Bon apetit!

Dinner time.

No pictures of the salad, unfortunately. Things got a bit crazy at that moment getting the next course organized.

Check out my gift on the stove behind Erik's shoulder: the red le Creuset cocotte. Love it.



The wine. Oh, the wine. Sooooo gooood...


The cheese course was drastically reduced. Not sure what we were thinking when we picked it all out, but we've got enough cheese left now to last us a month.


And the piece de resistance. Neither of us was even remotely hungry at this point, but we managed to find room for a couple of slices of this lovely dessert. You must make this buche. It was fantastic. Chocolate, and coconut and pistachios, oh my!


So we've now finished It's a Wonderful Life, and agreed that George Bailey did in fact have a wonderful life. I'm still in my pyjamas and the chances of me getting dressed to go out for a walk at this point are quite slim, so we'll probably roll into bed and call it a night bientot. It's been a lovely day full of eating and drinking and eating, and then more eating, and we're both happy to be wearing elastic waist pants at the moment. Life in Paris is so chic sometimes.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Photos

Christmas Eve-Pizza and Trivial Pursuit


Santa came


Christmas morning. Erik gets the sparkling wine and orange juice ready.


Merry Christmas!


Erik gets a guitar. I think he likes it.


Christmas breakfast, and the end of Trivial Pursuit. I won! :)

So far we have also watched the Rudolph movie (you know, the one you watched on tv as a kid. Erik had never seen it!), read our Christmas reading essentials (Economist and Elle), had a nap, Erik has just finished making his soup, and the next movie up is It's a Wonderful Life.

More pictures to come. Hope you are all having a wonderful day.

Noel a deux

Random picture taken the other day at Place de Concorde. If you look carefully you can see Eiffey to the right of the obelisk.

This is the first time that we'll be celebrating Christmas just the two of us. Despite the fact that we would love nothing more than to be with our families this year, we've managed to make the most of it. I have to admit that it's taken me a while to get into the holiday spirit this year, and I am definitely a lucky girl to Erik around to get things organized. He chose the tree, and put up all the decorations on Saturday as a surprise for me when I got home for work.

Please excuse my feet in the second picture, I'm on the phone with you, Nancy. :) And Joan, don't worry, the vienertarta in the first picture has been in the fridge since we recieved it. It's just been banished temporarily...

We've managed to get ourselves organized, and took full advantage of most stores being open on Sunday by doing a massive grocery shop and some last minute gift shopping. And I have to say the stores were pretty quiet! Almost no line-ups at the Monoprix and same at the Bon Marche. Maybe it pays to wait till the last minute? Hopefully I'm not developing any bad habits...

Our plan for tonight and tomorrow is as follows, for all who are interested.

I've spent the afternoon doing some last minute preparations for tomorrow's meal, and as a result our fridge is full to overflowing (literally. There is a bag of cheese that has been banished to hang outside the window. Partly because it's stinky, but mostly because there isn't enough room). Tonight we're making pizza and drinking beer (maybe a new tradition?) and are planning on going for a walk later to check out some Christmas lights. Erik has mentioned a couple of times today that this will be his first Christmas Eve that he hasn't been to church, so maybe we'll stop in somewhere just so we don't break a winning streak. Although I think we're definitely ahead after standing through the marathon service in Latin we endured last year in Italy. I never thought I'd get bored of looking at such a beautiful church.


One of the few times I've wished we had a bigger fridge.

Anyway. Really, the big day for us is all about the food, especially since we both know what we're getting from the other person. So much for surprises. Luckily we like to eat, and have a couple of bottles of wine that we're looking forward to opening, that should make it a bit more special.

