Trudging into Spring

The New Year began with me taking full advantage of French social services. Having spent the majority of my winter break running around while sick instead of resting eventually did me in. On New Year's day I found myself unable to stop coughing and having difficulty breathing when lying down. I decided to call the house-call doctor service, S.O.S. Médicins, to figure out what the heck was going on. The man on the line, who fortunately was able to attend to me in English, told me the doctor would get to my house within about two hours. Only forty minutes later the doorbell rang. A standoffish doctor dressed in jeans waltzed in, asked me what was wrong, listened to my lungs and took my temperature and then said, "Voilá, you have the flu." He wrote me several prescriptions for cough medicine, fever reducers, decongestants and antibiotics and charged me the same as it would cost to go to the doctor without insurance here (around $60). Since most pharmacies were closed I'd still have to suffer through the night. The next day, Charlie went out for my drugs. At the pharmacy he told the pharmacist I had insurance but that he didn't have my card. The pharmacist warned him that the medication would be expensive. When Charlie asked, "How much?" the guy replied, "Twenty euros" (roughly $27). When Charlie came back he began the recounting of this exchange with, "I love France."

Well, despite being convenient and efficient, the doctor wasn't exactly right. That was just the beginning of several horrible sleepless nights of endless coughing until I could get in to see my normal doc. She determined that I had bronchitis and gave me several more medications, including an inhaler, so that I could get over it. I was finally starting to feel better when I was stricken by a sudden sharp pain in my side that was hindering my movements and making it difficult to even sit or lie in certain positions or to lift my right arm. Once again I found myself back at the doc getting an ultrasound to rule out gall bladder and liver problems. When that was clear she decided I must have injured myself from coughing too hard (as in torn muscles or fractured ribs), prescribed me pain killers and told me to come back in a few days. What would have been my follow-up and likely x-ray appointment fell by the wayside thanks to my doc's incompetent answering service, so I decided just to wait it out. After two full weeks of intense pain it finally started to subside. I'm now two months on and it still hurts a little, but is manageable.

All the while I was suffering through this crap, school had begun again. My first week of class I had a large paper due and had to do some administrative backflips to get out of a class I didn't want and into one that I did. All turned out fine. I got an A on the paper (which means I got straight A's all last semester) and am now taking classes in the history of cultural translation, psycholinguistics, ethnographic methodology (this class involves chocolate tasting!), second language acquisition and an extremely fun translation workshop. This last class just gave me several homework assignments that I'm supposed to do over spring break and I'm actually excited to do them. On the side I'm trying to study some French too. Also, my classmates and I finally booked our tickets for our upcoming class trip to Istanbul and will be flying out mid-March (assuming that the revolutionary trend hasn't arrived in Turkey by then). In the meantime I'm trying to work up the motivation to add some Turkish to my language lessons as well.

There have been a few picture-worthy events in the last couple of months. First, for one of my classes we had to go on a tour to lesser known artisanal chocolate shops around Paris. One of the perks of this tour was getting to taste chocolate, but halfway through I was already feeling overwhelmed and sickened by it, so I declined to eat any more.

Nom nom nom

A few days later I was sitting calmly in my apartment when this happened...

(The dinging is our courtyard clock striking twelve.) This was certainly not the first time I had heard air-raid sirens in Paris. The first time it happened was several months ago. As soon as I realized what it was, it produced an adrenaline response in my body - you know, throbbing heart/head, fluttering stomach, shaky hands. I got up and went to the window (bad idea), opened it (worse idea) and tried to listen for bombs falling, guns firing, people screaming, etc. However, everything seemed quietly in order. I went to my computer (no TV) and did a Parisian news search to see what was happening, but there was nothing to speak of. Then I did a search on air-raid sirens in Paris and discovered that they test them at noon on the first Wednesday of every month. Phew! Now, hopefully no one ever attacks Paris at that exact moment or we'll all be screwed.

Then it was Chinese New Year. A classmate of mine who spent quite a while living in China proposed that we all get together and make dumplings for the occasion. I offered up my unusually large Parisian kitchen up for the construction of these morsels and we spent a lovely evening eating and bitching about school.

 Dan and Charlie start the prepping.

 Everyone joins in the fun of filling and forming the dumplings.

 Waiting to be boiled

In the meantime, I made my Szechuan sesame noodles with pork.

A few nights later as I was waiting for the bus home from class, I caught sight of something that I see often but never when I have a camera.

Beaming

That same week I learned that one of my musical idols and the partial subject of my thesis, Hasna el Becharia, was going to be in town.... well, not exactly "in town". She ended up being invited to perform in a tiny village about an hour west of Paris by train. Because I have been in contact with one of her bandmates who lives here in Paris, I was able to arrange another interview with her. This time I hired an awesome Algerian Arabic interpreter and got to spend a good half-hour talking to Hasna. We also got to see the sound check, which was essentially a private concert, and then stayed for the actual performance.

 Souad Asla and Hasna el Becharia

Hasna wails on the guembri.

Then it was Valentine's Day. There was much more celebration here in Paris than I had expected. Charlie and I don't really do Valentine's Day because we make it a point to spend pretty much every day sickening other people with our lovey dovey nonsense. For dinner we contented ourselves with leftover bread, cheese and sausage. Afterwards, Charlie made a nice dessert of fancy fruit (basically, that which is not in season) and port sabayon, topped with chocolate shavings and candied lemon.

There are figs under the sauce too!

And one of Charlie's classmates brought us some amusing chocolates from Belgium:

They were delicious too.

Next up will be my very first solo trip into the French countryside. Be back soon!