No one told me about the gym, which is hidden in the bowels of our massive building. But, quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the was a zoo in our building or maybe even a gateway to another world. It is absolutely huge and I am always stumbling on new stairways or elevators or rooms. Last week, I learned there is a whole different entrance to our building and frankly, the marble and the big sweeping double staircase are about as glorious as the Louvre.

In any case, another intern told me about the gym and emailed me the schedule of free classes.

Last Monday, I went down there with her. It really was at the end of the world: I swear we hiked through winding, nonsensical corridors for like ten minutes. I had almost lost faith in its existence when we arrived.

And sure enough, we opened a door and entered into a little tiny gym with a mirrored wall, a treadmill, weights, an elliptical and a changing room with showers. About twenty people in sweats were already lifting their arms in the air.

And so, in a surreal break from my day of news headlines, typing and translation, I joined the group. I love taking exercise, dance and yoga classes in French. You learn all different great words and if you don’t understand, you just look at everyone else and wave your arms like they are doing. You bond over the moves you can’t do (thirty more squats) and the small successes (drink break!).

Anyway, I had such a great time at Monday’s class that I returned a few days later.  Because Monday’s class was pretty relaxing, I was not expecting an intense workout: but that is what I got. But then again, I never really end up getting what I am expecting in France (I should know that by now.)

A stocky former boxer cheered us on but counted brutally slowly as we strained every muscle in our bodies in squats and kicks and all the rest of it.

It was a great gym bonding experience and a little surreal to return to the newsroom afterwards. But that is what this gym is: surreal. And full of good stories.

The other day, I went with another intern and the instructor failed to show up. We were ready to give up when a journalist who happened to be working out decided to be a gym teacher for the day (I promise, we didn’t ask him to.) Instead, he just began to give us advice and pretty soon, instructions. Like many French people I have met, he had a way of seeming like a complete expert (I mean, who was I to know if he wasn’t?) and so when he said “fifty rotatations,” well, we did it.

Forty-five minutes later, we were sweaty and tired. Our “instructor” was still going strong, but we thanked him and made a quick exit towards the changing room.

As my friend so artfully put it, “He sure missed his true calling.”

As part of the official announcement, he unveiled a trifold digital strategy and his campaign image.  I ended up working on articles about each of these two topics and they become the two most in-depth political articles that I have yet to work on at Le Figaro.

I realized that some things change (politics in the age of the internet) but some things (use of image) stay the same. As I analyzed Sarkozy’s campaign poster, I kept thinking about the art history essays I wrote on medieval paintings as an undergraduate. The horizon indicates the future…

Check out the links. I think they are pretty interesting!

» The Face of Sarkozy’s Election Campaign

» Sarkozy Confirms Re-Election Bid: “Yes, I Am a Candidate”

» Is Sarkozy More of an Internet Candidate Than Obama?

It was also utterly fascinating.

The anecdote that sticks with me, however, came from after the lecture. I went up to the French speaker to thank him for his time and caught him in the midst of a story.

He was recounting a recent lunch date he had with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right political party the Front National.  She is getting a lot of attention lately as a surprisingly large number of French citizens support her campaign.

The journalist said that Le Pen may have so much support because she is actually quite reasonable-sounding when she speaks. Moreover, she is polite and personable. In short, she has really tried to differentiate herself for the image of her extremist father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had a large following in the 1990s (to the horror of many moderate and leftist French voters.) Le Pen senior is still making headlines… he was recently fined and sentenced to three months in prison for saying that the German Occupation of France during WWII was “not that inhumane.”

Anyway, the lunch was going well between Marine Le Pen and the journalist when he asked her a great question.

‘Honestly, with the state that France is in, do you really want to be the president?’ he asked.

The journalist said Marine Le Pen’s entire demeanor shifted. The pleasant graciousness was left far behind. A fiery look came over her and she drew herself up.

‘But don’t you understand?’ she said. ‘Only I can save France.’

From the way she said it, there was no doubt to the journalist that she believed every word she said.

According to his account, Marine Le Pen’s utter conviction for her isolationist, anti-immigrant campaign is not just politics. She truly believes that Joan of Arc would do the same.

“Well, yeeeeah,” said K.

The moment when I realized I had a boyfriend and didn’t even know it was probably when I fully understood the complications of cross-cultural dating.

So, as a little Valentine’s Day entry, I thought I’d share what I see as the big differences between relationships à la française and à l’américaine. Not that I am in any way an expert (I mean, honestly, dating in your own culture is hard enough.)

