Finally!

Great Generations

Since getting married and pregnant, I've been learning some additional vocabulary, but one thing I think the Brits beat the French on is the way we talk about previous generations.

When we talk about our parents' parents, in English we call them grandparents. There's an air of greatness in the term I find, whereas in French they are called, well, actually, grandparents, but the 'grand' is more about big/large/grown up.

It gets even better the further back you go, with the English using great-grandparents or Great-Aunt for example, which are lovely terms, hinting at wisdom and experience and a life long lived. In French they muster arrière-grandparents, which basically just means another generation back.

Anyway, baby is lucky enough to have two great great-grandparents on El Puma's side and four great grandparents.

Chaos

Shocking Sunday weather leaves no choice but to spend a day in a museum.

After some recent bad experiences on the Paris metro (particularly our line it seems) we have also recently discovered the rather excellent bus system in Paris. Over the whole weekend we travelled virtually door to door by bus. No getting squashed, or getting smoked on or jeered at by youngsters, or having to walk for ages after exiting. Instead, we stayed above ground and wound our way through Paris seeing everything, and feeling warm and cosy while the rain came down in torrents.

Stranger Danger

It only really came to my attention during the week when we went to view a 2-bedroom appartment in the same building. The current occupants have two fairly young children and they were brought out from whatever they were doing to 'say bonjour'. The same had happened the weekend before when we went to visit Fred's friends and their 2-year old was also told to 'say bonjour'. 

Jump a generation and the French entering parties will circle the room saying hello to everyone before they can even get their jackets off. 

I know that in each of these situations the people being met are not strictly strangers, but I think there is quite a different attitude between Britain and France regarding talking to those whom we don't know personally. 

Do you also remember those 'Don't Talk To Strangers' adverts? 

Certainly, I, the supposed extrovert, often feel shy walking into a room full of people I don't know, whereas El Puma, who consistently scores an "i" (for introvert) in the Myers-Briggs personality testing, works the room like he's a member of the Royal Family.

Wonder how the kid'll turn out.

The Longest Grey

The summer solstice this year was a wash-out. Talk about the longest grey. Around 3pm an enormous thunderstorm rolled in and we thought that would be the end of the outdoors playing, but the evening proved surprisingly mild and there was music to be heard on every street corner. For the third year running. 'Sound Policy' took a spot outside an Irish pub and played rock covers until around midnight. I'm sure I felt some rhythmic jiggling inside.

Alcohol & Drugs

The current up-and-down weather (27 one day, 17 the next) has riddled me with the summer flu. I've spent the past four days maximising the 'rest + fluids + high doses of vitamin C' cure (and the occasional gargle with pisco), but when the shakes began today, I finally cracked and headed off to the Pharmacy. The French love their drugs and even more so when you add an extra twist such as pregnancy, for then they can delve into all the homeopathic variations:

Well, the drugs work. Feeling better already.

Some Sunday Sights

What to do in Paris on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

Well, there's the footie, shown on the big screen in front of that Tower again:

 Or there's the ol Tango plaza at Trocadero:

 Or you can just do your dog's hair:

Apparently Kim Kardashian and Kanye were also in town...in a rented convertible white Lamboughini...that took 1 hour to travel the 3 miles between the Place de la Madeleine and the Eiffel Tower in the Sunday traffic. Haha.

I got you, under my skin

Circuler

The crummy summer weather is at least providing us with a chance to visit my favourite museum in Paris, the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine (right beside the other corker, the Musée de la Marine with its current expo on lighthouses and some sort of famous tower....Efeel, Ethel, Eeffil...something like that).

The permanent exhibition at the Museum of Architecture is split over two levels, with ye olde stuff (casts of famous facades and such like) on the ground floor, and then all the modern stuff (airports, ecobuildings, funky buildings) upstairs. In the basement are the temporary exhibitions and at the moment an expo on how our movements shape cities is showing. 

It's about how changing transport modes have shaped our cities and now how these movements are shaping society. It was really interesting, and the museum also holds my favourite view in Paris: the naked backside of some Greek God.

Perhaps a better picture, taken with Toots in December 2007:

British Summer Time?

Puma Efficiency

Defrosting the fridge AND icing the sprained ankle:

The Euros

This was my attempt to watch England's opening football game against France last night, while continuing with my work:

 Both sides are insufferable when they win, so a draw seems the perfect outcome.

What To Expect When You're Expecting

After announcing the pregnancy at the start of our time in Brest this weekend, the rest of it was spent discussing various aspects of the brewing period and motherhood. This ranged from favourite names (Marie/Marcel) to what can and can't be eaten/drunk (raw meat, paté, cheese and wine all treated quite differently in France than the UK), developmental stages (apparently the Gonzales boys no longer needed nappies after they could walk...) and how to carry your kid (on the back, Peruvian style, so I'm told).

Some of it has been very useful:

 Some of it has been used for other purposes than those intended:

I suspect this is only the beginning...

I've Been Expecting You

Two-month anniversary

The Year of Jubilee

Paris 'celebrating' the Jubilee with red, white and blue:

We'll Always Have Paris

We'll Always Have Paris:

And that of course also means a protest.

This one in support of biking in the city. There were normal bikes:

...and one-wheeled bikes:

...and bikes with baby trailers:

...and bullet bikes:

...and tall bikes:

...and short bikes:

...and fancy bikes:

Actually, the extent of the bicycle network is noticeable in Paris this summer. I think they must have been working on it over the past year. It certainly feels a lot safer out there and sometimes safer than being a pedestrian: cars continue to ignore PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS.