Site / sight.  J’ai fait un erreur.  I meant to say “an incredible sight,” not “an incredible site.”  For all the grammarians out there, I correct my error.  Although I do think that Paris is an incredible site.  And I guess that thunderstorm implies thunder, which necessitates lightning.  Let’s focus on the photos for today.  I’ll pick up English again tomorrow.

An intense thunderstorm just passed over the city, complete with lightning and thunder.  In its wake, it left a complete rainbow arcing over the city and a portion of a double rainbow.  It was an incredible site; but my photos don’t do it justice.  Or perhaps it’s actually a limitation of the photographer.  The sunset behind the Eiffel Tower was as incredible as it has been every night.  I’m loving this city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday the director of L’Ecole L’Etoile told the four people in my class that we’re going to be combined into another class that’s more advanced than the one we’re in.  Yikes!  Beginning April 1st, our current teacher will start teaching a new group of complete beginners (les debutantes), and the four of us will join the advanced group.  To speed us along, the school is giving us an hour long session in the mornings at no extra charge to drill us on additional grammar, especially verb tenses.  Yikes!  Today I was in school from 11:30–12:30, had a half hour break for lunch, and then was back in class from 1–3, as usual.  I just thought my brain was tired before.  Maybe I can pay the school extra to not take the morning class?!?  Extra grammar, extra homework, extra confusion.  I’m certainly learning, or at least taking in data quickly.  I’m not certain how much I’ve assimilated.  I feel like I’m in a movie I saw in Gifted and Talented in 8th grade called Donald in Mathemagic Land where Donald Duck travels through time and learns the Pythagorean theorem and how to calculate angles for billiards and the golden mean and it has all these mathematical symbols moving around all the time.  Or was that in Little Man Tate?  See, I told you I was confused.  Now I can’t tell whether my memories of 8th grade are memories, or are a movie.  Yikes!  Did anyone else see the Donald movie?  I’m listening to Miss Billie Holliday singing and the apartment smells wonderfully of the new scented candles I bought yesterday and at sunset there were six mourning doves in the freshly leaved tree outside.  C’est la vie.

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain on the metal roof and the very first green leaves of spring.  It’s really spring in Paris now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

 

 

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.

I’m living a fantasy that I’ve had probably since I first came to Paris when I was fifteen years old.  I’m renting an apartment on the Left Bank for the next six weeks, taking language class to learn (finally) to be fluent in French, and absorb as much of this culture as possible.  Brad and I flew over together overnight, landing on what is the first "real" spring day according to our taxi driver.  The apartment is utterly magnificent; a far cry from the youth hostel days.  I have an outside terrace with a view of the Eiffel Tower, the Musee d’Orsay, and all of the gray slate mansard roofs of Paris.  The unfortunate part of the view means that we’re 110 steps up a narrow, twisting several flights of stairs.  I’ve been up and down 5 times so far today, and we haven’t gone out for dinner yet.  I’ve been told tales of an elevator that goes to the third floor but then necessitates a long walk around 3 sides of the building to get to our front door.  I’ll adapt to the stairs.  It’s good for me.  It’s good for me.  We’re struggling mightily to stay awake until local bedtime so that we quickly conquer jet lag.  After our apartment orientation we went out and strolled along Blvd. St. Germain in search of food before returning to a known site:  the Hotel Montelambert where we stayed 2 years ago with the Feld family for a September birthday celebration for Brad’s mom, located basically across the street from the apartment.  Today we both had artichoke terrine as a starter and Brad had a small portion of an incredibly rich pasta dish and I had a composed red snapper with mirepoix (diced vegetables) on a puff pastry.  Espresso and cafe au laits all around.  Caffeine is your friend after a red-eye flight.  Great food.  French cuisine is not all about the sauces anymore, but is incorporating the vintner’s concept of terroir, or locally grown and seasonal offerings.  After lunch we returned to the apartment and did our usual make ourselves at home routine, which for Brad means putting everything away in a tidy fashion and for me means letting my suitcases explode all over every possible surface until I figure out the best home for everything.  I think it’s a way of marking territory.  We found our local grocery store (tiny, but great fresh produce), bought electrical outlet adapters, managed not to go into several chocolate stores selling beautiful Easter eggs, and bought a pair of shoes.  No, not for me — for Brad.  There is a Paul Smith store nearby which sells very edgy Converse-type sneakers.  Brad had bought a pair of low tops while we were in L.A. about a month ago and this store had high tops with very cool patterns.  Shoe purchase score:  Brad 1, Amy 0.  We’ll see how long that lasts..  The clerk at Paul Smith was a Brit who recommended a language school down the block where he had taken classes, so we walked down and met the director of the school and I’m scheduled to take a placement test tomorrow morning at 11.  It feels great to take things as they come.  We went to the Seine for our afternoon exercise (anything to stay away from the siren song of the bed) and rediscovered the great paths along the river at water level, below the streets full of cars and people.  The views of the architecture from the river are everything a Parisian scene could be.  We’re heading to another known destination for dinner:  Yo Sushi at 8, rue de Berri.  So happy to be here, and grateful to have the opportunity to fulfill a dream I’ve had for a long time.