Here's the menu:

Petit dejeuner/Brunch
Sparkling wine and orange juice
Fruit salad
Boozy baked French toast

Gouter/Mid afternoon snack
French onion soup from the Williams Sonoma Paris cookbook

Diner
Roquette salad with warm mushrooms from Ina Garten's Barefoot in Paris
Roast Pork with green peppercorns, also from Ina's Paris cookbook
Roast vegetables
Green beans with shallots and pancetta
Cheese course: gruyere, brie de meaux, bleu de gex, rochefort, and chevre enrobes
Chocolate and coconut buche de noel

Of course you're all invited!

Hope this tides you over until we have some more interesting things to share. Steve and Yoshimi arrive on Saturday, and we've already got a list of things that we need to do with them. It will be great to see them.

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope that you have a wonderful day filled with food, family and friends.

Bonnes fetes!

Erik Blogs! Optics, Grammar, Rugby, and Subliminal Christmas

This is the part of my life I call "Blogging"

So it's quite clear to everyone out there that Torie carries most of the load when it comes to information distribution, whereas I am more of Rumsfeld-type character and consider you all on a "need-to-know" basis. However, due to a recent filing under the "Freedom of Information Act", I am suddenly motivated to come clean on my activities of the last few months, and make known-knowns out of all those known-unknowns.

Please also note that this blog was written on a Sunday morning and thus is probably the only entry to be coffee-and-pancake fueled, rather than champagne- and risotto-fueled. We'll see how the quality holds up.

Pinhole Glasses

So to start off with, after a recent email exchange with Howdie, I thought I might give my two cents on a pressing issue for everyone who wears glasses - why does looking through a pinhole make your vision better? If you don't know the trick, take off your glasses (or if you have naturally good eyesight, read voraciously and watch TV really close-up for 5 years to permanently damage the lenses in your eyes, then continue reading the blog), make a little hole by making a triangle between your first two fingers and your thumb, and look at a distant object. It also works by looking through a barely closed fist. It works so well, it is amazing that people wear glasses at all!

So why does it work? Well, despite many of the vague or just plain wrong explanations out there on the "Incorrect Information Superhighway", it's a fairly simple explanation. With reference to the figure below, in a normal eye, (such as Steve's until he was in university or Joan's until she was 40), light coming from a single point in space strikes the whole lens and is correctly refracted to all hit a single point on the back of the eye. Nice work Nature, nice design.



Now for a eye like mine since I was in grade two or Torie's since grade three, (man, our kids are going to be little Mr Magoos) the lens can't be stretched out enough, so the focal point is in front of the back of the eye, the light from that one point in space hits a wider area over the back of the eye, so a point looks like a smudgy circle, everything gets blurred, and little Erik suddenly has a lot more trouble negotiating the playground. Boo Nature! How did you not see reading coming? If God didn't want us to read so badly, he should have released the Bible on tape to begin with, and not waited for Charleton Heston to do it.

So notice that for the Mr Magoo eye, the light hitting the edges of the lens are more out of focus that those hitting closer to the centre; that is, they wind up further away from the point they are supposed to hit on the back of the eye. Thus, by making an aperture, you are cutting out these paths for the light, thus improving the image. What's the trade-off? Image brightness. For the good eye, all the light collected contributes to vision, and for the pinhole, you can sacrifice brightness for image sharpness.

So it has nothing to do with the brain, interference, quantum anything, or rods vs cones. The important sizes are the hole vs the size of your iris, so it works really well for Karina and I, since our irises are the size of dinner-plates, hence the red-eye/blinking issues we have when pictures are taken. Voila!

The Last Time I Learned Grammar

The next issue to address is the use of "last" when describing days past. An unnamed (but smart, funny, and beautiful) poster has claimed that "last Tuesday" refers not to the most recent Tuesday, but to the previous one. In rebuttal, I give the following examples:

- last Christmas, we got stuck in an airport in Italy
- last week, I didn't blog at all
- the last TV I owned was a Sony

So using "last Tuesday" to describe five days ago, and "the Tuesday before last" to describe twelve days ago would fit with these examples, whereas a generation of French children will now be further confusing Anglo-Saxons by saying "Ze time after ze last time I saw you, you were on ze strike". Ze horror!

