Chinese New Year Rounds 2 and 3

      The firecrackers continue for the second week and drums continue to bang at all unreasonable hours of the day in celebration of the new year.  Today was the second and largest parade and it took place in my little quartier of Paris.  It was like a giant block party with the streets absolutely packed shoulder to shoulder with people from all over the city who descended upon the Triangle de Choisy to see the sights, eat good food, inhale toxic amounts of firecracker smoke, get confetti in their hair, and take photos with the lions dancing their way through the streets.

This was taken right in front of my apartment building during the last stretch of the parade.  

The horse costumes were a definite hit and surprisingly realistic looking.

I have no idea what that says on the balloon, but a kid was holding it so it can't be too bad :)  

      Before all the parade festivities started, I met up with three other friends to go to our favorite pho restaurant.  I actually managed to step outside the box and ordered something that wasn't pho.  I forget the name, not like I could pronounce it even at the time, but it was this really good grilled pork, egg roll, vermicelli noodle, salad, soup, cucumber, lettuce, cilantro concoction that was out of this world.  It is a definite contender with the pho and at 7 euro is one of the best deals in the city.  We had so much fun at lunch that we decided that Sundays need to be our "try a new Asian restaurant" day.  

 Incense, McDonalds, and Paris...how can you not like that combination?

      After lunch we headed to a Chinese bakery to get some traditional desserts.  Two of them got these little roll looking things with red bean paste and a whole egg yolk inside, and me and another girl had these little balls of gooey, clear, tapioca-like stuff with sesame seeds and more goo on the inside and covered in little coconut flakes.  Yum!!!  How have I not had these magical little balls of yumminess before?  Needless to say I think from now on you will be able to find me each afternoon after class walking up to that little bakery with my 85 cents clutched in my fist and an air of mouthwatering anticipation in my step.

By far the best dragon troop.

      Our yummy food explorations complete, we went to find a good spot to watch the parade.  This proved quite difficult, but we found a spot and waited.   And waited.  And the parade never came.  We gave it an hour and then we decided to start making our way through the pushing and shoving crowd and back to the metro.  As luck would have it though, the moment we gave up our good spot, the parade started and we were left on tip-toes trying to see everything.  What we did see though was very cool and much better than the previous parade.  Forty-five minutes later and the parade was still going, but our energy was not, so we pushed on and finally parted at the metro stop.  

 This was seriously the cutest little Asian kid ever, and every time a lion would pass by she would get so excited I thought she would fall off her father's shoulders.

      I went home, but just for a bit as I hadn't gotten a chance to get any show-able photos as promised and it felt a shame to be up in my room above all the crowds and action just doing homework and piddling about.  So, I chugged my coffee, packed up again, and headed for a third round of festivities.  The energy in the streets was incredible and seemed to feed the tired parade performers as they slowly made their way to the finish after nearly two hours of walking, dancing, and banging drums.  The Chinese really know how to throw a good party.  The noise level was a good kind of deafening with groups of drummers and cymbal players going at with all they had and giant strings of firecrackers exploding at seemingly random times all around us.

In front of Notre-Dame de Chine 

      All the parents seemed to have decided to let go of their worries and let their kids have as many balloons, firecrackers, cans of silly string, and bags of confetti as they wanted.  All around kids were having confetti fights, using the incense sticks to light little red packages of explosives, and covering their faces and hair with handfuls of brightly colored cotton candy.  It was just a seriously fun time.  There was even a group representing Brazil with some amazing drummers that had a massive following of random people just dancing and jumping up and down behind them as they went down the street.  

In yet another display of odd cross-cultural interaction, this is a group of ladies from Colombia.  

So beautifully random and unexpected!

    I meandered a bit more and an hour later decided to return home to "do homework," "do laundry,"and "clean my room," but who was I kidding?  I've thus managed to spend an entire day doing absolutely no homework or housework.  I don't know if I should be proud or worried about how much is due still.  After such a colorful and wonderful day though I think I'll just revel in the pause and try and get my ears to stop ringing!
I love and miss you all and wish you luck in the new year.
-Kate Alice

Chinese New Year

      This past weekend was the Chinese New Year and the 13th arrondissement has been filled with banging of cymbals, drums, and enough firecrackers to make our 4th of July look like a little kids birthday party.  All around my apartment spontaneous dragon dances and street performances have been popping up, and the red paper from the spent firecrackers crowds the gutters in wet clumps and has taken up permanent residency on the bottoms of all of my shoes.

      

      I dared the cold yesterday and went out to see some of these up-close.  This one was just across the street from my apartment and consisted of some rather scary looking feats of balance with only cement and wet, red paper scraps as cushion.  It appeared to be a dance of some sort of offering to/food for the dragons consisting of small oranges and lettuce, but I'm not quite sure.  

the obligatory string of firecrackers and cause of the deluge of red paper

      

      Little orange trees like this one are absolutely everywhere and at the grocery store there are rows and rows of them that just about everyone seems to be buying.  I want one, but host-mom isn't too keen on houseplants, so I figured that might not be best.

