We have returned. We are alive. And we are buried under a massive to-do list for this week while Allen is off work. Mostly this involves house hunting, but we also need to sort all of the many, many boxes in our basement and purge the things we don’t need. We did 10 hours of house hunting yesterday and saw 25+ houses. I’m tired just thinking about it, but we’re going out to see more today! I hope to write more soon, and yes, the blog will continue! Notice we’re just Chez Schmanz now. And now…off to more adventure!

As of Wednesday night, we are basically packed. There are a few slips of paper and other flotsam in disorganization (naturally, all mine). There are some toiletries, mostly perfume and cologne, which still need to be properly packed. And aside from that, only the food and cleaning need to be taken care of before we leave.

It’s very unlike me to be packed almost a week in advance. But there’s a logical reason. If we hadn’t already packed, we couldn’t know how much space we had left to fill with souvenirs from France! As it is, there isn’t much room. But Allen and I plan to purchase another French tablecloth and maybe some clothes. En plus, the twice-a-year sales just started this week! We’re in luck. However, we had also hoped to bring back some art, but our full luggage won’t allow it. Any bets on whether we’ll be charged for oversized luggage?

This week has been full of emotional confusion. Monday was a rare day off for me, and i worked on some of my graduate school research. I’m currently taking my last masters course; the first part is online (started in March) and the classroom portion will keep me wholy occupied from July 16 to July 25. (Who wants to celebrate on July 26? Alternately, that might be a good day for a nap.) So Monday I tackled some of the transcription I need to do as part of the data collection for my action research project. In the evening Allen and I continued our packing efforts for a while. Then we ran off to Fuxia, our Italian place, for what was probably our last dinner there. I had a glass of prosecco and the Scallopine Limone. Allen had his usual, the Lasagne Carne. We both finished with panna cottas, getting our own so that he could have a red fruits sauce, and I could have caramel.

Tuesday was the hottest day I’ve experienced in a long time. I don’t know what the temperature was, but I sweated from about noon to midnight. I got my haircut in the morning, and on the way I realized with horror that I’d left all the cash at home (and the salon doesn’t take credit cards). I decided to continue and just explain my problem, fearful of losing my appointment if I showed up too late. Vicky was very understanding and cut my hair anyway. (And it looks great. She has given me the two best dry-on-its-own haircuts of my life.) Then I took the metro straight home to pick up cash and straight back to pay the hairdresser. By the point, I was running late to babysitting. I babysat, tutored, the usual, and then metroed home to try to avoid the heat. I met up with Allen, changed into a dry shirt, and we walked to Mimi and Jack’s apartment. They’d hired a babysitter so that the four of us could go out to dinner together. We walked around for a while before we decided to eat at Le Bar a Huitres. The air was thick with fruit flies; I’ve never seen anything like it. The little flies looked like pollen or dust, but kept landing on us. Fortunately, though the windows at Le Bar a Huitres were open, very few flies actually joined us inside. Still, I fished a few out of my wine, and I think I ate a handful. Aside from the unintentional protein, the food was delicious! Jack and I both opted for the Menu Homard, choosing 9 oysters and a lobster each. Mimi and Allen both chose a grilled shrimp entree, followed by a tuna steak for Mimi and a crab for Allen. Dessert was ice cream all around - lemon sorbet with limoncello for Allen and I and chocolate and cafe liegeoise for Mimi and Jack respectively. The staff were all talkative and friendly, and I believe it was the owner who paid a visit to our table and ended up showing us how to get the meat out of a crab. The food was very enjoyable, and the company was better. Afterwards, we went to El Sur, an Argentinian restaurant across Blvd Saint Germain from Mimi and Jack’s apartment, and had a round of drinks. The owner (who knows Mimi and Jack) plugged the pisco sour, and for good reason. It’s probably a good thing that I won’t be here to drink many more of those. Afterwards, we made plans to see them again on Saturday, so we wouldn’t have to say goodbye quite yet.

Wednesday’s highlight was babysitting Rafaela because we went to the park to meet Kerry and her kids so that Rafaela and Liese could play together. Mimi came with the kids too, so we had a big jolly gathering. Katharine was walking all over the playground clutching a bag of lollipops, so all the bigger kids surrounded her to ask nicely for one, and she was blithely handing them out to anyone who lined up. She put three or four in my purse when I said no thank you. When I went home afterwards, Allen and I threw ourselves into a frenzy of packing and cleaning. Hooray!

