Bastille Day

I guess it's too late by now to wish you all a Happy Bastille Day, but I hope at least some of you got to celebrate. I for one actually got to celebrate twice, and loved it!

For lunch, my French co-worker Caroline and I made a point to leave the office (for once!) and regale ourselves with some French cuisine at Saint Amour in Culver City. We actually made a reservation to make sure we got a table outside, so check this out - if it wasn't for the metal railing, you'd think we're in Paris!

some perfect bread and perfect butter - ahh....

lovely Caroline with her delicious tarte aux poireaux

And my steak au poivre, with the most perfect fries. I think this may well have been the first steak I have ever ordered. I don't do a lot of meat, but it was Bastille Day and this was outstanding.

pretty little condiment containers - the French manage to make even ketchup look sophisticated

And in the evening after work, Caroline took me as her guest and as an honorary French person to the French Consul's reception at the Pacific Design Center, which was a real treat. There was outstanding French cheese (check out all that chevre on my plate), delicious veggie pate - and lots of charcuterie that I'm sure was delicious but that I stayed away from after that steak for lunch. Oh, and of course that sumptuous red from St. Emilion that we were both having.

As the sun was setting, the French Consul himself gave a little speech, which turned out to be surprisingly moving. Predictably, he spoke about the French-American friendship and its history, about how French soldiers fought alongside the Americans during the US war for independence and how this friendship can never be dissolved although eight years ago it felt like that's what was happening (this he then dismissed as "the unavoidable tensions in such a close relationship"). But what really got to me was the part of his speech that was directly addressing the community of expats that he was facing, yours truly included. He said that if we left our motherland (the French call it 'la mere patrie'), it was not because we were in search of 'la facilite", of an easy path, but because we wanted to break out of the path that was laid out before us and create our own. And that this path was harder and required more courage and determination and perseverance than anyone back in the motherland or even in our adopted country could understand. That living in the US of course means a lack of safety net that is unimaginable back home. And that we should be proud of ourselves for having succeeded anyway, in exile, in a foreign language, on a path that no one else had imagined for us. He must have touched a nerve with this, since both Caroline and I started tearing up a little. And then they let go some of the blue-white-red balloons that were decorating the terrace, and off they went into the evening sky.