I am ill.
But not in the cool "ill jacket, yo," sort of way. Just plain ill.
I’ve narrowed it down to one of three maladies:
1. Avian Flu as a result of the quail I ate for dinner last night.
2. Blood Poisoning.
3. Mononucleatic reprise, since life was just looking up.
At least we know it’s not the Bubonic Plague, since I already had that during freshman year.
I spent yesterday wandering the Marais– literally, "The Swamp," so called because it was a swamp back in the day and the Parisians drained it and turned it into what it is today: the Jewish and gay district. Don’t ask me how it ended up that way, I am sure it has a history, but I have no idea what it is. The swamp was drained a really long time ago, before the Revolution I think... but it probably only became the Jewish/Gay Quarter after World War II, I would assume.
Anyway, I hit it up because I heard there’s good shopping to be had there, and oh, how true it is. It’s full of artsy boutiques no bigger than my freshman dorm room, full of handmade purses and drag queen shoes (literally– they are women’s shoes in men’s sizes, found in a boutique called "Drag Queen Apparel" next door to a salon called "Space Hair"). I bought a pair of silver earrings sold by weight at a tiny jewelry store I found, but that was all...
Except...
Well, here comes another story. So I am wandering the Marais, feeling sorry for myself because I felt so awful, sneezing every thirty seconds, and I am thinking to myself every time I blow my nose, "WHY DOES THIS COUNTRY HAVE TO BE SO ANTI-HEALTH? If I were in the US, I would go treat myself to the biggest smoothie I could find, filled with things like citrus and vitamins and minerals and echinacea and plants and chlorophyll and fruit and vegetables and seeds and roots and berries and nuts... THAT is what would make me feel better, but instead I am stuck here where I would be lucky to find a place that sold JUICE not at room temperature!"
But what is the primary lesson I have learned since coming to France, my friend?
Don’t touch things in the Metro? No.
Don’t kiss people, you might get a disease? No.
Jeans don’t need to be dried? No.
Nutella Crepes can serve as any meal at any time of day? Yes.
But the SECOND most important lesson is as follows:
Ask and you shall receive.
Or, perhaps put more aptly, whine about it in your head for awhile and suddenly there will be magic and whatever it is you were whining about will be granted.
Because I have never, ever, since coming to this country seen a smoothie store. They just don’t know what they are. But probably 10 minutes after this litany went through my head, I saw a sign for a place called "Wanna Juice." I told myself not to get my hopes up, but it was too late– they were up. And I was rushing toward the store, face pressed against the glass in hopes it was not a myth. I walked in, feeling vaguely like Dorothy before the Wizard, thinking I had found the cure to all my problems, and the woman greeted me with a cheery "bonjour!" and the menus were all in citrusy colors just like in the US, and all the drinks had stupid names, just like in the US, and suddenly my nose cleared up, I stopped sneezing, and my throat felt brand-new. No, wait, that last part is a lie. BUT I chose my drink (hakabaka detox, just for the record) and then looked down behind the counter only to see that this place did everything completely legit– no strawberry compote for them like in the US (I don’t know what I expected– nothing would stay open here if it was bad quality). But this was, like, uberfresh. Whole pomegranates sitting in a bowl waiting to be cut, kiwis in the middle of being sliced, fresh raspberries in a colander in the sink...
I paid 4Euro for my 33cl smoothie, but it was worth every last sip, if only because I know now that I will get well.
But then I went to church last night and found out that every girl in my small group– every single one– is ill right now. Two of them missed church because of it, the German one told me "oh, it is awful, ven I sneeze, it hurt so bad!" So perhaps we are all having our blood slowly poisoned, I don’t know. That same German one later saw me playing with my earring during the service and said, "Blair, stop playing vith your jewelry, it is not polite. I vill buy you a Kinderegg, and you can eat it, and then you vill play vith the toy inside it instead. Just be sure you do not eat the toy by accident!"
A Kinderegg. In case you don’t know, because I don’t know if we have those in the US or not, Kindereggs are chocolate eggs about the size of regular eggs, hollow with a toy inside. A lame toy, nothing as exciting as a cereal box toy, something lame like a Cracker Jack toy or those stupid jokes that come around cheap bubble gum. But they are still fun to eat. And German. And apparently the only type of toy they have in Germany, as that is what she is going to buy for me.
Today I spent the morning with my Swedish friend and the German one aforementioned at the Swedish one’s apartment. Lydia (the Swede who lives there) made scones for us, and we showed up to, in theory, have a small group meeting, but since we were the only three that made it, we really just ended up hanging out blowing our noses and sneezing for three hours. We ate the scones, laid around wrapped in blankets talking for awhile (all three of us are sick), and then Lydia said, "It looks like it’s a pretty day, we could go to the Tuileries for awhile and sit in the sun?" And we all looked at each other and said "Well... we could... Or we could stay here where we are already sitting, where it is warm and cozy and there is no moving required..." So that is what we did. Eventually we got hungry again, and this is what happened:
Lydia: "I’m hungry. Let’s eat something. Shall I make some popcorn?"