Yesterday was a nice day as well. The weather had become more temporate, and I met Leigh for coffee and to return some books she let me borrow. We’d met a couple of times before, but I wish we’d made more time to get together. We talked so much I ended up running late to babysitting again. I’m not proud of it. But babysitting went well - we spent the whole time drawing, and there were popsicles involved. Then I did my final lesson with Adrienne. I took it easy on her and we sang all the songs we’d learned, and I gave her a bit of an oral quiz. In the meantime, I gave her a French braid so she’d be ready for the concert at her school that night. I got to drop her off a bit early and said a warm goodbye to her and her parents. Then last night, Allen and I cooked dinner and then spent a few hours babysitting Kerry’s kids so she and her husband could have a night out in Paris.

And that brings us to today! Allen and I both have our last days of work today. I’ll have my last yoga class tonight (somehow I doubt I’m going tomorrow), and then the weekend will be filled with a picnic, shopping, cleaning, and saying goodbye to Paris.

Everything is flying by around us these days, and suddenly we’ve only got about ten days left before we return Stateside. Our lives and our thoughts are both jumbles, so this blog post will be somewhat of a jumble as well.

What’s coming up? Saturday and Sunday, we’ll be in Maubeuge (near the Belgian border) visiting Allen’s French family. This will be my first time meeting them. Tuesday night we’re having dinner with Mimi and Jack, and they’re getting a babysitter! Next Saturday we may hit an art market. We’d like to get in one more dinner at L’Epicerie Fuxia (otherwise known as “the Italian place”) and one more at AOC. Other than that, we’re working every day (except Monday for me), and I’m going to cram in as many yoga classes as I can stand. There’s also a nice bottle of champagne to drink, courtesy of a family I tutor for. Maybe we’ll drink it while we finish packing.

Last weekend, we babysat Mimi and Jack’s kids for the weekend and let them get away. You can see some pictures from our trip to the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes here. We ate dinner at a creperie with Antoine and Typhaine last night, saying our first major goodbye. Mimi and I had sushi for lunch on Thursday, and we had a yummy Thai dinner and general talk-fest on Tuesday.

Other than that, we’ve been working, working, working. Allen took a short trip to the UK and played a round of golf up there. I have started making friends in parks (yes, the week before we leave), who tell me about/offer me babysitting jobs with many hours. Ha!

Then there’s the question of what happens when we get back. In July, we’ll be living in our house again (back in the upstairs room). In August, we’ll probably be staying in Allen’s parents’ house while they’re vacationing. Come September, our whereabouts will be a mystery. In the meantime, we plan to look for a place in Arlington, as we’re now reasonably sure that we’ll be staying in the DC area.

July will see us cleaning out the basement (lots of stuff down there that we haven’t used or seen in a year), attending Brian’s wedding, visiting my mom’s side of the family, and house hunting. I’ll finish my last masters course, take a standardized test I need for teacher licensure in Virginia, and actually apply for licensure. Allen will start a new position with his current company, as yet undefined.

So here we go, barrelling towards the “next thing.”

A few weeks ago, my mom asked if we were counting the days. But we were still on weeks. But now that June is here, we are counting the days, and there are 22 more days to our stay in France. How did that happen?

We have 22 days, and I have 11 classes left on my yoga studio “subscription.” In the next 22 days, we’ll play parents for a weekend, Allen will visit England, we will visit Allen’s French family in the north, and I’m really hoping to buy a new pair of jeans or two. We have 22 days and 13 unfinished City Walks, 1 scheduled haircut (mine), and 4 suitcases to pack. In 22 days, we expect to have 0 visitors! (Elizabeth has just left - our first and last and most frequent visitor for the year.)

In the next 22 days, I expect some panic. But for now, I’m going to bed.

Thursday I had a rendez-vous at the prefecture for my carte de sejour, or residence card. I’ve been looking forward to this appointment since February.

