Archive for November, 2006
November 27, 2006 at 11:38 am
· Filed under france, paris
We just returned from a week in the states. Our landlady changed the hot water heater while we were away. It’s great that we now have a hot water heater that works (we hope!). The downside is that our landlady must have forgotten to turn the power back on to our apartment! That means we had to throw away a lot of food from our fridge (bleu cheese that hasn’t been refridgerated stinks, by the way) and we have no hot water for a shower after our long day of travel. It’s always something when it comes to apartments in Paris!
Maybe something tells us that we shouldn’t be living in Paris… Or maybe that we shouldn’t be taking trips away from Paris?
… what other surprises are in store for us…???
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November 14, 2006 at 11:53 pm
· Filed under france, japan
I got my test voucher back in the mail today. It is on. 19 days and counting.
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November 9, 2006 at 11:50 pm
· Filed under france, paris
That’s what I’m missing. I’m stuck here in Paris with lots of work to do and studying for the JLPT. My wife will be going down to Barcelona for the weekend for a “hen-do”. Well, I guess I have no choice but to get some extra work done this weekend.
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November 9, 2006 at 1:42 am
· Filed under france, paris
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November 8, 2006 at 1:13 am
· Filed under U.S.
It’s election day in the U.S. Will they ever move election day to a weekend or make it a federal holiday? It looks like they are already having troubles with the electronic voting machines. Again.
Anyways, I’ve already mailed in my overseas absentee ballot. Will the Republicans lose their majority in the house and senate? Or will the voters give them one last chance? Or will the electronic voting machines give enough negative votes to the Democratic candidates to swing the elections? The suspense is killing me. Either way I’m not sure much will change.
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November 5, 2006 at 10:58 pm
· Filed under france, musuems, paris
It was the first Sunday of the month today. That means a lot of free museum access! We decided to go to Musée du quai Branly, the new museum in Paris of modern (mostly 18-20th century) world anthropology. It had just opened this year, but had quite mixed reviews so we wanted to check it out for ourselves.
The museum has an impressive collection of artifacts, in particular masks and other ritualistic objects. However, we didn’t come away feeling that we had learned anything from the visit. Besides the general classification of objects by region (i.e. Océanie, Asie, Amerique, etc) there was not much organization. It had more of the feel of a gallery art exhibition. The museum was generally dimly lit and the lighting that was used was quite distracting at times in particular when one of the lights caught you in the eye, or just making it difficult to read a display legend due to your own shadow.
I definitely see that criticisms of the layout and lack of coherent organization are justified. However, I still think that the museum is worth a visit for its exquisite collection alone.
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November 4, 2006 at 11:52 pm
· Filed under food, france
It was a nice day today, a good day for sushi in Paris. It’s hard to find but decent sushi does exist here.
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November 2, 2006 at 11:57 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
I did it during randori. I was close to the wall. I was swinging my leg around for a throw when my little toe contacted the wall of our small dojo. It made a popping noise, but didn’t hurt too much. I stopped and checked it out and it seemed fine, so I continued for the rest of practice. Only later, after practice, did I notice that I could easily bend the last digit of my little toe completely sideways. I don’t think it was broken but it seems like the last digit was definitely dislocated but had popped back into place by itself. Some of the guys told me the story of someone who had their toe completely detached executing tomoenage, so I shouldn’t feel so bad. Anyways it doesn’t hurt too much. I’ll tape it up and go easy on it for a few weeks.
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November 1, 2006 at 8:02 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
Today is a holiday in France. The ‘All Saints Day’ following Halloween that we hear about in the U.S. but never really know what it is about. I asked a French colleague if he was coming into work today and he gave me a look like I was crazy.
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