Sick in Paris

Spent Christmas in Alsace. Alsace is in Eastern France, near the German border, so the Christmas tradition is deep. When I was a child, Christmas in San Diego meant a plastic Christmas tree which we put together by sticking the branches into the pre-drilled holes in the trunk. Sometimes, we would spray the plastic branches with fake "snow" from a can - this was, after all, California. In Alsace, there is lots of fog and freezing temperatures, which means that there was heavy frost on the trees - as though the canned snow of my childhood had turned real - like Pinocchio turning into a real boy. Walking through the forests on the hill near Estelle's home town was magical.

The bad new: Back in Paris, the following day, Estelle started to feel sick. We were on our way to have dinner with a Japanese couple I had met on the flight from Tokyo. By the time we made it to the restaurant Estelle was extremely nauseous. She took a taxi back to the apartment while I stayed for dinner. Back home that evening, I learned that the foie gras we ate at Christmas dinner had been from a contaminated batch. We got the word from Estelle's parents who had verified the serial number on the package they dug out of the trash can.