Paris finally feels like home. With the addition of a bike to my life, I know the streets a lot better--which ones are one-way, what the main axes are. I have a small repertory of favorite places in various neighborhoods--cafés, gardens, restaurants, stores. I love giving tours of my neighborhood, having discovered many of its quirks: "here's the robot shop, here's the cajun pool hall, here are the many Senegalese restaurants, that's the "philosopher" practicing his samurai sword skills on the sidewalk, there's the punk bar with the coffee-vodka shots, here's the restaurant that puts pepper in their desserts, there's the clown shoe store..."

But each time I start to get sit back and relax in my advanced state of expat nirvana, the god of humility gives me a wedgie and makes me realize that I am nothing but a goofy foreigner.

Example:

Today, at lunch, I saw what appeared to be boeuf bourguignon, that famous French beef stew made with red wine and mushrooms and potatoes. I'd had it once before at the Louvre cantina and had been pretty impressed. Compared to the fish pastries and the blood sausages, it seemed like my best bet. So I ordered the beef accompanied by bulgur and green beans. Yummy!

I find a great corner spot in the dining room (all of my colleagues are on vacation, so I've been flying solo.) I pour myself some water from the carafe and spear a piece of meat. Or is it a mushroom? It's hard to tell. I take a bite and nearly vomit. On my receipt is marked "rognons." It all starts to make sense. Now, I do make an effort to develop and diversify my palette, but there are some things that are not meant to be ingested and kidneys are one of them. After all, it's where urine is processed.

I instinctively hid the kidneys with the bulgur and beans only to curse myself 2 seconds later, because, having touched the kidneys, they were thus rendered inedible.

I shamefully carried my tray to the belt and ducked out of the cantina (hopefully) unnoticed. There was only one solution to this nearly fatal mishap. Go directly to the Grannies (what we call the one reasonable bakery in the neighborhood) and buy myself a sablé framboises, which--like chocolate after a dementor attack--brings back the comfort and warmth of pre-kidney life almost immediately.