Ch-ch-ch-changes!

It's official: the Sanders family has moved! Not very far though; although, I wouldn't be surprised if moving here feels like living in another world. We've actually moved back to Paris proper. For those of you who were unaware that we were not living in Paris, consider yourself informed. We've been living in the close suburbs of western Paris-area, basically a 15 minute train ride away from actual Paris. It's hard to believe, but it's been about seven years that we've lived here! That's actually the longest literal place that I've lived in my whole adult life. Even if you're counting cities and not apartments, I only lived in Seattle during my college days for just under 5 years. Our church's senior pastor retired back in January and since then, the church parsonage has been sitting empty, just waiting for some new tenants :) Some of you might be thinking, 'But didn't you guys just have a baby as well?' Why yes, yes we did. Ha! I wouldn't recommend the combo but for a lot of various factors that I won't really get into, this is the timing that we got.

Here's a few little factoids about the new digs (pics to come at a later date!):

--We'll now be only about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower (I hear those wheels in your heads churning...you're wondering if we'll have a guest room in the new place, aren't you!)

--Napoleon is buried there (not in our new place, but down the road, lol...)

--Paris is divided up in a circular pattern like a snail (oh how fitting!) and cut up into neighborhoods called 'arrondissements'. They're numbered, so we're in number 7.

--In 2011, the population in the 7th arrondissement alone was 57,786... That's actually more than my hometown of Albany, Oregon ! (And the 7th is considered to be one of the less populated Paris neighborhoods!) Compare that to the surface area of the two places and the 7th arrondissement is more than 10 times smaller than Albany! (4.09 square kilometers compared to 45.97)

--It is stinking rich. One of the richest in Paris. But you might not know that just by walking around. It is a place of old money; people have been wealthy since the beginning of time and apparently don't feel the need to flash their bling around.

--This follows my last point, but since the 17th century, it has been home to the French upper class and aristocracy.

--There are a ridiculous amount of public demonstrations that take over the street our new place will be located on. Yes, my husband has told me before that he couldn't get back home right away because of the tear gas lingering in the streets!

--The place was actually a very old home originally which is extremely rare in Paris proper (we mostly have apartments in Paris).  When the church started meeting way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, they met downstairs in the house. They quickly outgrew the location and added a ginormous room onto the front of the house. Today, the first two levels of the house are used for church purposes and the upper two make up the church parsonage.

--This follows my previous point: we'll be living on site! This should be an interesting adventure full of advantages and challenges as well.

--And I'll just end on this: there's no yard but one of the little known gems of the parsonage is that it has a roof top terrace....lounge chair and chilled drink, I hear you calling my name...

10 years ago Part 1

10 years ago this month I packed a ridiculously heavy and large bag to set out on my French adventure. I would be leaving for a full school year and kindles and laptops were still in the minority. So as to not get bored, I packed all of my favorite books that I'd want to have on hand. I bought the biggest suitcase I could find and I vacuum sealed my clothes like a crazy person. Somehow it was cheaper to fly into London and I had what I considered to be the world's best idea: book a hostel overnight and see London while you're at it! What could be better, right? I flew right into the city center. I hauled that big beast of a suitcase out those airport doors like a boss.

No one but fancy people had gps on their phones then (I didn't even have one of those!) but I whipped out my mapquest directions like no one's business. I tried to look very confident because you don't want people in a big city to think you don't know what you're doing or anything--they might try to pickpocket you. Just a hunch but 10 year older me thinks that the enormous suitcase and paper directions just might have given me away. Thankfully Londoners were kind to the helpless American girl with too much stuff. 

I walked those 10 or so blocks to the hostel. I remember being so glad to finally get there as the last 5 or so had been completely cobblestone. I was wrong, however. I had only reached the check-in desk. My room was located at the other location back 4 blocks in the direction I had just come. Feeling like an odd combination between Wonder Woman and Popeye pre-spinach I gritted my teeth and pushed 'the beast', as I was starting to yell  call it in my head back those darn 4 blocks and up the stairs to my private suite that I would be sharing with about 8 other people in what can only be considered as the world's biggest dorm room.

