School agenda...

I remember when I was in elementary school, my main concern in the late summer was to choose the school agenda. It had to be of adequate size, updated, easy to use but also trendy. The front cover above was to express in a single image, the personality its owner, or mine. Obviously, the brand agenda then determined the choice of the box, notebooks, folder. In short, every year my grandmother or my mother led my sister and me in the most supplied stationery store in the area and after about an hour we left with all the necessary for the school year. A real adventure.
Things have changed a lot: in the US, since our son started his school adventure, I've never seen a school diary. The teachers give each week a stack of sheets of papers to fill out and it all ends there. Not worth the effort for the kids to write every day tasks for the next day. Everything has been chosen and decided by the teacher: photocopies are already stapled by a class parent and distributed by the kids. Not worth the effort for the kids to write every day tasks for the next day. Everything and 'already' choice and decided by the teacher: photocopies are already 'ready and stapled.
Here it's as Italy 30 years ago: throughout the year Josh had to mark on his school agenda every homework for the day or the following week with results nothing short of .... exhilarating: our son marked the tasks on the first available page. Too bad the first page was the one corresponding to 27 August, while the school started on September 5! You see? Not only the agenda serves the purpose of empowering young people (they have to listen, understand, write, read, understand...) but also to enable them to appreciate the lapse of time, important facts as how many weeks are missing until the Christmas holidays, etc..

Although the school has almost 'comes to an end, are already' out the new agenda for the next school year. So, to continue the family tradition, I brought in Josh stationery store near the school and gave him "carte blanche" choose between the many agendas: there were of all colors, titles, photos, forms, etc..
Of course my son has immediately chosen the only agenda that certainly will not have the opportunity to use the Marengo: here it is.

 
That's right, those noodles colored with crowns on their heads and colorful clothing are "just sperm" ... "what 's wrong, Mom? Even my friends have this agenda ...". I know, there 's nothing wrong for a nation of libertines like the French, who probably use the school agenda to clear the tabu of sex already in elementary school ... but I doubt that the agenda itself would be considered as "appropriate" in the American school!

He chose the one with the Union Jack's flag. 

Emergency room in Paris...

Today I had to go to the Emergency Room at the nearby hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière (the one famous for Lady Diana's death....), which is one of the biggest hospital in Europe. 

I couldn't handle the pain any longer but there was no other alternative. The problem is that, not only it's a huge and extremely busy hospital, but we also are right in the middle of the high-touristic season so I expected a very long wait. I couldn't be more wrong. I arrived at 11:00 am and with nobody in line in front of me, I was registered at the "accueil" within 1 minute. I was only asked an identity card and my Carte Vitale. I used my Californian driving license, which they accepted without problems. Of course I had my Carte Vitale with me and they registered me as Madame Caire (so funny!). I was asked my french address, which I gave them. End of the questions. The guy was nice and kind and in excellent mood: he didn't have any problem with my accent and invited me to wait in the triage room where a nurse would take my vitals as soon as possible. Again I sat on the chair, psychologically prepared to the longest wait ever. The building is old (about 400 years) and didn't look sparkling and sterilized, but definitely cleaner that the County L.A.!!! At 11:25 am the nurse called me in the room, took my vitals and some generic medical information. I was assigned a code and asked to wait outside the door for the surgeon to visit me. I stepped out of the room, thinking: "Here is it, now it will be at least 2-3 hours....get out your book and read and be ready to alert another parent to pick up your son at school at 3 pm". Wrong. As soon as I sat on the chair, I heard my name being called from the other end of the corridor: I looked at my watch. It was 11:30....I couldn't believe it. The surgeon, a smiling 50-55 years old guy, dressed with his white coat with his name clearly visible, introduced himself and  started visiting me. His words were clear and he made also some effort to speak in English, just to make sure that everything was perfectly understood. He asked all pertinent medical information, much detailed, as I expected him to do. At the end of the visit, he typed all the information on the computer, went through all the details of the drugs he was prescribing me and asked me if something wasn't clear. He was very nice, polite and patient. The visit was finished. It was 11:50 am and I was ready to walk out from the ER with everything clear in my mind except .....the payment. I asked him where could I take care of the payment for the consultation in the ER and he told me that I would receive the bill directly at home (not more that 25 euros, according to him). Awesome!!!!! 

Can someone please explain to me what is the problem with socialized medicine? Because I don't see it!!!! 

Update (July 07): I just received  the bill in my mail box.....6.23 euros.....I don't know whether to laugh or cry !!!! 