I wasn’t really sure how it would go. I knew that I was supposed to show up at the prefecture at 4 pm, or possibly earlier because sometimes there is a long line outside the building. I was to bring many, many proofs that I was myself and that I should live in France and indeed that I did live in France, plus strictly regulated pictures of myself. And photocopies. I was also to bring Allen, in the flesh, as well as proof that he is himself, that he is my husband, and that our marriage is not a sham (harder to find proof of this than you might suspect). I might or might not need a doctor’s visit, I might or might not get my actual carte de sejour pasted in my passport that day, or maybe I was really applying for the first time since the woman at the February appointment hadn’t taken any paperwork from me. What’s more, I might have to pay up to 275 euros, possibly in cash. Big on paperwork and red tape, not so big on actual information sharing.

I suppose all that is to say, I had no idea what to expect. And I was scared. (I like to refer to this as “an appropriate fear of French bureaucracy” as I think the French actual foster this sense of uncertainty on purpose.)

Allen and I set a meeting time of 3:15 and promptly cemented two very different meeting spots into our mental calendars. At 3:40, Allen called me from the house, breathless from having run back there. “Where are you?” Then he ran back again, we met, gave each other a look, and got on with it. There was no line, so we breezed through the metal detectors. In the Europe-America-Middle East room (really?), we presented ourselves at the desk and got a number. (The woman at the desk said they were going to cut people off for the day because it was getting late, and there were a lot of people waiting. It was only 3:50.) Then we sat. (Sitting for a long time increases the appropriate fear of French bureaucracy, you see.)

When our number was called, only a few other couples remained in the waiting area. We presented my dossier to the desk agent, who flipped through it. She determined immediately that this would be a ten year application, meaning my residence card would be good for ten years without renewal. Happy third anniversary to us!

(Easiest immigration story ever. Ever. Okay, here’s what you do. Be American. Marry a French citizen. Be married three years. Then move to France and apply for residence. The end.)

But it wasn’t quite that simple. We didn’t have enough proof that our marriage wasn’t a sham. In fact, we had hardly any. It’s all home in the States. We don’t have a proper lease here, we don’t get utilities in our names, we don’t have any official French correspondence, we didn’t apply for health coverage, and we don’t have a bank account. We don’t exist (and neither does our marriage - nevermind that we weren’t officially married in the eyes of the French until December). So friendly French bureaucrat says we need to come back with more proof, in a few months.

Uh oh. We explained the part where we return to the States at the end of the month and don’t know when we’re coming back.

“Wait,” she says. “Are you living here or there?”

“We’ve been living here for a year, so I did what I’m legally supposed to do and applied for residence. But at the end of the month, we’re going back to the United States, and we’ll be living there.” I kept repeating something like, “I just did what I was supposed to, legally.”

“Applying for residence when you’re leaving in a month is absurd!” Our bureaucrat furrowed her brows. I agreed. (So very Parisian, the righteous indignation. So very French. Except usually it’s not on my side!)

“The Americans, they just come and go as they please!” The bureaucrat in the next booth chimed in, seeming surprised that I had bothered to follow the legal route. (Can I cite that as a legal French policy next time I move here?)

The two bureaucrats put their heads together and came up with a solution. I’d get a new recipisse, good for three more months. Along with that would be a document asking me to request an appointment with the prefecture to continue my application. I could request that appointment whenever I returned to the country - or not.

“Moins de boulot pour moi,” our bureaucrat muttered, “Less work for me.”

That worked just fine for Allen and me too. We didn’t really want to pay for the carte de sejour (275 euros, over $400, remember?) with just 25 more days to go in the country. And if we do move back to France, we can prepare a ream of documentation (plus photocopies!) to prove our marriage isn’t a sham - in advance.

We left the prefecture in high spirits and went straight for a Berthillon ice cream. Ah, to be an American in Paris.

I was preparing some pictures of Allen and I for my adorable niece tonight, and I got a kick out of the pictures of us from the past year. Here we are looking all fresh-faced and young at the end of October 2007. (We’re both officially in our late twenties now! Ah, how time flies. Haha.)

And strangely, this picture of me with ALL THESE FRECKLES was only taken two weeks before. (Suspicious!)

Then here we are in February at AOC. We’re looking a bit worn, maybe a little awkward at taking pictures in restaurants.

