Two Broads Abroad (and Pei!): J’aime bien travailler, mais pas toujours (I love working…sometimes)

My modus operandai in Paris of late has been to grab any opportunity to speak French, meet the French, and see other sides of Paris.  This week I tried to earn some fric (cash) to pay for upcoming travel plans.  I am proud to say that I can now understand toddler French, even if I can’t really deal with the French toddler tantrums during my babysitting jobs.  Although years and years of babysitting have taught me that perhaps these nightly meltdowns are due to the fact that the two and four year old don’t eat dinner until eight at night (not counting a nutritional snack of Petits Écoliers or some other chocolate biscuit), I just smiled and accepted the euros, sans the crushing exchange rate.

During another job (hustlin’ for euros), I dealt with the equally infantile artistes on the Left Bank.  My host mother works in marketing for a spa product company, but her real passion is art.  She is helping her friend and painting teacher put on a gallery show, and I volunteered (then got over trying to be ingratiating, and accepted some payment) to help out.  We had our first show last Thursday at the Galerie d’Europe, in the chic St. Germain-des-Près area, and I saw it all from the thankless job of catering grunt work—and hiding the fact that the wine came from boxes by filling pitchers in the back room.  The crowd was very international and well dressed—then there were the few in attendance solely for the free booze.  Yesterday, I tried to abstain from my American inclination to smile and instead look sufficiently haughty while doing door duty at the gallery. It was difficult to quell my laughter when the painter explained to the sculptor that she shouldn’t just sneer and ignore visitors who looked like they couldn’t afford the art—the “little people” might say something and give you a bad reputation!  Many a faux-pas later—not getting people’s contact information, not knowing how to wheedle potential buyers—I was glad to come home to the less glamorous task of conquering my French homework.

This morning, I visited Rungis, a wholesale fresh food market outside of Paris and the largest in Europe that is frequented by the opposite crowd.  Rungis is only open to professionals, but I was there as an assistant for my other job—working in a fromagerie!  While the job is unpaid, free gourmet, artisanal cheese is even better than cold, hard cash for me. We stocked up on some wheels of cheese the size of bicycle tires, and then I got a grand tour through the flower and meat section.  After walking through a warehouse of unending rows of carcasses (cows’ ribs look surprisingly similar to that of humans!), I was ready to finish the tour.  It hasn’t swayed me from my omnivorism (and if Wesleyan hasn’t converted me, Paris definitely won’t), but I abstained from dead flesh for the day. While what I really wanted was a “Gil’s Gardenburger “with guacamole and hot sauce (miss you, Neon), I settled for a baguette with goat cheese.

The market experience ended in the café at 9:30 a.m., in the middle of the warehouse completely occupied by butchers in blood-splattered aprons, joyfully swigging beer.  However, they have been up since 4 a.m., when the market opens.  While a weekend visit to Brussels has made me never want to hypothetically drink Natty/PBR/Red Dog again, I decided to go with coffee over beer before noon.

French students don’t seem to have the same slavish academic devotion as Wesleyan students (the university library closes at 8 p.m.!), soon I actually have to do some more sedentary and academic work – preparing for exposés, the 30 minute oral presentation in my French university courses that are about 50 percent of your grade, mince.