Darcy's Paris Blog

Flying to Portugal

Wednesday. No school for kids -- that's something else I learned at Sophie's house. Some kids do go on Saturdays, but hers don't. No school on Wednesdays for kids is sortof the kid version, I think, of the seven weeks of vacation the adults get here. They're always on vacation.

We had an all-company meeting in the morning, which was all in French, of course, but they did introduce me and a couple of other visitors. (I appreciated that -- at least now people are starting to discover why I'm here for so long.) A highlight of the meeting at the end was champagne to celebrate something. I love it -- I was drinking champagne at 11 AM. In what other country could I do that?

Headed to the airport to fly to Portugal for an event we have going on in Lisbon tomorrow. I decided to drive, which was fine except that they'd closed the parking lot for the terminal I needed. It was no big deal -- I parked in an adjacent terminal and walked over -- but it just seems to me that it's always something every time I fly in that airport. (Also weird: the check-in desk for my flight was removed from all the others, and I had to go through security just to check in, in addition to going through security to actually get to the gate.) I was on the same flight as Frederick, the branch manager. He seems very impressed that I'm taking French and uses it as ammunition for Dave (his boss, and the guy I ate with on Wednesday.) He loves to give him a hard time about the fact that he was here for three months and learned zero French. Something interesting I learned from Frederick on the flight was how maternity leave works here. (This came up in reference to someone in the office.) Women get one year off paid, I think. One year is pretty incredible. Then after that, they can extend it for one additional year unpaid, and then one additional unpaid year after that. So in essence, they can hold onto their jobs for three years. (Great for them, hard for employers.) The interesting thing is that they can notify the employer literally the day before they're supposed to return to work and say they want to extend their leave. This came up at NI here. The receptionist we used to have called at 5 pm on Friday, the Monday before she was supposed to return, and informed them that she wouldn't be in on Monday. At that point, of course, the temp had been relieved, so I'm not sure what they did on such short notice. Interesting, though, and indicative of how the government and employment laws work here. Very interesting.

When we got to Portugal, we were picked up by the local guy. (He likes to pick up the branch manager.) Looking out the window in the car, it looks like Portugal is a very pretty country but clearly poorer than other European countries. I didn't get to see much except the suburbs, but that was my impression. Went to the event site -- uneventful, except that a bunch of stuff broke that we had to fix. (Isn't that always the way?) Checked into the Holiday Inn Express and had dinner at this hole-in-the-wall place nearby. Food was good, but I don't know how they get enough patrons to stay in business! Came back and crashed -- we have another long day tomorrow...

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posted by Darcy @ 10:46 PM