London, Day 3: St. Paul's Cathedral and the Apocalyptic Storm of Doom

We knew there would be rain on Tuesday, but we thought that if we stuck to mostly indoor activities like St. Paul's and Tower Bridge, we'd be fine.

St. Paul's is the British doppelganger of Sacre Coeur and, as such, simply lovely. Huge white dome, millions of cramped stone stairs spiraling upwards, everything was very similar. Except I'm fairly sure St. Paul's is at least twice as big. All we know for certain is that it had twice as many stairs, and that you could visit two levels of the dome instead of one. Talk about a butt and thigh workout!

Here's a picture of me, playing teeny-weeny ant-sized human being next to Enormous Enormous Cathedral. Seriously, the thing was at least four or five times taller than what you can see of the columns here. No way are we getting that all in one shot.And we climbed practically the whole thing in a tight, steep, spiraling passageway that was described as bad for claustrophobics. In fact the informational sign advised claustrophobics and people with medical conditions not to attempt the climb, since it goes only one way and there isn't even room to turn around. For me and Dustin, there wasn't enough room to stand up straight. My goodness people used to be short!

Although I have an inkling that even for them, this passageway would have been cozy. Good thing I'm severely claustrophobic and only half-seriously convinced myself I could do it. Hey, I totally can. I just can't think or breathe too effectively while doing it, but I can do it.

Thankfully St. Paul's various views were worth the intermittent dizzy spells. Just above the cavernous main floor (and by "just above" I mean a couple hundred feet) is the Whispering Gallery, a huge circular walkway ringed with lights. Also thankfully ringed with a nice tall safety fence, since that's a looooooooong way down. Supposedly if you whisper something against one wall of the gallery, it can be heard at the opposite wall. I saw people testing this out but I don't imagine they got very good results, considering that the place was crammed full of visitors and background noise. Dustin was disappointed because he wanted so very badly to test the acoustic claims of the Whispering Gallery...but it's okay, he can just whisper in my ear instead :)

Like Sacre Coeur (and actually a lot of monuments in London it seems) St. Paul's has a strictly no-photography policy. Since I'm trying to work my way out of Sneaky Picture Taking Hell (read: aggressive cathedral workers everywhere) I wasn't able to get a shot. So, here's a stock photo to show you what the first gallery looks like. I guess I'm not quite ready to be the female version of James Bond after all if I can't even sneak a picture. I know you all thought that besides this one thing I was totally ready for the job...sorry to disappoint.


So we took a nice rest in the Whispering Gallery, played with Henry a little bit, and decided to venture up to the next level like the crazy kids we are.

The passageway got even smaller. I was huffing and puffing as we marched up the steps, but actually feeling pretty good; I think our lifestyle includes enough walking and cardio activity that I do relatively okay at things like this. Of course I had to be careful not to look at the walls or ceiling and did my best to pretend that I was in the middle of an open green field that just happened to be abominably steep. And that was how we all made it safe and sound to the Stone Gallery.

The lovely Stone Gallery is outdoors.

We'd had a little wind and a light sprinkling of rain on the way over to St. Paul's that morning, but nothing too bad. When we entered the Stone Gallery, a balcony that runs around the outside of the cathedral dome, we were immediately hit by a wall of cold air and water that took our breath away. After the first few gasps Henry decided it was pretty cool. He was smiling despite his teeth chattering. Mommy and Daddy weren't quite as enthused, but we buttoned up tighter and held on for dear life.

On a happier note, I really like this picture of Henry and his daddy:
After the Stone Gallery comes the Golden Gallery. But in between we have more stairs--and oh my goodness, I have never seen anything like this. I'm glad I made it through alive.

A couple hundred feet of super-tiny spiral staircase going right up the middle of a huge, empty dome. Empty except for industrial beams and chainlink fence here and there. And did I mention the staircase is made of wrought iron? So, it's see-through. You can see through the step below you. And in between every step is a nice huge gap. Also, the staircase goes up at what surely wasn't, but definitely felt like, a 90 degree angle. I clutched Henry for dear life and stopped every five seconds to swallow and NOT look around. To give you some idea of the freaky amount of empty space we were hanging over--according to Wikipedia, this inner dome measures 173 feet tall.

Vertigoooooooo...

Anywho, we make it to the Golden Gallery, basically a teenier and crampier version of the Stone Gallery except WAY higher up. Cool view. We took a couple shots and then hurried back down to avoid being blown off the roof of St. Paul's, because although we had an umbrella, neither one of us is Mary Poppins.

Here's Henry and I freezing it out on the Golden Gallery. You may notice by my hair that I'm wetter than a drowned rat:
Unfortunately, we were about to get wetter. As we left St. Paul's it started raining in earnest, so that by the time we made it over to Tower Bridge we were soaked to the skin and Henry was starting to make angry speeches at the sky. That's when you know you're in trouble.

You also know you're in trouble if you bend completely over to unfold your umbrella and the wind knocks you back into standing position. Then, it takes your solidly-built wooden-ribbed umbrella and reduces it to a nasty mangled mess. Blown inside out at least twice, bent parts everywhere, it was like watching a casualty of war take place. Oh well, at least I was luckier than the guy next to us, whose umbrella handle snapped clean in half while the upper part blew into the street and got run over by cars. Yikes! Rest in peace, umbrellas.

Dang, I really liked that umbrella too. Booooo.

After our third lap of the tower with no entrance door in sight, we decided to call it a day. Note to self: next time we're caught in a rainstorm in London, we should avoid the Thames River. Tower Bridge spans a nice chunk of the Thames and it probably didn't help much that we were right over all that water and wind.

So, that was how we ended up back at our hotel room by 3:3o in the afternoon. But you know something? We probably had little more than an hour of daylight left anyways, so I was fine with calling it quits.

