Snow Days at their Finest

Paris is known for its wet, cold winters.  However, lucky lucky me, it's been snowing this whole week!  Normally, it doesn't stick to the ground but all those huge, flimsy snowflakes create a perfectly breathtaking view.

To my delight, I woke up on Sunday and found that snow DID indeed stick.  I live on a small one way street, so traffic is minimal and within the hour, I could hear a group of kids playing outside.  Another half hour passes and my roommates and I hear a snowball hit our window.  I go to look outside and see the two kids I care for, their dad, and about 10 more kids outside having a snowball fight.  Before I know it, one of my roommates is joining the "battle" and after two more snowballs hit our windows (by my kid's dad of all people...) I'm putting on my outdoor clothes as well.  The second I get outside kids I don't even know are already aiming snowballs at me.  I'm not lying when I tell you I haven't been in a snow ball fight, let alone made or thrown a snowball, in at least 5 years.  As a 24-year-old throwing snowballs amongst kids between the ages of 6 and 15, let me just say that I had the BEST time.

Within 10 minutes of being out on the street, another 10 kids had joined us.  The most surprising thing for me to see was that their parents had come outside too.  I don't even mean that they were standing on the sidelines watching...no, these parents were full on involved in this snowball fight.  The whole street had become taken over by kids and adults throwing snowballs from one side to the other side.  People were crouching behind cars, dodging hits left and right, making runs for the other end of the sidewalk-- it was a top notch snowball fight battle.

I even made some enemies.  I say kids, but don't be deceived...some of those kids were out to get me.  At first, I only aimed at the torso and I didn't pack my snowballs very hard.  By the end, I was legit thinking up strategies and sneaking up on them in order to get a clean head shot.  Call me a horrible person, but if I didn't defend myself in a manner that was taken seriously, I'd probably be all sorts of patched up right now.

Before I knew it, two and a half hours had gone by and I came back to my apartment with snow in my hood, pockets, and hair.  My fingers were frozen because apparently my gloves don't work properly. Now I know.  But I had a great time (despite developing a new deep found hatred for one of the neighborhood kids) and I couldn't remember the last time a snow day had me playing outside for that long.  To top it off, my friend Kate and I made some vin chaud (hot spiced wine..) and sipped it until every bit of cold had left my body.  mmmm yummy.

Also, nothing against you Patriots fans, but we went to The Great Canadian to watch the football games, and I am so happy with the results :)

bisous xoxox

Parisian Rants (Part I?)

Starting a blog by complaining about a couple of things that get me just a bit angry is probably not giving my experience abroad a good rep. But, as I was sitting here thinking of a good topic to hit it off, I got hungry. (You'll probably see that food related topics will be frequently recurring by the way). Since I of course went through all my food this weekend, I had to venture out into the snowy streets of Paris (how romantic does that sound!! it was not, I assure you...) and buy myself something. As I was walking through the snow slush stuff, I silently cursed the woman who decided to walk in the middle of the sidewalk instead of the RIGHT side, forcing me to walk into deeper slush so that we could avoid a collision. This probably happened two more times before I got to the supermarket.

Once at the supermarket, I headed to the fresh produce section, and since I had decided on making some Thai noodles, I looked for scallion. Disappointment #1. Ok, fine, I'll just chop up some onion that I have at home. Next: crushed red pepper? Ha! C'mon Nadia, what were you thinking? Disappointment #2. Alright...I have hot sauce, no problem. How about some sesame oil? Off to the "Asian section" of the store (aka, 3 shelves of ramen noodles and light soy sauce). At this point disappointment #3 is not even under the same category as the first 2. Now I'm just angry.

Walking home with three mushrooms, soy sauce, and some pasta I decided that it really was beautiful outside with all the snow and hey, it could be worse. Thai noodles would have to be improvised a bit but whatever, I can make the best of it. 

...Until I was forced to swerve into slush for the THIRD time. And that is the precise moment I decided that I would let off some steam by writing my first blog post on things that get particularly under my skin.

Coming from New York, one would think I'd be used to having to deal with people who don't understand the unwritten rules of the sidewalk. In my eyes, it's pretty simple: you stay on the right side of the sidewalk. Let's go out on a limb and compare it to driving in the street...call me crazy, but it seems like a logical comparison. In New York City, the problem isn't the number of people who walk in the middle of the sidewalk or all the way on the left..it's the NUMBER of people. period. There are usually so many people on the sidewalks in NYC that these unwritten rules become more of a less-than-casual guideline. But honestly, when there ISN'T a wave of people walking towards you and behind you, most people in NY (at least I find this to be true) do walk with the awareness of the other people around them.

This is not the case in Paris. Unless you're in a very touristic area of Paris, people aren't always crowding around you to the point that you're pushing past them. With this in mind, I want you to picture a sidewalk. It's a pretty wide sidewalk and it's pretty EMPTY. You're walking along, on the right side of course, and here comes someone in your direction...also on the right side. YOUR RIGHT. And the best part: they're not shifting their path. The way I see it, you have three options. One, you allow them the satisfaction of their obvious mission to ruin your day and move over to the left. Two, stare them in the eye until they move to their rightful place on the sidewalk. Three, bump into them. I personally don't recommend option number three. But the point is, if there aren't many people on the sidewalk, why do two people have to get involved in a game of chicken? Don't even get me started on the groups of people that walk in a straight line across the sidewalk and decide that they're not going to form a single file when they're passing others.

I'm done. promise. That was my rant...if anymore follow, I'll try to keep them shorter.

bisous xoxox