Taking my sweet-ass time.

Starting off living in Paris is going to be tough.
For example, Sarah (colocataire et amie) and I spent almost 20 minutes walking around beautiful streets looking for a restaurant. Took. For. ever.

Once we were at le Twickham, I took the liberty of ordering, not one, but two shelled menu items. Les escargots were my gastropodial entrée and mussels were my mouthwatering meal.

Eating escargots is a little like going to the dentist. You see the tools about to be used in some mysterious way, and you pray it won't hurt. One is first presented with a pair of alien eyelash curlers and a two pronged fork made for a Lilliputian. Finally a plate of garden snails with butter boiling inside their poor shells gets placed before you.

Forty minutes later, I had eaten the insides of 4/6 delicious escargots. Oui, I gave up. However, somewhere around the second snail's release, I remembered it was a luxury to take so long to eat. I could spend my time and money simply enjoying one solid meal. It was liberating to feel like no matter how long I took to pry out the little bastards, no one was waiting for my table, the waitress didn't need to clear us out, and I could fiddle with my tiny fork for however long I needed!

The mussels, however, were not time consuming (eating pun intended) due to their shelled existence but due to the sheer poundage of the dish! After my snail defeat, I was presented with a mountain of wine sauce steamed shells! The server placed a dish next to our table for my discarded shells and left assuming I knew what I was doing. You know what happens when you assume, right? I eat mussels like an American, that's what.

I spent the next hour plus of our lovely meal trying so hard to be delicate about scraping the meaty bit out of the shell with a fork. Halfway through, a kind gentleman server delicately motioned toward my giant spoon, seeming to indicate I use it instead. I switched, bien sûr, and continued into the night.

It was only with our check that I officially asked and was 'orrified to find out that I had, still done it wrong! After many gestures and "you know, like zis," he finally just went to go GET two mussels to demonstrate the correct measures.
Apparently, one uses the spoon to eat the first mussel. Then, using the empty first mussel shell, pinch out the insides of the following mussels and slip them into your waiting mouth.
Mais-oui-But-of-COURSE. Le sigh.

It will be a while before I order any more shelled delicacies; I'll at least need a nap from the last one.

bis

Ignoring tourism

I saw the Eiffel Tower today. It was okay.

Two days ago, I arrived in France to start a teaching job at a middle school sooner than I can believe. The whole trip is and always will be a big ordeal. Catching planes, lugging suitcases (meant for a year-- that's why they're huge! I swear!). Winding up in Paris is a great reward for all of that hard work and dripping cash.
It's still there, it's still huge and visually appealing. No one doesn't like looking at angles organized into something hundreds of times taller than their own person. We humans tend to like that.

As a traveler and a woman of the world, I have the full right to ignore Parisian monuments. I've seen them a few times, they'll be there when friends visit from out of town and are DYING to go see the famous features. I claimed this right today by eating a sandwich while admiring the tower, tossing the wrapper (in the bin, I ain't no litter bug), and walking away.

It's not going anywhere, and neither am I.