The end of March sees us looking and feeling a bit more comfortable, if perhaps also more FREEZING COLD. (Could we be bundled up more? My memory says, “Why weren’t you??”)

And by the end of April, we’d not a care in the world, and we were much more at ease. What will the end of May bring? Or for that matter, the end of June?

By the way, Katie, my niece, is hysterical. We talked on the phone last night, and she would yell, “Hi Tonton Allen!” (She says it like “Toto” or “Todo,” which is sweet.) And then I’d say, “This isn’t Tonton Allen, it’s Aunt Lauren.” And then she’d say, “Nooooo.” Like, “You are crazy, lady, because I know I’m talking to my uncle, so just admit it.” So then she’d yell it more insistently: “HI TONTON ALLEN!” Ha!

Here’s a picture of the little darling. She’s 19 months old now! I stole it from Stephanie’s blog, just because I’m not sure she wants me linking everyone to her baby blog. I’ll be asking.

And this is one of our favorite Katie pictures. She dressed up as Ripley for Halloween! (She’s 12 months old here.)

I bet you totally get why we’ve been bummed to be away from her so long!

A year is too long…

To be away from your baby niece.

To live in an apartment without a proper kitchen and a bed on stilts.

To be unable to have a regular job (especially for my American sensibilities of needing to be “productive” all the time).

To say something stupid every single time you interact with another human.

To put up with the dollar-euro exchange rate (which is devaluing our sole salary).

A year is not long enough…

To establish a proper social life in a foreign country.

To see everything in Paris.

To get to the level of fluency in French I’d like to be.

To forget where home is, or was, and to reassign its location.

To try all of the amazing restaurants in Paris.

A year is perfect…

To make a few great friends (specifically, Mimi & Jack and Antoine & Typhaine).

To figure out your favorite bakery and try 75% of the food in it.

To brush up on French enough that it’s not completely embarrassing.

To have a few people around the neighborhood recognize you and say hello, and to run into friends on the street.

To appreciate a city you weren’t in love with when you moved.

At my school in DC, the teachers would murmur among themselves in May and June, “Don’t make your decision about coming back at the end of the school year.” Contract renewal is an emotionally charged process anyway (reviewing all the good and bad of the past year), without doing it during a completely abnormal atmosphere. Classes on taking a field trip every week, children miss school at the drop of a hat, and teachers’ nerves wear thin in the heat. Ideally, when your contract comes in May, you already know if you’re going to sign it or not.

If you had asked Allen in April whether he’d be willing to move back to Paris next year, I doubt you would have received a positive response. Working in a foreign language is taxing, the long-term threat of French taxes is financially terrifying, and then there’s the whole question of having friends. But April is gone, and so are all the months before it, and May has arrived. Now whole phrases are coming out of his mouth with words like, “If we move back to Paris…”

What has changed? May is here! I’m partial to May anyway, but May in Paris is particularly nice. In fact, I think this is what the crooners mean when they refer to springtime in Paris. They couldn’t be fantasizing about April. My records aren’t detailed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we had at least five minutes of rain every day between January and the end of April. But on May 1, France’s equivalent of Labor Day, Allen enjoyed his sunny day off work. And on May 2, we went to Grenoble and basked in the sunshine there. When we returned, the sun was firmly planted in the sky. In fact, we hadn’t seen a stitch of rain in all of May until yesterday’s downpour (relieving the heat a little). Today it’s back to gorgeous.

May is also the month of holidays. In fact, there are three major holidays (read: days off from work) within the first two weeks: May 1, May 8, and May 12. Looking at a calendar, you’ll find that two of those fall on Thursdays and the last on a Monday. Unlike Americans, who move holidays arbitrarily to a Monday or a Friday, French take whatever day it is off of work. You may scoff, “No long weekends, then.” But the French do us one better. They “fait le pont.” That is, they create a bridge between the day off and the weekend by taking another day off! So Allen had the following days off already this month: May 1 and May 2 (four day weekend), May 8 and May 9 and May 12 (five day weekend). No wonder he’s entertaining the idea of moving back to France soon!

I don’t know what the end result will be - it may turn out you just shouldn’t make a decision about coming back to France during the lovely month of May. I recently met an American couple who shared that they too left France because of an exhausting job situation. But when they returned to the States, they realized that living in France was worth the job for them. So they suggested that we would probably know once we got back to the States whether we’d want to move back to France. And since we don’t have a whole lot of choice in our location these days, we plan on just enjoying France in May in the meantime.

