Belleville Parc Surprise

Hello again! Today I went to a parc called Belleville! Before I start, I would like to note parc is park in French. So, as I was saying, I went to a parc called Belleville, which is a wonderful park that has free climbing, free going on a huge fort, and free going down a slide.

The slide is what's most important in Belleville. The slide is huge. It's probably 20 meters long (65 feet). Now, I went down the slide 5 or 6 times, and on the last time I went down the slide, I wasn't very happy. It turns out that I unfortunately slid through something greenish yellow and brown. It got all over my clothes. It got on my shirt, on my jacket sleeve, on my jeans, and on my FACE! At first, I thought it was mud. Then, I thought it was dog poo. My heart sank. So I went to my Mama to show her, in hopes that it was not dog poo. And when I talked to her, guess what? It wasn't dog poop.

It was worse.

It was pigeon diarrhea.

My heart sank down and fell out my ribs. So I had an exhausting walk to the Metro, which was far away, to go back to my apartment to take a shower. It felt refreshing, but also felt a bit gross.

More pictures!

real stinky cheese, but yummy

sardines and anchovies

Me talking with Papa

Notre Dame de la Croix (Our Lady of the Cross) not too far away--not the big Notre Dame

French word of the day:
embarrassé: To feel embarrassed. I felt embarrassé when I walked to the Metro with bird poo on my hand.

Little known French fact :
The ground floor number is known as zero instead of the first floor.

Game Time!!!
 Find the 1-up mushroom!!!

 

Thank you for reading!
Julien Rémy

First Things First.

Hello everyone! I'm in Paris but let's start in London shall we?

We took a train called The Tube, but it's your normal subway. If you're in France, the subway is called le Metro. First we went to the Courtauld Gallery. 

We looked around and I soon saw a portrait of Van Gogh. Mama said there's a legend where he cut off part of his ear and mailed it to his girl friend because he was sad that he broke - up with her. His girl friend must have hated Van Gogh even more if you ask me. Poor guy.

Then we went and saw Big Ben, I'm not so sure why they don't  call it Big Benjamin.    

Big Ben

Old timey telephone booth

The Thames River

Then we flew to Paris!! 

On the plane, I did 16 math problems in 1 hour. And one more thing: isn't that thing supposed to be in a Mario game? It's crawling on me!

A One-Up Mushroom containing sour candies

This is your French word of the day:
Marcher comme un mort vivant (marshay come un more veev-on)--This means "to walk like a zombie."
I was walking comme un mort vivant because I was so tired in London because I barely got any sleep, I was hungry, and my stomach was cramping.

Little known French Fact of the day:
In a lot of French houses, the bathroom with the sink and shower has no toilet. The toilet is in some other part of the house because the French don't want their bathroom to get stinky.

Get a 1-Up:
I'm doing something new this time!

A game! Find the 1-up mushroom in my photograph below and leave a comment with the right answer to get a 1-up point. Whoever gets the most points by first finding the mushrooms will get a Present From France at the end of my stay! (I'll mail it to you in June.)
Look at the mushroom I have in my hand.





Can you find the mushroom in the picture below:

Thanks for reading!
Julien Rémy

I Love Paris

I'm going to Paris in a little over a week.
I'm doing this blog again because I'm missing a month of school while I'm in Paris, and I want to be sure I can share what's happening to me. I will miss my friends and teachers because they're really nice ones and I'll have to wait a couple of months to see them again.
To all my class friends in Mrs. Deem's class, I would really like you to read this blog because I'll miss you and want to hear from you.

Au revoir! (good bye!)
Julien Rémy

Oysters for Christmas

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we went to my uncle’s house. There was my Tonton (uncle) Serge, Tonton Alain, and lots of other family people. When the first course was served, there were oysters—alive!—and the main thing about eating oysters is that you swallow the whole thing, except the shell. I didn’t do that.  Papa cut it into very little pieces so I could eat it. Obviously the oyster was dead now, and there was an adult there named Mikail who didn’t like oysters, and Papa served him a little piece to eat. What do you know? He leaned back because he was afraid to eat the oysters. So, Mama said that I was brave to eat it.