Unfortunately, the internet café that the hostel provided was located back at the check-in office. I briefly contemplated letting everyone back home consider me MIA at least for another 24 hours but decided my mom just might swim the whole Atlantic Ocean if she hadn't heard that I'd landed safely. Funny to think about in the age of Whatsapp, Viber, and instant everything. So I dutifully wrote and told everyone that I was okay. I wrote another email that night too. There was this cute guy that I had been emailing now for a few months. It had started off as a random French contact and had evolved from there. I told myself that it was only a little crush, because after all, how can you actually have a crush on a guy you've never even met before. (I know, I was the one girl in school who didn't have a crush on Leonardo Di Caprio after Titanic came out) That's what I was telling myself because not so long before I had crashed and burned after falling for my best guy friend in college. There was no way I was playing the fool twice and Cautious Carol had now become my name. I did, albeit very reluctantly, throw in that he would know how to spot me the next day in the Paris train station (oh, did I mention he had arranged my whole Paris stay?) by the fact that I'm just under 6 ft tall (1m80). I had kind of been avoiding that little factoid due to the fact that it tends to scare most boys off. But I figured that short of chopping off my calves and replacing them with peg legs my height would become obvious soon enough.

I'm assuming I fed myself somehow. Not sure when or how but clearly I didn't starve. I do remember not having factored in my big heavy suitcase to lug around during my little "London visit." I couldn't just leave it unattended. Someone might steal my fabulous book collection.  Thankfully I made a temporary friend who looked nice enough and she agreed to watch my suitcase for an hour or two. I did some sort of bridge walk along the bank of the Thames (which I wouldn't learn for a few months yet is actually pronounced as if there's no H). I walked by famous monuments having no freaking idea exactly what I was looking at. It took me forever at one point to realize I was staring at the London Tower. finally made my way back to the beast after doing way more walking than I thought was possible and somehow found the force within myself to drag it to the train station. 

Back then, before the age of terrorism, security with the Eurostar was nothing like it is now.  I just about died of embarrassment when I couldn't get the beast up onto the shelf reserved for luggage and the gentleman next to me had to do it for me. And then I really wanted to just sink into the floor when he loudly declared for the whole cabin to hear, just how heavy my luggage was and what could I possibly be bringing that could be so heavy? I should have made up some ridiculous answer but all I could think of was the truth and that made him look at me even more incredulously. I took my seat and promised myself that I would wait a few years before coming back over the channel. By then maybe my embarrassment would have waned a bit.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I was actually hoping to see the water from the train windows once in the tunnel. I don't know what I pictured, maybe one of those viewing floors you find at an aquarium? Clearly I was quite the seasoned traveler by that point. But one thing is for sure, I successfully managed to get off that train and step onto French soil which turns out is a decision that would change my life from that point forward. 

Last Night I Had A Dream

Last night I dreamed a telephone was ringing. Usually this turns out to be your alarm and you wake up and have this weird sort of urge to answer the phone convinced the president is calling you and oh by the way you're late for school even though you graduated years ago. Gotta love dreams, right? But it wasn't my alarm. It was a Friday night and it was my turn to sleep in the next morning. Matt was mumbling something about letting them leave a message but I still stumbled out of bed, groping for the telephone because it was, after all, midnight, and even the most dedicated of telemarketers in Paris usually give up around 9 pm and turn in.

I didn't even really have time to get worried. It figures that something as horrific as the multiple terrorist attacks last night would have first made it all the way across the big blue expanse and to my parents' tv set before I was even conscious that people were dying so horribly in my city. 2015, it seems, in the most awfully literal way, will have begun and ended with a bang. Last January, as many of you still remember, Paris was touched by terrorism when a couple of men raided the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and executed many of the employees who worked there. I remember feeling conflicted. I was shocked in the face of such violence and horrified that those men lost their lives in the name of God. And yet, I couldn't raise them up as heroes and martyrs as so many of those around me. There is nothing heroic about mocking the sacred. Belittling someone's faith whether Jew, Christian, or Muslim (and they regularly made fun of all three), does not take courage and freedom of speech does not eliminate the necessity of wisdom in our words and actions.