We have seven weeks and two days left in Paris. As would be expected, we are in a haze of disbelief that the year has passed so quickly. They always do. 

Allen and I are having incredibly schizophrenic conversations about returning to the US. Although it is already May, and technically we’re flying back next month (!), Allen still doesn’t know what his next work assignment will be. The most likely option seems that he’ll be working on an extension of his current project, but from the US. That would be in Westchester, PA, though there’s some possibility of us living in the DC area and him going up several days a week. (Actually I think that one’s a strong possibility, which would be very positive for my job situation. It would be difficult for me to live in Pennsylvania until the end of September, as far as teaching positions go.) But if this project does extend, there’s also a chance we could return to Paris in the near future (likely January 2009). There are so many other options, and it’s all so unsure, that I won’t go on at length here with all of the possibilities. Allen’s boss said that we should consider the Northern Virginia area our home base until he tells us otherwise. You can imagine how that amuses me.

So, as I said, we’re having these schizophrenic conversations. One minute we’ll be discussing where we’d like to live when we return. (We intend to continue renting out our house because of the potential that Allen will get assigned elsewhere, and we’d have to go through the renting process again.) If we find out that we’ll be staying in the DC area on a longer term basis, we’re planning on looking at houses/condos in Virginia (probably back in Arlington). So we’ll spend hours on Long & Foster or craigslist debating the possibilities. Then the next topic of conversation will be what we’ll require of our new Paris apartment when we move back (number one: a kitchen!!!). Our current apartment is quaint and oh-so-perfectly located, but it has some serious flaws that you’d never think of unless you tried to live here. Then we’ll turn the conversation again to moving and staying home, which involves me talking about how I want to adopt two cats, and maybe we should adopt black cats because they’re more difficult for rescues to adopt out, or how maybe we should foster kittens for a local shelter…I can go on and on. And then we’ll be back to what neighborhood of Paris we’d like to look at, enumerating the markets, parks, and attractions around a given area. It’s exhausting - and frankly, it’s pointless.

Besides the constant chatter - the what-if this and what-if that about all possible situations - I do try to be pretty zen about it. I cannot control it, so there’s no use getting frustrated that I can’t really apply for jobs (during the ideal window for interviewing for next school year) or that Allen and I may spend some time apart while I finish my grad school this summer. And here my mother thinks I’m not flexible.

What I can control is what we do with the remainder of our time here. So I made a list. So far I’ve ticked off a visit to the Musee National du Moyen Age, buying and trying bread from Poilane (good, but the dense sourdough was a little hard for me to get through), and seeing China’s terra cotta warriors (temporarily on exhibit in Paris). Remaining are visits to: Musee des Egouts (Paris’ sewer system - I think we’ll go with Antoine and Typhaine), the bio (organic) market at Boulevard Raspail, the photo exhibit Des Parisiens sous l’Occupation, the Musee Marmotten and Giverny (Monet havens), and the Marche Parisien de la Creation. Oh and finishing the City Walks. (We had 24 done heading into Thursday, but after some serious forced marches, Allen and I have completed 7 in the past two days, and now we’ve only got 19 to go!) Which leads us back to my original point, which is: we only have seven more weeks in Paris.

I’ve always felt that one of the major disadvantages of living in a large city is the potential to lose a sense of community. People don’t interact with neighbors because they’re too busy or suspicious of others’ intentions - or they’re just not sure how.

Get involved!

But last year in Washington, DC, I took part in a possible antidote to the lack of community: Learn-a-Palooza. The idea is this: we all have something to learn from others, and we all have something to teach others. So why not pool our community’s resources in a day of workshops - a sort of celebration of our individual and communal strengths. This year’s Learn-A-Palooza is on Saturday, May 10 in Washington, DC. It’s not too late to sign up to teach, and if you just want to listen and learn, check out the list of free workshops and show up on Saturday!

Here’s Learn-A-Palooza’s official blurb:

Have you ever wanted to learn how to play African drums, change a bike tire, or fry a turkey? On May 10th, you’ll have a chance to do this all and more — for free!