Puck and other "encounters" at the Bois de Boulogne

Today, for some inexplicable reason, it wasn't raining...such a surprise! After spending one week in planning how many raincoats and umbrellas and boots I should have packed to go to the Bois de Boulogne, all of a sudden I realized that a simple t-shirt would just do it. I've never been to this park, even thought it's just around the corner where I work. So I thought that the regular planning with my interactive metro-line application would be enough. Soooo wrong. As soon as we were out of the metro, I looked at the directions on my smart-phone...and I realized that this stuff is not smart at all. How on earth can a GPS application give me directions when it can't locate me without less than 4 km approximation? That's the entire Bois de Boulogne. As a matter of fact, we got lost. We went all the way north just to realize that we were heading toward the wrong direction...the blue arrow still immobile on my screen. Stupid app! Finally I got in touch with a friend of mine who was already at the Jardins de Shakespeare and she gave me some advice. So we walked...approximately half an hour. 

It was 2 pm and there were thousands of families in the park, playing, sunbathing, reading or just having their picnic. Kind of an awkward setting for prostitution, right? In fact when Josh asked me what was that "lady" doing, with her short skirt, sitting right in the middle of the curb...I didn't even have the time to come up with some ridiculous and totally false explanation...I just splatted the truth right in front of him: nothing, honey, she's just selling sex for money! Yeap! Like that....Just the time for him to turn around and give her another quick interrogative look, that the "lady" was carried away by a client in his car. No more comments from my son. I know I can't hide him forever from the ugliness of this world, but I wish I was less direct.

We finally joined the group of parents from the school, had a quick lunch then we entered the open-air theater where the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was played. Four girls from Josh's class were acting in the play and they were absolutely wonderful.  The setting was incredible: the Théâtre de Verdure is considered, for good reasons, one of the most beautiful open-air theatres in the world.

The audience sits on a large lawn around which are planted the flowers, trees and plants, so that the stage is completely natural and perfect for the play: the actors came on stage from different entrances and exits, and there are all sorts of narrow paths and steps for the cast to gamble around. The Théâtre de Verdure is worth a visit even if no performance is scheduled. Of course, you'll have to work hard to find it, first! 

The picture above? There is an explanation: the weather, this crazy Parisian weather, as usual played a trick on us: this time it wasn't the rain, quite the opposite. We spent 2 hours and 15 minutes burning and sweating under the torrid sun. Some of us literally collapsed!
Can't we just have a regular day? Can't there be something in between a thunderstorm and a Saharan sun? I'm puzzled...

At Musee Pasteur....where time is an option!

The Museum itself is interesting but, boy!, is it hard to get in. Keep in mind that none of the following information is posted on their website. We arrived around 15:30 and as soon as we started to walk through the gate, we were stopped by an armed guard. They made us stop at the check in, where a non-smiling lady took our identity card (California D.L. works fine but passport is better...), signed our names into the visitor data base, and handed us some badges. Then we waited about 15 minutes before we were allowed into the Museum. 

There, at the second floor, again we waited other 20 minutes for the guide to walk us in... Finally the guide walked us inside the laboratory, and after handing us written information about the exhibition, she closed the door behind us....and left! After a while a cracking noise came out from the speakers around the room, noise that we recognized as a French recorded guided tour. Aside from these pitfalls, the laboratory room was interesting, with all the custom-made glass beakers and microscopes displayed on the shelves. 

After the laboratory we visited the apartment where Louis Pasteur spent the last seven years of his life: bedrooms, sitting rooms, a bathroom, stairway, etc. Every room was furnished in Victorian style, unfortunately covered with dust from the Victorian age!!!!

The most interesting part of the visit was the crypt: just by walking in it you understand why Pasteur's family refused to have him buried in the Pantheon...

This place is amazing: the walls are completely covered with mosaics describing his discoveries (fermentation, immunization to anthrax, study on chicken cholera, vaccine of rabies, etc). Now this is worth a visit! 

Just walking around....

It doesn't happen every day, with all the rain we had so far, to see it from this point of view....

 

nor from this other point of view..... 

The Olympic fever in Paris...

In the past couple of days I noticed, in various Metro stations here in Paris, some interesting and certainly eye-captivating ads: the campaign promotes the Eurostar, a train that is well know for connecting Paris to London in just a bit more than two hours, as one of the sponsors of the Olympic games that are about to start in London this summer. But, as you can see from your eyes, there's more than that....

Here the Greek-style statues seem to have been used to mock the well known British stereotypes of athletic heroes, at least in the French view: overweight naked bodies with beer bellies playing darts and snooker! 

Perhaps the French company that is responsible for this ads is still suffering from the "defeat" (in terms of numbers of medals won) in Beijing....

I would love to see how the ads are in Metro in London... French athletes shooting snails or throwing goose liver instead of the javelin? 

The boys are back!!!!

Last Friday, while I was giving a talk at a conference here in Paris, Giuseppe took Giovanni to the Train Station in Montparnasse: I couldn't believe it. He was going with the school for a vacation-trip to Belle Ile en Mer, in Bretagne. Already? Yes, he is no longer in kindergarten. The group was formed by two classes: the Adaptation class (with 4th and 5th graders kids who mainly speak English and are learning French) and another class of 4th and 5th graders in regular French class. Total: 40 kids and one brave (or should I say crazy?) teacher, Mrs P. accompanied by a couple of supervisors. 

