Le jour d'action de grâce

After watching the French film of Coco Chanel's life on my computer, I noticed that midnight had crept it's ugly head toward my laptop clock, marking my first French jour d'action de grâce (joor d-ak-see-ohn duh grah-s: Thanksgiving).  The thought of spending the next morning cooking all day and teaching all night so that I could celebrate this American holiday without family, sweet potatoes, or pumpkin pie left me exhausted and slightly depressed, so instead of thinking anymore about it I decided to change into my pjs and climb into bed.

My hand poised over the light switch, a sudden frappe (fra-p: knock) on the door made my heart race and my body freeze.  Convincing myself that the loud knock was just the wind, I tried to ignore my confusion at someone possibly standing outside my bedroom at midnight.  I left my hand hovering over the light switch, debating whether or not I should go off to sleep without even checking to see if there was anyone there.  But mon coeur (mohn koor: my heart) wouldn't let me ignore le bruit (leh brew-eet: the noise).  There was definitely a knock, and I could feel a presence of someone - or something - on the other side of the threshold, waiting.

Turning the lock, I peeked around la porte (lah poor-t: the door), expecting to see no one there and for my fright to be all a mistake, as it's so often been with my old, loose French door on windy nights in the past.  In a split second my eyes scanned to hall, trying to adjust to the dark, only to see two eyes staring back at me.  Human eyes.  Male eyes.  Male eyes that belonged to someone who looked an awful lot like my boyfriend, Andrew.

And with a mouth forming words in a voice that sounded so much like Andrew's.

And with arms reaching out to hug me in a way so much like Andrew's.

"But wait" my mind told me, "Andrew is visiting his step-grandpa in Davis.  Andrew doesn't speak French.  There's no way Andrew could find his way around.  Andrew has to be at work on Monday.  Andrew is spending Thanksgiving with his family around their dinner table in California.  There's no way Andrew is standing at my bedroom door, in France, at midnight.  I've finally done it.  I've finally gone so crazy that now I can't even separate dreams from reality.  I'm a certifiable nutcase."

But my heart couldn't help but believe.  So I screamed.  I shouted Andrew's name over and over again, trying to wake myself up from this dream.  But I wouldn't wake up.  So I decided to hug Andrew, hoping his touch would wake me up.  But I just couldn't, for the life of me, wake up.

You know what?  It turns out I wasn't dreaming.  Mon Saint André (moh-n san-t ahn-dray: my Saint Andrew), who doesn't speak a word of French, who had never before flown overseas, who only had a weekend off from work, and who can never, ever succesfully keep surprises, managed to catch me completely by surprise by showing up at my bedroom door in The Middle of Nowhere, France so he could be with me for Thanksgiving.  True story.

And here I thought the most exciting thing about Thanksgiving this year would be the homemade cranberry sauce.

Crise de foie

I can't say Julia Child didn't warn me: I'm suffering from la crise de foie (lah kreez deh fwa: indigestion aka an American stomach in France).  Try as I might to blend myself seamlessly into a life of la cuisine française (lah kwiz-een frahn-says: French food) my delicate American stomach has started its own vocal form of protest.

This started with the milk.  After having un café crème (uhn kaff-ee krehm: a coffee with frothed, creamy milk) to help me out of bed in the mornings, my daily routine then followed with hours of hunched-over mal au ventre (mahl o van-tre: stomach pain).  I shrugged this off as due to the fact that in France they don't refrigerate their milk or whipped cream, until I found that even my chocolate ice cream-filled crêpe (kreh-p: crepe) had me racing for les toilettes (leh twa-lett: the toilet) before I even had time to ask for l'addition (l-dision: the bill).  Even salad has become a culprit lately, though that might be because my body is suffering from a serious lack of vegetables.

The thing is, I haven't found my little town of La Côte Saint André to be particularly centered around fresh, high-quality ingredients.  And I say this from experience.  The only thing that stays open 24 hours around here are two vending machines dispensing Mars Bars and Coca-Cola.  In fact, it turns out that France is a bigger consumer per capita of McDo's (Mic-dohs: McDondald's) than even the United States.  What I have found though, is that whatever similar products the shelves of the French supermarkets carry compared to what's carried in Safeway, French food is just plain richer.  The dark chocolate is darker.  The whole milk is, well, wholer.  The bread is...breadier: a crispy melt-in-your-mouth yeast substance of the kind you could only possibly hope to find at a French boulangerie (boo-lahn-jerry: bread bakery) before noon.

So, like every American before moi, my stomach (weaned on soy milk, sliced sandwich bread, and pasturized everything) has gone it's own form of a French culture shock.  Just like my mind can't handle the fact that buses don't run on Sundays, my stomach can't seem to cope with the fact that the freshly picked vegetables I buy still have dirt on them.  It seems that the French are a bit more ruthless about their food than my poor American stomach is used to.

Thanks to reading My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme months ago, I'd be lying if I said I  arrived here without knowing that even the most devoted American food enthusiast runs into gastrointestinal difficulties in France, even Julia Child herself.  Naïvement (nih-eev-meht: naively), I still hoped I'd be the one American girl able to dive into sautéed crêpes aux champignôn (kreps oh shamp-in-yons: mushroom crepes) and tartes au chocolat (tart oh shoc-oh-laht: chocolat tarts) unscathed.  Unfortunately, if I've learned any lessons about French culture this far, it's that no good meal/hike/Internet connection/day comes without a fight.  But despite my stomach's protests, I'm determined to win this particular war.  After all, if I can't enjoy French food - all the way from the first bite to the last moment of digestion - than I've lost out on half the fun of being here.  Let's just hope my stomach eventually agrees.