      These guys were watching the purple dragon perform and soon after joined in for a performance that was filled with painful looking feats of one dragon (two people) standing on the backs of a second dragon.  I was content to just watch. 

      I then headed down to l'Hotel de Ville to watch the "opening of the eye of the dragon" ceremony of sorts.  I'm not sure what it's purpose was, but this guy was really nice and dutifully held up his part of the dragon for two hours while standing in the rain.  Of course, that meant that I too was standing in the rain and snow for two hours.  

I couldn't help but wonder what those statues thought of all the color and commotion.  

The head of one of the dragons

      Those flags are a part of the parade that, as you can see, I was unable to see.  There were so many people pushing and shoving and crowded together that the parade had to go almost single file with the police standing hand to hand on either side.  Apparently, this is usual Chinese New Year parade etiquette in Paris.  The costumes that I did see were quite spectacular and all of the bright colors were a welcome change to the usual drab and muted shades of Paris winter.  While I love Parisians and they usually are dressed quite nicely, they certainly sacrifice a bit of joyful color and self-expression in the process.  It seems doubtful to me that every person in Paris decided that black was their favorite color all at the same time.  While it is a trivial matter, it is something that I've noticed that I've been missing, and I look forward to returning to a culture where a blue shirt or green socks don't make you stand out in the crowd.
      The next parade is this coming weekend, and I will be attending with some friends.  I'll try and get some pictures of the actual parade next time, but until then, Happy New Year!
-Kate Alice

Normandy

      A new semester brings new adventures and our last group trip offered one last hurrah before we all dive into our classes and busy schedules.  We had much luck in that it never rained on us, but it did remain much colder than expected especially with the strong coastal winds.

      Our first stop was in the small town of Honfleur which proved quite charming and nearly void of tourists at this time of year.  It was known for its artist community in the 1800s and drew writers, painters, musicians, and great minds such as Corot, Baudelaire, Eugene Boudin, Daubigny, Courbet, and Monet to name a few.

      This is the Sainte-Catherine church which is famous for being the largest church in France built with wood.  It seemed quite small from the outside, but inside it had a vast double nave and was surprisingly well lit with rows of stained glass.  The ceiling looked identical to two upside down ships with with the ribbed, skeletal shaped vaults.  Quite cool in my opinion.  

      As it was a Saturday morning, the open air market was open and the street and courtyard by the church was filled with humble looking farmers, white clad butchers, and an odd assortment of food vendors.  All of the stacks of fresh, dirt ingrained winter vegetables made me think of working at the farm and made me want to go back to the simple tasks of harvesting, washing, and culling.  What surprised me the most was the sheer number of varieties of the same vegetable.  There was one lady who had at least fifteen varieties of beets in all shapes and colors ranging from clementine-size black ones, to red, carrot looking ones, to huge white and pink ones easily the size of a small cantaloupe.     

      This lady was selling olives and dried fruits which the locals were buying in unprecedented quantities.  I seriously don't know how they can eat that many olives in a week.  Behind the table she had even bigger vats of each that she used to keep refilling each of these bowls.

      We were just walking towards this creperie when the lady came out and closed it up for the day.  I guess in small towns you are allowed to close your restaurant at 12:30 on a weekend.

      We ended up returning to the market and bought fresh quiches which we ate standing on the sidewalk in a little patch of sun trying to avoid getting too many crumbs in our scarves and avoid the wind.  Just after lunch we all grouped back together and made the trek up this little hill; although, I shouldn't say "little" because it felt like a mountain.  We started off at sea level and ended up here by way of a rather steep little series of switchbacks and the view was incredible.

      After loading up we headed to Deauville to walk on les planches along the beach.  It was very cold and extremely windy, but with the sun finally shining we didn't really mind.  Apparently in the summer, this place is very popular to visit and known for the film festival which draws many American actors and directors.  

Jon in the barrel room of sorts.

      As with most trips we've had so far, there was the obligatory tasting.  The Calvados region where we were visiting is famous, well, for it's Calvados which is a brandy derived from apples.  We ended up tasting cidre (cider), Calvados and Pommeau with varying degrees of alcohol, age, apple varieties, and pears.  Due to the very low alcohol content of the cidre, the tasting went on for a while.  In the end I think we tried about eight or nine different types ranging from mild apple juice tasting to super strong, burn your throat, straight up hard brandy.  It was actually quite good and we were each given a little gift of a miniature bottle of Pommeau. 

      The barrels to age the Calvados are very important and this distillery in particular had a collection of barrels in use that were of all wood varieties, thicknesses, size, and age.  There was one barrel that we saw containing a particularly well aged Calvados that was almost eighty years old!  Each barrel has it's own age, variety, and alcohol content, so instead of mass producing bottles, they wait for an order to come in and then individually fill out the order one bottle at a time.  Pretty cool.

      The tasting room was filled with a plethora of different types, and what I loved most was the variety of colors.  The older the Calvados, the darker the color so it is impossible to cheat and say that one is older than it really is.  The lady who runs the place and gave us the tasting, knew her product so well that she could tell us which was which out of rows of bottles just based on the color.   