Learn-a-Palooza DC is a first-of-its-kind community organized event happening on Saturday, May 10th, 2008. All day businesses, homes, and community centers in Adams Morgan, U St, Dupont, Columbia Heights, and Foggy Bottom and more will open their doors to hold short “workshops” on every topic under the sun — from “Intro to Mindfulness Meditation,” to “Beat the Sugar Blues,” to “Get Out of a Speeding Ticket,” to “Intro to Capoeira” to “Survival Skills Turkish Beginners,” to “Understanding Your Camera,” plus pool, knitting, juggling, and more.
OFFER a workshop — in your own space or someone else’s. Sign up at: http://www.learnapaloozadc.com

TAKE a workshop. Find the full class schedule at:
http://www.learnapaloozadc.com/workshops/list

My experience with Learn-A-Palooza 2007

I taught two classes last year. I had just started out with Pampered Chef, and I wanted an opportunity to practice my cooking shows and to broaden my contact base. Since Learn-A-Palooza is free to participate in, I thought it would be a great chance to get the word out to an entirely different audience than I’d normally find.

The only venue I found with a kitchen was Clay Johnson’s house. Clay turned out to be one of the powerhouses behind Learn-A-Palooza, and I was very impressed with his activism. Basically the story he told was this: he had just started dating Rosalyn Lemieux and in trying to show his best side started outlining this idea about bringing the community together. Together the two of them fleshed out the idea, and she basically called him on it, “Let’s do this.” And the amazing thing is, they did. And he said they set it up so that the community organized it - signing up for classes, offering space for classes, etc. Now, that’s a very simplified (and biased, and hopefully properly remembered) version of the story, and I’m sure it doesn’t give credit to many other people who were involved in making the first ever Learn-A-Palooza a success. But what hit home for me is that they went beyond just making a change and actually did something. We need more people like that - we need to be like that.

I taught two classes - one with brunch recipes and one with appetizers. The brunch class had 8-10 participants, and we made pull-apart cinnamon muffins and a ham and cheese braid. Then we all munched! In between I had to go home, wash all my cookware, and cart it all back. For appetizers, I think something like 25 people crammed into Clay’s living room. (I was amazed.) It was quite an experience for me, and the first thing I did was cut my finger on the artichoke can when I was opening it. My hand wouldn’t stop bleeding, so I (somewhat aggressively) solicited volunteers from the audience to do my work for me. Those excellent sports helped make asiago crisps, spinach & artichoke dip, and Tex Mex chicken melts. Towards the end somebody saved the day with some spray that stopped the bleeding, but the work had pretty much been done by the community itself! We all snacked and chatted, and I was really pleased that I’d come out and braved teaching a class.

I also hung out for two of Clay’s classes (since they were also in the “venue” of his living room). So I learned three tricks to get someone to buy you a drink and learned some tips on frying a turkey. Some of you are saying, “Oh so that’s where you learned that trick with the water.” Genius trick. Let me know if you need me to “show” it to you when I get back to the States.

Why I wish I were in DC right now

Last year, I was bound and determined that I’d have our house as a venue this year. I thought it would be fun to teach a few classes but also give others a space to teach in. Plus we need to get people to Brookland and Brookland to the people! (Most of the classes take place in the Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Columbia Heights, and Adams Morgan areas, but last year some classes were also near GW and at Dance Place in Brookland.)

I’m having fun thinking about what I would teach if I were in DC this year for Learn-A-Palooza. Let’s see. Maybe The Ins and Outs of Language Exchange Partnerships. Or here’s a good one: How to Pack Light and Pack Smart. Possibly even When in Paris, Order a Drink as the Parisians Do. Next year I hope I’ll have the know-how to teach Fostering a Litter of Kittens. Know what you would teach? If you’re in DC, sign up and do it!

And if I weren’t teaching, I’d be learning how to juggle, sharing ideas about using improv in teaching (one of my favorite classroom activities, but also great for trainings!), hearing more about eating local food, and getting tips on framing a canvas. The hardest thing is just deciding which workshops to attend!

I hope I’ve convinced you of how great an endeavor Learn-A-Palooza is! Leave me a note if you’re planning to go! Or drop in afterwards and share about your experience! I’m certainly sorry to be missing it this year.