Zen Mama

The past week has been miserably cold, with temperatures dropping down to -9 degrees Celsius. After living in sub tropical Hong Kong for 16 years, my body has long forgotten that I was born in the Windy City of Chicago, where we grew accustomed to temps way colder than that! Today, it was only -2 but we had our first snowfall of the winter season... A whole 2 inches (laughable by Chicago standards) which the kids were all excite about. So we got all dressed in our ski wear and went up to our rooftop to try to build snowmen. After sweeping up most of the snow on our rooftop terrace, we had enough snow to build this mini snowman.

I was recently at a branch office of my bank on Avenue Emile Zola in the 15eme depositing a check, and I had a question about filling out the envelope so I went to the  acceuil (reception) desk. During this time, a French woman came into the small agence . When I turned around to go back to the ATM, she was just finishing up filling in her envelope and we both approached the ATM at the same time. She pushed in front of me brusquely saying that she was here first. I corrected her and said I was there before her, but whatever, I told her to go ahead and “ pas de soucis ” ( no worries). She continued to grumble, and I told her there was no need to be rude, I was already letting her go first. She told me to go back to my own country. I said: “yes, you French are all racist (not that I meant ALL French, of course, but people like her)” So she told me again to leave France. This is the 3rd time since arriving in Paris that I’ve been confronted by such direct racism in my...