Pooped out in Paris

I went to the grocery store (you go every day here--I am NOT joking) to get something for dinner.  Since I was going to get quite a few things, I took my Rolster.  This is the method for transporting the groceries that are too heavy to carry or you don't have delivered.  Yes!!  They deliver groceries here.  I have only done it once because the website is in French, so it's pretty time-consuming for me at this point.  You can also shop in the store, then take your loot to the delivery station in the store, where they box it up and then deliver it to you later.  This probably requires a pretty detailed conversation that might be difficult for me to mime, so I have not attempted this yet.  I'm hoping to bring a French friend with me to help translate, but since I don't have a French friend with loads of free time to go to the grocery store with me, I'm rolling with my cart right now.

I got my groceries (Beef Tips with red wine!) and rolled along my way to wait for the bus.  I had to wait for about 10 minutes--no problem until I got on the bus and noticed a bird had pooped on my Rolster!!  Really??  Cleaned it off best I could on the bus and got the rest off at home.  What are the odds that a bird comes to poop on my brand-new grocery cart out of all the people sitting and standing there waiting on a bus?  There were probably at least 10 others that bird could poop on!!  Maybe it was my stylish cart that caught his eye?  

Too stylish for Paul.  He was like, couldn't you get something more discreet??  I'm not rolling that thing!!

Bird Poop, Part Deux

That afternoon, I sat down at my computer to write.  It was a beautiful day yesterday--sunny and about 70 degrees, so I had my French doors open.  (Not sure if they call them French doors here or not, I think they might just be windows...ha!)  Anyway, we have big windows on either side of our living area, which is great considering we have no air conditioning.  Since it was beautiful, I had both sides open.

Next thing I know, a huge pigeon has landed on my balcony (which is only about a foot wide) and is stuck there between the glass window and the railing on the balcony.  I'm sure I don't have to explain to you how excited my dogs were about this situation.  I closed the window as fast as I could so the bird wouldn't get in the house--yes, that has already happened once!  So then the dogs are racing back and forth in front of the window trying to catch the pigeon, who poor thing, is trying despeately to fly away.  Our railing is about 3-4 feet high, so the pigeon needed to fly straight up, then out over the railing to get away.  As you can see, we put mesh after arriving due to the fact that our dogs can easily slip through the railing--we are on the 3rd floor, which is actually the 4th floor in the US.  (They count the first floor as "0" here.)

The pigeon kept flying into the glass, the dogs were attacking the glass trying to get the pigeon and I was trying to catch both dogs.  Max had his signature "yelp" going loud and proud.  Coco was barking, too.  I think she was excited that Max was excited.  Putting the dogs into their crate would not be really helpful in this instance as that would cause Max to yelp louder with more enthusiasm.  Of course, I stopped to snap some pictures...

CoCo is the excited blur!

poor bird

I finally got ahold of both dogs' collars and dragged them into the foyer and closed all the doors.  Max continued to yelp and I continued to yell NO!!  Be quiet!!  I got my broom.

*2 asides to mention here:  First, Max has already caught and killed a pigeon on the street about a month ago.  I'm not sure how, I mean, he' s Yorkie, for crying out loud!  The girls were walking the dogs and next thing, Katherine phones from downstairs and was hysterical, telling us to get downstairs right now!!  Turns out, Max snuck under a big wrought iron fence and nabbed a pigeon and had it in his mouth.  It was pretty disgusing, but he was proud.  We bathed him like 3 times that night.  Gross!!

Second, I am afraid of heights, so I had to get the girls to walk out on the balcony to put the mesh on the railing.  I just can't go out there.  and, no, I have not been up on the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame.  Or anything else tall since I went up on the Hancock Place Building in Boston about 15 years ago.  As soon as I got to the top, I got all panicked and went right back down.  

I had to get the pigeon unstuck somehow, so I opened the window and stuck my broom out.  Poor pigeon keeps trying to fly into my window for another 10 minutes while I poke at his feet with the broom.  Finally, he latched on to the broom and I slowly lifted him up to the railing.  I was a little worried something might be wrong with him, and when I lifted him up, he would just drop over the edge because he couldn't fly--I didn't really want to drop an injured bird on someone on the street--or my neighbor just below me who has a big balcony set up with a table and chairs...all that was going through my head and also the fact I had to actually step one foot out on my balcony.  But, once he got over the railing, he flew right into the tree and acted like 2 dogs had never tried to kill him. 

 Woo-Hoo!!!  Bird gone, dogs calm.  But, of course, he left several "gifts" on my balcony.  

Cross Country Weekend

Can you tell which one is my daughter?  Hint:  longest legs & hot pink shoes

We are recovering after our first Cross Country meet.  (Disclaimer: we usually need to recover after we do anything here for the first time...)  We hosted our first cross country meet with the girls competing and also housed 2 athletes from the American Community School in Cobham (London, England).  It was fun!!

