"Les soldes" come to Denmark

Like Santa on double-duty, les soldes (the sales) come but twice a year. Any Parisienne can tell you that these are the times to hit the stores without breaking the bank: January-early February, and July-early August. So what's a displaced Parisian with a thing for shoes to do in a city with a disappointingly drab sense of fashion? Let me introduce you to my new favorite way to lose (at least) a half hour: spartoo.com.

This French shoe site sells every sort of shoe you can imagine, from bargain basement to runway fashion. The deals come January/July (or better yet, tail-end super mark-downs in early February/August) are unbeatable when it comes to massive selection and bang for your buck (or euro, or kroner, or whatever your preferred currency). This site became my favorite way to blow off steam (and spare euros) when I discovered it while writing my doctoral thesis. What really did me in this year was my recent discovery of spartoo.dk. (And don't think you're immune, dear non-French non-Dane reader: there's spartoo.co.uk, .de, .es, .it, etc, but if you're still not covered, spartoo.net offers free delivery to over 150 countries.) With over 1000 brands, free returns, free exchanges, and customer advice on sizing of each individual shoe model, what's not to love?

An assortment of Spartoo goodies to have greeted me in Denmark

And now that I'm gearing up to become a businesswoman, scouring this site has become a gleeful obligation! This season's July "soldes" have officially launched this week, and I was all over them. From the confines of my damp and chilly Scandinavian country, I just had to share the joy that came with these little parcels of Parisian pleasure. I might not be able to step foot in Paris these days, but my feet have Paris all over them.

And the winners are...

If I wasn't already homesick for the City of Lights, this just did me in: last weekend, Paris hosted the latest international pole dance competition, Pole Theater Paris. And with the shotty internet connections which are endemic to Aarhus, I could hardly even stream more than a performance or two. Thank goodness for youtube.

If you aren't in the loop, the pole community has yet to come to a uniform consensus on how to categorize and judge their competitors, but they're working on it. Poleranking, which aims to bring together the international pole community, offers these categories: Pro and Semi-Pro, based on skill level, and in addition to an overall winner in each category, there are prizes for art, drama, comedy, and classique. This leaves space to acknowledge some very different performance styles, from those who perform vertical ballet/gymnastics to those who tell a story through their costume, music, and choreography, to those who adhere to pole's origins in the strip clubs ("pole classique"). Pole studios don't generally specialize in any one of these categories, leaving each athlete to develop his or her own style. You may even find, as I have, that one studio is home to several instructors with very different performance styles.

I'm excited to give a couple shout-outs to some of the winners from last weekend. First of all, Louise, who frequents my studio here in Aarhus, BPoleFit, took the Pro Category Pole Art award with this performance.

And secondly, one of my very first instructors from back in Paris won Semi-Pro Pole Classique with this beautifully racy performance.

It doesn't take long to notice this performance is more stereotypical "pole dance." Frankly, that doesn't make it any less of an accomplishment or an art. Deciding it isn't your style (or mine) shouldn't open the floodgates to moral judgment. This performance is an integral part, the heart even, of the larger pole community that exists today. A lot of controversy has built up over #notastripper, a popular tag polers like to use when sharing their photos and videos. This sentiment is problematic as it furthers the stigmatization of sex workers and denies the very origins of the sport itself. It's important to recognize, and certainly not ostracize, the women who helped found this sport. I'm not going to take too much time to hash out this topic, but if you're curious, feel free to check out what the Daily Dot has to say on the topic. 

Graduation Day

Many months after the fact, and hailing now from not just France but the US, Canada, and Denmark, we made it! It was fantastic to get one last (unexpected) chance to see some familiar faces from my PhD days in the Ecole des Neurosciences de Paris, as well as, of course, to see Nicolas without all that last-minute packing pre-move stress.

My PhD graduation

The French didn't quite seem to get just how a graduation ceremony is supposed to work. For one thing, having never given their high schoolers nor undergrads a graduation any sort of ceremony, they didn't realize that doctors shouldn't be wearing mortarboards. (That said, I think you would have seriously let down a lot of French grads had they shown up to find themselves given soft, squishy doctoral hats and hoods instead of the classic graduation cap and gown from the movies.)

Though they didn't quite know the ropes, to their credit, the organizers clearly put a lot of effort into making the day memorable for us. The ceremony began with a fifteen minute classical music concert performed by a full orchestra. Then a parade of professors in full regalia, including someone who seemed to be carrying some sort of scepter, marched up the aisles. After a couple of introductory talks, the keynote speaker, French Académie des Sciences member Ghislain de Marsily, gave an amusingly left-wing political call-to-action speech. He recounted his days fighting during the May '68 student rebellions which nearly toppled the French government, and he went on a brief anti-creationism rant. He argued for better gender equality, questioned how we define "the greater good," commended the class for including so many foreigners, and encouraged us to use our imaginations, creativity, and originality to go out and change the world together. (He later explained to me that he was inspired by Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford commencement speech, though he wanted a more group-oriented, less individualistic, perspective.) He actually dared to finish his speech with a quote not only from an American president (JFK), but spoken in English. He may have been an old man in full academician regalia, but he was not bound by French tradition. Coming from the Parisians, it was a really heart-warming note on which to send off the new PhDs into the world.

