Laundry Day -- July 6

 

Now you might be asking yourself, what's so exciting about laundry day? Fair question... but, this machine has baffled me from my very first day here.  It washes. It dries.  It irons?? It seems to have a setting for everything...and I could just envision myself overflowing the whole thing onto the floor and water crashing into the apartments below. 

AND THEN...there's the detergent.  I really thought it was for the dishwasher. Except I don't have one.  And it had pictures of clothes on it. Once I concluded it was in fact the detergent, the question becomes -- how much do you use? A little? The whole packet?  Who knows!                                                                                                   

After a few YouTube videos, I decided to give it the old college try.  I picked the middle settings on both washing and drying...and pushed the arrow.  And held my breath. And kept holding my breath. And held it some more.  The process takes forever -- like hours forever -- but, thankfully, it does seem to work and the clothes seem to be clean and pretty dry, too.  Whew.

The students had a project to work on this morning and we're having a guest speaker at 4 PM Paris time....so, I had the middle of the day free.  After working on my fall classes for a bit, I decided to venture over to Le Marais (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marais).  Like NYC, Paris has many districts/neighborhoods that have very distinct looks and feels.  This one has been my favorite hands down so far.  I lunched (wasn't quite sure what I ordered beyond that it had beef and fries), I walked, and I went into a really cool church -- Saint Paul - St. Louis.  Although I've moved away from the Catholic Church in my own faith practice (hi, Maxwell St. Presby friends!), there is something just captivating about the big old churches.  The history. The tradition. The symbolism. The presence.  

I also explored a cool "Target-like" store called Hema (https://www.hema.com/fr-fr?gclid=CjwKCAjwzJmlBhBBEiwAEJyLu2IR5wg9LCq0FT0cPJH7hRsqyqF2pIKTVSdct5eEIohdbGkEl-6lPRoCtDEQAvD_BwE)

 

 

  

Le Marais is also historically the Jewish Quarter in Paris. There are several memorials related to the Holocaust in the area -- I came upon this one on my walk over that was particularly striking. 

 

And, I couldn't help but smile at this nod from my husband, Joe ... a restaurant with his initials on it! (It wasn't open or I would have eaten in it for sure!) 

Our guest speaker this afternoon was Francois Gemene.  He talked about both the French health care system and the French response to COVID-19. 

Some of the highlights from his talk for me...

1) Bottom line -- health is seen as a basic human right in France and that drives the decisions they make about the system.

2) BUT...there has been some movement lately where individuals can pay within a private system for higher levels of care, which is creating concerns about equity. 

3) Much of what our speaker shared is very similar to the US -- the rural/urban divide is huge and there are medical deserts in rural areas.  Mental health services are probably the largest area of need....and demand...right now.  

4) The COVID-19 response also felt familiar -- lockdowns, masks, vaccines, conspiracy theories -- they had it all, too.

5) Two pretty striking differences jumped out at me -- 1) telehealth is less popular than the US.  While they used it during the pandemic out of necessity, you don't see the same desire to continue with it that you do in the US and 2) they have patient portals, but they are much harder to get your information from -- you have to make a formal request before you're able to see what's in there.  Hmm....

Until tomorrow...