Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin

Well, time continues to fly. After showing the family around Paris for the past week, I had a grand adventure of my own yesterday afternoon. My orchestra was invited to play in a little village outside Paris. St-Cyr-sur-Morin, as Wikipedia kindly told me, has a population of about 1800. It took us about 2 hours to get there by bus, bumping along through the countryside and around the traffic circles.

It was already dark by the time we got there, so we couldn't see much of anything. The concert was in a new building that was a combined auditorium, mayor's office, and childcare center. The building is brand new, we were the inaugural concert and were thus treated to a hero's welcome. The arrival of the Parisians was indeed considered a big deal!

We arrived around 5, rehearsed for an hour and a half, then went over to the childcare room for dinner. Turns out that one of the local ladies had prepared an entire FEAST for us (keeping in mind that the orchestra is about 40-50 people, this couldn't have been easy). There was fried chicken, cold cuts, potato salad, and brie. Oh you should have seen the brie. This town is actually in the region of France called "brie," so you can thank them for the cheese we all know and love. Well, I know it but can't say I love it anymore, haha. But you get the point. The brie wheel was seriously like a foot in diameter, if not more. From what I could tell, the other members of the orchestra massacred it. Oh, and there was a big fruit tart as well. And the local officials themselves came to pour our kirs.

Over dinner I accidentally became the star of the show as I was talking to one of the other cellists, who commented on the fact that my accent is quite good for an American. I never know whether to take this as a complement or not, because on the one hand she was observing that my accent was respectable, but on the other hand she was observing that I come from a group with notoriously bad accents in French, so I don't know whether it was only respectable in comparison to other Americans, haha. In any case, I unwittingly became the star of the show when as a joke I started speaking French with a terrible American accent. At which point the people around us stopped their conversations and started laughing hysterically. So then everyone made me continue because they thought it was so hilarious that I could just do it at will. So there I was like, "bonn-joor, je sweez am-ay-ree-can" (etc), with a whole crowd of French people laughing their asses off around me. At one point I said (in the badly accented French) that there were too many Americans in France, at which point they were like, "yes!" They were perhaps a little too enthusiastic on that one, haha. Again, not sure if they were laughing with me or at me...

Anyway, the concert was more or less fine, but the cutest thing was that the mayor was there, along with all the regional notables. The mayor MC'd the ceremony. The elementary school principal is in the brass section, so he was the local star for the night. A bunch of the kids came out to see us, and after the show they wanted the autographs of the conductor and our two soloists (a pianist and a trumpeter)! So sweet, particularly since I think this orchestra is fairly mediocre, haha. But the reception was so nice and friendly, they're a real community. After the concert they served us some local cider, which was of course delicious (cider is ALWAYS delicious in my book).

From there we got back on our bus, where I passed out for the entire ride home. Woke up just as the bus was navigating the back streets of the 14th arrondissement, at which point we were ready to hop off and resume our lives as anonymous Parisians. So much for our 15 minutes of fame in St-Cyr-sur-Morin!