In the USA, I think we put a lot of effort in defining the relationship. I have always gone by the rule that you are not allowed to call someone your boyfriend (or girlfriend) until you talk about it. As relationships evolve organically and not mathematically AND we are not all good communicators in this world, a lot of Americans end up defining their relationship as “um, it’s complicated.”

In France, there isn’t really the same stress about definitions. Relationships move fluidly. One of my friends told me that the only time you bother to stop and define what you are is if you are conciously cultivating something with no romantic attachment. Otherwise, after you’ve seen someone a few times (or in some cases, after a really good first date), they become your “copain” or your “copine.”  Nine years later, if you are still dating that same person, they are still your “copain” or “copine.”

In the US, we tend to make a distinction. People in my sister’s age group start with “talking” with someone (basically consistent flirting and playing with the idea of a relationship.) Then, you “date” or “see” someone in a more serious-than-talking-but-still-casual way. Only when it becomes serious does that person becomes your “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.”

So you can imagine how shocked I was to learn I had a boyfriend. My American friends were right there with me.

“I think I need to break up with him,” I confided in a friend over Skype.

“Wait, what?” she said. “Break up? When did you start dating?”

Good question.

In the end, I can see advantages in both systems. I like it that the French definition is so liberal: in that way, you don’t have to display how serious or casual your relationship is to everyone who asks. It is more natural, fluid and relaxed, which is good because no relationship is the same. You can’t fit it into a certain box and it is unfair to label something in a way that has preconceived notions attached.

That said, being a girl who was raised in the Midwest, I think I kind of need that definition that I grew up with.

If for no other reason, to know what to write to friends back home.

One of them is the daily struggle to decode my friend’s texts, which can sometimes leave me absolutely baffled.

Just like Americans have g2g and lol and ttyl and a score of other abbreviations, French young people have also taken to these shortcuts despite the moans of their elders (the French are, after all, notorious lovers and defenders of their language.)

• The first shortcut that seriously stumped me was mdr. Try as I might, I kept reading it in my head as ‘murder,’ which seemed pretty drastic in the context of the conversations where it came up. I finally just had to ask. The answer? Not murder, but pretty deadly all the same. Mdr stands for ‘mort de rire,’ which means ‘dying of laughter.’
• A lot of texts can be understood if you just read them aloud as the abbreviations are homonyms. Anything that in French is normally written with a ‘que’ (like quelle, for example) can be shortened to a ‘k’ in a text. In that vein, ‘quelle’ becomes ‘kel.’
• I figured out ‘tt’ by saying it aloud, too… ‘tt’ is an abbreviation for ‘tout.’ Cmt is short for ‘comment’ and pr is ‘pour.’
• As if it was tiring, you don’t need to worry about writing out the full ‘je.’ Simple phrases like ‘je prends’ (I’m taking or I take) becomes ‘jprends.’
• All of this is made five thousand times worse when you account for the inevitable human error of typos, which can happen in any language. It was thus that I got a series of texts about my friend being desperately in love with ‘Karim’ (Who in the WORLD is Karim? I thought desperately) only to later confirm that T9 had replaced ‘Karim’ for ‘Farid’… which made so much more sense. There is still the looming question of how Karim and Farid got switched (still not sure how that happened) but at least I have the story straight.

Dear readers, do you know any text lingo that I am missing out on?

So, I was in crisis mode when the company decided to discontinue it (I guess it really was my special scent and no one else was buying it.)

Right after they discontinued it, I ordered a bottle off of EBay. But by the time I had finished that bottle, prices had skyrocketed. Guess there were other people who loved it after all.

It was sad, but true. I had to face the facts. I’d have to find another scent.

I came to that decision several weeks ago and I figured that there are worse things in life then shopping for perfume in Paris. I also had a teeny hope that maybe I could find an equivalent to my cherished perfume.  With that goal in mind, I typed ‘honeysuckle’ into my favorite online dictionary.

When I saw the response, I sighed. ‘Chèvrefeuille.’ One of those over-vowelled French words that Anglophones like me shipwreck over. I kind of guessed then that this was going to be a difficult mission.

But I bravely set off. I went to Sephora, which happens to be close to my work. I approached the over made up woman standing idly by the perfume shelves.

‘Bonjour! Can I ask you a question?’ I asked timidly in French. ‘I’m looking for a perfume with the scent of chèvrefeuille.’

I kind of stumbled over the last word.

The woman’s face didn’t react except for eyebrows that shot up towards the ceiling.

‘You’re, umm, looking for a perfume with the scent of… chèvre?’

