{"id":4315,"date":"2004-03-24T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-24T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/blog-du-frances-2\/"},"modified":"2004-03-24T00:11:00","modified_gmt":"2004-03-24T00:11:00","slug":"blog-du-frances-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/blog-du-frances-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog du Frances&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have arrived in Paris, but still remain an American geek. Paris is a big mirror that doesn&#8217;t let me escape that image. No way&#8230;observe the following conversation upon exiting the Paris Metro:<\/p>\n<p><i>T: &#8220;Where is it? The largest structure in Paris and we&#8217;ve managed to lose it. Great! Let&#8217;s cross the street.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>K: (After crossing the street) &#8220;Uhhhh, Tam.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>T: &#8220;What?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>K: &#8220;Look behind you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>T: (Spying the Eiffel Tower. Grumble, grumble.)  &#8220;What are we doing here? Let&#8217;s cross the street!&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>But looking carefully into the mirror, Paris can&#8217;t escape me either:<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They no longer have public trash bins. They use clear bags hanging from frames. A form of terrorist prevention that hasn&#8217;t traveled to the states.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>On a French keyboard, the M key is exactly where you wouldn&#8217;t expect it to be. Other than that and a few special characters, it isn&#8217;t hard to type on a French keyboard.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Renaults and Peugots. Very few SUV&#8217;s&#8211;the streets are too narrow for that. <\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>So far, no take-away coffee, though everyone seems to be in a hurry.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Diet Coke is called Coke Lite, and it tastes funny. I may switch to espresso.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Several years of experience as a Dungeon Master is required to retain one&#8217;s sanity in the Paris Metro.  Pigeon French is a good secondary skill to have, but understanding signage and a good sense of direction will win through.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Point and click is an acceptible substitute for speaking the language when using a menu\/map\/visual aide.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Smoking is allowed EVERYWHERE.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Paris is not an accessible city.  (I&#8217;ve been looking Bridge.)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>After listening to two days of French, I find I understand Spanish better. Go figure.<\/li>\n<p><\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a long day, but there will be more to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have arrived in Paris, but still remain an American geek. Paris is a big mirror that doesn&#8217;t let me escape that image. No way&#8230;observe the following conversation upon exiting the Paris Metro: T: &#8220;Where is it? The largest structure in Paris and we&#8217;ve managed to lose it. Great! Let&#8217;s cross the street.&#8221; K: (After<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}