      I failed to get a more proper photo than this, but my favorite part was seeing all of the pomme prisonnières as seen here.  They grow the apple inside the bottle, and when it is big enough, remove it from the tree and fill the bottle with either the type of Calvados made with that variety of apple or with a complementary one.  Stacked in rows, the bottles of pomme prisonnières looked almost like organs in jars and had an oddly alluring creepiness to them.

Some of the apple trees

I just liked the shape of the roof :)

      Our first day complete, we feasted on salmon, roasted vegetables, cheeses, wine, apple tarts, and way too much bread as usual.  The accommodations were quite nice, and the two other girls and I in our room ended up staying up till 1:30 talking even though we had to be up by 6:30 the next morning!  We had to be up early so that we could get to the Normandy American Cemetery in time to assist with the flag raising ceremony.  

       It was a depressingly enormous cemetery looking right over Omaha Beach, and maybe it was all psychological, but it seriously felt like we were back in the states.  

Omaha Beach

      After the cemetery, we headed a bit further down the coast to the Point du Hoc in between Omaha and Utah Beach where the Rangers climbed the cliff under German fire and suffered great losses despite the eventual victory.   

The actual point of the Point du Hoc

      As you can see, many of the barbed wire entanglements are still intact as well as were bunkers, a few canons, and those things that look like over-sized jacks playing pieces.  The ground was covered in what I first thought were undulating dunes, but actually they were the remainders of craters caused by bombs.  There were so many craters it was almost unbelievable.  I'm not sure how anyone survived with such high concentration of aerial fire.  It was quite surreal.

      After Point du Hoc, we visited the Tapisserie de Bayeux which was a 230ft. long hand embroidered ribbon of cloth detailing the Norman invasion of England and culminating at the Battle of Hastings.  Given its age, it is surprisingly well intact and colorful.  That was followed by a superb lunch of moist, roast duck, potatoes, fresh salad, more bread, mini quiches, apple crepes with a brandy, honey reduction sauce, and all topped with a piping hot espresso.  It was by far our fanciest meal yet, and we feasted happily.

      In theme with the day of depression and war, we spent several hours visiting Le Mémorial de Caen- Musée pour la Paix [Peace] which was a fantastic museum about WWII.  It was very well done and had a wonderful collection of original artifacts, film footage, and personal accounts that were quite moving.  At the end we all couldn't tell if we were happy to have just visited a nice museum, completely and utterly depressed at the atrocities of the war, or inspired to do something to make sure it never happened again.  We settled on discussing ice cream, pandas, and Ke$ha the entire way home.  

      In all it was a very fun trip and a great time to relax and get to know one another better.  We only wished it would have lasted longer.  Speaking of longer, I think I might have broken a blog record for the longest post yet.  As yet another thank you shout out to the parents, please note the incredible difference in photo quality between my previous photos and these.  I'm not talking artistically, but no more pixilation!  I hope everyone is well and preparing to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Snake.  Here in Chinatown everything has turned red and gold in preparation, so be expecting to see some photos of the celebrations of next weekend.  All the best...

-Kate Alice

New Toy

Hello dear ones,

Another rainy, windy day here in the city.  Unfortunately for me, the rain inhibited me from playing too much with my new toy.

      I'm now the proud owner of a new Cannon 600D 18-55mm courtesy of my dear parents.  Thank you!  I have yet to find a good name for him, so in the mean time I've just been calling him Huey.  The switch do DSLR has been greatly anticipated despite my deep attachment to my prior Canon PowerShot A610, my first camera and also courtesy of the dear folks.  I'm so used to needing full light to take an adequate picture that it's been odd being able to shoot in almost any light.  I know so little about taking actual photographs, so this will be a learning process.

 For some reason I liked this one; accidentally taken through the curtain.

      Even though it was raining this morning, I figured I would go out just in case the rain stopped for a bit.  Since I haven't spent much time around the Eiffel Tower, at least not during the day, I figured I would head over there and be all touristy. 

      Unfortunately for me, it didn't really stop raining but for more than about five minutes when these were taken.  I tried the whole, hold the purse, camera, and umbrella while trying to take a photo thing, but it was a bit tricky and I soon retreated under a cafe umbrella for a cafe and croissant.

      The rest of the afternoon was spent in an exceptionally long meeting in which I learned no new information, but I got to see my friends and goof off when the directors were out of the room.  By the time I got home it was time for dinner and it was dark...and raining.  I might take time to insert here that I have officially gotten over my phobia of eating fish with everything still intact minus a few guts.  Eyeballs?  No problem.  Deboning a whole fried bass? Piece of cake.  I've not recovered from the lamb spinal cord incident, but fish I can handle.

What I refer to as "my intersection". 

Banlieu to the left of the big road and Paris to the right

      I got Huey just in time for our trip to Normandy this weekend.  Two days of megabus rides, the beach, war museums, and a cider tasting of sorts.  Good times.  I will be sure to report back when I return with photos of our travels.  Much love

-Kate Alice

p.s. The nice zoom on this thing should take my spying on the neighboring apartments to a whole new level.  I'm psyched.