The First France-Giving

It's here... Christmas season! It seems like just yesterday when I was explaining to glassy-eyed lyceens how and why Americans carve jack-o-lanterns. Now, before I know it, similar exhaustion-enducing lessons on how to make pumpkin pie (anyone else starting to sense an orange citrus theme in our holidays?) have also come and gone. And so it is officially my favorite time of year-- pre-Christmastime! Happily, Christmas is an international holiday, so I am not obligated to talk about cheesy American rituals-- which I admittedly love-- while feeling like the least cool 23-year-old in France. On Wednesday I will open door #25 on the advent calendar card my mom recently sent me. Seriously, where does she find these things? Will I develop this radar for random stuff when I become a mom? I sure hope so because it made my day when I dug it out of my usually empty mailbox [ Kristen Milano, 30 rue des Bouches-du-Rhone, 31500 Toulouse FRANCE... hint hint].

Thanksgiving was not my favorite of holidays for most of my childhood. Call it the curse of the oldest grandchild. But it slowly grew on me until it engaged in an as-yet unfinished battle with Halloween for second place in my preferred holiday line-up. This year I had my first ex-patriot Thanksgiving with 10 Americans and a few Spaniards and Frenchies mixed in. Thanks to valiant efforts of Lauren and Bonnie-- by that I mean their willingness to relentlessly heckle a butcher-- we had a whole turkey, which is next to impossible here. We ate all the traditional stuff: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans almandine, stuffing, apple compote, creamed spinach, a lovely can-shaped cranberry sauce glob by which many were amazed, cider, lots of wine, and of course pumpkin pie-- three of them! We also had some new dishes, because how would it be an Ex-Pat holiday without adventure? I ate plantains (delish!), tortilla with potatoes, and an amazing deep-fried dessert made by Alberto; I don't know the name but they looked like beignets (french doughnuts). My only personal disappoint of the meal was my absolute failure at making a chocolate pie, the recipe for which I found on an apparently unreliable website. I have now officially learned the "never trust information on the internet" lesson our parents' generation keeps trying to instill in us. We ended up eating the pie as mousse-- and all's well that ends well. Here's our overflowing Table of Thanks:

I realize now how much I like the way Thanksgiving clearly marks the beginning of the Christmas season. In America, Christmas smacks you across the face with a candy cane. Starting that last Friday in November all the stores are playing holiday music and decked out in red, white, and green. Here it's a gradual transition. I don't hate it, but my heart did do a somersault when I saw a festive lamppost decoration lit up on my way home from work today. Now I am cuddled up chez moi, listening to a slightly bizarre Christmas music station on itunes radio... the song on now is a version of "Little Drummer Boy" by Lauryn Hill and Rosie O'Donnell... am I wrong to think that's a strange collaboration? Now it's switched to a horrible cover of "Last Christmas". Who on earth thinks they can sing it better than WHAM? In an ode to the Chingachgook JBU, here is my improv Last Christmas verse :

Last Christmas I lived in Lake George

But the lake was too cold, to swim and to play

This year, to save me from cold

I'll travel Southern Europe

With just over two weeks until I head back across the Atlantic to celebrate the holidays, I am trying to live French life to the fullest before true winter strikes. Yesterday I forced myself up before 11am, a rarity on Sundays, and rode my bike to an open-air market. I got my week's veggies and fruits, as well as a treat of candied strawberries mmm! Then Brittany and I grabbed a noon-time beer/coffee. It's liberating to live in a country that doesn't judge you for having a drink at lunchtime on Sunday. Then again, if it weren't for those uptight Puritans we might never have Thanksgiving, my tied-for-second-favorite-holiday, to start off the Christmas season right... not to mention I'd be distraught without that pumpkin pie.

