Today I took my placement test at L’Etoile (the star) School in the morning and attended my first class for 2 hours this afternoon. There were 3 other students in my class: a young man from Korea, a young woman from Taiwan, and a woman older than I am (shocking) from India. The woman from Russia had called in sick. I thought I had small class sizes in college, but this is excellent for getting lots of time to speak in class. I’m definitely rusty on the gender of countries and never knew that La Suede is Sweden. I always thought suede was a just great fabric for jackets and pillows. There’s nothing like stumbling around in another language to make me appreciate my English skills. It’s tiring to have to think before I speak. Or maybe I should practice that while speaking English also. My teacher is named Veronique and has a beautiful accent and is very patient. I’m surprised and pleased how quickly I’ve gotten rolling. It has been nice to have Brad here to encourage me to go and do new scary things.
Walked the ten minutes from school back to the apartment and up the 743 stairs to find Brad napping, which seemed like an excellent idea. We slept well last night after our sushi dinner and walk home down the Champs Elysee and across the river; at least from about 9:30 until 2:18 this morning. Then I was awake for a couple of hours listening to Brad snore before falling back asleep. I earned my nap today.
We’re now lounging about. Brad is reading a book called Jack Fish and he just read me a section about the Toto Washlet toilet, which we’re both huge fans of. Our apartment does not have a bidet, which is kind of disappointing since I think of the bidet as being one of those quintessentially French experiences.
I guess we had a quintessentially French experience yesterday morning at Charles de Gaulle airport. We’re standing at baggage claim, barely functional after our red-eye, and a woman is surreptitously smoking a cigarette right next to us, standing directly in front of several “defense de fumer” (no smoking!) signs. So far we’ve managed to avoid stepping in the ubiquitous dog doo-doo on the sidewalks left by all the tiny French dogs that Denali and Kenai would crush if they stepped on them. Not all things French are perfect.
The chocolates at La Maison du Chocolat are pretty damn close. After lunch at a cafe, we bought a small assortment of chocolates as a gift for Anthony, the sales clerk at the Paul Smith store who pointed us to L’Ecole L’Etoile yesterday. And I had a raspberry-flavored piece and Brad had a coffee-flavored piece. Really amazing. Intense and smooth. The Richart chocolate store is in our neighborhood, too. We’ll obviously have to do extensive comparison tasting, since Richart is one of my favorite chocolatiers. They make especially wonderful spicy flavors and unusual combinations. New York has outposts of both stores, and San Francisco has a Richart, too. But there is definitely something special about eating French chocolate in Paris. We’re having a grand time — Brad even braved the flower shop in our block to buy me a beautiful arrangement of colorful roses and some kind of berries while I was in school. His French is strictly at the “point and grunt” level, but it works. Thanks for the flowers, duderino.
Thoughts In Random Patterns 