Maintenant, je veux dire que je suis commence une nouvelle dossier avec mes photos s’appelle “Parisian Street Life.” Tiens, pas tous des photos sont de la rue, mais juste Paris generalement. Je veux prendre beaucoup des photos a les gens dans la rue sans leur connaissance. Je vais essayer a ajouter des photos peut etre un ou deux fois une semaine. Donc, peut etre tu voudrais regarder mes photos ici a ParisianStreetLife chaque maintenant et puis et s’il tu plait, laisses tes comments, je suis tres interessant a lire quoi t’as dire.  Merci. . Je crois que le dernier phrase ne traduire pas, oh well.

To some up what I tried to write in French… Check out my new set of pictures primarily about Parisian Street Life.

regard the date

I realize that I have been out of touch for quite some time. Parisian’s don’t seem to have a firm grasp on the concept of customer service. It goes way beyond apathy and into deceit. Not only is it difficult enough to get a Parisian to help you, but when they finally give you their attention, they tell you exactly what you want to hear so you stop talking to them and thus allowing them to continue ignoring other customers. It’s something that everyone should be aware of when traveling to Paris.  To conclude my initial point, our ISP denied us internet for a little over a month while at the same time had little trouble making us pay them; that my friends, is what I have had little contact with you.

Aside from that, I actually have a job in Paris now. I teach English for a company called Atribord. It’s a nice little gig right now, and hopefully it will pick up soon. It’s been interesting reviewing English grammar. It has made me ask myself why grammar is not required to be taught in high school or college in the United States. The last time I had a grammar lesson was back in 8th grade, and that was around 13 years ago.

It’s no wonder that the majority of the U.S. population uses bad grammar, including me.

As for now, all my pictures are gone, you can find some of them on my picasa webspace.

I believe the site is http://picasaweb.google.com/todd.tupper

Only a few new photos of the family around Christmas, and a cute video of my niece and my parents (very docile and patient) dog, Scooter.

sorry.. no news here, just pictures.

1) I do not make every possible effort to answer my cell phone; I never have, and most likely never will. The reason is that I tend to give more attention to what I am presently doing than to something that is interrupting me. Granted, if I’m not doing anything, I will answer. If I’m involved, especially if I’m talking with someone else, I gracefully push buttons on the phone until it stops making noise. I view this as being polite, everyone else just thinks I’m weird for not answering the phone, including the person I would have had to interrupt to answer the phone.

2) If I don’t return a phone call the same day, I probably will forget to do so. This also applies to written mail and emails. I’m absolutely terrible about replying. Even now as I write, there are six drafts in my outbox to people (sorry Dan, Ben, Jessica, Wendy, Stefanie and Bill) going back at least 5 days. While I believe that this more qualifies as being lazy, it’s still being anti-social. Problem is, I prefer to use the phone; being that I’m in Paris, it’s difficult (especially when the internet plays tricks with you not being able to make outgoing calls).

3 ) I am a geek. I love to test new experimental software and try and tweak my computer as much as possible, just because I can…. and I’m content with that. Well, anyway.. I’m a geek, and that alone tends to make one charmingly anti-social at times, but I think I’ve always been that way.

4) Using a weblog as the primary purpose of communicating to the majority of your friends.

I forget what the initial point of this was…. probably just an apology to all those who I haven’t been in contact with (because I’m anti-social). Making phone calls, and writing emails can be time consuming, especially when one is far away.  Time zones are a pain to contend with, so it limits phone calls primarily to the weekends .  The problem is, it gets tiring to make 10 phone calls to people that you haven’t spoken with in a few weeks.  When I talk to someone on the phone, I like to talk for quite a while.  Alas, after getting done speaking with one person for an hour, I really don’t want to talk anymore.  Tonight however, I managed to call 10 people, and got only two answers, and I spoke only briefly, and left nasty messages to the rest.

After the phone fails, then it’s down to email.  Nope, I’m terrible at that as well.  Especially some of the context of the emails are slightly not what I want to talk about, and when I start to write, I write quite a bit (like talking on the phone).  Then the cycle repeats itself again.

