School days and soy sauce

Today, Sunday, has been pleasant with summer-like temps and a gorgeous blue sky -- at least until clouds rolled in late in the day. (photo: Susan's class baking baquettes; oh, and yes, they were delicious.)

This past week has been just a wee bit interesting.

Susan finished the written portion of her final exam last Tuesday. Her primary concern centered on having to memorize eight different recipes, only one of which would be on the exam. They were given a paper with the recipe but with missing some of the ingredients, times, temps, etc., and they had to reproduce the exact information. A bit stressful but she passed with flying colors (or colours if you prefer).

Next week is the practical portion of the final: they will be given the recipe but can not utilize any notes, etc., and of course it has to be made within a certain amount of time, or points are deducted. By the end of the week, however, the intermediate level will be history and Susan will have some well-deserved time off before beginning the final level: “Superior” (”supérieur”). Since that level is taught in French only it should be loads of fun.

And speaking of French this last week also saw the conclusion of Susan’s second two-week session of French lessons at the Alliance Francais. With an erratic schedule for the next several weeks it is unclear if or when she would be able to continue French. Naturally since I speak fluent English I am little concerned for myself but she feels the pinch of the upcoming superior level so again, a bit more stress.

But we keep reminding ourselves that what we’re doing here is good. In fact, ‘we’re just happy to be here.” And lucky too.

Last week we both attended an interesting presentation Le Cordon Bleu: Mr. Yamamoto from central Japan came to talk about soy sauce in general and his micro-brewed soy sauce in particular. as a consumer of lots of soy sauce we both found his talk quite fascinating, and enjoyed hearing the process explained from a very small producer’s point-of-view. The challenge now is to find his product here in Paris. The Japanese shops seem to be generally located in the 2nd arrondisement, near the Opera and Place Madeleine area so it looks like we will be headed up that way later this next week. Anyway if you're interested you can find out more about sauce sauce online. Just click here! (photo above: Mr. Yamamoto)

By now you’ve also seen my blog entry on our day trip to Versailles this last Saturday (21 October) so that’s old news for you.

We saw the movie The Queen in a local theater Sunday afternoon – what an outstanding performance by Helen Mirren (among others) in a truly great movie. We can't wait for Clint Eastwoods first half of his WWII epic about Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers; that opens here next week.

Anyway, we had no sooner left the dark of the theater to a beautiful bright, sunny afternoon and started walking down Avenue des Gobelins toward our apartment when we began hearing the whistles, you know, police whistles. First one, then two, then three and four and five. And then came a half dozen police shooting past us on roller blades, scooters and bicycles, halting cross traffic, and then zooming on down the street. And right behind them were literally thousands of roller bladders of all ages, sizes and obvious skills whizzing down the street! We just stood on the curb watching the parade. Funny we had seen something very similar on the Champs Elysses this past May, and on a Sunday. Must be something in the water here.

This coming week will see me finishing Pere Lachaise cemetery, at least for the moment – although we both plan to return there on All-Saint’s day of course. I will then turn to tracking down and photographing the statuary in the remaining city cemeteries.


We strolled through the nearby city gardens and you'll be happy to know that the colors are still with us so we feel safe for the moment.

We hope you are all well and that winter is still far from your door.

Wish you were here,

Steve