The sushi helped. We found awesome sushi at a grocery store down the street, loaded up, and lazed around in our hotel room all evening. Bliss, bliss, bliss. London has got some good sushi going on.

Except for staircase design issues, they also don't do a bad job on their cathedrals either. Yay for St. Paul's!

London, Day 2: Tower of London and British Museum

Monday was a bit colder than Sunday, but we persevered. It's the wind chill factor, we told ourselves. Nothing but the wind chill factor.

Thankfully, London has a lot of fun things to look at, so we were able to distract ourselves from our increasingly-numb faces as we walked to the subway station and hopped on a tube train. What a fun system. The lines split off here, there, everywhere. You scan your card as you go in, but also as you come out. Sometimes a train comes in at one platform, sometimes it comes in at the opposite platform, who can say which it will be? Certainly not I, maybe not even the station employees. Also, it costs dramatically more than the Paris subway system, for which I am starting to feel a creeping nostalgia. But thankfully the Tube did its job and got us to London's oldest fortress without exposing us to too much of what we naively supposed to be nothing more than "wind chill factor." (Even if it did expose us to some horrific seat cover fabric choices. Uuuurgh.)

Ah, entrance lines. Really, once your fingers lost all feeling, it wasn't too bad. We spent far less time in line than we did at Versailles, with the added benefit of having the Tower right there to look at. The Tower of London is actually a sprawling complex of many towers and buildings and even townhouses, interspersed with lawns and gardens and surrounded by one huge castle wall and a former moat. In the Victorian age they drained the moat (it was getting mucky and pestilential), filled it half full of dirt, and planted a lawn there.

This year, they've got an ice skating rink in one part of the moat. I don't know if that's normal or what, but it was kind of funny watching ice skaters cruise around underneath the imposing fortress where so many people died.

Okay, okay, enough morbidity. The grass was really green, ooh yay! (Better?) I wonder if it was well-fertilized by human flesh. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Here's a picture of Dustin in front of the Tower. He loved seeing a medieval castle.

They had steel sculptures of archers on top.

Here's the tower where famous prisoners like Princess Elizabeth Tudor and Thomas More were locked up. Also known as the Bloody Tower because of the murder of the two young princes.



I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the Tower's small chapel, but it's probably just as well, because that was one of the most chilling parts for me. We walked into the small room decorated with tapestries and crosses and sat down in one of the pews--and right away I noticed this faint odor. I don't really know how to describe it...a little bit of old musty smell, and something like meat. I guess if I had to describe it I'd say it was similar to the way a deli sometimes smells. Hardly even noticeable.

Next thing you know the Yeoman Warder leading our tour stands up and possibly explains everything. The Tower registry lists around 3000 prisoners admitted during its use as a federal prison. Of those, only 360-some odd were officially executed. Their headless bodies were all buried in the chapel floor, one on top of the other and next to each other like sardines. Well, time passed and the chapel sort of went to ruin; hundreds of years later, Queen Victoria decided to renovate the whole thing and restore it as a national heritage site, so she sent workers in to clean things up. When they got inside the first thing they noticed was that the floor was literally rolling and heaving with mounds. Any guesses what those were?

So, they dug everybody up and tried to identify them. One example: they knew from historical records that Anne Boleyn was buried in an arrowbox with her head under her arm, and that she always wore green. They found a skeleton that matched the description and moved on. They dug up Thomas More, Margaret Pole, Queen Catharine, Lady Jane Grey, all kinds of people. Despite official records placing the death toll at 360, they dug up more than 1500 bodies. More than half the total prisoners!

Well that's what happens when you go about torturing people and whacking their heads off for the slightest offense. Totalitarian pigs!

In any case, there's really no amount of airing out that will help such a small chapel now, but the Victorians did what they could about the other problems. They equipped all the bodies with coffins and re-buried them in the floor and also the walls, to make a little space for each one. They also put in memorial plaques for Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Margaret Pole and some others. All I know is that even though it wasn't a terribly scary-looking place, there was just something weird about it that creeped me out. I couldn't wait to leave.

Here's a picture of the chapel:


Here's a quick shot of Tower Green, where prisoners of high rank were beheaded in private. The Yeoman Warder, or queen's guard, pointed out that they'd put the Christmas tree right where the scaffold would have been. Happy Holidays, right?
On a brighter note, here's Baby Henry having a romping good time at the Castle of Grisly Death, as I've decided to call it. Sorry if he looks a little evil, it's probably the atmosphere.
We were running a little short on time--and quite frankly I have no desire to see torture instruments or prisoners' last words carved into walls--so we skipped the Bloody Tower and its heinously long entrance line. Instead, we went to see the Crown Jewels.

The Crown Jewels are so ostentatious it's unbelievable; more gold and jewels than you can shake a stick at. But of course don't even think about shaking a stick or anything else at them, otherwise you'll probably be arrested by the guards. The jewels are kept inside a huge vault in the basement of one of the towers. They were pretty cool, but also kind of overwhelming in their complete richness and uselessness, you know? I wasn't allowed to take pictures so I can't really explain...let's just put it this way, the Queen of England owns the largest diamond in the world, it's bigger than a chicken's egg, and it's stuck in some golden scepter in a dark vault in the Tower. Yes, that was amazing to look at. But come on, Your Majesty, don't you want to put that sucker in a ring setting and see what happens to your finger? I mean seriously.

And the crowns. Oh, don't even get me started on the crowns. They were lovely, of course, but there were sooooooo many. It seems like the royals had a new crown made at any excuse: one for the conquest of India, a little baby one for Queen Victoria, one to showcase a huge irregular ruby, y'know, any old thing will do. One or two just aren't enough. We must have crowns out the wazoo. All this despite the fact that according to King George V, they're an absolute nightmare to have on your head! Turns out a million pounds of gold and diamonds gives you a nasty headache after three or four hours.

