Where in the world is Val?

Saturday, 28 June I went for a run in the morning to a park in the 19e, called Parc des Buttes Chaumont. It is absolutely beautiful... More on that later, as I had a picnic there yesterday evening and I intend to go back again before I leave... but I am getting very ahead of myself. I am sorry to say (but not that sorry) that was my last run in Paris. I have given up on excercise - I feel like my one run a week is just going through the motions, and can't really be doing that much for me... And as I run so infrequently, it always kind of hurts since I am not really in running shape... In any case I will be back to the states in a week at which time I will have nothing more important to do than to get back in shape so we'll worry about that then. Okay, end of digression, back to Saturday. Once again, Eric very kindly gave me the day off, but he told me I had to visit the Musée Cluny, since I hadn't been there yet and the Renaissance is one of my favorite periods of art h...

I pretty much always eat well in Paris, but these next couple of days were certainly no exception. Tuesday, 24 June Happy Birthday to my host mom Catherine! Since she made French food for my birthday, I told her I would make her an American dinner for her birthday. I woke up early to start on dessert - a cheesecake. I was planning on using neufchâtel in place of cream cheese - neufchâtel is a French cheese that I have used in the states to make cheesecake. In the states, it is pretty much just like cream cheese but with less fat. Apparently that is not the case in France - Catherine got neufchâtel, but it was hard! So she also got brousse, which is a soft cheese - a little softer than cream cheese - that she told me is used frequently in cooking. Second difficulty : no graham crackers, for the crust. I just crumbled up some kind of cookie. Third : no sour cream for the topping - I used fromage blanc. Otherwise, there were no other ingredient problems. The next difficulty was le four - ...

23 June 2008 I had a relatively slow morning. I visited the post office to get stamps and a small news stand to get postcards, as I was planning on climbing the Eiffel tower in the evening and I had heard that there was a post office at the top and that it had it's own postmark specifically stating that it was mailed from the tower. On my way back to the apartment, I stopped in a little shop and in my efforts to look more Parisienne I got myself a couple of shirts and a couple pairs of shoes - one pair of ballerinas, and one pair of sandals. I had planned on getting lunch at a little restaurant recommended by Jamie in her book and, more importantly, recommended by Isabelle; unfortunately, I ran out of time because of my putain d'atelier de rapport de stage . (I won't translate that word for word, because it's not very polite... I'll just leave it at my workshop for my internship report). After the workshop, I met with a girl from my class, Sara, so we could prepa...

Samedi, 21 juin 2008 Eric was wonderful and told me I could take Saturday off of work, and I was certainly not about to turn him down! In the morning, I went for a run through the 11e towards the Cemetière de Père LaChaise, where there are a ton of famous people buried - popular tombs include those of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Moliere, Edith Piaf, Chopin, and about a bazillion other people. Personally, I have no real desire to visit, but at least now I have been to the area. The bad part of the run was that the whole way there, as well as along the side of the cemetery, was all uphill, but that is better than if the second half had been the uphill part! After my run, Catherine told me that the company she had had the previous evening had been very remiss in eating her dinner, and so I should eat the leftovers so they didn't go bad. Well, ok, if you insist! There was a chicken salad with couscous and greens and pine nuts, that came from the same magazine as the omelette wrap f...

Friday, 20 June 2008 Last Friday was a day filled with new experiences. For breakfast, I stopped in one of my corner bakery and got a new pastry, an ouranet , which is a pastry with two halves of apricots on each end of an oval, and cream between the folds of pastry dough. I still prefer their fondant au chocolat . For lunch, I visited la rue des rosiers, which might be my favorite street in Paris. It is cobblestoned, and located in the heart of the Marais. It is lined with small boutiques, Kosher bakeries, and falafel vendors. It is also where Le Loir dans le Théière is. There is a row of flower boxes that runs between the sidewalk and street - which is usually more filled with people and cars - that I assume gives the street its name. Or is there because of its name. Or something. After having seen the falafel shops, always with a line down the street, I decided to visit one. I am glad I did! It was delicious. And pretty much all vegetables so it must have been really healt...