense of urgency, she added "which is one my favorite phrases". Well let me tell you: as her comparatively slow-moving family members, we are already VERY aware that it's her favorite phrase!  It's  only a favorite phrase because of my slow-moving family!

3:17pm Paul here.  I am not used to having so many sous-chefs; I hope that too many cooks don't spoil the broth! RUDE. Clare's occasional experience as head cook at Columbae is showing! Cranberries are cooking. Dressing is partially made. Clare is cutting broccolli before heading to the market for gravy ingredients. Nothing here is quite the same. The oven control has numbers as opposed to degrees.  Everything is measured in metric and often by weight rather than volume.  The ideas of cups and ounces and teaspoons are foreign to the French, naturellement!  It makes things challenging, but fun nonetheless. D'accord--back to work.....

5:23pm Cranberry sauce done, dressing ready to go in, sweet potatoes ready to go in, tian partially assembled, broccoli cut up. Clare and Annie are off trying to buy wine.... Still to go--mashed potatoes, gravy, and final push. ca. 2 hours til showtime! 

6:26 pm: word from the host fam: they are en route! bathroom decluttering, tablesetting, wine opening! EXCITING! Mom thinks our pie is "going to win." :)  Wait till you see the pictures! Clare, you are going to post a picture, right? yes mommy, we have to do something with the pictures from that photo shoot of you and your chef d'oeuvre.

6:49 pm: I think the food will be ok, although we just realized there is no potato masher...Mom wants to make everyone take a turn mashing with a fork when they arrive, because as she put it "if I got there and they gave me a task I would be much more comfortable." (um. I don't know what to say to that.) and now she is practicing "French." At least she starts off with "Je ne parle pas francais".. For the record,.I did learn to say "Merci pour tous ce que vous avez fait pour Clare"  and managed to say it (painfully slowly) to Clare's host mother and sister when they arrive.  But I forgot to preface it with the "Je ne parle pas francais" --not a problem since that was immediately obvious as soon as I started talking.

6:53 pm: It's almost GO TIME!

7:00 pm: this is redundant but IT'S 7PM!!!!! remind me not to be a social organizer in my old age. I would certainly have a heart attack. whee!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING +1 everyone!
We love you all!

Check back later for more commentary/details from once cooking got intense! And summary of how the dinner went! Mom is very worried she won't get to finish "rebutting". And Dad has "one quick comment to make on there, lovebug." SO, a toute a l'heure!

(7:03 pm: photo shoot of mommy and her beauuuuutiful pie)

LOVE from Paris,
Annie, Paul, and Clarebear