Roman and Hannah and Jasmine and Erik Scrum Down in Lens

Going back to the theme of the word Lens, I have been waiting for just the right moment to write about the fall trip to see a Rugby World Cup game. That time has arrived.

My good friend Roman, his great girlfriend Hannah, and Hannah's awesome daughter Jasmine came to visit us this fall. Jazzy has the ability to strike a pose for pictures always at the exact moment that Roman and I look like the confused old men that we are becoming.


Erik : "So I think, somehow, with this cell-phone, I can phone Torie and she can tell us where we are"
Roman: "I have a map of Barcelona, does that help?"

As part of the fun, we took a trip to see a rugby match. Naturally, we wanted only the best, so we picked the perfect game: Georgia vs Namibia in Lens. Lens is a town about 1.5hours by TGV from Paris, a town of 37000 people, but with a stadium that holds 41000 people. The game was on a weekday so Torie couldn't go, but the other four of us decided to make a go of it. To start off the day right, we met in the Jardin de Luxembourg so that Roman and I could play in the play-park for a while. Oh, Jasmine played a bit too. Here are some pictures.



The rope structure that Jasmine has successfully scaled is about 6 metres high, with just the rubber mats on the ground underneath. France. So after Roman and I finished checking the structural integrity of the play-structures, we headed off to catch the train. At this point, it began to lightly drizzle (foreshadowing).

Arriving in Lens, we immediately found a nice warm restaurant to acclimatize ourselves to the train-lag. We found an awesome place that did mostly Alsatian style stuff, which can be summarized as "on a platter". Delicious food, and once they caught on that Jasmine (like all decent human beings) has no patience for lactose, were extremely accommodating.

Walking through the town, we stopped to look in a store window, and while Roman and Hannah discussed the complexities of French shoes, two local teenagers walked by. One of them overheard our English, turned to her friend, and did her best imitation of English for a non-English speaker,which is just saying "Blah-blah-blah" with a nasal accent so harsh it almost adds an R into the word. Hilarious! I have done my non-French French imitation so many times (purse your lips, frown, and say "jeu jeu jeu, monsieur"), it was nice to hear that there is one for English too, and amazingly accurate! Most English conversation I hear on the metro could be easily replaced with "Blarh Blarh Blarh" with no loss of information exchanged.

But I digress. By this time, it was really starting to rain. Hard. Luckily, every restaurant, bar, and coffee shop, antique store, and bank was into the rugby spirit, so it was hard to take three steps without finding a warm dry place to sit down. And as the entire town was filled with people there to see the rugby game, all my hard work printing off maps was for naught, as we could just slip in and out of the stream of people flowing towards the stadium as we pleased.



Those green tubes in Jazz's arms are noise makers - when you bang them together right, they make a sort of sci-fi laser beam sound. Very useful. We eventually made our way to stadium, got inside, and went to our great seats - extra great because they were under cover.



And because we were sitting down, it was time for food and drink. I popped down to get some hot chocolates, fries and beers, and was surprised by the lack of line-up at the beer stand. As I waited for le barman to pour the beer, I remarked that this particular brand of beer was called "Amstel Free". Free of what, calories? I asked. Oh no monsieur, zere is no the alcohol in ze beer. Apparently this is a soccer stadium, and while beer and rugby players/fans leads to singing, dancing, and hugging, soccer and beer together tends to lead to fisticuffs and bleeding guys with mullets . So I think this next picture was taken just before I told Roman and Hannah that their beers were beers in the same way that Namibia is a world-class rugby team - in name, but not really.



Apparently, they had noticed, but were being polite.

It is the nature of every rugby game to be entertaining, whether a close game or a blow-out, and this one was the latter while still fulfilling my opening generalization. It seems that the Namibian national team has not played a rain game in 20 years (sort of a dry country) so their handling was poor to say the least. Here's an action shot - the Namibians are the guys in white who look cold.



