Why I love malamutes and colonial archives

How can you resist this beautiful puppydog? He looks just like my former dog Brandy.


See more pics here: The Daily Puppy

I just got back from Aix-en-Provence, which was unfortunately almost as cold as it has been in Paris. The colonial archives are, however, possibly the most pleasant archives in the entire world. The reading rooms have lots of light and are comfortable, the staff is incredibly friendly and helpful. And best of all, they have an incredibly liberal digital photo policy! It could only be better if the words "secret archives" were carved in stone over the entrance. However, this is the picture at the entrance to these archives:


If you can't read French slang, it says that the archives are an "anti-fascist zone," which is comforting. It's never good to have fascists in the archives.

Now I'm on my vacation, although I have to kill a few days before Aaron arrives. But I will take lots of pictures of us so that you can see my excellent new beret!

Bonnes fêtes à tous!

Christmas Time is Here

I took a break from my nightly television watching to stroll along Boulevard Haussmann to look at the Christmas lights and windows at the big department stores. These are pictures from Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, which are probably roughly equivalent to Macy's and Fortunoff in the US. I really liked the lights on the Galeries Lafayette because it had a very nice North African mosaic pattern with lights that went on and off in really beautiful and complex patterns. Here are a few examples:





Then Printemps had a kind of tacky setup with nets of lights over their domes and then lights under the main awnings of the store. For some reason they had a Norlandic theme with lots of hideous windows with what I imagine were supposed to be fairies with blond braids that kept getting hung up in trees and things and hideous crystal glassware everywhere. But they did have a few cute animal scenes including these penguins and polar bears. And to its credit, Printemps did have a couple of large pictures of George Clooney on the front of the building.




Unfortunately all the parents kept pushing their little kids up to the front and being quite rude so I didn't get very good pictures. Christmas is really when I most hate strollers and little kids. Why would you bring your stroller onto the busiest sidewalk in the entire city just to spend two seconds looking at a mechanical penguin, especially when the temperature was probably in the teens at most (fahrenheit that is)? Plus we nearly saw a few out and out brawls between parents whose children couldn't get close enough to the front and were ready to take everyone down. Parents get pretty psycho when you mess with their child's enjoyment of "the magic of Christmas."

Those of you who know me well enough to know about my unspoken-of past life in the sign language performing group will understand why any phrase that contains the words "children" or "magic" at Christmas makes me scowl ferociously. I have no other way to explain my lack of Christmas cheer. Fortunately I'm going to a party tonight with lots of spiced wine, cider and cheese so that should raise my Christmas spirits!

Au Champs Elysées!

My sleeping schedule has somehow shifted a few hours so that I usually can't get to sleep before 1 or 2 and it takes a lot of self-persuasion to haul myself out of bed by 9 am. I think it is partly to do with the fact that the sun doesn't actually rise here until that late hour of nearly 9, and if the sun's not up, I see no reason why I should be!

The (good?) side about this new schedule is that it gives me an opportunity to listen to late night radio on France Inter, roughly the equivalent to NPR. At around 1:30 last night I was laying there trying to think myself to sleep when the song "Au Champs Elysées" came on the radio. Now if you never took French in junior high or high school, you have probably never heard this song. And I have to say this is the first time I have ever heard it outside of my high school French class. But it reminded me of how cheesy European songs are all the rage in language programs. In addition to the venerable "Au Champs Elysées," French teachers often bring out "Frère Jacques" or "Alouette" or even Johnny Hallyday when they're desperate (previous postings have already outlined my opinions on his musical talent).

But as I was lying there thinking about these songs, I suddenly remembered that, while French songs kind of suck, Dutch songs are horrible! When I did my language course in the Netherlands a few years ago, everyday we could look forward to some sort of awful sing along in pronunciation class and at the organized events planned for us (and you all know how I feel about forced groupy-groupiness and organized events - if they'd made us wear matching t-shirts I would have gone AWOL to Amsterdam!). Since it was the 50th year or something of this organization's international language school, they brought several Dutch "celebrities" to entertain us, including the Netherlands' most famous novelist of World War II ( and since they can never move beyond WWII, he probably will be forever), and some old pop singer who must have really been desperate to come sing in our cafeteria/ping pong room with a band of dirty old men who in the bar later were hitting on the beautiful Russian girls with astonishing tactics. But her most famous song, apparently, is one of the Dutch people's favorites because it is all about the smell of the canals in Amsterdam. I don't remember the canals smelling all that bad, but apparently sometimes they do and it must be immortalized in song!

But by far the worst offender, in my mind, in the cheesy European song department, is the song titled "'t Is altijd lente in de ogen van de tandartsassistente," which translates to "It is always springtime in the eyes of the dental hygienist." If the Dental hygienist union ever needed a theme song, this would be it! I wonder if this song ever made it to Eurovision... I think it might have fit in beautifully!

Do any of my fellow foreign travelers have any classic songs to add to the list?