The Chanting Explained & the Exploded Suitcase

I felt like a jerk for not knowing which Jewish holiday it was so I looked it up. It's Shavuot. You can read about it here. Carey and I are now wondering if the lights in are stairwell have been turned off because of Shavuot. It's a little dangerous. We can't see anything until floor 5.

Also there have been police outside of our building since Saturday. Carey thinks it might be due to Elizabeth's suitcase that she left downstairs and was either shot and exploded or just doused in water. Here's that story (I received this email from Carey on June 1st):

i just got back from the police station. here's why.

my friend elizabeth is moving in with me for the month- i live on the sixth floor (french, so seventh american floor) with no elevator, so we left her big suitcase downstairs while we went back for another load. when we went back for the suitcase, there was dirt and water all over the floor. but no suitcase. an old bitch who lives on the first floor was coming downstairs as we were staring confusedly at the corner. i asked her if she'd seen a suitcase.

her: "yes, i was worried about it too."

me: "worried? do you know where it went? it's ours."

her: "oh, the police came and shot it."

me: "what? shot it? uhhh"

her: "yeah, we thought it looked suspicious. there was another real problematic bag a few years ago, you know"

me: "uhhhh"

her: "the police came and told me to stay inside and then i heard a gunshot."

me: "uhhhh. do you know where it is?"

her: "no. they shot it"

me: "uhhh ok."

so elizabeth called the cops. three different places before they figured out where she was. idiots. once she got the, their response was something like:

cop: "no, it was taken immediately to the police station and it was exploded."

elizabeth: "but we only left it for like half an hour"

cop: "nope, we were called and it was a suspicious bag and we had to do that becuase it was policy"

so she took elizabeth's information and told her to come to the commisariat in my 'hood right away. so we have a mental breakdown, then head over there. some nice cops on the street directed us in the right direction. we walked in and the exchange went like this:

me: "we're looking for a suitcase that disappeared"

cop: "ohhhhhhh" (looks at another cop and laughs) "the suitcase!"

me: "uhhhhh.."

then they take elizabeth in the back and i waited out front for her wondering what was happening. what was happening was they took her back and took her around the corner to her exploded bag on the ground. she was suprised cause her stuff was still there, obviously intact, even though they'd said on the phone it was exploded, which we thought meant it would be in smithereens, like if american cops exploded something.

they wouldn't answer her questions but just took her and wrote her info on a piece of notebook paperwhere people had been writing all day, completely unofficial, and she had to sign saying she'd received her luggage and the components inside on the 31 may. they i see her come out with two cops carrying her baglike it was a corpse. apparently "explode" means "cut around the edges, don't look at anything inside, just destroy the piece of luggage and get everything really dirty and wet".

so they gave us a trashbag that we shoved all her clothes in- when i asked for another the bitch cop told me it was the last one they had. go figure. i told them that i'd left suitcases downstairs 7 different times and never had any problem-apparently i was just lucky. since i live next to a synagogue there are always cops patrolling and if something's suspicious they take it and blow it up. aka get it wet. effing france.