Sinister as it was, I'm glad I came to the Tower. It was fascinating and eerie and good fun. We went through one last display, which housed the massive collection of Henry VIII's armor (he was a regular medieval jock and almost every weapon he owned also doubled as a gun.) Finally, an exhibit that Henry and Dustin can really sink their teeth into! Henry thought the shiny weapons and armor were great. He woke up from a deep sleep, found himself face-to-face with King Henry's helmet, and this huge smile spread across his face. He was still delivering his "pleased to be here, love your armor" speech an hour later, when we left the building.

I will admit one thing--the armor collection was good for a little comic relief. I share Rabelais' opinion of codpieces. (He felt noblemen tended to have air between their ears and air in their codpieces.) However, words fail me when it comes to Henry VIII's personal take on the traditional codpiece. For a suit of armor? Um, really? Doesn't it get in the way?! Now that I think of it, the whole dang suit sort of gets in the way.

For those of you wondering, I guess I'll go ahead and say it...a codpiece is akin to the medieval version of a jock strap. And just to show you what I'm talking about, here's Dustin and Henry standing proudly next to a suit of armor whose codpiece, by comparison, is on the smaller side.



Henry VIII cracks me up in that horrible are-you-for-real/who-do-you-think-you-are kind of a way. Everything he owned had to be the biggest and best and he had to have ten copies of the same thing, because this guy was the KING. And as if to try and make himself look slimmer or at least proportionate, the bigger he got the more his codpiece grew. By the time his last suit of armor was made he was a legitimate tub o' lard, but at least he could pretend like he was still the potent womanizing rock star of his youth. Or whatever he took himself for. Hey, at least he wasn't writing "Sun King was here" everywhere like Louis, right?

I'm kidding, Louis was an absolute teddy bear next to Henry. This holds true for our Henry as well, since it turns out he can get quite vicious when it comes to fish and chips. We got lunch right after the Tower and Henry had zero complaints about English food.

Note the savage bite marks. Henry is getting more fearsome and Nordic by the minute and has now graduated to a whole new level of bossy; he feels perfectly entitled to grab huge chunks of other peoples' food and shove it into his tiny baby mouth. If we try to stop him, he sassily pushes our hands away and gives us The Look. It's adorable, but troubling.

At this point we had 90 minutes left to go before Britain became the dark side of the moon in terms of light and warmth, so we decided to hit up the British Museum on our way home. The British Museum is happily situated right down the street from our hotel, so we'll be making periodic stops there to fill in any little gaps in our schedule, and do the Museum piece by piece. This particular evening we started with the Egyptian Room, since that exhibit was closed in the Louvre and I love me some Egyptian.

Nothing like a little Ramses, or should I say BIG:

This reminds me of The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Dustin checking out the Shabaka stone. Hugh Nibley what what

Best buds
One word: headache.
Well, that's about it for Monday and I know I still have Tuesday and Wednesday to blather on about, but actually we're going to Stonehenge tomorrow after minimal sleep so I better get snoring. Ciao!

London, Day 1: Shakespeare and Camden Town

Here we are in London! We love it, some of us more than others, some of us maybe a bit excessively, to the point of taking pictures of every random phone booth that comes along. But that's beside the point. The point is that London is awesome...when it's not raining cats and dogs with a windspeed of a billion miles per hour. Also it gets dark at 4:30 pm in the winter.

Sunday morning was the clearest and warmest day we've had so far, meaning that everything went according to plan. We showed up at the Globe Theatre for the 11 am showing of "Footsbarn's Christmas Cracker," which turned out to be a series of short skits combining traditional English pantomime, famous Shakespeare characters, and evocative musings on the fleeting nature of life. Oh, and potty humor. Let's not forget the potty humor.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures during the actual performance, but here's a picture of the stage before the play started.
In keeping with Elizabethan tradition, they have a pre-show with musicians playing at the back of the stage and something fun to look at, in this case a model of the world. The show started when a crazy-looking French-speaking jester exploded out of the globe and cartwheeled all over the stage. Not sure if Henry appreciated the jester or is just highly suggestible, but he clapped along with everybody else.

I really liked everything but my favorite part was the costume design, hands down. It looked a lot like Cirque du Soleil with the long, pointy fake noses and the extremely high eyebrows and puckered lips. The Footsbarn actors had a lot of cool stuff going on with their costumes. Probably my favorite was the guy who played both Romeo and Juliet. One side of his costume was a dress, the other side was a man's outfit; he had half a blonde wig on and he was flirting with himself. It was HILARIOUS. And of course the big burly man dressed as Lady Macbeth...when in doubt, drag it out (you'll be fine, the pun-pain subsides eventually.)

It definitely didn't follow traditional Shakespeare plots, but they referenced him continually and I have to admit I found the originality refreshing. Sometimes I get a little sick of Hamlet's monologue, no matter how well it's played. Imagine my delight when Hamlet turned out to be an emo kid! Greasy dark hair in his face and everything. There was also a skit with one of the mimes interviewing a three-headed Shakespeare. And throughout the whole performance they had a tightrope stretched across the stage, and two actresses dressed like angels kept dancing back and forth on it. Sometimes while playing the violin. They were obviously highly trained, but it definitely made me nervous to watch. NOT good with heights. (More on this later, when we come to St. Paul's.)

We got hot chocolate during intermission and Henry sent another croissant to meet its baker (this is what happens when you watch a slapstick play, okay.) By the end of the performance he was fast asleep. It's his seal of approval. He snored right through the end when they shot confetti out of a cannon and everybody jumped up and down, cheering and stomping their feet. Now WHY won't he sleep through the night?!

After the Globe, we moseyed on down to Camden Town. Along the way, I forced Dustin to stop every five seconds and take pictures. Here are a few. My favorite is the one where Dustin intimidates the heck out of Statue Man.


