Thanksgiving Lobster

It's hard being away from home for the holidays, and this was the second year in a row that I've done it. Maybe even the third for Thanksgiving, now that I think about it. But as opposed to last year, when the holiday passed with little fanfare (as evidenced by my Thanksgiving dinner of spaghetti and meatballs) this year was wonderful. All of the American assistants were pining for home and for turkey and for anything made with pumpkin, so we had planned a rather large Friendsgiving in Beauvais, where a lot of assistants live. In the days leading up to it, I tried to talk to my classes about Thanksgiving, but it turns out that I'm a little rusty on my Thanksgiving history (and even if I weren't I don't know that I could fill an hour of class time that way), and concepts like green bean casserole and sweet potato pie don't exactly translate. I asked my students what they knew about Thanksgiving and got pretty much the same answers from one class to another. They offered up turkey, corn, pilgrims, and Indians, but I was a bit taken aback when I had three separate students insist that lobster was a Thanksgiving food as well. I reluctantly wrote lobster(?) on the board and silently wondered where they were getting their information. But after doing some research of my own later on, it turns out that they were right and that I need to reacquaint myself with the first Thanksgiving.

So it was agreed that everyone would bring something to our Friendsgiving, and since all of the Americans were yearning for something -- anything -- pumpkin, I took it upon myself to provide. There is an American store in Belgium that, in general, sells just about the worst America has to offer in terms of nutrition (think marshmallows, Pop Tarts, Chips Ahoy, and the like). But around Thanksgiving, they set up a little display with cranberry sauce, pre-made pie crusts, and my personal favorite, canned pumpkin. I'd stocked up on this a month or so before, so I was ready. I was going to make pumpkin bread, which is incredibly easy, provided you have an oven that works, the right tools, and the right ingredients. But with an oven that never quite heats up the way it's supposed to, no measuring cups or can opener and only one loaf pan (for two loaves), and apparently no ground cloves in all of Europe, the whole thing proved to be a more difficult undertaking.

I did manage to acquire some measuring cups from another American assistant, I eventually (after much googling) managed to open the can of pumpkin without a can opener, and I even sort of made do by smashing whole cloves with the bottom of a glass for the better part of an hour (clove bits flying everywhere). But there wasn't much to be done about the bad oven besides just waiting for the bread to be done, however long it took. As it turned out, it took about two hours. Per loaf. Somewhere in the whole process I also somehow snapped a mixing spoon in half. So all in all, it was more complicated than it should have been, but when I finally went to bed (at 2am) I had two pretty perfect loaves ready to go.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who'd had trouble either. One girl had put herself in charge of pies and was also up half the night trying to make pie crusts in her bedroom with altered ingredients. She told me she'd gone to sleep with flour in her bed.

In the end, though, it was lovely. There were maybe eighteen people there, and we were all worried that there wasn't going to be enough food, but everyone had brought plenty and we all had as much as we wanted. And the best part was that it wasn't just Americans. There were other English assistants from England, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, German and Spanish assistants, and I think one Japanese assistant. So while half of us were feeling nostalgic for Thanksgiving with our families, the others were experiencing their first Thanksgiving ever. They told us how they'd struggled with their culinary contributions (how would a non-American know what green bean casserole is supposed to look like?), and they tried lots of things for the first time. There was so much sharing of culture, and my friend Kayla and I got sort of embarrassingly emotional about the whole thing.

All in all, if I couldn't be with my family, there was no place I would have rather been this Thanksgiving than exactly where I was.

I can't find a picture that has everyone in it, but this is nice too.

This is France.

When I was writing my blog in Belgium, I focused a lot on observations; it was my first time living in another country and a lot of things were new (and strange) to me. This time around, I've got a better idea of what's going on. Eating bread and salami for breakfast doesn't faze me anymore, I always carry cash, I know that if I order a ham sandwich at a restaurant that it's just going to be bread, butter, and ham -- and I know how to ask if I want them to throw some vegetables on there too. Some things seem to be pretty consistent in this region of Europe, and I've heard that the north of France is fairly culturally similar to Belgium, so that's easy enough. As I get to know this country more, though, I'm still discovering things that are at turns amusing, distressing, and just a little odd.

• France loves paperwork. I have never in my life encountered a more bureaucratic country. I was even expecting this, and it still surprised me. Putting aside the mountain of paperwork that had to be completed in order to validate my visa, including copies of every document from my passport to my bank account information to my 7th grade report card (kidding, sort of), I had to bring a passport photo and a proof of habitation just to get a bus pass. Most French people are used to this and accept it with a smile, but I'm pretty sure that's just a mask for their pure and unmitigated sadness. I want to put my arm around their shoulders and tell them it doesn't have to be this way, but apparently it does, so that just leaves me in the printing room at school, making copy after copy after copy. 