Chingachgook's European Vacation

Recently I discovered that my beloved digital camera is dying a slow, overexposed death. The bad news is that this is happening a month before I have a chance to go home and get a new one (with converters, the exchange rate, and "techy lingo" that I can't speak in French any better than English, there is no way I'd buy one here). But the good news is 3-fold:

1. Said camera is not, truth be told, very dear to me. In fact it's not surprising it's dying, as I've treated it pretty badly over our two years together. I blame my frustration at it's low quality performance.

2. I discovered the terminal malfunction on the very last day of my 2-week vacation in England and Southern France with my amazing boyfriend. Although he was not able to revive the camera any better than I could, I had a good couple 100 shots of our vaca already!

3. My next trip home is conveniently during Christmas....

In an ode to my camera, I think I'll share about my vacation, complete with pictures.

I met up with Ken and our Camp Chingachgook brit Dan in Nottingham, where Dan's family was nice enough to let us stay with them. They had 2 adorable and pudgy little jack russell terriers! This of course set Ken and I off on getting a dog... which I really want to do but cannot right now for obvious reasons. Dan took us to Sherwood Forrest, the home of Robin Hood. Not only did we see the Major Oak, the biggest tree ever to be held together with metal bars, but we also learned everything you could ever want to know about Robin Hood through the amazing talking museum exhibit (I was really excited that museums are all free in England!). The exhibit may have been geared toward a slightly younger set, but we thoroughly appreciated the narration, especially Friar Tuck: "I take care of spiritual life for the merry men. I like good spirits... and good food." The next day, we went to York, which is a town with mediaeval vestiges. Ken and I discovered the real secret of York though- it is home to Diagon Alley, as seen below:

Dan made sure that we tasted all of England's culinary traditions as well. Above, Ken is enjoying a cream tea at Ruffert, an abby near Sherwood Forest. Perhaps the most impressive thing about our time North of London is that we were able, between all our adventures, to fit in screenings of BOTH Paranormal Activity movies. Trip = Success

On Wednesday Ken and I took a bus back to London, planning to leave for Toulouse the next day. In an interesting turn of events (greves+easyjet+kristenbeingreeeallystupid) we had to stay in London until Sunday morning. I know, it's a hard life. We used our extra time to see everything there is to see for free in London. One prescient memory is our 30 minute wait to get into the Museum of Natural History, 30 more minute wait to get into the dinosaur exhibit, and subsequent discovery that the exhibit was popular because of a life-sized, automated T-Rex that roars at you while a museum docent says "please keep the line moving". We agreed that the most interesting thing we saw in the museum was a giant tree sliver... well besides the T-Rex, which actually was pretty frightening. Another favorite moment was Ken receiving a love bite from a swan in Kensington Gardens. This was quickly followed by me running away and yelling "Come on! Come on! The birds are landing on people..."

When we finally arrived in Toulouse on Sunday, we were exhausted, hungry, and a whole lot closer to broke than a week before. We decided to take it easy during the week, but I loved every minute. We went to Carcassone, where I was guilted into buying 8 euro tea by a sneaky shop owner and Ken insisted on walking ALL the way around the ancient fortress and looking into EVERY alcove and wrought-iron door, saying "I wish we could get in!" and rattling it sufficiently. We finished out the week with a trip to Narbonne, a small city on the mediterranean that isn't known for much other than a cool unfinished cathedral and the remains of the Via something-or-other, a road from ancient Roman times that connects Rome all the way to Spain. This made me a little nostalgic for high school latin.... in pictura est puella, nomine Flavia. This sentence and "via" is about all I recall. I was more for the undead languages. Anyway... in Narbonne Ken and I saw a rugby match, complete with cheerleaders, mascot, and horrible team colors. Narbonne beat Lyon in a big upset, and I enjoyed watching the Narbonne cat mascot wave his tiny arms, which he could neither bend nor put by his sides, in joy. We finished off the evening with a whole pizza between the two of us. (Pictures forthcoming)

A night's sleep, a few museums, and a church later... and Ken was leaving to begin his 2-day journey home. And all I had to remember his visit by were an inordinate number of photos and a dying camera. Nevertheless, I'd say it was a successful first journey to Europe for him, a great first trip to the UK for me, and a much needed vacation together for the bothof us. It wasn't until he came that I realized that between me leaving for France and our crazy summer at camp, we hadn't spent more than 24 consecutive hours of quality time together since the spring! Now that I have less than a month left until Christmas vacation, I am trying to balance my enjoyment of being in France with my impatience to see Ken and my family (including Ellie, whom I haven't seen since August!) in December.

