Pics from Paris

So I've been a bit busy (well sort of busy) lately and have finally managed to get through my photos from Paris.
I've got a lot though so I'm going to sort of string them out a bit, so people (assuming people are reading this!) don't get too bored of my idea of a nice architecture photo.

Walking around Paris

This album does have what is currently one of my favourite photos of all time (that I've take anyway) so see if you can spot which one!

Spending time in Paris

I've spent the last couple of days mostly with may family doing various things in preparation for Christmas. I really love France (and Paris in particular) but there are definitely some things that I like that aren't done the same way either in Australia or China. One is the politeness. Every shop you go into people say "Bonjour monsieur" and they always sound so cheery. Then when you leave it's "Merci monsieur, au revoir, bon journee". I like it, it's great!
The other thing is shopping for food. It really could be a full time job here. You stop at the baker, the butcher, the patissier, the fruit market, the fromagerie (cheese shop), the wine shop and sometimes the supermarket as well. This afternoon my sister and I spent about 3 hours out and only managed to get enough food for the day! We did find these fantastic meringues though.

We'd been looking for a Christmas tree for a few days that was big enough. Most people in Paris have quite small apartments and so quite small trees. The embassy has very big apartments though, so we needed an appropriately sized tree and there weren't very many around. My sister and my mother came home yesterday though with the instructions "put your shoes on, we've bought a tree and you need to carry it". So I head out with my sister to find the man with the tree. It's about 25 minutes walk or so. We get there and the tree is about 2.5m tall with a huge half log on the bottom to keep it stable. I could barely lift it! I managed to get it on my shoulder and carry it about 150m before we gave up and my sister left to get my brother in law. I got a lot of very strange looks along with a few "quelle grand sapin" form people. She finally came back and here's the tree on the streets of Paris.

The shop we bought it from is just out of sight in the background! My dad rocked up and we carried it back to the apartment where we had the unveiling ceremony, National Lampoon's Christmas style

Lucky the apartment is so damn big! So tonight it'll be decorating the tree which should be nice with the family all here (except Jane, hurry up and get here :).

I was out on the Champs-Elysees the other day (as one does!) and ordered a capuccino (because Australia is the only place that understands flat whites) and here's what I got

Yes that is whipped cream on the top. Definitely the weirdest capuccino I've ever had in my life! I was very confused when she gave it to me but she acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe she's never seen a capuccino before? Well she still hasn't!

Weekend tomorrow so the big shops will all be totally packed so I might do some local shopping here then head to the department stores (Le Printemps and Galeries LaFayette) early next week for some more in depth shopping :)

First day in Paris

So I managed to make it to my sister's house without too many issues. I also managed to stay awake until 10:30pm (5:30am Beijing time) which was nice. I then woke up at 8am Beijing time (1am) and a few more times, and finally gave up sleeping about 6:30am. Not too bad an effort. The view from the balcony is straight out at the Eiffel Tower, it's pretty special.

After a slow start with getting Lily ready to go (babies take lots of time), my sister, my mum and I went to Boulevard Haussman to the big department stores, Printemps and Galleries Lafayette. It was nice to get out in Paris again, the clothes, decorations and stuff are great here. I think I will spend a bit of money on clothes and shoes :) Lily was fine, not crying or anything. One problem with little kids is that the metro is really not designed for them. There are very few lifts and the turnstiles won't fit a pram or normal stroller through them and they're built really high to stop people jumping them. They have gates but there's almost never anyone there to open them. So Lily went in the baby carrier but it's not clear how long she'll fit in there, she's getting bigger pretty quickly.

I'm thinking about a few different options for stuff to do over the next week or so before Jane gets here. My parents are talking about going to Amsterdam which might be nice. I haven't been there before and it would be a fairly quick trip on the train. If anyone has any other suggestions for me, let me know!

