Week 6: "I am 45 fish"

This week I went back to school after a 2-week Vacances Toussaint. A highlight of the working week was one student who told me, when learning about pets, “I am 45 fish”. All the schools of the département also had a practise “Mise à l'abri”, which is an invacuation, a confinement in the school in case of outside risks. Apparently, there is a huge risk of tsunamis and hurricanes in suburban Paris – or at least the Seine flooding. 

Any excuse for cake

On Wednesday, we went to Le Café des Chats, having reserved a highly in-demand table a few weeks ago. Very much what it says on the tin, the recently opened café has about a dozen cats sleeping and prowling around, for clients to pet in between slurping their drinks. On the tables, there’s even a ‘cat menu’ (not for eating) with a profile for each of the cats, including their personalities. We all found ourselves very drowsy by the end of our afternoon, thanks to the combination of snoozing cats, the warmly-lit, underground stone cellar café-space and hot drinks. However relaxed I was, I couldn’t help but notice the cats seemed fairly disgruntled at the perpetual, insistent petting by little children, when all they wanted to do was have a decent nap… 

A cat tree

Hanging bags of spices; a reprioritisation
of the senses in 'visual' art

After the Cat Café, I had a wander around the Centre Pompidou, and the contemporary art exhibition on its upper floors. To get there, there are escalators which ascend in plastic tunnels outside the building itself, and given that the Pompidou is centrally-located in Paris, they provide stunning views of the city.

Centre Pompidou

On Friday afternoon, Alice and I met Nathalie. Nathalie used to be a French language assistant in Northern Ireland, so not only does she know everything about what’s hot in Boulogne, and have perfect English, but she also understands what it’s like to be a language assistant abroad. We chatted in French at Paul in Les Passages, the Boulogne shopping centre; FINALLY, a place where you can go for a coffee without being expected to have a full meal, and not being allowed to otherwise take up a table in the restaurant, which has so far been very hard to come by here!

I also discovered THE BEST THING YET on my way through Les Passages; PIANO STAIRS. If you’ve ever seen that Simpsons episode where Homer finds the giant floor piano in the shopping centre and annoys all the shoppers, then you’ll have a pretty accurate image of me frolicking on these piano stairs, where each step plays a different note. 

Piano 

This week also saw some pro-activity for project Steph Learns French. Firstly, I started an English/French conversation exchange with my downstairs neighbour, Jeremy (one of said twins of a previous entry). I also signed up for a local, weekly French grammar course. To be put into the right class level, I had to do a test in “Orthographie, Grammaire et Conjugasion”. It boded well that I didn’t even know what “orthographie” meant…(spelling). Despite the intimidating realisation that I hadn’t studied French grammar in more than 3 years, it was disproportionately satisfying to see the test being marked. For the first time since school, there were objectively right or wrong answers and a comprehensible mark scheme (which didn’t include criteria such as“creativity”, like the Cambridge English mark-scheme.) 

On Saturday night, I had hoped to see Il Etait Temps (About Time). However, upon arriving at the cinema, it turned out that the film was already fully booked (with Rosanna and Hazel already inside, with tickets). So, instead of seeing the cute romantic comedy, Rachel and I found ourselves watching Gravity. Turns out, sci-fi space thrillers are not generically interchangeable with romcoms. I was NOT emotionally prepared for the intensity of the next 90 minutes. After about half an hour, I genuinely wanted to leave the cinema, as I couldn’t stand the constant stress the film heaped upon me, fully-immersed in 3D space. As a cinematic experience, it was incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it before. I say ‘seen’ when actually, I spent a good 50% of the film with my fingers in my ears, eyes screwed shut.

On Sunday, I visited the Shoah Memorial in Le Marais. In the evening, Rosanna, Rachel and I went to see “The 1975”, although none of us wanted to leave the little bistro where we’d had dinner just as the live jazz started in order to make it to the gig in time.