Room and Board

So admittedly I have not been keeping up with writing very well over the past month. Last night I was talking about the differences between college and "the real world" of young adulthood with a good friend from home, and she told me that in college she was constantly busy and worried about finals, papers, you name it. But now, she said, she isn't busy in the same way, but there are many different pieces of her life that she needs to think about all the time. Rent, insurance, bosses. These little things don't loom in the way that 25-page paper does, but they never seem to stop buzzing inyour ear. Add to her synopsis immigration papers and a language barrier, and you've got an assistant's life in Toulouse. All of this was my lengthy way of saying that for my first month here I've had to spend my ample free time concentrating on irritating details like getting my atm card (which took, I kid you not, more than 7 visits to my bank) rather than doing fun things like blogging and writing postcards and letters.

But here I have arrived! On the other side of the paperwork inferno... or as much so as I can be. I am living in a house in a residential neighborhood about 10 minutes from the city center by bus. It's a duplex, so we share one paper-thin wall with our neighbors (still haven't met them!). My housemate, or colocataire en francais, is a 22 year old french guy named Brendan. His girlfriend is also here 90% of the time. I like both of them a lot, and the don't speak english very well so I get to practice my French all the time. Here's my room below: it's simple but has a nice big bed. I'm working on the decor!

I have already met Brendan's family and been to dinner at his mom's house. She hosts foreign students often (currently they're hosting a student from New York) so their family is used to helping foreigners out, and probably also to understanding weird accents. They've told me that my accent is only slight and they wouldn't have known I was a native english speaker unless I told them! This is probably the best compliment I've received in France.

Tonight we had an 'extended' family dinner at our house, of which the participants were myself, Brendan, his girlfriend, his mom Marie Pierre, 13-year-old brother Alerie, and this other teenage boy whose association with the family I am still not quite sure of (these are the kind of misunderstandings I have learned to accept with the language/culture gap).

It was kind of potluck-- everyone preparing something or other. I made the entree, which I was extremely nervous about. I should clarify that "entree" means "appetizer" or "first course" in French, not "main dish" as it does in America. This makes a lot more sense, since it comes from entrer (enter)... aka to enter into the meal. Of course us dumb Americans appropriated the word incorrectly. In any case, not being a culinary genius, I first looked up "french appetizers" online. What I found was a bunch of recipes for cheese manipulated in some way or other. Here's another fun fact: the French never eat cheese before the meal. Cheese comes only after. So I ditched the anglo-style recipes and went with a simple spinach salad with apples and roasted walnuts. Not gourmet, but I thought it was pretty good!

It's such a fun experience to eat with the French. I like that they eat in courses. Meals aren't necessarily complicated; for example tonight we had my salad and a simple lasagna, with apple tart for dessert. But by serving the salad and waiting until everyone had had their fill of that before moving on to the lasagna, the meal lasted longer and we had more conversation.

As for me, I am slowly relearning how to cook for myself. I did some cooking last fall, but since living at camp I've really fallen out of the habit. Here in Toulouse I have no gargantuan kitchen to attend to my food needs (thank goodness... I couldn't take one more bite of summer camp food). So I am taking baby steps around the kitchen, getting bolder with my meats and recipes, and painstakingly stocking my cupboards with oils and spices. Not to mention trying every cheese France has to offer! I hope to soon write an entire entry about cheese. Ah the culinary joys of life abroad.... Bon appetite!