Sommeil

I love sommeil (so-may: sleep).  Ask anyone who's ever seen me in a bed.  Sure, I might be an oiseau de nuit (wa-zo duh nwee:  night owl), but once you get me sleeping I'll be damned if I'm getting out of bed before I've hit the "snooze" button at least five times on three different alarm clocks...

Yes, very sad but I'm impossible to wake-up in the mornings and I'm never, ever chipper before noon and that's only after I've had at least three cups of coffee.  At least in this regard I fit in with the les français pretty well: we both hate mornings, are addicted to coffee, and especially hate mornings where we have to wake up early and drink that coffee specifically for the purpose of going to work.  Quel horreur (what horror)! 

Where I stand-out as not being in the least bit française but instead a stressed-out, hurried, and in poor health américaine is my lack of sleep.  While I can listen to the French complain about having to go to work on any given day of the week, I rarely hear them complaining because they didn't get enough sleep the night before.  The French are always pretty well rested, they just prefer not to work.  Moi (mwa: me/I), on the other hand, realize that while I do like teaching for the most part, I think a major reason why I dread Mondays so much is because Monday means that, for five days straight, I get less than six hours of sleep every night.

How do the French do it??  Along with skipping a meal, having messy hair, and putting make-up on in public, it seems that missing sleep is just something the French would never do.  After all, being cranky and stressed from lack of sleep is not only bad for the skin, but it's just si americain (see ahm-ehr-ee-kan: so American).  The French see full stomachs and a long night's sleep as key to a happy life and as a way to ward off eventually looking like a tired, strung-out American with who gulps a super-grande coffee while sprinting to catch the bus on their way to work.

Unfortunately as hard as I try, going to sleep in the wee hours of the morning is just hard-wired into my recent American college graduate psyche.  Late nights are a sort of souvenir (sue-ven-eer: memento) I keep with me from all the way back in high school when I realized that I could procrastinate on all my papers as long as I pulled all-nighters the night before they were due.

Even today it's as though I'm stuck in a bagarre (bag-ar: fight) against time and the inevitable. I try to keep myself awake as long as possible, even if it's for no good reason.  If I call it an "early night" (ie: going to bed before midnight) I feel like I've somehow failed myself and also wasted perfectly good hours of darkness better spent surfing the Internet, watching t.v., or reading a book until I eventually pass out with the lights still on...so not classy, and sooooo not French!  Yet the painful cycle starts all over again: Monday will come, I will wake up at 5am having only slept for four hours.  I'll struggle to keep my eyes open the rest of the day, and fall asleep drooling on the bus ride back home.  Thankfully in America they make pills for this sort of thing.

Les crêpes

Pancakes have always been my favorite breakfast food.  There's just something so completely perfect about a round, baked bread drenched in sugar and coupled with a warm cup of coffee and a mimosa on a dimanche matin (dee-mahn-sh mah-tun: Sunday morning), and it seems every country agrees with me.  Americans have buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup, the English have thin pancakes topped with castor sugar and lemon juice, and in India there are dosas: thin, crispy, flaky pancakes served with chutneys and curry.  But no pancake seems to be more celebrated or as universally well-known as the French crêpe (kreh-p: pancake).

Crêpes originate from the north-western region of France known as Brittany, but crêpes have been around so long, are so delicious, and so simple to make that they're ubiquitous throughout the country.  Seat yourself at any crêperie (krehp-air-ee: pancake restaurant) in France and you'll be handed a menu with almost fifty options of crepes to choose from:  savory crêpes or sweet crêpes, buckwheat or white flour, simple toppings like cheese or sugar, or more complex toppings like bacon or fruit and alcohol.

My own personal French classic standard is crêpe à la Nutella (kreh-p ah lah new-tell-a: pancake topped with nutella).  Actually an Italian invention, Nutella is a hazelnut and choolate spread slightly melted and drizzled on the inside of the crêpe before the pancake is folded into quarters and shoved into my mouth just as fast as I can chew: messy, sweet, chocolaty and absolutely perfect on any day of the week. 

French cuisine (ki-zine: food) is infamous for being rich, indulgent, and almost impossible to master, but to me the crêpe is the more honest symbol of typical French fare: simple, delicious, drenched in butter and works well when eaten with just about anything.  The French are well-aware that they have a legacy of complex recipes and seven-course meals, but any true Frenchie I've met would much rather run out and grap a quick crêpe from the local café than spend hours sweating in the kitchen over a hot oven.  Of course, this is a well-kept secret so don't tell anyone I told you.  All French people I've met claim to be great cooks who also happen to know whether or not a bottle of wine is going to be good just by reading the label on the bottle...I pretend to believe them.

L'art du "non"

When in doubt, the French just say "non" (noh: no).  Les français (lay frahn-say: the French) seem to believe that adding no at the end--or beginning--of any statement automatically annuls them from any commitment to other people and even to their own words.  Just in case the word non isn't enough, the French can always add "ne...pas" or "ne...jamais" ( nuh pah, nuh jahm-ay) to a verb as just varying artistic ways of saying non. 

Let's not lie, the French value the powerful drama equilvalent added when "no" is thrown on the table.  No can start an debate, break a heart, ruin a friendship much more easily than a "oui" (wee: yes) can, allowing the French to regard non as a palindrome of godly proportions for its ability to piss people off in the matter of seconds.  So sophisticated in fact is the detail-oriented French art of saying no, that the tone in which you say it and the number of times you repeat it carries varying meanings.  For example:

Just saying "non" once means "No, but you might be able to change my mind".

Saying "non, merci" means "No, and you're really starting to annoy me".