I don't know much about London so I did some research and Camden Town Flea Market came up as a must-see. It was perfect! They have everything you could possibly imagine from antiques to vintage and designer clothing to food. And even WITH the currency exchange rate (which is abominable right now) it was dirt cheap. We wandered around for hours picking up awesome souvenirs for some of you lovely people. Actually, I guess awesomeness is subject to your opinion, but some of y'all are dang hard to shop for. So when we give it to you, please give us your best fake smile in return :)

Like I mentioned before, it gets dark at 4:30 here...which is probably going to be one of the most annoying if not THE annoying thing about our visit to London this time around. We'll see, it might end up being the constant rain and wind too, we're less than halfway done at this point. So, when Sunday afternoon abruptly turned into pitch-black freezing darkness, we picked up some homemade Chinese food from a market stall and rushed home to watch British TV during dinner. Okay, so maybe everyone knows this except me, but British TV is hilarious. About ten times more intelligent than American TV, give or take a time.

Well I have two more days to catch up on, but Henry is testing the acoustics in our bathroom and somebody should really put a stop to that. So ta-ta for now!

N-O-E-L

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!

We had an awesome time this year, if you don't count the stomach aches that resulted from a bunch of friendly French people encouraging us to eat all these foods at once: snails, crab claws, langoustine, roasted chapon (castrated rooster), non-alcoholic champagne, smoked salmon, cheese, truffle foie gras, extremely dark chocolate and millions of fantastic pastries. Phew!

(Only three of the food pictures are actually mine, but it shouldn't be hard to guess which. Hint: the worst three.)

Sophie and Lionel are great fun. I really hit it off with Sophie's family, especially her mother Marie-Claude and her brother Kevin (the three of us spent a good hour discussing food and politics in steadily escalating French while the others sort of sat around and wondered when we'd snap out of it.)

We gave the Claus family one of my paintings (out of poverty, not misplaced vanity) and a box of white chocolate Ferrero Rocher. The Claus family gave us a lot more in return, of course, as they always do :)

Sophie got me a massage gift card to what may be the one and only spa in our village. Lionel surprised Dustin with an invitation to go four-wheeling in the Vosges this coming spring. And Henry got hugs, kisses, a stuffed moose with a large biteable nose, and a huge set of magnetic animal blocks which he immediately played with quietly for hours. And by "played with" I mean "tapped lightly with a spoon and observed the magnetic capabilities of." Seriously, our kid is one-of-a-kind nerdatious.

In our little family gift exchange the next morning, I gave Henry a new button-up shirt (yawn) and presented my lovely husband with a pair of embroidered socks that say "Elles sont toutes a mes pieds." In English: All the women are at my feet. Proving that he does, in fact, have the ability to make any woman fall at his feet, Dustin got me--you guessed it--MORE chocolate, and even better, chocolate for the soul. That's right. An ooshy gooshy love letter. He's so romantic these days, I can only suppose it's the French air going to his head. Anyways, the socks say it all.

But getting back to Christmas eve at the Claus house (in French, those two words rhyme.) We spent most of the evening eating and talking and playing MarioKart on the Wii and getting sillier and sillier until suddenly we realized it was already 11:30 p.m., at which point we rushed out the door for midnight mass in Commercy like chickens with our heads cut off. In fact, only half of us ended up going: me, Henry, Dustin, Sophie, and Marie-Claude.

By the time we showed up in Commercy the priest was already two minutes into his sermon. Mass was great, I loved every minute of it! You could definitely tell we were in a small town; they had nobody skilled enough to play the organ and instead opted for Passionate Guitar Playing Man, who blissed out with his face turned to the heavens while rocking his acoustic hymns. The congregation sang along with, for the most part, straight faces.

Other moments that struck me included the incense-burning, the blessing of the wafer, and the sung mass. There's something eerily beautiful about a musical church service; it had a lot in common with the solemn feel of Jewish melodies. Luckily our priest had a nice voice, too. That always helps.

When the service was over Sophie walked us back to her car, which she'd parked next to King Stanislas' summer palace. I tried to take a quick nighttime picture but it turned out unbearably creepy-looking.

Something of interest we learned in the car on the way home: apparently Joan of Arc's house is located less than 20 km from Mauvages, where the Clauses live. She rode her first campaign out of the neighboring town of Vaucouleurs. So when the weather gets warmer, Lionel and Sophie have promised to take us on a field trip to Joan of Arc's medieval hut or whatever it is, and also into a nearby field to see some lesser known Roman ruins. Excited beyond words!

So excited, in fact, that my whole body was humming with joy and chocolate-derived caffeine by the time we got home, which prompted me to stay up watching movies with Lionel until 4 in the morning. I was also knitting like a fiend the entire time, my hands moving so quickly that I now have sore fingers more than two days later. I can tell you one thing--that's the last time I eat so much chocolate right before bed.

Speaking of too much chocolate, here's another mistake: Henry loves French chocolate. So we thought we might indulge him a little bit on Christmas morning and let him have, let's say, several pieces in a row. Merry Christmas, Henry! That's right, smear it all over your face while laughing like a tiny maniac. Oh, and while you're at it, toddle up to a mirror and have yourself a nice long conversation with your chocolate-bearded twin. You're an adorable baby, Henry. UNTIL 10 o'clock at night, when you're STILL doing those things at jittery, sugar-crazed speeds and won't go to bed.

We managed to catch our train the next morning despite minimal sleep, but we must have looked like walking corpses to the sleek, well-groomed Europeans around us. Good thing Henry was still buzzing with energy and stayed awake to entertain them as we hopped from train to train and made our way across the English Channel. Because really, that's all I care about after a (lifestyle-comparatively) wild night of partying--whether you approve of my unwashed hair or not.

Anyways, thanks to the people that made our Christmas so great, and thanks to God for his Son and for finally making it to London and the sweet, sweet shower in our hotel suite. Ahhhhhhhhh Christmas. THERE you are.

