For dinner, a bunch of us checked out the Latin Quarter (near Metro Saint-Michel)... there's this one narrow street jammed with restaurants and pedestrians. Maitre-Ds (I still don't know what that means or why they're called that) stand outside and bargain for your patronage. 8 students ended up snagging a 9-euro, three-course meal with 3 free glasses of Sangria per person. 'Nuff said.
Afterward, we went to a bar near Odeon metro. Bar, simply enough named, is on the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie. Drinks are rather pricey (though quite good), but it's got this neat basement... almost a cellar, really... that they've turned into a second bar and a dance space with a DJ. Lot of young 20-or-so's down here, and there's no cover charge before 11. Just look out for the mean coat check woman... then again, if you're not our friend Kirill, you've probably got nothing to worry about.*
(25) was a Sunday... not much happened. There was bowling, but-- Trust me, we would do better here to move ahead.
(26) is Monday, 1 February 2010
For my "Reacting to France Today" class (my "writing intensive" one), we went to lunch at the Lycée Hotelier, a vocational high school (in French, high school is lycée, which almost rhymes with cliché). This is like a typical high school: they study standard things, but they also spend one day per week either cooking or serving in a functioning, reservations-only restaurant. The main course of duck was pretty good, but some things (like an artichoke salad and weird vegetable yogurt hors-d'oeuvre)... Well, let's just say that I hoped this week's chefs were being graded on a curve.
After lunch, they showed us around the school, including to a part of the building with hotel rooms that the students practice cleaning and preparing-- that is, those of them planning to go into the hotel business. If you feel anxiety about whether or not you're going to be successful with your major, I'm sorry to belittle that crisis, but you've got nothing on a French kid. These folks pick a career even earlier and, once they do, they stick with it. When you are dressing up and waiting tables in English as a second language at the ripe old age of 16, you're pretty much locked in.
Voulez-vous des frites avec ça?
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Footnotes.
*Twice this woman sent him to the back of the line. Poor kid.
maitre d' is an abbreviation/nickname for maitre d'hotel (which doesn't mean he actually has to work at a "hotel" in the american sense of the word, just that he works in a restaurant whether in a hotel or not)
ReplyDelete-Heather
Well done. Thanks, Heather!
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