In the days to come the nightmare unfolded in new and scary ways. I remember going shopping the day after during the traditional January sales--normally a zoo of shopping bags, stressed out shoppers, and fought over shoes. In the place of the usual consumerist crazy marched uniform clad soldiers with big guns and a chill trailing behind their clipped steps. Every shop was talking about it. In Gap they were joking that they should probably shave their beards so as not to be confused with terrorists. I saw Je Suis Charlie badges everywhere.  The day after I was at work when my boss informed me of the hostage situation taking place in a Jewish grocery store across the city not far from where good friends of ours live. Without panicking the children we needed to get them inside the school as quickly as possible and stay inside until the hostage situation had been resolved. We took down the sign on the front door indicating that we're a school and the reign of Alerte Vigipirate began. No more parking outside of city halls, schools, prominent churches, or the police station. A heavily armed man was now posted outside of our local synagogue. On Monday we heard that there was another hostage situation, this time only minutes down the road from the school next to a grocery store that we go to weekly. Once again we were tense and on edge; some of our school children live in that neighborhood.

As it turned out, the third attack was mercifully uneventful and not terrorist related but for the first time, my confidence in the stability of my city was shaken. You didn't know where or when the next attack was coming from. The first had been targeted; this, more and more random... It felt as if every troubled and radical Muslim in the city was coming out of the woodwork in angry vengeance. For the first time in a relatively sheltered Western life, I felt truly unsafe.  As a Christian, it was hard to know how to position myself. I knew all the Sunday school answers but deep down in my core I knew I needed more than just a platitude. The truth is, I was scared then and I'm scared now. I won't deny it and hide behind a front of pretending that Christians don't ever feel threatened by the overwhelming presence of evil in this world.

And evil it was. Reports are rolling in revealing the massacre of the night before. Whole cafe terraces shot dead while enjoying an evening drink. Young people murdered as they were shot up and thrown grenades at during a rock concert. Bomb blasts during a French-German soccer game. One of my friends, holed up during bible study and unable to get back to her nursing baby for fear of going out in the streets. A fellow parent from church stuck in the soccer stadium with his two small boys trying to reassure them. My coworker, about a week away from her due date lives in the very neighborhood the hostage situation took place in. Thankfully she was actually sleeping when it all took place but not having heard from her, I and another coworker were concerned.  Another friend had both her brother, sister and their spouses that went out for dinner in the neighborhood that got shot up. They were just 300 meters away from the restaurant shooting when it happened, thanking God that they had changed their mind about having dinner in that very restaurant earlier. They found refuge with a hundred other people hiding in a hotel basement.

This attack hits even closer to home than last January. The multiple shootings occurred in our old neighborhood, just a couple of blocks away from our former apartment. I can picture the concert hall that was shot up. I can imagine the cafe and bar nightlife well, having walked those streets many a time while living over there. The truth is, I am scared. I live in a city where I might be blown up just taking the subway or having a drink in a restaurant. I knew that before and I am reminded in the most horrific way possible that my physical safety can crumble at any second. But if I stay focused on this chapter in history then I will lose sight of the big picture. God's bigger picture. You see, I believe in a big God. A God who is writing a large narrative; one in which there is heartbreaking conflict but overwhelming resolution. The most joyful of happy endings. I am as baffled as the next person by the ways God moves and the tragedies he allows to occur. The Bible, however, promises a time coming when there will be no more tears. No more suffering. Evil completely weeded out and eradicated. A God who is waiting for the maximum number of souls to find their freedom, peace, and joy in him. So yes, I'm scared. But I also know where to tell my emotions to get off at when they threaten to consume me. Because this isn't the end of the story.