Walker, Texas Ranger

I almost forgot to post about Henry's first steps. It happened yesterday morning...he took three steps all by himself with his fat little baby feet and then got so excited about it that he nearly hyperventilated. The gasps, the giggles, the whole nine yards. Me and Dustin were basically doing the same thing though.

Anyways, this afternoon I was just thinking about how much I love this little fella. He's a very easy baby and lots of fun...and he keeps popping out with more of these dainty poses. Lately they happen during bathtime.


Keep up the good work, Henry. Mommy and Daddy love you so much.

Dear French Government, I'm Gonna Deck Your Halls Until You Can't See Straight

But before we begin, a couple more pictures of Nancy. Christmas lights and ripped-out heart sculptures. Awww.


Anyways, so myself and the French Government (hereafter referred to as FG) are developing this interesting relationship lately. I mean don't get me wrong, FG, I totally dig the awesome food and cultural bonanza we've got going on here. I'm just not so crazy about the part where nobody is in their office from 11am to 2 or 3 pm and y'all look suspiciously like slackers more often than not. Oh--and also that time when you forced us to go all the way out to Nancy to get a routine physical, but mostly we just sat around in waiting rooms eating vending machine food to stay alive. Allllllll day long.

Yep, that would be last Wednesday.

The trip really got off to a great start when I glanced over our official letter and bounced away to buy tickets for Metz. Turns out, our appointment is on METZ STREET in NANCY VILLE. See how I made those letters big so you could see what I was talking about? Not our lovely FG. They chose to put the "Nancy" part reeeeallly small at the bottom of the address, probably because somebody in that big office is bored, bored, bored and wants to mess around.

So, we bought the wrong tickets, exchanged them at the last minute, and essentially worked ourselves into quite a hilarious huff even before the actual departure. Well, I suppose it went pretty well at first. We got up on the stroke of six am, got ready in record time, and got on the train early. We'd even packed our bags the night before so that we would have Henry's supplies ready, as well as the millions of documents and ID pictures required to survive in the Hexagon.

Well, millions of documents minus one. That one, unfortunately, was a passport. I won't say whose, but he was pretty surprised to realize that it was still on the desk back home. I was pretty surprised to find that at 7 am on a train headed full speed for Nancy with only 50% of the required passports, I didn't much care for some reason. I supposed that FG might have some weak spots and if those weak spots involved wine, so be it, but we were going to get Dustin through this freaking process, passport or no. Also, I work on Thursdays.

FG works too, but it is unclear when. Our first appointment= 9:30 am at the hospital. The hospital entrance= not easy to find. Not clearly marked. The front of the hospital looks like the back. Construction everywhere. Barely an employee in sight. Because the hospital may or may not be open at 9 am? Really? Well, the place was dead. No offense to all the old people inside, but it really was.

We finally locate the main entrance, which from my American point of view appears to be a service door wedged behind some plastic sheeting and boxes. I don't ask for much, but informational signs at a hospital would be helpful. Luckily for us they weren't essential, since we were 15 minutes early to our appointment. To my joy, we discover a whole group of American assistants in the waiting room!

Teaching assistants love each other; we're a rare group of snarky, naive, cynical, romantic Francophiles with just enough brains in our heads to pretend like we're intellectuals and not enough brains to avoid the Meuse region of France. In fact, that turned out to be our main topic of conversation in the waiting room: "So what do you love about France?" "Oh, you know, everything but Meuse." "Oh yeah me too. Man, we are totally in the armpit of the country here aren't we. Now what's your opinion of Proust?" "I find him blase, but I am so in love with your earrings, omg, where did you find those?" "In Paris!..." and so on and so forth. It's the perfect clone storm.

After painstakingly convincing the front-desk receptionist that she really really wanted to accept Dustin's passport card instead of an actual passport (laziness wins out over anal-ness much of the time) everything seemed set to go. I couldn't help but laugh when I read the fine print at the bottom of the passport card that says "This card does not replace an official passport." I never thought I'd find myself actually trying to use that silly little card as proof of citizenship in a foreign country. Oh well. You get desperate, and then you get over being desperate, and then you become completely relaxed. Also slightly insane.

We got chest x-rays, a surprisingly quick and painless process. There are some things FG totally flubs up on but then again, I must admit--there are some things FG does like a pimp. Line the assistants up one by one, in, out, don't even take off your shirt, just give the x-ray machine a nice big hug. (It's supposed to sound happy and stress-free, not like an assembly line with questionable morals.)

More discussion in the lobby, where we come to find out that Meuse really is one-of-a-kind for better or for worse. It's like a "your mom" joke, in a way. Except that here, "your mom is sooooo fat" becomes "the towns in Meuse are sooooo small." One assistant piped up with "My town is so small that when I moved in, I made the front page of the newspaper AND they put me in their local marching band." He was also interviewed by the only radio station in the area because it's highly possible none of them have ever seen an American before, and they're all going stark raving mad from excitement. I have to admit, none of us could one-up that. He's in the Vosges. Even for the Vosges, his town sounds dinky.

Then off to Appointment Number Two.

Well, not right away though. Since Appt. #2 is, oh let's say, FOUR HOURS later. So while the others scrounge around for food and mostly end up shuffling off to the hospital cafeteria, Dustin and I give each other a grim look and set out for the next location. We've learned that if you're dragging a baby around you can never tell how much transportation time you'll need, so it's best to show up extremely early and then brace yourself for a possibly interminal storytelling session with Henry while eating clementines found at the bottom of my purse. To keep this glorious tradition alive, I'm always sure to throw a couple clementines and books in there every day, along with a bottle of Ibuprofen. What. It makes anything fun.

Not sure exactly why, but this doctor's office had the same back-is-front problem as the hospital and its main entrance turned out to be the door you'd least expect. We moseyed on in and got situated nice and close to the vending machine, since at this point vending machine= only lunch opportunity for miles around. I tell you what cracks me up: a vending machine in a doctor's office that does not offer a single chocolate-free item. There may have been one, IF the Madeleines weren't chocolate-filled, which I very much doubt. France considers chocolate a separate food group. A healthy one.