Each weekend this fall, our school competes against the other American International schools in Europe in soccer, volleyball and cross country.  There is a winter and spring season as well with other sports, too, so the kids can participate in 3 or 4 sports each year.

The part I like is how the teams travel to other schools to compete over the weekends.  We host the opponents' team in our home Friday night and take them to the competition along with our own kids.  Everyone who has athletes competing is expected to host the visiting teams.  Reminds me of the time some team got stranded after a football game at Forsan and I awoke to find several high school boys had spent the night with us--can't remember what team that was or why they were stranded, but I bet those boys were on their best behavior since they ended up spending the night at the opposing coach's house...ha!

So, on Friday afternoon, the Cobham team arrived and their cross country team walked the course.  I added some of the pictures I took so you could see our course is a real trail--none of that running around the nicely manicured lawn at Doerre my girls did back in middle school.  Yesterday, they ran a 5K on rocks, mud, wet leaves, up hills, through trees, and on trails.  It was really cool!  (Maybe more of the high school courses in Houston are like this--my family didn't get to experience that--ya'll can let me know if I'm exaggerating about how hard the course seemed to me.)  I'm a sissy when it comes to running, so cross country running impresses me quite a bit.  I can only run in a tennis match or if someone puts a baton in my hand for a relay.  I could possibly run 3 miles if someone was stealing my kids or dogs.

St. Cloud is up on a hill, so a great view of the city from here.

Our school competes in volleyball (boys play here, too) and soccer matches on Friday night and Saturday morning.  Cross country is a 5K run (about 3 miles) on Saturday morning.  According to the parents I met, the teams usually run in the rain every meet.  The rain feels a little Houston-ish except it is NOT one thousand degrees with a million percent humidity--it is cold.  And, dogs were all over the course, which I found hilarious and happy.  Fun to see big dogs running all over the park and the runners trying to avoid them.  Also, cyclists and other runners right on the course.  Quite a change from my UIL-controlled sports career back in high school--you Texans out there will remember the many rules & regulations.  Heck, the UIL One-Act Play competition has its own complete book of rules--a LONG book.

The Texans were all freezing, but Megan (our Scottish Texan friend, now lately attending the Cobham school) said this weather is MILD. This is her third year there and she loves it--ran a great race, too, and finished in the top 10.  Of course, she stayed with us, which was super-fun.  She was our neighbor in Gleannloch Farms since she & Laura were about 2 years old.  We were able to see the whole McKay family back in June, which was awesome.  Hope to ski with them over the Christmas break, too.  So all in all, friendly competition and a good time had by all.

Ana, Megan & Laura before the meet

So what do you cook for supper for some kids from Scotland, Idaho and Cleveland?  Tex-Mex, of course. I made some chicken tacos along with chips & salsa.  2 of the girls are vegetarians, but luckily, they still eat chicken. We enjoyed hosting and it was fun having a house full of girls.

Here's where Laura & Katherine will be travelling to compete this season:
September 20-The Hague
October 11-Brussels
November 1-Amsterdam

Team hugs & congrats

We host other schools the weeks in between, so looking forward to more friendly competition.  Our school is hosting the Cross Country International School Final, so all the teams listed above will travel to Paris in November, along with Luxembourg, St. John's in Brussels; The British School of Paris and the British School of Brussels and several different schools from London.  I'm looking forward to seeing my friend, Susan Lidback's boys run with the TASIS team from London.  Andrew and Arne were in my piano studio back in the day, so excited to see that sweet family!  Seems the international schools are chock full of Texans including another Total family, the Canfields, whose daughter, Cate, plays volleyball in Brussels.  No matter where you are, some friendly Texans are there--isn't that cool? So to wrap up, I'll be looking for a warmer coat and a bigger umbrella before the next cross country meet.

A Tennis Match Too Far

Tour Eiffel from Saint Cloud

Many times it has come up in conversation about the crazy things my friends & I do to re-arrange our lives to play tennis.  Laundry at 11:00 pm (that was always me!), accounting work in the middle of the night, cramming 40 hours of work into 3 days....But, if you ever wondered how far I would go for a tennis match, you've got your answer now:  I walked through 3 small towns, (I think) about 5 miles in about 2 hours!  Yes, I have finally have discovered a strategy that could possibly allow me to beat my friend, tennis superstar Christi Hastings:  drop her off about 5-6 miles from the match with a heavy racquet bag to carry in a foreign country!  Make her find her way to the match in a new language!! Then, I might somehow wear out even Christi, who has been known to do a complete triathlon BEFORE her tennis match...ha!  But, here was my day yesterday:
A nice gal from my girls' school organized a tennis group for Tuesdays.  I was really excited to join and get out and play after taking an extended leave from tennis.  In fact, I haven't played since April.  So sweet Corry sent an email about playing, along with the address for the courts.  I wasn't really sure how to get there without driving.  I mean, I could drive, but that is really scary since I haven't driven before in Paris, not to mention, I have only ridden in a car twice since July when we arrived.  So, I made my plan to catch the bus, followed by a train out to Bougival, where the club is located.  I figured once I got there, I would just navigate to the tennis club on my phone (GPS/google maps) and walk.  When I entered all the info, I could not find the section from the train station to the tennis club, but what the heck!  I can do this!!  If I can drive all over the 4th largest city in the US to play tennis, how difficult can finding this tennis club be? It's a small town....