• There are a whole lot of animals in shop windows. I mean, not real ones, usually (although no fewer than five floppy-eared dogs stared me down from behind windows on my walk from the school to the train station yesterday, and I have seen a lot of cats sitting in windows as well), but fake animals incorporated one way or another into store displays. I present Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, and F:

I guess it's working, though, because I am way more interested in animals wearing people clothing than in people wearing people clothing.

• Speaking of animals, no one picks up after their own. For everyone's sake, I have no pictures of this, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I have to constantly look at the ground while walking here (especially in the smaller towns), or I will be in trouble. I'm fairly certain you're required by law to pick up after your dogs, so I suppose it's just not enforced and no one really seems to care, for some reason. But I care a lot.

• Tiny doors. I don't know if it's really possible to tell from the picture how small these doors are, but I would estimate about half the width of a standard door. (This is not true of all or even most houses. Just something I've noticed on my walk to the school in the morning.)

• There are a lot of cemeteries. I suppose when you've been a country as long as France has, you do tend to accumulate a lot of dead people, but I'm still surprised whenever I'm driving through the countryside up north and it's just cemetery after cemetery. And almost as if they're acknowledging the fact, there are also quite a few shops for various gravesite and mortuary materials: coffins, headstones, urns, etc. So that's fun. 

Of course, several of these are World War I cemeteries, as the north was a pretty active battleground. There's even a German/French World War I cemetery in Montdidier, the little village where I teach.

And in a sea of crosses, one or two Jewish graves as well:

I took those pictures back in early October, but here's one I took just yesterday:

Seasons are fun, right? Too bad we don't really have them back home.

Here are some bonus fall pictures, just for fun:

Gradient tree!

• I think we can agree that some stereotypes are founded in truth. Well let me confirm right now, an impressively large portion of the French population smokes. For those who hate all the restrictions on smoking we have in the US, France is the place to be; there are few restrictions, and where they do exist, they're largely ignored. For those who aren't such a fan, and those with respiratory problems, best not linger in this country for too long. People will smoke where they're not supposed to and they will unapologetically blow the smoke in your face. And it's not just the adults! Take a look at this picture I took outside the high school the other day:

This was not at the end of the school day; this was just a five-minute break between classes. All of those students standing around are smoking, most of them between the ages of 14 and 17, and the crowd is even larger before and after school, and at lunch. 

It's not like teenagers smoking is any sort of shocking phenomenon, but the sheer number of them is a bit surprising, as is the fact that no one really cares. Teachers smoke alongside the students, and it's not rare to see a 14- or 15-year old girl walking through the halls with an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth because she just cannot wait to get outside to light up. Parents will share their cigarettes with children younger than this as well. I understand it's a cultural thing, but it's still a bit jarring for someone of my era coming from the US to see things like this. It also just doesn't seem like great parenting, but maybe I'm just being judgmental. 

All in all, France is...well, it's very French. Certain things are great, like baguettes for 58 cents and the prevalence of good pastries. And certain things are less great, like the chill that has settled deep into my California bones that I'm afraid might never leave, and paying €15 for a tube of mascara I pay $6 for at home.

Luckily I've got Belgium right across the border for those times when I need to escape to more familiar surroundings, and the fact that I now feel that way about Belgium gives me a bit of hope that I may get there with France too. 

Getting Settled

I'm trying to avoid giving a play-by-play of all the time I have spent NOT updating my blog, but I do have to do a bit of catching up. So the next couple entries will probably be that.

I work at a high school in a little town called Montdidier, deep in the French countryside (finally, the famous campagne from years of French vocabulary lists is relevant). The school had a free room set aside for me right on campus, but the previous assistant (who has been awesomely helpful - thank you, Aoife) had advised had me not to take it and to live in the bigger city of Amiens instead and commute into Montdidier to work. Still, I thought it might be a good idea to live in the room just for a month or two, until I started getting paid and could afford something else. That seemingly solid plan started to crumble almost as soon as I arrived in town. A typical conversation with every teacher I met went something like this:

"Welcome! Where are you living?"
"I'm staying in the free room here at the school."
"Have...have you seen the room?"
"Um, not yet, but it's just for a month or so."
"I see. Well, good luck."

Except, you know, in French. Mostly. And then that teacher and whatever teacher had made the introduction would give each other a look that clearly indicated my plan was not a good one. Which made a lot more sense when I did finally see the room, and when I got to know the town a bit better over the next couple of days.