Not that I'm complaining or anything, because if I had to choose death by vending machine food I'd definitely go to France to die. No stale Twinkies in this joint. Fabulous European chocolate Twinkies with no fake aftertaste whatsoever, can't remember their brand name for the life of me, but toss in a couple bottom-of-the-purse clementines and some water and you've got yourself a reasonably well-balanced snack. I hesitate to use the word "meal."

I should mention a semi-hilarious episode involving Henry (as they usually do.) The waiting room was large and included a children's playground. We took Henry over to check out the place and noticed that he needed a change. Dustin ran off to the bathrooms and reported there was no changing table there; this never comes as much of a surprise, since French bathrooms often aren't equipped for babies. Well, we're in public, but too bad so sad, Henry needs a change! And I'm not about to go do it on the nasty bathroom floor. The nasty carpeted floor inside the playhouse seems like a slightly better option. Seeing no other choice but to plow ahead and get it over with, we plonk Henry down and start changing him like maniacs.

No less than three secretaries and a nice old man converged on us immediately. If there's one thing I've noticed about the French, it's that they believe in public parenting. Which means that the public, whoever they may be, are perfectly entitled to tell you how to do your parenting. Sometimes it's cute that they care. Most of the time it's also weird and invasive.

"Don't you want to do that properly?" frowns the adorable old man, tilting his head and squinting at us analytically.

"Excuse me?" I ask, stunned at the sudden crowd of spectators.

He bites his lip. "I just think you should have some hot running water. That's the proper way to change a baby."

"He's right," says one of the secretaries. "Warm water is always best. Oh, and tilt his head to the left."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather do that over here on a soft chair?" asks another.

I'm not quite sure why they're saying all this, since by now Dustin is mostly done. But they continue to hover anxiously, pointing out minute details and fretting about our lack of hot running water.

"We don't need water... we have wipes," I point out, holding up the Huggies case. What the heck is going on here?

Despite having just gawked at us for five minutes as we used wipes on Henry, all four of them seemed taken aback. "Oh, you have wipes!" exclaimed a secretary. "Oh, okay." And with that, they all left. The old man followed. But not before patting Henry on the head, squinting at us, and then shrugging as if to say Well, I tried!

I still have no clue what happened there.

By now the other assistants had figured out which door to go through and started trickling in one by one. This led to another interesting talk session in the waiting room where we discussed everything from graduate school to Goonies as stern French nurses took us in and out to be weighed and measured. Daniel, our local Vosges celebrity, seems to delight in theoretical situations. Following his lead, we pooled our brains to determine what would happen if the Quebecois ran out of poutine and came for ours. And just to give you a taste of how unique these people are, Henry's feeding time sparked an intense debate over whether primitive humans used tools to feed their children or simply chewed and spat into their mouths, like birds.

"Wouldn't it be unhygienic to crush your child's food with a piece of obsidian?" postulates one girl.

"Well yes," admits Daniel, "that's why I suppose they may have opted for the chewing technique."

"But of course they didn't know about germs, did they?" says another. "So why not use a rock? Prehistoric man used tools for lots of other things."

"We've found arrowheads, but we've never found silverware, unless you count knives. My theory is that they must have chewed and then passed the food from mouth to mouth so that the baby wouldn't choke."

Unbelievable. "I've seen lots of moms chew on something a little bit and then use their hand or finger to put it in the baby's mouth," I suggested, offering Henry another spoonful of mush. "I think it probably just depends on what type of food it is."

"Ohhhh, of course!" everybody murmured. As if we had just independently arrived at some really important discovery. We are such nerds.

The last step was a private meeting with a nurse who looked at our hospital chest x-rays. I got called back first. She turned my x-ray every which way, not inspiring much confidence in her ability to read x-rays, and squinted musingly at the various blotches and shadows in my lungs. "Mmmmm...you're good," she decided after thirty seconds. Then, she discovered I was raised in Washington and chatted happily about Twilight for a good five minutes, despite my complete lack of ability to converse on the subject.

Dustin's interview didn't go so smoothly. "I can speak English to him, no worries," the nurse assured, but it didn't take long before she asked me to come back and help.

"Tell him that, uh, he has something on his x-ray and according to federal law we need him to come back for an intensive checkup to figure out what it is," the nurse announced, poking a finger at Dustin's x-ray. "Little spot. Right here. And he has to come back tomorrow, because it's our only free appointment until after Christmas and if he waits that long he'll get deported. Can you translate all that?"

I sure could, but I sure didn't want to.

*Several head explosions later*

We had another appointment at the Office of Immigration, but that all went fairly quick. Dustin couldn't get anything done there because without a clean bill of health from the doctor, he's apparently considered unfit to live in France. So I had to cancel two classes the next day and stay home to take care of Henry while Dustin went to Nancy alone, armed with nothing but English and an attitude.

Needless to say, that was an adventure in itself which involved running around like crazy trying to get an ID photo and missing a train and discovering that the spot was an old tuberculosis scar and there's absolutely nothing wrong with him...but...it's a whole other story. Bottom line is, boo for red tape.

Boo on you, FG!!! A million times boo!

FURTHERMORE, if this chocolate I'm eating right now wasn't so divine, I might actually go out and do something about it.

The Nancy Cathedral

Yep. We went to Nancy. They have many cathedrals but this is the one we took a picture of, and I have no real idea what it's called. I'm surprised Dustin even had time to take a picture of it. We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off at this point in time...and...maybe when I'm less exhausted, I'll tell you the long, grueling story behind our Nancy trip. Let's just say this--we were taking care of government requirements. And I really hate government requirements, especially French ones, but on the other hand, they've got some pretty cool cathedrals, so...it balances itself out I suppose.

