First Post, Fondue, and Title Explanation

Hello Interwebs-peoples,

I've jumped on the bandwagon. I'm following the pack. I've become another opinioner in a sea of millions. Simply put, I've created a blog.

Even though I've been in Paris since last September, I felt the time has come to mass-distribute my experiences to those who care. I hope this experience will make it easy for my contacts back at home to feel like they are still involved in my daily life, and vice versa (yes, I want comments people).

Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, I hope to direct you to my friend Jessie's blog and check out her latest post on our fondue experience last night. We went to Le Refuge des Fondues (my second time, her first) and had a great night. Here's the link: http://jessieloveinparis.blogspot.com/. She does a much better job of capturing the moment that I could ever accomplish, so I'm not even going to try. Hope she likes the increased site traffic.

Le Cainri is French slang (verlan) for "the American". It's what my nickname has become at work. Why Cainri? Let's explore:

• American = Americain

• Take off the 'Ame' at the beginning and you get 'ricain' -- another word for American

• In French slang, you typically take the first two letters of a word and put them at the end. Examples: 'cigarette' becomes 'garetteci', 'metro' becomes 'trome'. The French are very impressed if you know this.

• So, in that vein, 'ricain' becomes 'cainri'.

There you go. Who says you can't learn anything from reading blogs?