Foooood photos.

Here are some pictures of the some of the food I’ve been able to eat recently.

The first is from L’As du Fallafel.  The best falafel in Paris.  I haven’t tasted all the others, but I am pretty sure nothing can beat this.  Inside of this little pita are cucumbers, red cabbage, eggplant, that last falafel ball when you think they’re all gone, and lots more that I forgot to write down.  In the Jewish district of the Marais.  5 euros outside, 7 euros inside. WORTH IT.

So I also realized that I am not very gifted at taking pictures of food.  Sorry about that.  I also broke the lens on my camera.  Guhhh. I was walking up the stairs in the entryway and fell going up them.  Yep.  And my camera was in my bag and it cracked against the stone floor.  A little plastic bit fell off of the part where it clicks onto the body so now everytime I take a picture I have to reclick it back on.  It’s annoying, but at least it’s fixable.

Reba is the greatest. (below)

She left the Paris, and to bid her goodbye for a couple months, a few of us went to a restaurant called Le Verre Bouteille.  (Actually both the falafel and the following are due to her presence.  Thanks, Reebs.)  Anyway, her food choices made the cut.  Mine did not.

Winning entrée: Confit de Canard.  Duck, baby.

Dessert: Les Profiteroles.  Cream puffs.  Ice cream.  Chocolate.  Almond slivers.  And in the background, some crême brûlée.

COME TO PARIS.

Nothing like the smell of fresh tar in the morning.

So, I don’t actually live INNNNN Paris.  I live NEXT to it.  And I love it. I love the home I live in; I love the family; I love hopping on public transport to get into the city.  But last night I spent the night at a friend’s house who lives INNNN Paris.

Heavens gracious, I forgot how much I love waking up in a city.  Top floor studio apartment. Open up the window, look to your left, oh yeah that’s just the Eiffel Tower.  I got up early and after descending 5 floors of spiral stairs I was greeted with sun, bustling people, new tar between Haussman’s apartment buildings and a statue at La Place de Clichy.  I felt like I was glowing.  Somehow being in the middle of a bunch of noise and smells and cafes being opened and vendors sweeping sidewalks I was almost expecting the baker to start singing that opening song from Beauty and the Beast.  Bonjour! Bonjour! Bonjour bonjour bonjour!

I had a little bit of time to kill before going to class, so since I was so close, I went up to the Sacre Coeur to start off my day.

Yeah my face is huge. Get over it.  And I look angry.  I’m not; that is just my concentrating face because I kept missing the stupid touch button on my phone to take the picture.

Sacre Coeur is great in the morning because look how empty these steps are!  As I was leaving it started to fill in.  I love sitting on the steps in the morning.  The crisp air.  A good book.  A good writing session.  Parfait.

Are these the famous Montmartre steps? Does anyone know? I feel like they can’t be, but I took a picture just in case.

Anyway, today was a great day.  Waking up in Paris? Yes, please.

It’s your season, Utah.

Well, you finally won, Utah.  Socks and sandals is actually kind of IN right now.

picture thanks to Sartorialist

and if Garance is wearing it, then by golly I just have to embrace it.  So I did. And I document it here:

Today was the first not freezing day in years it seems.  I couldn’t get enough.  Sunny and slightly breezy. Had some Berthillon ice cream – often said the best ice cream in Paris. …I have to say Amorino is better, but that’s just me. Sat on the river with a friend, ate ice cream, video taped, told stories.  Enjoyed the sun.  Took off our jackets.

If socks and sandals means warm weather and stories on the Seine, I’m totally okay with it.  Paris hasn’t been this lovable in months.

greatest Proust moment ever.

So while I’m in France, I have to take a French class to keep my au pair visa.  I go for 2 hours at a time, 3 days a week.  I could tell you lots of stories, mostly about what my French professor decides to tell us about racial issues in the country, but it’s better to tell you about today’s Proust moment.  Today we were going over vocabulary for  jobs / careers / in the workplace.  For a little discussion, the substitute asked us what our dream job was when we were little, and I thought about it.  A lot of past things came back to me, but I wanted to remember the FIRST dream job I ever had… and as my brain took the journey from one dreamt career to another, I was finally led to the first job I ever fantasized about.

Are you ready?

I wanted to be… a SHIRT DESIGNER.

No no, not a DESIGNER, which would actually be really cool if I had thought that when I was 5.  No.  See, there was this place in a nearby plaza when I was little where you could pick out a Hanes-like T-shirt, bring it to a worker, and they would do crazy puffy paint designs on it.  I think there was some sort of machine or apparatus involved in creating some of these designs.  Spinning the shirt while blowing out hot pink puffy paint or something.  Anyway, THIS is what I wanted to do.  I wanted to design these shirts.  The greatest job ever.

My siblings can correct me on this next part, because I often get these kinds of things wrong – but for ME, I feel like “A shirt designer” was my answer for the majority of my childhood to the all-common question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It may have only lasted a few weeks, you tell me, but in any case, it happened, and I am real happy about it now so that I could laugh out loud and be entertained for a few brief moments in French class.

I searched for ‘ puffy paint shirt / crazy shirt ‘ but no google images did my shirt-designer-dream-job justice.

Maybe I should just forget doing a masters and seek out this shirt designing idea.  I still really respect puffy paint.

AMERICA.

So I just finished my 2-week romp on American soil.  It was SO MUCH FUN.  Here are some things I realized:

1. Taking pictures while driving is a GREAT idea.  I went from Brandon (where my parents live) to Gainesville (where Jason/Heidi live) during a really bad storm.  I got some good before and after the storm shots.

See how it’s sunny where I am, and then scary and dark up ahead? Yeah I didn’t know what I was in for.

Then it got really scary.  And I HATE using the windshield wipers full speed. Hate it.  It makes me feel like I’m playing Mario Brothers and I’m running out of time and the music starts going really fast and I can’t concentrate anymore and end up jumping directly onto some spikes.  And so I felt like I was going to die in this storm because a. the wipers were subliminally telling me to veer off the side of the road, and b. I literally couldn’t see because there was so much rain.

But look what happened afterward! So pretty!

2.  Friends are FUN / My friends are awesome / I had forgotten what it’s like to have friends.  Seriously.  I feel like I did more in the six days that I spent in Utah than I ever did in 4 years of going to school there.

3.  Salt Lake is such a great city.  So I decided to move there when I’m done in France.  But, to do what there? Which is when I realized the following:

4.  I have no future.  Well, remember how I took the GRE?  And then I cried afterward because I did way worse than I expected?  Yeah, well, after that, I decided maybe I should not do a Masters… do I really want to go back to school?? No, I don’t.  But you try telling that to anyone who has a PhD and they’ll talk you out of it real quick.  So I sat in on a French grammar class by one of my professors, totally kicked-A, and nerdishly totally enjoyed it. And she took me back to the French office where my Professors all talked me into doing a masters.  You can finish it in one yeeeear!  We knoooow you! It’ll be fiiiine!  Give yourself the ooooption! Do it for meee!  And honestly, they’re right.  I should do it, because WHY NOT.  Or at least apply and see what happens.  So I did. I applied, and so we’ll see.

For now, back to Paris.