And of course, no French ceremony would have been complete without a champagne reception. And so my French education is officially complete. For now.

Now the recipient of-- count 'em-- four PhDs (for just one thesis!)

The big move

Heartbroken as I was to have to finally leave, I don't think this move could have been more perfect in all its unplanned, delayed, and imprecise style. Packing my apartment was a whirlwind in and of itself.

At last, my apartment was packed and (nearly) ready for the movers.

Over the past few weeks, I've had at least a half-dozen goodbye gatherings, including two for some other friends' departures which I high-jacked to say my own goodbyes, a few random one-on-one coffees/ drinks/ dinners with various friends, a party or two (including a last-hurrah pool party on my rooftop), and a picnic on the Seine.

Our last illicit rooftop pool party

We really got down to business yesterday: movers day. And at just the same moment when it seemed that the last of my happy moments in Paris had been boxed up and shipped off, that the last of my living ties to the city were being trimmed away, I found myself surrounded by unexpected kindness, support, joy, and even fun. When a near-disaster with my movers resulted in a call for back-up muscle-power, my last night in France morphed into a final evening enjoying the panoramic views from the off-limits parts of my rooftop and a celebratory five-course dinner in a fantastic restaurant, La Cantine du Troquet in the 14th.

Spending the evening with good friends really helped soften the blow of it being my last night in Paris.

Our fantastic impromptu five-course dinner at La Cantine du Troquet made memories with a much longer aftertaste than the food.

And today, my race through my last day in Paris required me to store a few suitcases in a friend's lab at the Institut Pasteur, which of course required me to do one last coffee with my Pasteur friends just before heading to the airport. Like a scene straight out of a movie, two of my best friends even waved me off as my Uber taxi drove me to my airport shuttle. I nearly cried. And then came the weirdest part:

When it was all finally done-- bags packed, apartment keys handed in, final letters in the French postal system, extra bags stocked in Nicolas's dad's spare Parisian apartment, group hugs hugged-- when I was sitting there in the Orly airport shuttle watching the ticker-tape count down the minutes until my many bags and I would arrive in the airport, I found myself overwhelmed by a strange sense of euphoria. Though there were many moments when I imagined it impossible, Paris really had become home over my nearly six years there. And now this much anticipated move was really happening. It was unscripted yet better than I'd have hoped for, and I felt so much love. Even strangers kept offering to help me with luggage. I don't know if it was the lack of sleep, or the fact that at this point I'd realized that I had forgotten to eat all day (and we were rapidly approaching 8pm), but I was suddenly on the brink of *happy* tears. And I've ridden the high until now-- though no longer on an empty stomach-- as I find myself starting to fight the heaviness of my eyelids from the comfy seat of my Aarhus-bound train.

Denmark, I have arrived.

Land of the vikings, prepare yourself: Emilienne is here.

Paris in Pink

My favorite week of a Parisian year. The city is opening up its spring wardrobe, and just in time. I'd been a bit heartbroken over missing this on my last spring in town, but luck was on my side: the cherry blossoms have arrived!

Catching up

Autumn in Paris- yes, a few leaves do redden!

I've hardly had time to come up for air since my thesis defense last September. That said, it hasn't all been the in-over-my-head workload kind of stress. Only sometimes. In between, I enjoyed another classic autumn in Paris, complete with the (minimal) reddening of the leaves, another Nuit Blanche and Salon des Vins, and my 7th annual Expat Thanksgiving.

Another classic Nuit Blanche adventure outside Hôtel de Ville

Expat Thanksgiving Round 7 was a smashing success

But I hardly restricted myself to the confines of the périph (the beltway around Paris which separates the true Parisians from everyone else). There was the unseasonably hot weekend in late October that we spent out in Brittany, where I discovered that thatched-roof houses are not just a thing from a Disney movie.

Ah Bretagne, home of wonderful crêpes, thatched roof houses, sandy beaches, and Azad's sexy pose.

Then there was that nearly-20-hour layover in Warsaw on my flight home for Christmas-- way to check off country #28!

Warsaw, Poland. Totally worth the layover, even though the downpour did require me to scour the Christmas markets for a fresh pair of warm, dry, wool socks to survive the subsequent transAtlantic flight.

Of course, no trip back to the US is complete without a stop through New York, which this year included pre-noon cocktails (in my defense, it was 5pm in Paris! And so rainy outside...), the windows at Saks, and a showing of the 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.

Living it up on Christmas Eve in New York City

And we can't forget the third annual grown-up Christmas-Edition Cousins' Campout, which even came complete with a crowdfunding campaign to bring home Professor Flinghopper.

Crowdfunding campaign ad to bring home Professor Flinghopper

Cousins' Campout- Christmas 2014. Enough said.

2015 got off to a crazy start, minus a break for one last mulled wine of the season at the Champs-Elysées Christmas Market.

One last vin chaud (mulled wine) at the Champs-Elysées Christmas Market to start the new year right.

The rest of my time was split between running to meetings with the Pole Emploi (French Unemployment Agency) and the bureaucrats who decide whether I can stay in the country, sneaking into lab to continue working (and manage collaborators) while legally unemployed, and throwing together a fellowship application and a couple of presentations in an effort to sort out my future as a postdoc. It wasn't easy and it wasn't always pretty. Welcome to my life as a freshly minted PhD.