Paris, politiques, pétanque, et lait pasteurisé.

Paris, politics, pétanque, and pasteurized milk.

This morning I woke up late, around 11:30, after getting to bed at 1am. I really needed the sleep — Sunday night I got 3 or 4 hours, Tuesday night I was up all night, and Wednesday night was my Thursday morning. So I probably am still a little in debt, but I feel pretty good.

Mes experiences Parisiennes today started with the local supermarket (three aisles), where Justin and I did his shopping. The French have two sorts of milk: pasteurisé, which is what we are familiar with, and sterilisé, which is not refrigerated, can keep a long time, and apparently tastes nasty. I probably won't try it.

After the supermarket I took the metro to meet Justin, his friend/neighbor Matthieu, and their friend Laurent at the Bois de Vincennes, a park to the southeast. It is not a forest by any means ("bois" means "woods"). It is a park, with wide paths, some trees, and a lake with an island in the middle. It is kind of like NY's Central Park (though not nearly as big) in that there are a few roads through the park. On the island (which has a bridge and a road to it) there is a restaurant I think. We sat on the bank of the island and had a picnic, a very Parisian picnic I think: baguette, fromage, vin, tomate, concombre. A little hard-boiled egg, a carrot too. Matthieu brought his guitar and djembe. So we sat, ate, drank, talked and played a little music. What did we talk about? Pretty girls, pretty boys (for Justin and Matthieu), slang, work, music, un peu de la politique — the presidential runoff election is in two weeks. There are posters everywhere encouraging people to vote (and lists of where they can/should vote). Why doesn't that happen in the States?

I wandered back to Place de la Nation by myself and took a stroll around it. I stopped to watch a sight that was almost ridiculously stereotypical — middle to old-aged men playing pétanque. There were four or five games going in the square. The other stereotype I've been witnessing is baguette-carrying. My dear Americans, it is actually true that people walk down the street with a baguette (or six) under their arms. I've been here two days, and I've seen it too many times to count. I myself carried a baguette today, stuffed into a guitar case.

New subject: Music is different here. Besides their shitty taste in pop music, the French even do music theory differently. First of all, in France (and in all the Romance countries) musicians use fixed do solfège, so instead of saying, par example, E major, they say Mi majeur. B flat minor would be Si bémol mineur. That will be confusing. Also, an eighth note is "une croche" (as opposed to an English quarter note being a "crotchet"), while an eighth rest is demi-soupir. A sixteenth note is "une double croche". And a thirty-second note? "Une triple croche". Get that? An eighth note is twice a double croche and four times a triple croche. A quarter note is "une noire" ("a black"), a half note is "une blanche" ("a white") and a whole note is "une ronde" ("a round"). In two weeks I have to coach singers with this system. It will be an interesting challenge.