Okay, every once in a while I feel compelled to post about what I originally started this blog for - ranting about the French. Or rather, presenting and analyzing the mysteries of cultural differences. So here goes with 2 totally unrelated things.
First, We have started having a minor roach issue, despite my Romanian cleaning girl and my obsession with sanitation due to the bébé. A man came to spray. He was so in love with his job as a roach-sprayer, I could barely get him to shut up and not holler at me over his shoulder about all kinds of intimate details about roaches that, frankly, no one needs to know. I said "I'm sorry, but my baby is asleep, do you think we could discuss this a bit more quietly?" He said "sure. And don't worry about they neighbors hearing you and finding out you have roaches - they do to! They called us to spray a few weeks ago. That's why you've got them now!" He chuckled away and was quite jolly while telling me this and clearly thought it quite funny.
And story Number Two, certainly of a less frivolous nature: Tonight on the port of Nice in front of a massive church which you see and hear from my apt, there is a big protest going on. Now stick with me here while I explain. Every Weds night, a charity group sets up shop in front of this old church and hands out soup to the homeless - a soup wagon, so to speak. It is pork soup. Now a national judge has banned this group from handing out the soup, because it is pork-based and thus discriminatory against Jews and Muslims, who cannot eat pork. So naturally there are those on one side screaming "For god's sake, repeal the ban and let the charity give the hungry people the damn soup!" And then there is the charity group itself, mournfully regretting that they cannot give out their soup (or so they act). Then there are the charity-organization haters, screaming at the charity things like "You bunch of lousy racists! You are all going to hell, you and your damn pork soup!". And finally the homeless people, who, seemingly, just want the soup to accompany their several bottles. What the average passerby wouldn't know is that the judge who made the ruling did so because this "charity" organisation is in fact a nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen-type right-winged group called "The Solidarity of the French", and they purposefully serve pork soup so as not to feed the "non-French". They try to get away with not outwardly admitting it but that's the deal. On their website, it even says that they will not give dessert and other accompagnying food products to anyone who doesn't eat the soup--sort of like saying clean your plate or you don't get the cupcake. This is to prevent anyone who wants the rest of the handout but can't eat the soup (i.e. the Jews and Muslims) from getting anything at all. Then they are the people screaming "Where are the damn non-pork soup-wagons? Why is it always the Christians who have to feed everybody? Why are the Muslims running their own 'hallal" soup wagons and the Jews a kosher one?"
I re-state that these are unrelated stories - there are no roaches in the soup, one would hope.
This is after she woke up. Here she is, on her half birthday, in all her glory.
To acknowledge both us of surviving the adventure for this long, we will celebrate by serving her meat tomorrow, per Doctor's orders. Sorry to the veggies reading this.
First, We have started having a minor roach issue, despite my Romanian cleaning girl and my obsession with sanitation due to the bébé. A man came to spray. He was so in love with his job as a roach-sprayer, I could barely get him to shut up and not holler at me over his shoulder about all kinds of intimate details about roaches that, frankly, no one needs to know. I said "I'm sorry, but my baby is asleep, do you think we could discuss this a bit more quietly?" He said "sure. And don't worry about they neighbors hearing you and finding out you have roaches - they do to! They called us to spray a few weeks ago. That's why you've got them now!" He chuckled away and was quite jolly while telling me this and clearly thought it quite funny.
And story Number Two, certainly of a less frivolous nature: Tonight on the port of Nice in front of a massive church which you see and hear from my apt, there is a big protest going on. Now stick with me here while I explain. Every Weds night, a charity group sets up shop in front of this old church and hands out soup to the homeless - a soup wagon, so to speak. It is pork soup. Now a national judge has banned this group from handing out the soup, because it is pork-based and thus discriminatory against Jews and Muslims, who cannot eat pork. So naturally there are those on one side screaming "For god's sake, repeal the ban and let the charity give the hungry people the damn soup!" And then there is the charity group itself, mournfully regretting that they cannot give out their soup (or so they act). Then there are the charity-organization haters, screaming at the charity things like "You bunch of lousy racists! You are all going to hell, you and your damn pork soup!". And finally the homeless people, who, seemingly, just want the soup to accompany their several bottles. What the average passerby wouldn't know is that the judge who made the ruling did so because this "charity" organisation is in fact a nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen-type right-winged group called "The Solidarity of the French", and they purposefully serve pork soup so as not to feed the "non-French". They try to get away with not outwardly admitting it but that's the deal. On their website, it even says that they will not give dessert and other accompagnying food products to anyone who doesn't eat the soup--sort of like saying clean your plate or you don't get the cupcake. This is to prevent anyone who wants the rest of the handout but can't eat the soup (i.e. the Jews and Muslims) from getting anything at all. Then they are the people screaming "Where are the damn non-pork soup-wagons? Why is it always the Christians who have to feed everybody? Why are the Muslims running their own 'hallal" soup wagons and the Jews a kosher one?" 