The room itself was...well, it was clean. It did have that going for it. Other than that, picture a dorm room, but colder and less welcoming, and with plastic and aluminum furniture, and linoleum floors. The "kitchen" downstairs in the building was actually just a hot plate and a microwave. Perhaps the most inconvenient thing, though, was that there was no wifi in the room. There was no accessible wifi anywhere in town, actually, except for in the main school building (which is, of course, closed on nights and weekends), and in the McDonald's, twenty minutes away on foot. I know, I know, I'm probably too dependent on the internet, but internet is the only way that I can conveniently and affordably communicate with my family, not to mention do research for lesson planning, write blog entries, or read emails.

There are also only about 8000 people in the town, and absolutely nothing to do. It's not even easy to get around or leave the town, as there are no buses and the train station is a half hour walk away from the school. I anticipated a very lonely (and incredibly inconvenient) couple of months were I to stay. SO. I actually ended up moving after that first weekend. I now live in Amiens (the "big" city in the area), in the same house where last year's English assistant lived. There are four of us in the house and only one bathroom, but there is wifi, there is a washing machine, and I am only a short bus ride away from the train station, a grocery store, and friends. So I am happy.

And actually, I had a feeling it would all work out when Tom and I went to see the house for the first time. See, for years, Andrew has been "speaking French" with one of the few sentences he could recall from high school. Over and over, for probably seven or eight years, he's been asking me: Où est la bibliothèque? Where is the library? And as we turned onto my new street, the first thing I saw was this sign:

So, Andrew, to finally answer your question, the bibliothèque is here. Or at least a bibliothèque is here. Close enough.

(In case anyone feels like sending me a letter or a postcard, or just spying on my neighborhood via Google Maps, my address is 13 Rue de Mercey, 80090 Amiens.)

When I went back to the school to actually start work on October 1st, all of the teachers asked me how I was faring in my little room in Montdidier. When I told them I'd already moved to Amiens, they all looked relieved and told me that that was probably a wise decision. I tend to agree.

And that's all for now! But I might write another entry immediately after this one.

I'm getting good at this jet lag thing.

I have to apologize (mostly to my mom) for taking so long to write my first post after arriving in Europe. I started it a while ago, but things kept coming up and I was just so busy that it was hard to find the time. And then more things kept happening, so the prospective post was getting longer and more intimidating, which just made avoiding it more and more appealing. Anyway, I finally decided to just split up everything I wanted to say into a few different posts, so I could get something up, even if it wasn't everything all at once.

My European adventure (Take 2) started off brilliantly with a 14-hour delay that the airline didn't feel was important enough to inform me of. Luckily my dad is a lot better at planning for things to go wrong than I am and he checked the flight online the night before, so, unlike a good number of the other passengers, I did not go to the airport at 6:15pm on Monday only to be told to come back the next morning. Thanks, Dad :) 

HOWEVER. I was excited about going on the new 787 Dreamliner plane that Norwegian Airlines insisted was the best thing ever and totally worth being ridiculously inconvenienced for. And I have to say, it was pretty cool. Not only did it fly (standard, I think), but it also had windows from the future. No physical shade to pull down, just a button that allows you to tint your window to different levels of blueness. Kind of like manual sunglasses. Also, the map was interactive! The map is, hands down, my favorite part of the seat-back screen experience, and this one allowed you to move the world around, see the little cartoon plane from different angles (not really a necessary or even interesting feature, as far as I could tell), and zoom in on different parts of the world and read little blurbs about various cities. So that was cool. I slept a little bit on the plane (it might have been my imagination, but I think Dreamliner seats recline like half an inch farther), but by the end I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that flying alone will always be awful, no matter how many movies and out-of-context TV episodes are at my fingertips. 

The truly unfortunate part about the whole thing, though, was not the delay in leaving, but the effect it had on my layover in Stockholm. What was supposed to be a five-hour layover turned into a fourteen-hour one, which I was less than excited about. The plane landed at 4:10am and my next flight was not until 6:30 pm. Luckily, about forty-five minutes into my dayover, I met another American traveler, Sam, who was starting out on a month-long trip to Algeria. Just because, apparently. He was staying in Stockholm for a few days, though, and didn't really want to leave the airport until he could check into his hostel. Or at least, you know, until the sun came up. So he hung out and talked with me for about seven hours, which was really nice of him. We got hamburgers, had a nice talk, and discovered our mutual love of absentmindedly tearing paper:

That was a team effort.