Saying "non, non, et non!" means "No, I'm never going to change my mind, and I hate you".

Of course, the word "yes" feels a little lonely in France with the word non getting all the attention, so the French have even created a special way to say yes if you're saying yes to someone who has just told you non.  When followed by a non, the French oui becomes si (see: yes), a yes-word only used when you're trying to argue with someone who's just said no.  For example:

"Non, je ne peut pas payer!  Je refuse!" - [No, I can't pay!  I refuse!]

"Mais si!  Il faut que tu paies!" - [Yes you can!  You must pay!]

Confused?  Good, because I am.  I've been in France for six months and still can't figure out the correct way to say oui, si, or non in certain situations.  Then again, I think that's partially why the French make it so confusing in the first place.  After all, if you get so confused during an argument that you've forgotten who's said yes and who's said no, chances are the argument will just come to an end over a bottle of vin (von: wine) and some food, and the one thing French love more than saying non is eating.

Une année de l'amour

A year ago today I went on a walk with five dogs and a tall, over-talkative, handsome boy/man named Andrew.  We met at noon at the top of my street and compared notes on school, work, and dogs coupled with a few awkward silences, all ending with an exciting exchange of phone numbers.  365 jours plus tard (jwers ploo tahrd: days later), and Andrew and I have engaged in countless conversations, fights, kisses, and one année de l'amour (ahn-ay duh l-moor: year of love).

It's never easy being in a relationship, especially a long distance one.  I swore to myself, in fact, that I wouldn't let myself be in a relationship when I went to la belle France (lah bell Frah-ns: beautiful France) because I thought the pain of having part of my heart in the States while I was trying to live a life 6,000 miles away would be too hard to handle.  Besides, I've always prided myself on being independent, and there's nothing more threatening to a girl who likes to be on her own than a man by her side.  But I fell hopelessly in love with this vegetarian boy who so innocently cheered on baseball teams, never forgot the importance of a goodnight phone call, and always let me win an argument.  So when the time came to say bon voyage (bon voy-aj: farewell) Andrew and I made a pact to make our relationship work, day-by-day.

Five months of our relationship have been spent à la distance (ah lah dees-tahns: long distance), and we've weathered our fair share of emotionally taxing relationship hurricanes, but Andrew has also been my constant companion on the phone, through emails, letters, and random surprise visits to help me through all the tough points this year that I couldn't have gone through alone.  Mon copin (moan ko-pan: my boyfriend) has taught me in the span of 12 short months how difficult but wonderfully freeing it can be to let someone into my life in a very real, honest way.  

Andrew has seen me at my best (when I was trying to impress him into second and third dates) and at my worst (too many times to count), and vice versa.  And tu sais quoi (too say qwa: you know what)?  Every time I see Andrew as his less-than-perfect self, I fall a little more in love with him.  So thank you Andrew for being you, for falling in love with a girl like me, and for sharing this year with me.  I can't wait to see what the next year has in store for us!

Leith (in Dutch)

Last week, on yet another one of France's much-appreciated two week random vacations, I packed my bags and headed off to Amsterdam to meet up with my sister and other friends for a week of what the Dutch like to call tolerantie (tolerance).  Basically, for the Dutch there are three regels (rules) to tolerating something even though it's technically verboden (forbidden).  These three rules are as follows:

1.  Whatever is being tolerated should also be making the Dutch government a lot of money.


2.  Whatever is being tolerated should do no harm.


3.  When engaging in an activity that is technically illegal though tolerated, for God's sake, be discreet.


Most important of these three rules, of course, is the first.  Money.  This first rule is why the world's oldest profession, prostitutie (prostitution), is a major building block of Amsterdam society.  This first rule is why Katholieken (Catholics) could line up by the hundreds on their way into "secret" Catholic churches long after Catholocism had been banned.  This first rule is why "koffie winkel" ("coffee shops") somehow mysteriously wreak of skunky grass when you pass by them and also serve "space brownies" made with "green butter" and "weed".  This first rule is also why bicyclists who trample overpedestrians still get entire lanes of the road to themselves and pile fietsen (bikes) one on top of the other in the middle of the straat (street) (by the way, trampling over tourists in Amsterdam isn't considered harmful because hunting down tourists is also a perfectly legal national sport).


Rushing through this quaint European city that's practically leaning on it's side due to rotting foundations from its kanaal (canal) system, I had little time to really get to know the Dutch, but what I did get to know I fell in love with.  After all, how can you not love a country that devotes itself to windmills, clogs, and overweight hookers?

In fact, by the end of the trip I myself was on a bike, effortlessly gliding through city streets (with a look of sheer terror on my face...it had been five years since I'd been on a bike), hopelessly trying to be mistaken for a native Dutchwoman.  Unfortunately, I'm at least five inches too short to fit in with these people who gorge themselves on dairy, and my Yankee accent stands out like a cat in heat when spoken around a language that sounds like some strange mix of German and lyrical gibberish.  I can only hope that future budgeting allows for multiple visits back so I can work on fine-tuning these Dutch traits.  Maybe in a few years I'll be squashing over tourists on my vintage bicycle with the rest of the Netherlands.

By the way, Holland is a state (divided into North Holland and South Holland) of which Amsterdam is a part.  If you live in Holland you, ipso facto, live in the Netherlands, but you don't necessarily live in Holland just because you live in the Netherlands, and just because you're visiting the Netherlands doesn't mean you're going to visit Holland.  That would be like saying you're Californian even if you've lived your entire life in New York, just because California is part of the United States.  I learned that that little fact this week.  That's right: I'm almost 25 years-old and still learning basic geography.  Problem?