Le Grand Lemps

This past week I finally started teaching at Le Grand Lemps (leh grahn-d la-nce), a village east of La Côte whose only real claim to fame is that there's a gare (gehr: railway station) in the center of town allowing the villagers a quick and easy escape to Lyon forty minutes away.  Of course, it could be any animosity I hold toward this village is le collège (leh koll-ehj: the junior high) where I will be spending a weekly nine hours of my life for the next five months.  As if going through junior high the first time wasn't bad enough.

I don't know about you, but junior high was a nightmare for me from day one.  The kids were petty and often just plain cruel, the classrooms smelled like bad BO and acne medication, and junior high was also my first introduction to public locker rooms which is, let me just clarify, a nightmare scenario in and of itself.  My single happy memory of my junior high days was graduation: my ticket out.  And now here I am teaching those hellish students in those stinky classrooms.

The really scary thing?  Junior high, the second time around, isn't so bad.  Les collègians (leh koll-ehj-ee-ahns: the junior high students) actually haven't grown into that bitter stage in life yet, and are actually excited about English and - dare I say it - eager to participate in class.  Every day I walk into a classroom it's like a scene out of the Twilight Zone: I expect to be eaten alive without any shred of dignity left yet, at the end, I miraculously manage to live to dread another day.  I'm certain these collège students are going to turn on me sometime.  It's just a matter of when.  Until that happens, I'm actually having fun.

Also, in 10-15 days I might actually have the Internet.  In my bedroom.  Meaning I can continue my pre-France life of staying in bed until noon searching for bootlegged Sex & the City episodes in my nightgown without any blocked website access or crappy wireless signals.  What's the French word for euphoria?  Oh, yeah: la euphorie (lah oo-for-ee).

Ruedouane

Novembre (noh-vehm-bruh: November) has officially arrived in la vallée de l'Isère (lah vall-eh deh l-eezehr: The Isère Valley). How do I know? Because I've been trudging through rainy sludge in ballet flats for the past week, spending entire afternoons in bed willing summer to make a comeback, and have decided to make coffee, hot chocolate, and soup my staple diet for the rest of the year. Sure, I might die malnourished, but at least I’ll be warm in the process.

I'm sure I'll feel giddy about the winter as soon as I have a pair of decent boots and more than one sweater in my name, but in the meantime I reserve the right to complain. I mean, it's wrong to expect a coastal Californian girl to be able to prepare herself mentally for the biting cold...isn't it?

Anyway, this past freezing, rainy Thursday, after sitting through lesson planning for two hours at the collège (kol-ehj: junior high) where I start teaching next week, I was in middle of town waiting for l'autocar (l-aught-oh-kar: the bus) which was, per its typical schedule, a fashionable 20 minutes late. Noticing my hands turn a burning shade of frostbitten reddish-blue I've never seen before (I haven't taken the plunge yet into investing in even the cheapest pair of gloves: I'm a masochist at heart), I made the executive decision to flag down the first autocar I saw, even if it wasn't headed in my direction, and beg for a ride home. What can I say? I guess I have a thing for pissing-off bus drivers.

Well, as it turns out the driver I flagged down, a Monsieur Ruedouane from Algeria, not only took pity on me but let me ride for free, informing me that I had a free ride home with him for the rest of the year! While taking me back to La Côte, Ruedouane told me about how much fun he’s had getting to know the teaching assistants throughout years, and that anytime he has a layover between bus schedules he'd love to grab coffee and discuss American-Arab relations. And no, I'm not talking sexual relations. Ruedouane is simply an outgoing, curious, and harmless middle-aged Frenchman who has temporarily renewed my faith in the French Republic. Now, not only do I have a free commute to the junior high school, but free French lessons and coffee to boot! Génial (jeen-ee-al: brilliant)!

Vienne

I know it's injuste (en-joost: unfair) and puéril (pu-eer-eel: childish), but for the past few weeks I've been getting that sneaking suspicion that every single person in France has a more exciting life than me. A bit injuste because I realize it's unrealistic to expect myself to have met a gaggle of friends all over the French countryside to do things with, and puéril because, let's be honest, it's a bit immature not to realize that everyone leads a pretty pathetic life from time to time, even if you are French. Still, I can’t help but have the feeling that, while I’m holed up in my room, everyone else in town is busy getting wasted and having the time of their life.

As tough as it is to come to terms with, I have no friends in France who will whisk me off to an amazing Halloween party on a moment’s notice, or invite me on a vacation to their family villa in Monaco. So, I've decided that until I meet these fabulous friends, I have to be my own party. And this party started yesterday: a party of one in Vienne for Halloween. Jaloux (jah-lo: jealous)?

Vienne is a town/city (not quite sure if it's big enough to earn "city" status) just slightly sud (s-ood: south) of Lyon, filled with Roman ruins and quaint street markets. I spent the day walking along the Quai du Rhône (qu-ay duh roh-n: the banks of the Rhône River), sipping espresso in cafés, and sightseeing until I was literally blue in the face (though the blue face was probably more from that damn cold fog).

Of course, what would a day full of French adventure be without having to run after the last bus back home screaming "Wait! Stop!" in English? I practically had to knock the bus' door down while it was stopped at a red light on its way out of town, only to be ridiculed by the bus driver - in French - for 15 minutes. Oh oui, j’ai fait ça (oh wee, jay fay sah: oh yes, I did that).