So anyway, Sam left and I began the second half of my layover. The Stockholm airport has free wifi, but only for three hours, after which you have to pay. I figured having a fourteen-hour layover thrust upon me was good enough justification to ask for maybe a wifi password or something, but they were pretty much just like, "Fourteen hours?! That's awful. But no, no free wifi for you."

The next several hours are sort of a blur. I checked my luggage for my second flight, trying to ignore the judgmental looks of the airport employee when I told her I was headed to Amsterdam and she stared down incredulously at my two suitcases, duffel bag and backpack, because apparently no one brings luggage like that to Amsterdam. In my exhausted and frustrated mind I was yelling, "You don't know my situation!" but I didn't actually say anything. Obviously. Then I mostly spent the rest of my layover trying not to fall asleep all over the place. I was out like a light the minute I sat in my seat on the plane and didn't wake up until the pilot announced our final descent into Amsterdam, where Tom was waiting (with a chicken curry sandwich! One of the things I'd missed most since leaving Belgium) to take me to Gent. 

I had an awesome few days in Belgium with Tom. We went to this little city called Aalst to take a tour of a chocolate factory, but the factory turned out to just be a little cafe and chocolate shop where you could watch them make chocolate through a window. So we got a piece of some kind of brownie pie and moved on. My favorite thing in the city was undoubtedly this street:

We also went climbing with Tom's roommate, Hugo and his friend Charlotte, and while I was still not good at it, I found that I was significantly less bad than I'd ever been before. 

That's Tom on a wall! First top rope, then lead climbing.

Anyway! After a lovely few days in Belgium, it was off to the little town of Montdidier to see the school and get settled in my new room. 

And that's it for now! Intro to France will come in the next post.

Intro posts don't have to have creative titles.

Hello everyone (and by "everyone," I mostly mean my immediate family, at this point), and welcome to my France blog. For those of you who read my previous blog about Belgium, it's probably going to be a lot like that, but set about 120 miles south.

First thing's first! I really struggled to come up with a title and URL for this. Alliterative puns are nice, but after racking my brain and consulting my mother, I still didn't have anything I really liked. Here were some options that I came up with:

• Floundering in France -- This one, though likely accurate, was a little more self-deprecating than I really wanted it to be.
• All Up in Europe -- Taken! :(
• pluspain -- For the URL. It means more bread in French, but when read in English it looks significantly less pleasant.
• Sometimes You're Down and Sometimes Europe -- This made me laugh a lot, but it's kind of a mouthful.

Finally, I settled on Fake it 'til You Frank it for the blog title, with Frank being a (somewhat outdated) word for a French person. I also played with the idea of using franc instead, like the currency, but they don't even use that anymore, so there you go.

And for the URL, I decided to pay homage to my first France experience, which is really what got me interested in teaching English there in the first place. In my junior year of high school I went on a trip to France with my French class. On that trip, Emily, Nikki, Amanda, Jake, and I made a bit of a habit of taking extra bread from dinner back to our rooms and playing hide-and-seek with it. We called it Où est le pain?, or Where is the bread? If I remember correctly, whoever found the bread took a bite and then hid it somewhere else. And so on.

So. Now that that wholly unnecessary explanation for my titling decisions is out of the way, let's get started!

Things I'm Excited About:

• Being back in Europe! Reasons for this include, but are not limited to: delicious sandwiches (still not for breakfast), pain au chocolat, crêpes, old buildings, casually taking trains, the general European feel everything has, and the ease of walking everywhere. 
• Being in a less long-distance relationship! I will be two hours south of Gent, where Tom lives, but that's only a train ride away! And the same time zone and everything!
• Traveling. Ideally, I would like to do more of that this time than last time.
• Not living where I work. That made for a very confusing dynamic when I was in Belgium. But in France, I will work set hours at the school and the rest of the time will be mine. So that'll be nice, I think.

Things I'm Nervous About:

• I have hardly spoken French in the last couple years, and that is about to be all I am speaking. In Belgium, everyone spoke English, but in France, outside of the really touristy areas, people really do not speak English. I know this, yet I am consistently surprised by it. My spoken French is decent, and even pretty good once I get back into the rhythm of it, but my listening comprehension is awful. So the idea of going to a place, trying to find an apartment, set up a phone plan, open a bank account, etc., all in a language that is not my own is a bit scary. Administrative things scare me even in English. I honestly feel like I somehow fooled them into thinking I was far more competent than I am and will have to keep up that charade until I reach said perceived level of competence (hence the title of the blog). 
• I have no money. Like, I am profoundly broke right now, and it is really stressing me out. At this point, I think the best I can hope for is one of those "I moved to this country with a cardboard suitcase and a dollar in my pocket, and look at me now!" success stories. 

So we'll see how this goes!