Cafe Cannibal with Canucks

You know you live in the modern world when you get a call from back home asking:  “So what are you up to next weekend?”  and then before you can say “lickidy-splits” she’s booked her flight.  That’s how Nicole, a best friend since high school, and a women who has almost always gone out of her way to visit me on my little adventures, came to join me first here and then for a ro-tic (that’s romantic sans le “man” as her older sister famously quipped years ago) weekend in Paris.

"Can I get a coffee with milk... okay cafe latte, but it's really not the same thing"

We of course did the touristic things, that touristy people do, and by night we met up with Toronto friends and part-time Parisians in an urban suburb.  I felt extremely lucky to have my favourite people together.  We climbed up and around the park that although closed at this time, has the most magnificent city view of Paris I’d ever seen.  Stopped in for a glass of red and then descended for dinner at an elegant/edgy /cafe/ resto corner pub, with a live band on one side and long tables on the other.  The place was decorated with eerie chandeliers with warm dim lighting, scratched glass hangings and chipped paint.  The server pulled the table segment out to allow two of us to shimmy in behind along the wall bench and then she pushed the table back in again like an amusement park ride locking them in for the meal.  Our table now connected us back within the row of familiar strangers.    

I don’t mind telling you the food was French-tastic, the service was attentive and the atmosphere (I’ve already sort of mentioned) was warm and fun, and the company was superb!  It was a really good night!  The next morning came too quickly and poor Nicole, who had contact lens problems the day before and had been fighting a cold the entire time finally succumbed on her last day.  We were told that the pharmacies post names and location for on-call Sunday doctors, but when we arrived  the posted times were for Saturday, so we walked down the street to the next two pharmacies over, but to no avail.  We asked inside a hotel, where the women wanted to know first if we were guests before she offered a hospital location.  We lied.  To confirm the information we’d received at the hotel, we asked again at the subway info booth.  He told us that we were headed to a private hospital and offered another hospital instead.  We made our way over, found that there were several hospitals in this area, and picked one, which unsurprisingly was closed on a Sunday.  Fortunately, a friendly security guard directed us to another one across the way.  He detailed instructions then told us the short-cut version by passing through the bus terminal, and around the taxi stand etc.  After waiting in line there, we were told to get back on the subway line to another hospital to see a specialist.  We were a little annoyed.  Couldn’t she just see a GP, get some drugs and off we go,?? Nope.  


The third hospital was really beautiful in an old nunnery kind of way, long corridors, huge windows looking into the perfectly manicured courtyard, old pictures on the wall of past presidents, maps and portraits of presumably important people.  It also happened to be beside the famous Nortre Dame, bonus!  We navigated our way to the proper department and waited again in line before we were told to take a seat among the 50 odd people also waiting to see the one doctor on duty.  It took ages.  Nicole and I passed the time by playing elaborate games of MASH.  

Little Trooper

Finally Nicole went up to ask for an ETA, and the nurse told us we could step out for lunch.  We came back an hour later to find the women doctor had been replaced by a dreamy young man.  Nicole and I joked with glee at our luck.  Now Nicole’d have this hottie looking deeply into her eyes, and that all this waiting would be worth it!  Mid school-girl giggles of us dreaming up probable outcomes, Nicole’s name was called and what seemed like an hour passed before she returned.  It turns out dreamy doctor is an interning med student, and so the check up went like this:  He conducts a full eyes/ears/throat exam (inclusive of iodine drops),  comes up with a diagnosis and then the real doctor quickly examines.  She agreed with his diagnosis,  and then they talk about how they’d reached this conclusion, the treatment etc.  

Nicole is such a trooper!  Being sick in not fun, but in  a foreign country and being passed along several times over before finally arriving at the right place and waiting patiently (okay we’re Canadians, we’re familiar with the waiting game for medical service) but all in all she was good humoured and fun to hang with.  I really miss her now and her florescent kleenexes.  The best part of Paris was spending time with my friends.  Maybe this true no matter where in the world you are. 

A Touching Moment

So I’m looking at an apartment.  Thomas, my maybe future roommate, shows me the site of our future flat and where his friends, a cute couple, are currently living.  When we arrive, they are sitting hunched over boxes eating dinner – the regular moving-out scene.  They happily shuffle things around for my walk-through as we joke and converse. 

It’s sunny and spacious.  Equipped with laundry and gas stove, but oddly it does not include a fridge, nevermind Thomas will buy one.  It’s a walk-out -balcony -in- my -bedroom kind of apartment, it’s perfect!  More importantly, I decide these people are cool, and exactly the type of folks I wanna be friends with.  As we’re wrapping up I ask why they’re leaving.  The man, while casually standing over the sink cleaning the grit off the frying pan says they’re thinking of expanding their family.  I should tell you now that everything happens about 30 seconds later for me in French than in real time, so by the time realized the significance of what was said, the women has begin to tear up and flutter her hands around her face, and then Thomas, flipping his head, as though watching a tennis match, between the two of them says:

“ non, c’est pas vrais, oui?”

With an even brighter smile and tear buds now falling down her cheeks she nods and starts laughing.  We all laugh and make rounds hugging.  They are only two months in, so hadn’t told anyone yet. 


I think it’s strange that Thomas then congratulates them by making horns with his hands on his head – 'mocking a bull' he explains.... but then again 30 seconds later it occurs to me that he’s talking about the astrological sign Taurus, as in when the baby is due.  And just like that i was invited into my first tender moment, albeit accidently.  

Taxing

Day one on the job and I had very little time to prepare for my first lesson.  

The school offers boxed teaching plans, all laid out in perfectly organized binders with colour coded levels that correspond to the various sections, but following the British method, and having to use odd phrases like:  “we shall go to the cinema later.” etc... is a little dull, so i quickly searched for something under the same prescribed theme -  vacations -  and ripped a small paragraph from someone’s blog about a vacation gone wrong.  

I didn’t give the text too much thought and subsequently spent my first lesson explaining words like honeymooning, spontaneous, jaunt and shanties.  Basically every other word was an exercise in itself.  Finally at the end of the lesson, I asked them how they were feeling and a women looked down at the sheet, raised her head and with wide eyes said: “ummmmmm taxing”  - one of the many words we’d gone over earlier.  It did make us laugh though, and I was proud that she’d made that connection.  

Picnic

When you’re new in town, and don’t know folks yet, sometimes it’s just nice to take yourself on a picnic.  And on a perfect Sunday afternoon, that’s exactly what I did.  This is a beautiful park conveniently located, so off I went.

Although these swans look sweet and docile, it’s really better to keep your distance.  I witnessed them nearly clobber a kid, though in the swans defence, the little bugger did have it coming.