Mikail taught me how to juggle plastic tree ornaments, but I'm still not like one of those professionals who can juggle three balls. We stayed up until 4 o'clock in the morning!

We also ate lobster, duck, potato gratin dauphinois, a chocolate buchette (fancy “yule log roll”), and I had a raspberry macaroon. There was also lots and lots of wine, red, white and bubbly.

After a while, almost everyone was saying they heard a sound. One of the aunties asked me to look out the window to see if someone was there. A second later, we heard the doorbell. We opened the door inside the hall, and standing there was Pére Noel, or Santa Claus, who had four presents for me! Here’s a picture of one of them:

This is a Bobble Head Darth Vader.

On Christmas Day, I started getting really lucky because by then I’d gotten about a dozen things for Christmas.  I’m spoiled. This was in my stocking:

A flashlight/keychain/Lego Darth Vader.

I also made a Monopoly game of Star Wars. I’ll show it to you:

My favorite part of France is when I see my French uncles.

On Christmas Day, we took a walk in a really good park called Belleville Park.  There was the longest slide I’d ever seen, and I slid on my belly.  If you saw me, you’d have thought I was going 50 miles per hour!

French Words of the Day: Tonton and Tata (sweet names for Uncle and Aunt) like Tonton Serge and Tata Sylvie!

Fun Fact of the Day:
Instead of dollars, French people use Euros.  They are coins.  They still have paper money, for 50, 20, 10, and 5 Euros.

Merry Day-After Christmas! Only two more days of blogging.

The Day Before the Day Before Christmas

We went to the French Market again!  Remember earlier?  That French Market that had the panties next to oranges? Well, we went there, mainly because Maman was going to get me a toy.  But it didn't seem like their toys were that interesting. So we got some vegetables instead.

Then we went to a store nearby, and they had quite a lot of cool toys.  Some of the things they had were motorized dune-buggy-looking cars and motorcycles, but what I really wanted and picked was a common Battleship game. In France, they call it Sea Battle.

This may seem a bit short, but there's not much else we did. I'm not going to tell you every single second to make this longer, so have a happy day before the day before Christmas!

Busy Day

From yesterday morning until afternoon, we were locked in the apartment! This is what happened. We searched about the whole apartment for hours for the keys.  We have to use the keys to get OUT of the house, so basically, we were locked in. Imagine! Staying inside a house until 3 o'clock when Paris is waiting outside for you! (Then, in the afternoon, my Papa came home from work and said, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry!  I took both the keys with me!" He gave me a yummy yule log as a treat and kept apologizing to us.)

But before he came home, I felt puzzled.  I felt so sad because we were planning to go to the bakery and the Eiffel Tower. So after a while, we started to make ourselves a gingerbread house from a cottage kit because there was nothing else to do. It made us happy again. When the cottage kit was finished, this is what it looked like:

And did I tell you yet that one day this week, in Papa's sleep, in the middle of the night, Papa sang the beginning of a Wagner opera! It startled me awake, he was so loud. Then Mama and me started laughing our heads off.  And then Papa woke up and said, "Oh, I'm sorry!  I was singing in my sleep!" It makes me laugh so hard right now!

After we got the keys, we didn't go up the Eiffel Tower like we wanted to.  Unfortunately, the line was so long that it would probably take 45 minutes to get our tickets, which was crazy because there was about 151 people in the line. Instead, I got some hot chocloate and some cotton candy and we walked along some wonderful shops that were lit up for Christmas.  There were things like bubble blowers, some hats, hot chocolate, hot wine, rings, hats, and a lot more.

And today, we went to a different part of the city: the Louvre. Mainly, the best part you can see of it is the glass pyramid. (Maman is groaning at me now.)  The Louvre is so big, it would take two days to search the whole Louvre. We visited the Egyptian antiquities. After that, we fed the ducks and seabirds and pigeons in the Jardin des Tuilleries (a garden in front of the museum). Let me tell you, over one little crumb of food, they would try to poke each other's eyes out.  The amazing thing about those seabirds was that if you threw a crumb high in the air where they could see it, they could catch it in the air.