I walked through Bougival, Louveciennes and La Celle-Saint Cloud!

Off I went in my tennis clothes with my bag to the bus from my place in Neuilly to Pont de Neuilly, to catch the metro.  Rode that to La Defense, then tried to catch the train to Bougival, but hit a snag:  the French bus/train drivers decided to strike, so my train's arrival time kept getting later and later... But, it finally arrived and off to Bougival I went.  I didn't wear my ball cap as to keep my Americanism to a minimum, but a hauling around a giant "Wilson" black tennis bag and wearing neon-yellow sneakers could have given me away...but it was cool, because I knew what I was doing and where I was going...sorta....

rethinking my tennis bag...

When I arrived in Bougival, aka "The Boondocks", I noticed my maps were not complete.  I'm sure many of you know from experience, these maps/GPS are not a perfect science yet.   (I live this every time I search for courts in The Woodlands.)  But a map did load showing the club, so I thought I could find it.  Unfortunately, when my GPS said to make a left turn, it meant down an alley, not a street, so I got slightly lost.

No wonder I missed my left turn!

But, after much walking (about an hour with the hefty tennis bag on my back), I still hadn't made it to the club.  I guess at this point, I should mention the club is on an island in the middle of the Seine River, but it really wasn't super-obvious or anything.  But, I was not giving up and kept on reading my map and finding my way.  I seemed to be heading the right direction...

No street signs here--the street is placed on a wall or building and as you can see, it can be rather SMALL!!

I finally reached a big park and I remembered from my computer that the tennis club was near a golf course, so Voila! I had maybe found it!!  Kinda!!

Well, not really, but I did find the Total Tennis and Golf Club.  They were very friendly, especially when I told them (in my broken French along with excellent charades) my husband works for Total.  They showed me their courts and introduced me to the pro and ask me to join their club, which was exciting, except I was looking for a group of ladies from American School of Paris and I did not see any of those ladies at the Total club.  Dang!!  How many tennis clubs can be on one island??

Where my GPS actually took me....notice the word "Mort", which means death from branches falling on you, according to the sign.

So I finally gave my friend Corry a call to see if she could rescue me.  I noticed my fully-charged phone was down to 20% battery (foreshadowing, kids, an important detail for later in the story), but no worries, because Corry was on her way!  Yay!!  She found me and took me over to the tennis group--I was only about several blocks away, so not bad for someone my family deems "directionally challenged".  I met some wonderful ladies and hit some balls with Corry, who is a fantastic player--hope I can keep up with this group!  One of the ladies offered to drive me back to the train station to catch my train back. Whew!  What a relief after all the walking earlier!!
Unfortunately, she drove me to a different station--not the one in Bougival, but La Celle-Saint Cloud station.  Okay, no biggie--I can read the map, look at the monitors and figure out how to get home, right?  NOT!  The station had a big police tape "X" across the front door--the strike struck again!  But, being the plucky optimist I am, I still thought I could figure it all out, so found a working monitor with times and sat down to wait for the next train, scheduled to arrive in about 10 minutes.  When the train never came (Dang!!!) I realized I was stuck there, but what to do?  My phone was almost dead, I didn't have much cash and no one around me spoke English...uh-oh...I really wasn't sure where I really was, so I didn't think I could walk anywhere (plus I was really tired from the earlier walk).  If my phone died, I don't have Paul's phone number memorized, plus he was downtown...oh gosh, I'm a little worried now...

I'm sure I was a sight for the locals to laugh about:  sitting there in my tennis clothes in the freezing rain (yes, it was 50s & rainy by then) with my giant bag wearing a ball cap and smiling at strangers.  (Okay, I was hoping someone might speak English to help me out.)
There were busses there--LOTS of busses, but sadly, no drivers--maybe they were on strike, too?  But, I tried to see if there was a bus to somewhere I had been before, like another train station or Versailles?  Was I even near Versailles? or Bougival?
Then, Voila! I saw a row of taxis!!  Recently I have discovered that taxis take credit cards (Plucky optimist emerges again!) With the cost of fuel over here at 8-9 Euros a gallon, who has the cash for a taxi anyway?  You gotta use your credit card!  Of course, none of them spoke English, but, if you know anything about me at all, you know I can play an excellent game of charades, including my personal favorite: "I need your help and I have a credit card!" along with "I'm desperate!".
So, I finally made it home by 3:00 pm from my 10:00 am tennis match with some part of my pride still intact.  My daughter Laura said, "Mom, it's funny how stuff like that always happens to you!"  Yes, just me and Kramer.