Cindy: "Oh, that would be good..."
Lydia: "Or carrots! I have carrots! We could eat those! Blair, what do you think about carrots?"
Cindy: "She will want popcorn only if it is salty because that is how they eat it in the US." [Transcriber’s note: In France, they only eat popcorn sweetened.]
Lydia: "Oh, Blair, you do not know how to eat a carrot with us because you are American!"
Blair: "What does that mean?"
Lydia: "Oh, you know, they don’t eat vegetables in the US, but that’s ok, I’ll go get the carrots and you can try them. Make sure you eat the whole thing, especially the middle part, because that is where all the vitamins are!"
She came back with three whole carrots, unpeeled, with the plant still attached to them. We commenced eating them, feeling like Bugs Bunny, and then Lydia suggested we go sit on the roof terrace to eat them.
Lydia: "But we will have to be very careful when we get up there, because it is very dirty up there."
Blair: "Then what will we sit on?"
Lydia, pausing with her carrot still in her mouth to see if Blair is serious: "Chairs, of course!"
In other news, Madame did a cooking workshop here Thursday night with her friend Jacqueline. The two of them made salmon pate, quail with grapes, and lemon tart for us all to eat– there were five kids from my program, plus the two of them, and it was amazing. Because it would be too complicated to have us all trying to cook, they did the cooking, explaining as they went, and then gave us copies of the recipes so we could do them ourselves. The five of us students sat at the breakfast nook table, all in a row like little angels, while they made everything right there before us, just like Emeril. They had already measured out almost everything, and all the ingredients were in little bowls just like on cooking shows. It was so cute– the two of them are adorable, and when they get together, it’s ridiculous. Lots of cries of "Zut!" and "Ahh, qu’est-ce que tu fait, ma cherie?", which mean, respectively, "Zut!" and "What in God’s name are you doing, my love?" Zut is hands down my favorite french word. There really is no translation, and it’s really not a very polite thing to say, but it’s not a curse word either... I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that there is no situation that can not be ameliorated with a wholehearted cry of "ZUT!"
And Jacqueline told us about how, back in the day, there were some kind of bird in France that were such a delicacy you could eat the whole thing, bones and all– they were super-expensive, but they served them at state dinners and fancy restaurants and things, until, sometime in the 20th century, the things went extinct, all because of the Parisians’ appetites! We had quail as the main course– the vegetarian in me was saddened at the sight of the serving platter with seven tiny birds on it, but then I tasted one and it was so good I decided to quit fronting like I care about animal rights and just eat the silly thing.
But here is the best part: the salmon pate (which was amazing) is made with canned salmon, which in France (as in the US) comes with bones still in it. Jacqueline suspected that would freak out the Americans, so she did her best to pick all the bones out, but she missed some. So she warned us as we were about to eat it and said, "But don’t worry, it’s just a little bit of calcium!" All the girls at the table flipped out and could hardly take a bite without first mashing it to smithereens to make sure there were no bones– the guys didn’t care, but I think that was only because their French was not very good and they didn’t understand what had just been said.
I, on the other hand, thanks to my real-life education in the proud hamlet of Beattyville, didn’t care one way or another whether there were bones, and even found myself HOPING for some in mine, because two summers ago (or something) I worked in Beattyville and ate salmon patties from Fonda’s Deli at lunch all the time, but was always way grossed out by the bones, until some guy convinced me to eat them. It took me weeks to be convinced, because I always just picked my bones out and the guy who swore by their goodness ate them. But then I learned, and there was no going back. At first I was proud of myself last night for eating them, then I realized that’s what everyone in Beattyville warned me about when I started eating them: "Oh, Blawr, you know eating salmon bones is only one step away from being a real Beattyvillian. You drink Ale8 and peanuts, and now you eat salmon bones, you are on your way to becoming an honest-to-goodness mountain woman!"
This could be a problem.
Thanking God I’m a country girl,
B
P.S. While I was on my way to school a couple days ago, a motorcycle policeman with his siren going whizzed past me, and then another, and then a bunch of police cars, and then a limo, and I thought to myself, "Wow, there goes an autoclave."
And then I started thinking about it, and I realized that, in fact, an autoclave (spelling?) is the thing used to sterilize instruments in a lab, and not a herd of cars guarding a famous person. So I tried to think of the right word, and this is what I got: autoclave... mobileclave... mobicarte (this is, incidentally, the company that provides minutes for pre-pay phones in France)... automobilator... autocade... mobilecade... MOTORCADE! But it took me that long to figure out the right word, further proof my English is deteriorating at a rate much more rapid than that at which my French is improving.