They took the train from Montparnasse Station and after five hours of train plus half hour of boat-trip, they arrived in the Domain that hosted them. 

The place is actually huge, around 50 acres and has horses, animals, playground, soccer field, etc. etc. The kids, who weren't allowed to bring with themselves any electronic device, discovered that there is so much more than video games and TV in life...like  hiking, playing on the beach, catching crabs, playing soccer and they also writing a book, with the help of a poet who instructed them every day: the title is "Je suis amoreux d'une pirate" and tells the adventures of a Canadian boy named Horatio who falls in love with a pirate named Laure. Extremely well done!

Final drawing, by Giovanni Sebastiano

They even had a party of the last night, with music, stroboscopic lights and dance! What a blast! That's when all the drama about who was going to invite who started!!! Already? I guess so....

Of course not everything went perfectly well, as we expected: Giovanni was once sent out of the dormitory room since he tried to engage the other kids in a pillow fight just before bed time....and he was caught by the supervisor! 

During the entire week, we weren't allowed to call them: the only communication system available was a recording machine on which Mme P. and the kids would leave their messages for the parents in the evening. Great system! 

Here he is, back at the train station: when I arrived, I saw a crowd of mothers and fathers, surrounded by kids with their luggage and I couldn't see my son...then....a kid step out of the crowd and start running toward me, jumped on me and hugged me: Giovanni!!!!! How much I missed him!

Musée Nissim de Camondo - a history of power and betrayal

Today Mimi, Patricia and Kim and I visited the Musée Nissim de Camondo, close to Parc Monceau. 

I was honestly impressed both by the astonishing beauty of this home-museum as by the story of this unfortunate dynasty, now died out. Sepharditic Jews expelled from Spain, they moved to Istanbul where they made a fortune with their bank (they were known as the “Rothschilds of the East.”). Once they obtained the Austrian then the  Italian citizenship (thanks to the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II who made them “Counts”), they moved to Paris where they became art collectors … Isaac apparently spent a fortune to by  paintings by Monet, Cezanne and more than 30 works by Degas (painting he later donated to the Louvre!). His cousin Moise, who lived in this home as a child, decided to transform this home in a living collection of Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture and decorative arts: the building itself is inspired after the Petit Trianon, where both Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette lived. 

 Inside, each room was especially made to showcase the precious  collections, certainly one of the greatest of 18th-century French furniture: it includes rarities such as a table topped with petrified wood that was once owned by Marie Antoinette, an outstanding collection of Chinese porcelain, fine French paintings, carpets from Versailles, tapestries from Aubusson illustrating La Fontaine fables, the fabulous Sèvres Buffon service with each piece decorated with a different bird, and the bronze and the silver from Russian Empress Catherine II, and so much more.  

One of my favorite area of the museum was the cuisine: approximately 30 by 40 feet in dimension, tiled in white and black from floor to ceiling, it contains the most extraordinary stove and oven I’ve ever seen. The stove occupies almost half of the kitchen, has eight burners which could accommodate enormous pots side by side. The oven, separated, has four ovens and two steam cabinets.  On the opposite wall there is a huge work counter with cabinets beneath and numerous long shelves above displaying beautiful pieces of copper cookware, bowls and more. 

The fifteen domestics who lived in this house would eat in the adjacent room, which communicates with the main kitchen through a “passe-plats”. 

We are not done yet: another door takes you to the chef’s office, which has a “vertical passé-plat” communicating to the above formal dining room. The chef was also the only one, among the servants, allowed to communicate through a telephone with the exterior (mainly with the butcher…). 

 Next to the door there is a “intercom” which, by means of lightened small bulbs, would allow the servants downstairs to easily understand in which room of the immense house their service was requested. Cool! 

There was even an elevator next to the main staircase… 

When Moise’s son, Nissim, died in WWI while fighting for France, he decided to make his house into a museum in memory of his son. His daughter Beatrice, together with her kids and former husband, were arrested by the the French Vichy government deported to Dracy and then to Auschwitz, where they all died. 

First of all, there was quite a discussion among us regarding how handsome was Nissim: some say he was an Andy Garcia type, some say he looked more like Sacha Baron Cohen....I'll let you decide. 

While walking through the different areas, I tried to imagine how difficult it must have been to be raised here as child, without being able to jump on sofas, without a chance of touching or moving thins around. Not certainly a child-proof home! Probably even the owner’s wife felt unease in this museum-home…in fact she fled with the horse trainer! But my mind was mostly taken by another thought: when we watched the movie about the family, I was shocked to learn that, despite the family donation to this Country in terms of lives and money, the French government didn't help them but actually approved their tragic deportation. So much for friendship!

I hope you enjoyed my blog on this amazing museum. As always, comments are welcome and encouraged. Cheers!