Stroll Through Montmartre

The "I Love You" Wall.

Just wanted to share some pictures from my recent walking tour of Montmartre.  I recommend using a professional tour guide when you visit Paris.  It can be an efficient way to see more and understand more about what you are seeing!  Another useful tool is to download a walking tour on your smart phone.  You won't need wireless since it's downloaded and it's easy to haul around with you--much easier than a book when space is limited.  Jacques, our tour guide, was very knowledgeable and I learned so much about Montmartre.  It was a beautiful day!

Abbesses Metro stop--one of 2 (the other is Avenue Foch) original art deco entrances.  Someone chained their shopping cart to the fence! LOL

Sacre Coeur

View of La Defense from Sacre Coeur

Gargoyle!!

Charming cafe--they have the largest geraniums here!

Vineyard in Montmartre.  Grapes will be harvested this month.

Winding street with Sacre Coeur in the background.

Marche` facade created for the movie "Amelie".  Owner decided to keep it.  One of my favorite movies!

50s era cafe also used in the movie.  Amelie herself!

The Paris landmark!  Love this movie, too!!

Scattershooting in honor of Blackie Sherrod

Bonjour, Ya'll!
Texas sports fans probably remember Blackie Sherrod, who wrote a sports column for over 60 years in Fort Worth and Dallas--possibly syndicated, as I seem to remember it running in my local paper when I was growing up.  I loved reading his column and the way he pulled his random thoughts together in his "Scattershooting while wondering what happened to..." style.  So in honor of Mr. Sherrod, who is one of my literary heroes, I'm gonna give it a try...

Scattershooting while wondering why my celery froze to inside of my freezer...hubby says that we have "frost-free" models back in the USA.  I thought that was just advertising.  Had no idea the thing would have legit frost inside...had a whole bag of celery stuck to the back wall yesterday!

So this week is "The Rentree`":  the week in France that everyone returns from their (sometimes month-long!) vacations and goes back to work and school.  It's kinda a big deal with sales and specials all over town.  I discovered Picard, which is a whole store devoted to frozen foods (gourmet, ya'll!) that will "Simplifiez-vous la rentree`!" Yippee!!  Hoping I can avoid that whole weighing the vegetables/sticker-thingy all together.

Scattershooting while listening to my girls say how awesome their teachers are...it's a conversation we haven't had since Laura had Mr. Pinkerton at Doerre.  Don't get me wrong, my girls almost always like their teachers, but it's been a while since they were wowed....probably since the days Katherine would rush home from school to start "playing school" and pretending to be Mrs. Krenek or Mrs. Tischler.   As we were packing up for this move, I found several books marked with NPL on the spine (Nornes Public Library) from when the girls liked to pretend to be "Mrs. Smith", our terrific librarian at Hassler.

Both girls attend American School of Paris, which is located in Saint Cloud.  It is an American/international school with students from over 60 countries.  Everyone speaks English and it offers the American IB & AP diplomas.  ASP has 840 kids this year in grades K-12, with about 100 in each grade in high school.  ASP offers bus service or my girls can take public transportation to Saint Cloud.  Driving is not an option for any of the students, as you must be 18 or older to drive in France.  The girls' teachers are all male, with only one female teacher for each girl.  (Big change from Klein ISD!)  I attached a little video about the school if you want to see why we like it so much--both girls' English teacher, Mr. Kim, is featured as well.  We feel really blessed for our girls to be here!

http://www.asparis.org/cf_media/index.cfm?obj=4294#.UiiFrevPeT0.gmail

Scattershooting while wondering how flea markets got that name...we visited the biggest one in Europe over the weekend--maybe in the world--at Porte de Clignancourt known officially as Les Puces de Saint-Ouen or "Les Puces" (The Fleas).  It's pretty big with about 2,500-3,000 open stalls covering 7 hectacres.  Founded around 1885 by the rag-and-bone sellers of Paris, 120,000-200,000 visitors now stop by Les Puces every weekend to shop at the biggest antiques market in the world.

Scattershooting while wondering what's for supper....We're eating leeks!  The markets here have all kinds of vegetables I've never seen or heard of--thank goodness for my itranslate app to look them up.  So, "Voila`!" I  discovered leeks and we really like them.  Leeks are high in protein and low in fat--very healthy.  I'm finding all kinds of recipes on Pinterest so I can cook leeks, shallots, endive, and other stuff I can't identify from any previous meal.  We're drinking fabulous French wine so if I mess up the recipe, we don't notice so much.