Oh Happy Day

                           

 

Oh happy day. It's Easter. Fabulous, soul-saving Easter.. I love Easter. I really do. Have you ever  noticed that everything around you screams Easter at this time of year? And I'm not talking about the chocolate egg aisle at your local grocery store either. (Although I admit those screams are pretty tempting...) In France, more so than in Oregon where I grew up, I feel like you can especially feel it. We have enough evergreens in Oregon to not make nature feel butt-naked but here in the Paris area life outside feels very dead during the winter months (and when you think that the majority of it is paved in concrete, I guess it kinda is...). In an oceanside state where you differentiate 3 seasons out of 4 by the amount of rainfall people learn that you might as well just throw a raincoat on it and call it good. In fact the first few months I lived over here (oh let's be honest--it lasted longer than that) I had to hide a grin every time I saw Frenchies frantically running for an awning to hide out under during a downpour. Until I realized that it actually makes sense here. In the Pacific Northwest, if you tried attempting that, you'd be waiting all day for that rain to let up (and maybe then some). Weather changes rapidly here so when it's nice out you seize on it; when it's not, you hibernate. When spring rolls around, those first tentative buds practically scream new life. Matt and I joke about how we get to know our neighbors again every year once spring hits. People venture out. Cafe's put out patio furniture and you can even find bikini clad sunbathers taking over the local parks (never really understood that phenomenon btw). Every spring Paris is reborn.

I love how everything around me reverberates with fresh new life come March and April. I love the cherry blossoms, the wild bulbs that sprout out of the most random places. I love how I come to life with every fresh start and each new time I take to soak up the life bringing message of Easter. The truth is I don't deserve the kind of grace that God has lavished on this brittle heart of mine. But just like my butt-naked trees I know that he will bring about something organic in all that brown and black should I choose to let him. Happy Easter to all of you. 

Ici, c'eeeeeeeeeest Paris!

Update: My husband told me I'm thinking too much like a girl and that I should have included the final score. So here it be: 4 Paris 2 Evian  (that means we won!)

There is this soccer team here called PSG. It stands for Paris Saint Germain and you say it like "Pay Ess Juh-ay). Our national team isn't always something to write home to Mom about but our Paris team, well they're another story. You see, a couple of years ago Qatar bought PSG. Yes, I really do mean the country of Qatar. And being that they are, how should I say it, uh, rich, they have been able to bring in a lot of big names. Currently we've got Zlatan Ibrahimovic (if you're as clueless as me here's the wikipedia link) and not so long ago David Beckham had a brief stint chez nous.  (side note: it's really too bad that he and Victoria decided not to bring the kids across the Channel--I was really hoping they'd enroll them in our school so that parent teacher conferences might be a little spiced up....haha, yes I did just say that...) 

Matt is a big fan of the PSG team and has made it a personal challenge to never miss telling me the score from a game. He knows that I don't really give a hoot and I think I've decided that his tactic is to persist, persist, persist in the hope that someday I'll grudgingly become a fan. Ironically, he also employs this strategy with classical music but I digress... So while I don't really like watching a soccer game on TV, I figured I could bite the bullet and give the whole 'live performance' bit a go. For Christmas I surprised him with two tickets to a PSG game against Evian (yes, where the water is from). 

We bundled up, waved goodbye repeatedly to the Livster (who was spending the afternoon doing the whole playdate thing with friends of ours), and embraced our temporary freedom by following the rambunctious sports fans on the metro. The weather was gorgeous, albeit freezing. All in all it was a really fun date as well as highly informative. Here's some of the life lessons I took away with me:

1. Security (heightened due to the recent terrorist attacks) does not like cans of diet coke (that's right, we will aspartame you all to death so watch out.)

2. The options for said coke cans are to chug or dump. Dumping a perfectly good can of pop is against my religion so we chugged. A lot. In front of security. If I didn't hate hashtagging so much I'd write #awkward moment.

3. Chugging a can of coke has consequences: a) your body goes into hypothermia as a result of having ice cold pop thrown into it during freezing temps b) you have to pee, and I mean really.

4. If you are of the lady persuasion, do not go to the bathroom. Qatar clearly spent all its mula on Ibrahimovic and didn't have any left over to spare for things like a garbage bin, paper towels, soap, or even toilet paper.