The Georgians were used to this sort of weather, and cruised to their first world cup victory ever! Much celebrating was to had - yagshemash!

After the game, we caught a train to a neighbouring town to then catch the TGV back home. We had about an hour in that town, and decided to try to do the impossible - eat a meal in France in under an hour. We ordered before taking off our coats and asked them to bring the bill with the meal. Unfortunately, a few other people had the same idea. We got our food about 15 minutes before the train got there, wolfed down everything we could, stuffed fries into napkins, and punched our bank-card codes into the debit machine as we walked out the door. Like a bunch of little Fonzies, and what is the Fonzie? Cool.

This picture of dinner another night they were here (with our friend Anja too) may have made the rounds already, but I think it's a nice shot. We had a great visit with them, I really enjoyed hanging out with them. Roman is renovating the house he just bought, and Hannah's restaurants are keeping her busy as usual, so I hope they can think back to those few relaxing moments in the rain and forget that they are covered in drywall/grill spatter. We love and miss you guys.




Waxing Philosophical

So finally, Christmas is coming up, and while we are really excited about Steve and Yoshimi coming to visit for New Years, we realize that this will be our first Christmas where it is just the two of us. We have had one or two early, mini Christmases while in Toronto, before heading up to Ottawa for the gigantic food-and-fun fest that goes on there every year, but this year will be different. I think our parents' generation experienced this a lot earlier in their lives, as travel was a lot more difficult and expensive (it would have been tough to go home to Edmonton from Toronto every year by horse and wagon, like Dad must have had to).

I am really excited. It will be different, strange, sad, and happy at the same time. I think all the Christmas traditions that we do every year, all the repeating tastes, smells, sights and sounds, are all ultra-effective, subliminal triggers to vividly reproduce great times with great people in great detail. Whenever I smell cardamom, I remember the first Christmas I spent with Torie's family in Ottawa, and I feel like I am back in St Albert when I catch the smell of woodsmoke slowly filling a house on Christmas morning as Erik didn't realize the flue was already open.

Which means that the new traditions we start now will be the triggers to remember this period of our lives in France, when things are no longer terrifying and impossible, but starting to feel comfortable and right. Just like coming in out of the cold and chowing down on cheese, bread and white wine while standing in the kitchen reminds me of our first year in Montmartre when the families came to visit. So the new traditions this year - like hanging andouillette on the tree as decoration, or the foie-gras cookie recipe that I am working on - better be stinky, shiny, and noisy, so that they stick forever.

These deep thoughts have made me reflect on how much our lives have changed while we have been in France, and how instead of these two years in France being a brief break from a normal life in Canada, life in France is now rapidly becoming the norm. Rather than life in Toronto being something we have to get back to as fast as we can, it is now more a really fond memory of an exciting, great time in our lives. One period of many as we move onward, upward, and always twirling, twirling towards the future.

And that, my friends, is how you blog.

Friday Night Dinner Conversation

Yes, it's your lucky day. It's Friday night, and because I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful husband who does the dishes, you're lucky enough to have not one, but two delightful blog entries tonight.

This one's a question.

Today is Friday. Last Tuesday refers to A) December 4 or B) November 27

If you chose B how would you refer to Tuesday Dec 4? If you chose A how would you refer to Tuesday Nov 27?

For the record, I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose this one, but I'm stubborn enough to still think that I'm right. :)

And another totally unrelated question (this one has to do with school). When saying the date: Tuesday December 5th, or Tuesday December the 5th? I don't think I would ever say the 'the' unless it was 'the 5th of December' but one of my kids insisted that her French English teacher makes them say the 'the'. Is it a British thing, or is it just wrong?

Please leave your answer(s) in the comments.

Saying Hello

You'd think that the longer you've lived in another country, the easier life would be.

Don't get me wrong, life is certainly easier in many ways but it seems like the easier some things become, the more you realize where you're going wrong.