So I write online, with the hopes that some people actually check this site.  I’m sure only about three people do, mainly because I so rarely update this.  That however, is also the reason as to why I do not read other peoples websites, because they are so rarely updated.  In conclusion, does anyone really read what you write?
Moving on (or backwards)…

Thursday was my first French class in about 12 years. I know this because I had to recount when I last had a French class for my current French teacher. This story goes back about 3 weeks ago when I went to the local Mairie (town hall) to ask if there were things that foreigners could do while in Paris, sans a visa. I was given a book, which only consisted of classes offered by the city at a reasonable price. With this book I was given two application forms. After a little thought, it was agreed upon by Amandine and myself that I would take a French class (because we never speak French unless we are around her friends are family, and in those cases, I just smile and nod until the evening is over. That’s not entirely true, but time does seem to slow down when all one hears is a foreign language for a few hours). Information provided by a local school said that they had received over 200 applications for the French class. “Merde!” As a result, two applications would not be enough to be assured acceptance into one of these French classes. The clerks at the local Mairie remembered me and denied me more applications, so I went out in search of other Mairies. Luckily for me, the next one I visited had a stack of them laying out so I just grabbed a sizable amount and quietly left. So, roughly twenty-five euros later, and many many applications filled out, I was hopefully guaranteed to be accepted into one of the fifteen schools. Au contraire mon frère. I believe I was denied acceptance to three out of the fifteen schools. No matter. It’s an 80 Euro class, 4 hours a week until February — not bad, even if you include the 25 euros I spent on postage.

My first class was Thursday, maybe I already mentioned that. I felt so young, probably because I was sitting at the desk of a 10 year old, and to make matters worse, I knew damn well that this 10 year-old could understand more French than me. This was a first for me, attending a class conducted entirely in another language. “Merde,” I kept thinking to myself. It would have been at least somewhat comforting to have another anglophone in the class, but no. I ended up sitting next to an Italian named Simone, and someone of Asian descent whose name I cannot pronounce.

It made me remember about former experiences in a classroom, which was my senior year in college when I was primarly enrolled in philosophy courses. During those classes, my primary strategy was to remain silent, and observe those who were vocal in the class, then classify them as friend or foe, analyzse their thoughts and opinions, and when the time presented itself attack their system of beliefs and not stop until the end of the class, or until I had destroyed their system of beliefs (regardless as to whether or not I agreed with it).

This class on the other hand, was quite different. I attempted to remain silent, mainly to listen and compare my level of French to all those around me. I’m some where in the middle I assume, however, I evidently was giving off too many gazes of, “What the fuck is she talking about?” in reference to what the teacher was saying. “Ca va, Todd?” she asked me. “Ouais, je vais bien!” I proudly said even those it was not the case, and she knew that as well. As the class went on, she made sure to call on me as often as possible to see if I actually understood what was being said. I must say however, that this was completely different than any other time I was in class (less my senior year in highschool during Mr. Welsh’s Calculus class, I had no clue what was going on in there). No, it wasn’t because I wasn’t paying attention that I was unaware as how to answer the question, or that I didn’t understand the question; my problem was more fundamental, I didn’t understand the words in the question.

The two hours came and went, more painlessly than I had imagined. I was glad to have been placed in level deux, as opposed to niveau trois. Ca marche. I went to a book store and bought my book (which truly seems to have been written for 8 year-olds. Je peux lire et ecrire mieux than most of the people in the class, it’s the listening and speaking that I have a hard time with, and seemingly, that is what is important, until there is a test on reading and writing. Je vais voir on Tuesday how well I do.

All that aside… I suppose it’s just the future that I have to plan for.

D’accord.. a la prochaine, pour maintenant.

The last time I wrote anything here was almost a month ago. In some ways, quite a bit has happened, and in other ways, nothing at all. The most notable thing that has remained the same (or constant) is my employment status, or lack there of. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. In order to work in France (or at least for an American), one needs to have the perspective employer send a copy of the contract to the prefecture or ministry of immigration in order to receive a visa which grants the status of being able to work. The visa can only be obtained from one’s local embassy, which in my case would be Philadelphia (only 3,000 miles away or so). From there, one then returns to the area in which one lives in Paris (or where ever in France) and goes to the correct City Hall with the visa to apply for the Carte de Sejour so that one can actually work. In theory, that’s how it works.

In my quest for employment, the usual response is, “Do you have working papers for France?” I reply “No, but, if you’re willing to hire me, I can then get working papers.” Most of the time I don’t receive a further reply, but in the remaining cases, the reply is, “Sorry, we need some with working papers,” which I believe is the French politely saying in English, “Fuck off American.” And it’s not just for regular jobs, it’s also for childcare as well. I’ll have to remember this when I hire a baby sitter, “You are legally allowed to work, because I’ll be writing you a check and I need to be able to write off this expense.” Whatever happened to cash in hand for babysitting. I believe that would be a worthwhile strike here in Paris.