Our Christmas Tree

The city paid for it and set it up outside our street like they apparently do every year, but I think we'll just go ahead and say it's our Christmas tree anyway.

:) :) :)

Damage Control

Sometimes when I teach a class I get caught up in the moment and sort of forget what's going on around me. This holds true for many other things as well. Especially that "forgetting what's going on around me" part.

This mindset can last for...oh, let's say...days. Then, if I have to teach a class, I might get super excited about America's history and all the cool facts I learned on wikipedia and completely space out about the kids' perspective on life. For example, although I had previously learned that the French school system is VERY secular, I momentarily passed over this crucial fact in my lesson planning.

Enter Thanksgiving. Have my students ever heard of such a holiday? No, it's completely new and bizarre to them. Have they ever heard of pilgrims? Not of any kind, not even Catholic ones. Have they ever heard of Indians? Most of the class, thanks to Westerns. But there are some things I (incorrectly) assumed they would have learned by first or second grade.

"The pilgrims left England in the 1600's," I say slowly, holding up a big picture of a man in a funny hat. "They sailed to America to start their lives over."

All the little hands shot up. "Why?! Why did they leave England?"

Well, that's rather simple..."They left England because of their religion. Their religion was different than everybody else's at that time."

Ten seconds of blank silence and frowns as the children struggle with this concept. Naively, I supposed they were attempting to understand the complicated political and religious firestorm that would have driven so many families to make such a long, perilous journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Or something along those lines.

One of the cutest little girls you've ever seen raises her hand. Ah, here we go, I tell myself, mentally prepping for the curveball Cute Girl is about to throw me.

"What's religion?"

Now it was my turn to stare. "You...uh...you don't know what religion is?" You're what, 8 years old?

I should mention that the minute the word "religion" popped out of my mouth, the teacher at the back of the room perked up rather quickly. She swooped in, nervous as heck.

"Children," she gushed in soothing tones as if she were talking about death or nightmares, "I know that many of you don't know what religion is. Do you have parents or grandparents who pray?"

A few hands went up.

"Well, children, religion is about how people pray. It's when one person prays one way, and another person prays another way. And everybody prays to a different god. And then they do bad things to each other because they don't pray to the same god. And that's what religion is. So sometimes, like with the Pilgrims, people leave their country forever so they can pray to their own god." She smiled nervously at the kids and gestured at me to continue.

I must have had an interesting expression on my face. "Uh...okay, well, anyways...all of England was Catholic, and uh..."

Immediately a little boy piped up with, "What's a Catholic?"

I really didn't know what to say. I felt like asking him if he'd seen the six Catholic cathedrals in our tiny village. Maybe he was just so used to them he had no idea what they meant.

"Ummmmm...A Catholic is one type of..." what did that teacher say again? "...person who prays to a god. English people and French people all used to be Catholics." Although apparently not too much anymore, eh?

He still seemed confused, but by now I'd realized that these kids were probably going to be more confused than otherwise before I was done. Teacher Lady was popping up and down out of her seat in the back with every sentence I spoke, ready to pounce for more damage control if I started talking crazy again.

Luckily for her I took a short break from dangerous subjects. In fact, we held on good and solid there for about the next five minutes or so. We had a pleasant conversation about Indians (the French love Native Americans.) There was also a lengthy discussion about corn and the novel concept that no, France had not invented popcorn, that would be Native Americans once again. Then we get around to good old Squanto. They thought his name was hilarious. They shouted it maybe a dozen times in a row and proceeded to jump around making what they imagined to be Indian noises. It was like a bunch of teeny Squanto groupies going nuts all over the place. And just imagine their excitement when they discovered there was a lot more to him than his name!

"Squanto spoke English," I explained, "so he was able to communicate with the Pilgrims."

Cute Girl wants to start more trouble. "How come he didn't speak French?"

Seriously? Okay. "Um. Indians had their own language, you know."

All the little kids went Ooooooohhhh as if I had just announced that Native Americans had wings and tails.

Cute Girl won't leave it alone. "So how come he spoke English then?"

I'm quite pleased at this question since I happen to have recently looked up the answer. "Well," I begin with a smile on my face, "he actually learned English while he was a slave in England."

Speaking of popcorn, Teacher Lady erupted from her chair in a similar manner and fell all over herself trying to calm everybody down while the children murmured in confusion "What's a slave? What's a slave?" "It's nothing!" she kept saying, "It's nothing! It just means that Squanto visited England, that's all it means!" Much as I wanted to laugh, I felt kind of bad for her. I think the teachers here are going to be pretty sick of damage control by the time I'm done corrupting their poor children.

Mislabeled

So I don't know if we've mentioned previously that the French have a hard time with spicy food, which is suprising given the fact that Dijon mustard can sometimes be a little on the hot side. But they do.

It's really quite hilarious to watch--the other night I made chicken curry for Sophie's kids (at her request!) and they were breathing heavily after every bite and drinking tons of water. I thought they probably hated my guts for putting in so much curry...and then afterwards they went "Whoa!That was good! Where did you learn to cook like that!?" and I said "Umm...have you never eaten curry before in your life?" And no, they had not, because the French really can't stand spice, even if it's a little too much salt or pepper.

Anyways, good thing Sophie's kids enjoyed their induction into the Wonderful World of Spice, cause I think the rest of France is gonna have a tough time following them. Judging by the tiny Mexican food section in the grocery store, people aren't too keen on cumin and chili pepper. Apparently we're lucky to even have access to tortillas and salsa, since according to my parents no Mexican food could be had for love or money in France in the 80's. And speaking of love or money, from her descriptions it sounds like my mother was pretty much ready to trade both for a good burrito, she was that desperate for Mexican food.

