Day 5: Market and Cooking Lesson

Hello again, friends. Today I had to go on a field trip with MICEFA. I will complain about that in the following paragraph. But after that I got an awesome cooking lesson in French! I will rave about that in the paragraph after. But I want to note that my Madame is awesome and helped me get there on time and fed me a nice breakfast. Plus she taught me to use the RER for the first time!

Alright, so first thing first: as you may have picked up from this blog, I am ATTEMPTING to fit in so people don't look at me on the street and immediately know I am American. Not necessarily because I am embarrassed to be American, but because I want to try to actually experience and live the culture I am living among. During the field trip today, this was not possible. It was a large group of (mostly) American students who all spoke English with a tour guide who spoke in English the whole time. I saw more Uggs and North Face jackets than I have seen since I left the United States. Anyway, the tour guide took us to a market near where the city gates used to be in the 12th arrondissement. Which, as he noted, is pretty much all French people and Americans stick out like a sore thumb. It was pretty interesting, but we blocked THE ENTIRE THOROUGHFARE and everyone was mad at us and glaring at us because no one was buying anything and everyone was yelling in English. He also took us to a little boulangerie and we blocked THAT thoroughfare. Where lots of French people glared at us. One man purposely bumped as many of us as he could with his bag while angrily muttering. It was pretty embarrassing. So I didn't want to exacerbate that by taking pictures, so I don't have any.

The good part is I heard a bit about the Picpus neighborhood and cemetery. The neighborhood is named after a local vaccination hospital from back in the day. You can guess why if you know how vaccination used to work... The cemetery is where many decapitated bodies were buried in a mass grave during the Terror. Fun fact: La Fayette is buried there because he wanted to be buried next to his wife, and SHE wanted to be buried near her relatives who were nobles and were somewhere in the mass grave. Every year the US Ambassador and a French official, possibly the Prime Minister or the President but I forget, put a wreath on La Fayette's grave. So a pretty uplifting start to the day!

"Here at the gate of the throne, the scaffold was installed from the 13th of June to the 28th of July 1794."

The good part was after that we had some time to kill before the cooking lesson. I had to get change for a large bill so I bought some small things at a small grocery store. And my observation is DEAR LORD French people love chocolate. On and in everything. Especially cookies. Anyway, my friends and some of the Puerto Rican students and I all went back to the market after I got change and we got Lebanese food. This time no one was mad at us (because we weren't blocking the road or yelling in English). On our walk back we saw a cool statue and a plaque that made me sad.

 Cool statue

"Here Roger Guimet fell gloriously for the liberation of Paris on August 25th, 1944 at the age of 20."

Side note: there is a child screaming bloody murder somewhere in this apartment building and I hope he isn't being beaten. I don't know if French people do that or not. They're usually strict but I don't think they usually use physical punishment. It could possibly be that he was put in time out and is trying to get attention. He's been screaming for like 10 minutes.

So anyway, later on we made our way to the cooking lesson, which was at some sort of restaurant or something. It was awesome and it was all in French and I didn't ruin anything! I think it really gave everyone confidence and it was a fun way to do so. We made financiers and a lemon meringue pie and cream puffs stuffed with chocolate mousse. Now that I'm sitting down to write this I realize I don't have much to say about it other than it was fun and a confidence booster and I felt better that I finally got to use French instead of listening to a guy yell in English.

Chocolate mousse-filled cream puffs and lemon-meringue pie

The previous two things plus financiers in the middle

I then made it back to my home stay and talked to Madame's son about politics and university and law school. I think he had trouble understanding me but he was patient which was nice because he told me later that he had to study (but it's okay because he was taking a snack break). Anyway, until next time!

Bisous,
La vache espagnole