In other news, I begin taking a French class next Thursday. I took the entrance test this past Thursday so they can determine my level of French. The test went well, or bad. I felt bad for not understanding the basic things, like the masculine or feminine of different nouns, but I seemed to do alright with writing, and my quick oral exam went well enough. This is all the result of not having a structured learning environment. I would say there were a majority of Asians there to take taking the test, which seems to be the racial theme for my trip to Paris this time around. I’ve definitely seen more people of Asian descent here in the past month than the previous times I’ve been here.

Alas.. So, perhaps all of my three readers are wondering what has been preoccupying my time since I’ve been here? Maybe not. “Not much,” however, is the answer. I initially spend my mornings sleeping, then checking email, and checking the regular classified ads for jobs that I might be able to apply for. Other time is spent gathering information for Amandine’s research paper. A few hours of the day are dedicated to being outside, and the evening hours of course are dedicated to drinking wine and eating bread and cheese.

I managed to finally buy the conclusion to “A Year in the Merde,” by Stephen Clarke. So far it’s not as funny as the first, but I’m only about a quarter of the way through.

The most interesting thing lately to happen was that I, Todd Tupper, had a vistor here in Paris. Was it family or close lifelong friends or a college roommate, no but it was absolutely a blast having the one and only Jessica Lewis here. I had a delightful time spending time with her and showing her around Paris. Rather than tell you about all that her, Amandine and I did while she was here, you can read about it on her website. (After reading that I say to you: “Take that all of you who have denied a free place to stay in Paris!”)

So where does that bring us to… Well, minor notes of interest will include the following..

Last night, Amandine and I went out to eat at an Indian restaurant and since we weren’t being asked for what we would like, I took the time to look around what other people were having… I began to notice that NO ONE was drinking wine. “Intriguing,” I pondered…. Then I mentioned to Amandine, “No one is drinking wine in here.” Her response, “It’s not possible!” Possible in deed. We found the only restaurant in Paris that doesn’t have wine. Yet there were quite a few people in there, so maybe the food was amazing. We couldn’t tell you because after 5 minutes of not being asked what kind of wine we wouldn’t like to drink, we left.

Some weirdo earlier today at Saint Sulpice was trying to tell me that “Excuse me,” was the same thing as, “I’m sorry.” Nuts to him.

In other news, I now have a fish. Amandine has two fish. Here is a picture of Azrael (in memory of Gargamel’s Cat. (from “The Smurfs” if you’re too young to recall.)
He even eats the cockroaches here. (but hopefully they’ll be gone soon.)

So what else is going on here.. Not much that I can think of..

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things.  I’ll try and remember to update this more often.  In the mean time, (if you have a fast internet connection) you can watch this video from earlier this afternoon.   And yeah..  You can come visit or call me anytime you want…
So to recap:  I got a fish, not a job. I can put to rest any rumors of me getting married. I do have an interview on Thursday, and I should be home in December. Oh, and there is a new set of pictures here, or you can access them through means of going through those pictures links off to your right.

In conclusion. Watch Battlestar Galactica!

The End.

I could of course write only in French, not only would it help my improve my writing in French, but it would force you to use a translator to read it, and then you might not check here at all.

If you’ve come here looking for pictures though, I have some bad news.  As of now, 3:50 CET, the pictures aren’t working.  I’m not sure why.  The website may be down or something.  I really do need a better solution to it.  I might end up hosting my pictures on my picasa space. It’s only 250 megs, which should mean maybe 1,000 low resolution pictures… You might not know, but there are probably well over 6,000 photos on my current space.

Again… Paris is still Paris.  Though at this time of year it is fairly slow considering that most people are still out on their month vacation.  Or if they are back, they’re gradually easing back into working.

Strikes or manifestations are plentiful yet.  The weather is very nice currently, though a little hot.  (Nothing like Boston this summer so I’m not really complaining.)

I’ll be sure to get some more pictures online for you soon, if I feel they are interesting.  I do have a new phone number for those of you who dare to call and pay the 40 cents a minute. (it’s 13 cents a minute if you use Skype).

+336 73 05 44 49

If you’ve got a minute or two, or feel that this site is too boring — you can take a gander at fellow expat Jessica, in some unpronounceable city in Germany.

Alright.. I promise, I’ll try and keep all of you more up to date.

Bisous

Tchô