So one fine day Dustin and I decide to explore the somewhat-overpriced Mexican section and we can't find taco seasoning or anything except fajita mix, really, so we settle for fajita mix and get ourselves on home to consume some welcome spicy food. First thing I notice upon shaking out the sauce packet is that it's a strange dark brown color and has a really sugary smell. Next thing I notice is that when the sauce has finished cooking, it's thick and gloppy and definitely smells like molasses.

The third thing we notice is that if you take a bite out of a French fajita, there's no denying it. The label says "Fajita mix" but the taste screams BARBECUE SAUCE.

Hilarious as this is, it still weirds me out completely that French people the nation over are at this very minute chowing down on barbecue-sauce-doused fajitas and thinking they're getting a really authentic taste of Mexico.

Don't Worry, Be Happy...

...even if you have to deal with a lot of garbage in one day. (Snort)

Friday night Henry came down with a fever of 102.7 and didn't feel better until about half an hour ago, but good news! His temperature is pretty much normal.

So, that was an ordeal to be sure, but thanks to rectal suppositories (a classic French favorite) Henry is back in business and I'm okay too. We weren't sure there for a minute. Anytime the baby is upset I'm ten times worse and no, in case you were wondering, that doesn't help at all. But he's all better now. I've never been so happy to see him eating and smiling and acting normal.

And even though the French government has recently asked me to pay a residency tax to keep Dustin from getting kicked out of the country and even though this was completely not mentioned by anyone before we got the official letter, let's just look at it this way: I'm getting a chance to prove my love for Dustin by shelling out a bunch of cash for him. It's equivalent to paying for him, I think. I'm buying my husband. Awesome.

Actually, that was misleading, because the French government doesn't accept cash per say. They want me to go to the city hall and buy over a dozen large "stamps" that cost between 9 and 20 euros, then present this particular combination of stamps at the immigration office in Metz. Which also involves buying a train ticket. Oh, and they made an appointment for me at this place without asking me and informed me in the letter that I need to show up. Thanks for the advance warning, freaking Sarkozy.

Anyways, back to the positive side...breathe breathe...Dustin can now say he is a 10-stamp man. 10-cow woman is slightly more impressive when you first look at it, but on the other hand these are expensive stamps and anyways, cows are kind of gross sometimes.

What If

Recent Dustin quotes:

Apropos of nothing--

"If there's a tree in the forest and there's nobody around, what's the freaking point? You know what I'm trying to say here?"


In reference to squatting--

"Only women can do that. Women and the Chinese."


In reference to who-knows-what--

"What if Louis the XIV jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?"

My response--

"Depends what kind of hoopskirt I'm wearing at the time."

His response--

"Okay...you can just get back to me on that one."

I DECLARE WAR ON ARMISTICE DAY

Armistice Day is a whole different can of worms when your great-grandparents fought and got killed right in your own backyard as opposed to all the way across the ocean. I mean we live in Meuse, Verdun is right next door, there were trenches everywhere in this region. So to keep WWI memories alive and kicking the French government has formed a set of rules:

1. All useful businesses shall be closed for a day. Possibly even a day and a half if they're really lazy and want to toy with consumers, especially those who have no food at home and need to go grocery shopping, those kind are hilarious

2. No buses shall run and no prior notification will be given, because only a total idiot American would expect Armistice Day to be less important than Christmas

3. Only the aforementioned silly Americans shall be stupid enough to wait at the bus stop and expect the infrastructure of civilization to function

4. Send your sick children to give the silly American teacher kisses while they cough in her face, so that on Armistice Day she comes down with the flu (and I really did, that very day, and by the grace of orange juice and medication I am still able to walk, but just barely)

5. If at this point you're not thinking about war or conflict of some kind, something is wrong with you

6. Mission accomplished. Vive la France!

Paris, Last Day

It’s Dustin again. I have the responsibility of describing our last day in Paris. First of all, we had some awesome pastries. I had my favorite pastry yet, called a Conversation (with a French accent). We took the Metro up to Montmartre. Dantzel spotted a flea market and I graciously gave her permission to go in. She came out with a bunch of cheap clothes so I guess it was worth it. With new clothes in hand, we walked up the hill to Sacre Coeur, which is a more recent (early 1900s) cathedral that looks a lot like a mosque. It was beautiful and there were tons of musicians out front, which gave it a very spiritual feel. We saw a harpist (he sounded great) as well as two guys playing soft songs on acoustic guitar and bongo drums. Everything was beautiful except for the millions of stairs you have to climb to get anywhere. Sacre Coeur is a refreshing church in Paris because it is white and not gothic; it was done more in the Art Deco style and has curved Byzantine domes (Dantzel obviously has been talking to me.) See for yourself.

They really didn’t want anybody taking pictures inside, so we had to sneak a couple. Here is some of the inside of the big dome.

Here is a stained glass window that Dantzel really liked.

The best part is that you can walk to the top (after paying a small fee of course) and get an awesome view of the city. Okay, so walking the 300 steps in a short, narrow spiraling staircase with a baby on your back isn’t that fun, but it was worth it. Here are a couple of the shots we got from the top.

Coming back down we saw a crazy looking mime-ish guy.

After Sacre Coeur, we took the metro to the Arche de Triomphe! This is a pretty cool place. I think it is the biggest intersection in the world. It probably takes 20 minutes just to walk around the whole thing.

Beneath it they have the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with an eternal flame.

At the top there is a great view of course. Here is Sacre Coeur on top of Montmartre.

Here is the business district.

Here I am so excited to be in front of the Champs Elysees, the famous street leading to the center of old Paris.

Last but not least the Eiffel Tower. As you can see Dantzel wants to take it home with her and I want to destroy it for some reason.

Hungry and tired, we took the typical route to our hotel – via the Latin Quarter, or student district. We walked past the Sorbonne and the Pantheon every night. After buying souvenirs, we got some delicious take-out Indian food. The next day we packed up and left about noon. Then it was Au Revoir, Paris, Au Revoir!