Shanah Tova!

Last night I didn't get a chance to update like I thought I would - yesterday was a bad day (as bad as a day in Paris can be anyway). Luckily, my friends insisted I get a celebratory gift and we spent the night watching the Sex and the City series finale. For all you fans out there, you all know that that means Sex and the City: An American Girl In Paris, Part Une. Gotta love when Big follows her, gotta love her outfits, gotta cringe when she falls in Dior. The best part of having a bad day in Paris is the food. My friends surprised me and showed up to my apartment with the biggest ball of chocolate chip bread (aka something unknown but DELICIOUS) and that was after having kept me eating all day long! (As a side note, the French are always eating, and never eat on-the-go,  I don't know what they do all day! Never have I endorsed eating as such a hobby though - the novelty of amazing food never gets old and remains pure bliss). Later on, I ended up skyping and catching up with a very old friend from high school - a real mood-changer. As under-the-weather as I felt yesterday, my friends made me feel great! 


Today is Rosh Hashanah! Although I wish I was home for this holiday, the cultural experience I got instead was great. Kate and I woke up early and went to services at the Orthodox synagogue: Synagogue de la Victoire. It was the biggest synagogue I've ever seen (beautiful and daunting) but was unfortunately not even close to filled up. I guess that's representative of the Jewish population here. I can only imagine how empty it is on a normal Shabbat. Women had to sit separately from men so it was a bummer that we saw everything from a funny angle. Kate put it perfectly; for the orthodox, women are simply "glass citizens." Even though there was a gender separation, a hierarchy was very clear. The women related to prevalent men sat in the front of our section and exchanged words with the rabbi (minimal contact, but more than everyone else). We weren't sure about the dress-code so to be safe, we both wore black flats, tights, skirts, sweaters. If I don't say so myself, we looked just about as conservatively Jewish as one can get - almost orthodox! We were very pleased with ourselves because we already stand out as Americans and didn't want to draw further attention. Good thing the elderly women all wore Chanel suits, and the younger girls were all in brightly colored heels. Tomorrow we are trying a different synagogue (just to compare), but we will most certainly dress our chic-est!





Even though I hated that women were ignored during the service, that the women therefore talked amongst themselves the whole time, and that I couldn't follow along, the service was awe-inspiring nonetheless. When the rabbi blew the shofar, I thought of everyone together at home and it was the first time I really felt the power of everyone practicing these rituals simultaneously! The best part, though, was the rabbi's sermon (I NEVER thought I would say that...) It was in French! And it was the first time I listened to something not designed for me to practice my listening skills. Though I didn't get all of it, I got the gist of Rosh Hashanah being a contradiction of celebration and judgement (a very good sermon) and it was truly an "I have arrived in Paris! I am here!" moment. I acted as part of the regular population! Very very cool. Très très chouette!


No separation of church and state here, so after services, off I went to class! An in-class essay and an oral exam later and the "I arrived feeling" was pretty much gone. I had lots of homework and reading to do tonight, as well as make a bunch of Shanah Tova phone calls (great talking to everyone and hearing all your voices) so not much exciting news to report right now.


I'm only going to services for a short while tomorrow because I need to help prepare and shop for dinner tomorrow night at my apartment! A bunch of us are celebrating the holiday and doing Shabbat via cooking a festive meal of chicken, challah apples and honey, etc. etc and going all out (and then all going out)!  Should be lots of fun, but there's nothing like being home for the holidays.


**SABRINA: don't forget my checklist of activities to keep you entertained at services! I miss you and all of our games this year...next year we'll have to be extra _________ during services!!!! 
(our word and Mom's word might be different here. We say awesome, she might say rowdy)**


In other news, the strike is finally over! All of the trains have been super crowded and running so slow.
I am also in the process of planning a trip to Giverny this weekend since we don't know how many more nice weekends we have left.
Back to studying for my phonetics exam tomorrow...


Happy healthy sweet wonderful New Year and all good things to come! L'shanah tova and lots of love to all!
À bientôt!