Traveling to Paris

It's funny cause all the other international flights I've taken have been with non-Chinese airlines. I can now testify that it makes a REALLY BIG difference. Normally I would plug in my headphones, queue up a bunch of crappy (or ideally not crappy) movies and watch them until I fall asleep for a few minutes. My flight from Beijing to Paris (it was non stop which is ok) was on a littlish sort of plane with no entertainment (aside from the old-style overhead monitors that you can't see). I had a suspicion this would be the case so I brought my laptop etc along. But what happens is that the (mostly) Chinese fliers all stand in the aisles yelling at each other, or they all watch movies on their iPads with the sound up or they all play games (also with the sound up). It's pretty annoying! So the one flight I want to sleep through is also during the day so I really should stay awake. GRRRR!

An interesting thing happened very early in the flight though. If you've been following my blog (and if not WHY NOT?)(also I understand :) you would already know that yesterday Jane and I and her friend from work Jie Xia (Jessie) went skiing at a place just outside Beijing. It was roughly an hour out of town. Well about 5 minutes after we take off, what do we fly over but the ski place. It was easily recognised by the fact that it's all man-made snow in the middle of a brown string of hills. Sort of sticks out a little! And if you've been reading even further back (and you should have been) then you would clearly remember my camping trip on the Great Wall. If not, please take this opportunity to remind yourself. Right, well I flew over the same spot. It looks pretty much the same from up here too. ABout 10 minutes after that though, everything went white and snow covered and it's been that way for the last 5 hours or so. Mongolia and southern (and probably even more so northern) Russia are seriously empty and desolate. There is nothing here but hills, snow and (very few) trees. No roads, railways and certainly no towns. Jessie was saying that last year they went horse riding in Inner Mongolia last year and that maybe we should do it again. It would be interesting but do you think they'll let me swap the horse for a trail bike? I really don't like horses.

I finally watched the first episode of Game of Thrones. I've read the (existing) books a few times but for some reason never quite got around to watching the show. I guess I've slightly avoided them because 1) I know the story isn't finished and 2) the author is producing one book every 5 or so years, one just came out and he seems pretty fed up with the whole thing really. Still, I enjoyed the show, I think I will definitely try to watch the rest of the episodes. Would have been nice if they'd called it "A Song of Ice and Fire" cause Game of Thrones was just the first book. At least I have an advantage of knowing who the many, many, many characters are :)

I should probably also have brought more than a single episode for my 11 hour flight! I also should really invest in more games on my mac than ones I can't run without running the battery down like Oblivion/Minecraft/Terraria and less battery intensive but also less interesting games that I'm not very good at like chess/mahjong. I won 3 chess games in a row against the computer which is a record for me because I don't think I've ever actually won a game before :) At least I how the pieces work.

So I'm kind of running down my battery and hoping that some award- and cash-winning novel idea will come to me (and that I could write it). Nothing so far though.

Missing home

It's funny, we've been here for almost 5 months I think but it wasn't until I went back to Australia for a few days that I realised I'd been missing home.
It's coming into summer, people are having Christmas parties, BBQs, evenings out but I'm not getting any of that here. It's not just the weather, which is cold but sort of bearable, it's just not being able to see people when I want to.

Beijing also has a decided lack of (to me anyway) Christmas feeling. There are decorations in a few places (shopping malls, our apartment complex has some lights on trees) but for some reason it just doesn't feel the same to me. At least I know that Paris (where I am going on Monday) will have an excess of Christmas trees, lights, songs, banners, tinsel and all the other things that make it feel like Christmas.

At least I have the benefit of being able to see my parents and my sister (and James and Lily!) for Christmas. It's a shame that Jane won't be able to see her family as well, but I can't imagine what a nightmare organising THAT trip would be. Hopefully we'll see them in the new year.

So, in conclusion (Jane and I have been providing useful feedback on her co-workers' English and they've been writing essays) I've been missing my friends, family, the weather and the sorts of things that summer lets people do (like diving). Still it's not all bad, I'm going skiing on the weekend :)

Not sure if I'll have any internet when we get to Paris so if I don't, Merry Christmas everyone!!

Also check out this fine Tim Minchin Christmas song on the youtubes (grandparents with slow internet and low tolerance for swearing should probably not click on this link!!). Makes me sad being away from Australia but it is a great song.