Beach Bumming in Tulum

Political Pawns

I’m a bit dis­con­nected from French news. But recently, a few head­lines caught my eyes again, mostly because they quickly spread inter­na­tion­ally. First, there was the tragic story of the Dupont de Ligonnès family—the father is still on the run by the way.

France’s Most Wanted

The U.K and Roy­al­ists around the world cel­e­brated the Royal Wed­ding, the U.S.A finally got “America’s most wanted” and Canada woke up from the fed­eral elec­tions with a hangover—Harper in a major­ity gov­ern­ment, seriously?

Mean­while, the head­lines in France were all about a grisly case that took place in Nantes, my hometown.

Are French Rude?

I entered France with my Cana­dian pass­port and I decided to become a woman with a mis­sion. I was going to find out if French were rude. About an hour after set­ting foot in my for­mer coun­try, I was ready to say yes. As soon as the plane landed, you could tell the French return­ing back home from the Cana­di­ans: the for­mer loudly rushed out of the plane while the later politely let each other go first.

Beauty Comes From Within (And From Shopping In France)

I felt like one of those peo­ple who are offered drugs at a party, got hooked and ended up sell­ing their car for a few grams of crack or what­ever is trendy these days. The girl at the counter had me hooked on the best cream ever by giv­ing me a free sam­ple. I decided to do the sen­si­ble thing: I just said no. I’m not spend­ing that much on a cream, this is ridicu­lous, no mat­ter how good it is.

A Parisian Bug Story

I pushed the door open, slightly annoyed myself, and let him in. “Ah oui, ah oui!” he exclaimed in sur­prise, sud­denly real­iz­ing I was not a drama-queen after all. We stared at each other, unsure of what to do. For­tu­nately, after 6 weeks in France, I had my French­ness back and I could try to solve the prob­lem as diplo­mat­i­cally as possible.

Crêpes Dinner in Nantes

Crêpes are Brittany’s spe­cialty and crêperies can be found every­where in Nantes. These very thin pan­cakes are made from flour, eggs, milk, but­ter, and a pinch of salt. Nor­mally, crêpes are slightly sweeet and galettes are unsweet­ened: the first one is served as dessert and the sec­ond one is the main meal. They are tra­di­tion­ally served with very cold cider.

Going To...

We are on our way to France and will stay in Europe until July 31 st. I haven’t spent a sum­mer in France since 2003 — at the time, I was com­ing back from Aus­tralia and New-Zealand and I spent the sum­mer study­ing for my uni­ver­sity exams. It was the hottest sum­mer ever in Europe and I spent half of my time camp­ing at the beach with a bunch of friends. Seven years later, I don’t have that many friends left in France but Feng and I should have fun nonethe­less — I remem­ber sum­mer in France as a nice season.

The Customer Is King

In France, the say­ing goes that “le client est roi”. But in fact, the cus­tomer is any­thing but a king: at best he is an idiot, a minor annoy­ance in your day. As this funny arti­cle on “How to play the French ser­vice game … and win” explains: “The cus­tomer is king. But we all know what they did to their royal fam­ily. The guil­lotined head of Louis XVI bounced across the Place de la Con­corde as a few thou­sand Parisians laughed at it”.