5. Later on I see a bunch of beer-filled men also using the ladies restroom and that seals the deal. No more peeing until home.

6.Unless you pay better money than we did, expect seat assignments to be a very loose concept.

7. The sports arena is the modern man's attempt to go to war. There is everything you need: war paint, drums, chants, flags and lots of old fashioned trash-talking.

8. The chants are the arena's way of separating the true fans from the fakers. I gave up trying to figure out all the chants and decided mouthing watermelon would serve my purposes just fine.

9. The terrorist attacks reached even the sphere of the stadium: we held a moment of silence for each of the recent victims.

10. Scoring on your own team is bad. It will probably make the little man in the coaches boxes very animated.

And there you have it. My life changing encounter with PSG aka going on a date with the hubs.

A Cueillette-ing We Will Go!

You guys. I'm in love with a farm. (A husband and daughter too just in case any of your were worried).  But not just any farm, a cueillette kind of farm. It's a good thing I've got friends that aren't as lazy as me otherwise I would have passed all this cueillette-y goodness without a clue (as in, my friend Heidi actually looks up cool places to go even after more than a decade of living in France). I mean, I've lived here for seven years now and just found out about these things the other day. But what is a cueillette farm, you might just be asking yourself? So glad you asked. Below, ladies and gentlemen, is a cueillette: 

        cueillir

   

                       vt  

              [ +fruits, fleurs]   to pick

           (ANTHROPOLOGIE)   to gather

           (fig)   (=attraper)   

               [+malfaiteur]   to catch

cueillette

   
      nf  

   [+champignons, fruits sauvages]   picking, gathering  
la cueillette des champignons      mushroom picking  

   [récolte]   harvest, crop

     (ANTHROPOLOGIE)  

   la chasse et la cueillette      hunting and gathering  

I mean, who doesn't want to go to a farm where catching, gathering, and hunting is involved, right?? The way a cueillette farm works is basically like a glorified u-pick farm. Only instead of just berries and whatnot, they have a little of everything, including flowers! Fun right?  

They way it works is you grab one of these big ol' wheelbarrows at the entrance and head out to whatever part of the farm that has the seasonal produce you might be interested in. 

Here's a list of just a few of their products mentioned on the sign below: beans, eggplant, tomatoes, spicy peppers, zucchini, raspberries, spinach and radishes. 

And of course not an awful place to take the kiddos: 

Near the entrance/exit they had a few products already picked and get this: pumpkins were less than 5 euros a piece! That's half the price of a Paris pumpkin! (Please understand this is important news to us American expats that are forced to tramp all over Paris every year looking for a dang pumpkin to carve only to have to sell all our possessions just to buy the thing)

Spaghetti squash below: 

Putting the wheelbarrow to good use: (laziness must run in the family...lol) 

In the apple orchards, pickin' with Papa: 

As it turns out the girl is much better at picking up apples on the ground than cleaning up her toys... 

After our hard work on the farm we decided to head over to the other end where the animals and store were located. 

This, believe it or not, is an 'insect hotel'. I still haven't decided whether it is cool or creepy... 

Isn't this just the cutest chicken coop ever?  It kind of looks like a little house! 

I have to say I was pretty blown away by their store. Here I am expecting a couple zucchinis and tomatoes and this was the view that awaited us:

I mean, everything just looks gorgeous, doesn't it?? 

I loved some of the different creative displays as well. Check out the sausage stand: 

And is this not the most beautiful display you've ever seen for fresh herbs? Only in Europe would they make a fountain into a plant display! 

They also have a cafe/restaurant within the store as well. It was a little pricey for our little outing but definitely something to not rule out in the future! (Besides, who doesn't love a dog presenting you with the menu??) 

Good times were had by all. Here's our fall harvest that we took away: 

 Not too shabby, aye? 

The name of the place we went to is called Les Fermes de Gally and you can check out the website here:  http://www.ferme.gally.com/_cueillette-acces-horaires-cueillette-de-gally   There are quite a few cueillettes in the Paris area though, if you're interested, just do a google search for cueillettes in Paris and you're sure to find some! Happy picking!