After, we walked through those shops again, but this time we were near the Champs Elysees. I got a type of food called a crepe (a thin pancake with chocolate and bananas wrapped up inside) and a hot chocolate.  Maman got vin chaud (hot wine). And here's the coolest part: we saw Pere Noel (Santa Claus) and some reindeer, including Rudolph.  They were up high in air in a sleigh hanging from a motorized cable tied to a really long line.  Of course, this Santa wasn't a real Santa--he was just one of those guys with a beard. He was talking a lot in French, so I couldn't understand him, but I think he said, "Merry Christmas" and to be good boys and girls.

That was pretty much all.  This day was pretty busy for us because we walked for miles to get through all those shops. Our feet were killing us.

Tomorrow, I'm going to sleep in. 

French word of the day: chocolat chaud (shock-oh-lah show), which means hot chocolate

French Fact of the Day: The Louvre isn't just a museum with a glass pyramid.  It used to be a castle, and the original stones of the castle are in the basement floor of the museum.

After two days

Since the blog didn't get shown up for two days, this post will be extra long.  But first, let me tell you about what happened in these two days.

First, I went in a train that lasted for about two hours.  When we finished, we took a car ride that lasted about an hour. When we were riding in the car, my mom's friend Amy pointed to a REAL medieval castle. It had quite a lot of turrets. And it was in the middle of a suburb!

When we got out of the car, we were in the French countryside!  We went into a somewhat abandoned-looking castle, but when we got inside, it looked like a regular beautiful house. This was Miss Amy's house. Miss Amy writes books.  She has a four and a half year old girl and a 6 year old boy. At first they opened up some toys that I gave them as presents. We ran around and played with swords (it was really fun). When I was safe, I did a dance and sang, "I am protected!" I could speak a little French and the kids could speak English a bit, so we could understand each other. Then, there was a little shed with a little trampoline inside. We jumped on that for a little while.  I haven't been on a trampoline for at least six months, so I quite enjoyed it. Then we played swords again and played on the computer.  

(We took pictures, but we forgot our computer cord, so we can't download the pictures from the camera.)

For dinner, we ate veal with Papa's sauce, some salads, and some things that I'm not sure what they were. But they were good. We had a tarteline for dessert.

We spent the night in the country.  That was Saturday.  Before I tell you about Sunday, let me tell you something pretty cool.  Me and my mom finally finished the Lego Millenium Falcon on Sunday morning. Here it is, my big Christmas present. (I opened it early because it wouldn't fit in a suitcase for the plane.)

Han Solo is driving

inside

On Sunday, back in Paris, we went to a very good friend of Papa's. Her name is Madame Francoise. She is a very very very lucky woman because in her apartment, you can see the Eiffel Tower. At night, it starts to glow with yellow light.  And then, every hour for a few minutes, the Eiffel Tower starts to sparkle like fireworks with bluish-white lights. Her daughter lives downstairs, and the coolest thing about her room is that she has a bookshelf, and that bookshelf is technically a secret doorway to another house that belongs to Madame Francoise's sister! I also saw Biscotte, the little lazy cat of the house. She's round, and she gets up only when she's hungry, pretty much.

We stayed there until midnight. There were 11 people for dinner in total.  The dinner lasted a very very long time.  Papa asked a 9 year old boy named Alexandre if he wanted to play checkers with me. (He doesn't really speak English.)  So we did, and guess who won?  (Me!)

French word of the day:  

cadeau (ca-doh) I gave cadeaux to Miss Amy's children.

French Fact of the Day: 

People shop for their fresh foods at a French market.  If you're thinking Tom Thumb or Walmart, they don't have that here! A French market sells things like sardines and bread and octopus and radishes and toothbrushes and toys and potatoes outside with a tent roof over it, and it only lasts for a few hours. It's pretty odd, but this is true: we saw all sorts of things for sale at the market, like panties for sale right next to oranges.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this extra long post.  And we won't forget to do another post tomorrow, so please show up and give me a comment!