She had only heard the first part of the word. And there could not have been a more awkward result : chèvre means goat.

I had walked into a perfume store and asked to smell like a goat. That pretty much wins as far as language mistakes go.

I struggled to explain, but the damage was done. She had never heard of chèvrefeuille. Hoping to guide me in a better direction, she began to present me with random other scents. I thanked her and made my quick exit.

After a long search, I did find a chèvrefeuille perfume in France made by Annick Goutal. It smelled divine—absolutely perfect—but it was way out of my price range. So I adjusted.

New smell: rose petals, which smell exactly like the ‘perfume’ I made when I was little by gathering and mashing my grandma’s rose petals.

Being a big city, Paris has immigrant communities from all over the world. Last week, the Chinese communities in Paris celebrated the Chinese New Year in style. The streets by Place d’Italie were packed with revelers, groups breaking in to the colorful dragon and lion dances, people eating clementines for luck and lots of explosions: firecrackers are traditional, too, for starting the year with a bang! 

Everyone turned out to watch the Chinese New Year’s parade. These girls had a great viewpoint over everyone’s heads.

The churches in the primarily Chinese area were also welcoming in the Chinese New Year.This couple was eating a lucky New Year's meal. On the decorated tree, you can see clementines, which are supposed to bring good luck!

This couple was eating a lucky New Year's meal. On the decorated tree, you can see clementines, which are supposed to bring good luck!

The streets were littered with evidence of the firecrackers and our eardrums were ringing for hours.

And as the holidays change, the traditional pastries change, too. While the perfectly golden, crusty, almond-y galette de rois is reserved for the Feast of the Kings or Epiphany, which falls in January, February is the time for steaming stacks of crêpes for Chandeleur.

After the pastry dough is cut and rolled out, you mix up the frangipane and scoop it in.

Don’t get me wrong, I am really frickin’ excited about crêpe season. Like, really. But like all of life, like the passage of the seasons and the passage of years, moving on also means giving something up. My short and sweet (very sweet) fling with the galette de rois is over.  Until next year.

I have been meaning to write about this uncanny affair all month. Before this January, I had never before had a galette de rois or celebrated the holiday that comes along with it. I have to admit something: I wasn’t excited at first. Because (I know this is blasphemy) but I don’t really like flaky pastries. I know. Here I am in Paris and I don’t like croissants or pain au chocolat. Sorry. And the galette de rois seemed awfully similar.

When one of my best friends was visiting from the US, a Parisian friend (lets call her “my Parisian grandma”) gave us each an enormous slice of the pastry. On her last evening here, we had it with chilled rosé and basically died of pleasure.

Once the pastry has almond filling in the interior, you fold and seal the edges.

My love affair had started. Like the best affairs, it was short, sweet and very intense. At the beginning of January, I had never tasted a galette de rois, now as the month comes to a close, I have to admit that I have eaten it on… one, two, three… seven occasions. And several of those occasions included multiple slices.

There was the late morning slump in the newsroom suddenly brightened when a colleague opened up a bakery box, there were the individual cakes (another gift from my “Parisian grandma”) shared as a late night snack when my sister was here, there was the glamorous lunchtime celebration in a covered courtyard presided over by the head of Le Figaro and accompanied by champagne (it pays to be an intern sometimes) and there was the snowy morning slices with my “adoptive” French family. All of this culminated in a baking lesson where I learned to make the traditional cake with my Parisian grandma, rolling out the thin pastry dough and watching it raise to incredible, golden heights in the oven.

It isn’t just the cake that’s fun… the tradition is fun, too. The cake is cut and the youngest member of the family hides under the table. This got extremely ridiculous considering as I was never in a galette de rois situation with little kids. My French “sister” (age 14) was pretty much the youngest it got. Other times, it was someone in their twenties giving up all dignity in the name of tradition. In any case, as the server picks up each slice, the youngest calls out who will get it from under the table. That is supposed to ensure that is completely up to chance whoever gets the fève hidden inside.

The gold of the crown of the three kings cake comes from brushing egg onto the pastry.

Did I tell you about the fève? The fève is a little lucky figurine baked into the cake. Whoever gets it is supposed to have a lucky year.

My friends admitted to me that they were terrified of getting the fève when they were in elementary school. If you got the fève, you were nominated king (or queen) and… horror of horrors… you had to choose your ruling partner from among your classmates. Basically, you were going to get teased the rest of the year no matter WHO you picked.

This January, I did finally get the fève… but considering how many pieces I had eaten by the end of January, the ratio was pretty good.

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