We're both at the point where we are very comfortable living in French. My big complaint tonight is that my brain has been 'thinking' in English for the last couple of days, which tends to get me into the middle of French sentences where the only way out is in English. And having to translate everything that comes in and goes out means that you're always about ten steps behind the conversation that is already moving too fast for you.

But that's not the point.

One of the big things I've recently become aware of is the need to say 'bonjour' any time you enter any space that is occupied by people.

My initial (and Erik's too) reaction upon entering a space occupied by two or more people involved in a private conversation is to be as discreet at possible so as not to interrupt them. I've finally realized that the French consider this reaction much more rude than to walk in with a booming 'bonjour!' for everyone in the room.

Realizing this, however, does not make it an easy habit to break.

And the French are quite good at 'discreetly' pointing out that you've committed a huge faux pas.

On one of my field trips last week, I approached one of the museum staff (who was on a cigarette break with two other employees--maybe that was my mistake? :) ) like this--

Me: Excusez moi, mais ou sont les toilettes? (I have two four year olds doing the pee-pee dance next to me, so am clearly pressed for time and not interested in making small talk)

Her: Bonjour! (with obvious pause for me to insert my sorry-ass late greeting and acknowledge my poor upbringing*, tsk tsk)

She then directed me to the washrooms with a sneer and an eyeroll. It doesn't phase me too much with strangers, but with people that I see on a regular basis, I often wonder if I'm seriously offending people, or making myself seem unfriendly by not barging into a room with greetings, kisses** and conversation for all, which is very much not my personality.

So what to do? My goal for now is to work on the bonjours. Hopefully the kisses and conversation will come naturally after that....

*for the record, I don't want to imply that I've been poorly brought up. The reference here is mainly to mean 'non-French'

**by kisses I mean the 'bisous' (kiss on each cheek) that the French usually do when greeting one another.

Is It December Already?

If I didn't have to teach about Christmas, I probably wouldn't realize that it's only about three weeks away. Sure, the Monoprix has upped the toy content on the first floor, and the grocery section has been all but taken over by boxes of chocolates and displays of foie gras and magret de canard, but would I really realize it was December if I didn't have to buy a new metropass? Probably not. All I'm counting down for these days is my next vacation.

So, what have we been up to around here?

I was lucky enough to go on not one, but two field trips with the Nursery School last week. On Thursday we went to see the Cubism exhibit at the Picasso Museum with the four year olds. They were pretty cute, and had done a lot of work on Picasso, but they were also pretty excited about the picnic lunch we were going to have. After the second room they started asking when we were going to eat.

On Friday I accompanied the five year olds to the Musee du quai Branly where we did a safari visit to learn about animals from around the visit. The visit was really well organized, and the museum is really cool! I had never been before, and it's on my list of places to go back to. Field trips are fun and all, but man are they exhausting! Especially since the entire school seems to be sick with the same hacking cough, and to spend two whole days telling kids to cover their mouths after they've just coughed in your face gets old pretty fast. Good thing they're cute. :)

This weekend I was at another fitness training, this time for BodyAttack. Only two days this time, and I'm beginning to feel like an old pro. Our instructor was over an hour late on Saturday morning, his train was late coming in from London. Then he forgot to reset his watch only to realize late in the afternoon that it was an hour later than he thought. We managed to get through everything we needed to despite all this, and had a good time doing it. We even did the beep test. Remember that? I don't think I've done it since high school. I met lots of great people, including one who has the exact same birthday as me who I'm hoping to teach with on Sunday. Now I just need to work on getting some of my own classes to teach...

Getting back to the holidays, we finally have confirmation that our guests will be joining us. Steve and Yoshimi get in bright and early on the 29th. Alex is also going to be here over New Years, and we're looking forward to seeing her too.

So there you go. A glimpse into our 'super exciting' Parisian lives.

Now it's your turn. Drop us a line and let us know how you're doing. :)