Plus ça change

Once upon a time, I had long hair, no glasses, and thought that 3 weeks was just about forever. This was when I lived in France the first time (yes, this sounds pretentious, but whatever). I spent 3 weeks in Normandy in February (pro-tip: not the time you want to be in Normandy) living with a family as an exchange student. I almost went crazy with homesickness and culture shock, but I survived, because I was that ballsy. It helped that my host grandmother made really good chocolate mousse.

At any rate, as I draw near the 3-week mark here in Paris, I keep thinking about how long it seemed to take way back in 9th grade. I guess that’s what being catapulted into a foreign culture without even knowing the future tense will do to one.

On a more interesting note, I’ve been rereading the emails I sent home to family and friends, and at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory and navel-gaze-y*, I was a fairly funny newly-15-year-old. So, here is a piece pulled from my juvenalia—an era between real correspondence and blogging and way before Facebook when I wrote lengthy emails to anyone who would listen.

Blair’s Guide to TV in France. An excerpt, based on a few of my
favorites…

Attention à la marche!: Weird game show in which the contestants
respond to random trivia questions and the main pull of which seems to
be the large, CG-animated purple blobs that the host dances around
with. Also has randomly themed episodes, like CARNIVALE!!! or LES
ADOS!!! (teenagers)
My thoughts: French game shows are all like this. Weird. And the host
has this strange purple blotch on his nose that distracts me from the
gameplay. It’s quite gross.

Sydney Fox, l’aventurière: Either a Canadian or English show that’s
been dubbed into French about this “archaeologist” and “college
professor” who looks like she’s about 20 years old who travels the
world in search of artifacts and crap. Basically a Buffy rip-off with
bad dialogue and gratuitously low-cut shirts for all female
characters.
My thoughts: Very, very crappy. The dialogue is awkward too, because
people are always saying “est-ce que ça va?” which i have never heard
in french, dubbed over when the character is actually saying “are you
okay?”. It’s always just “ça va?” and those extra syllables are very
strange. Luckily, Sydney Fox’s male best friend happens to by very hot
in a geeky way. Yay.

Première Compagnie: Low-class reality show about all these people
living in an army camp. I can’t tell if they’re competing for money or
just trying to get their 15 minutes of fame. It’s one of those shows
where they add in little thought balloons with “funny” things that
people are thinking. There’s also a viewer participation aspect that I
don’t understand.
My thoughts: Reality TV is the international language; as it sucks
everywhere. Elodie’s father in law happens to find this show
hilarious, and laughs obnoxiously at things even I can tell aren’t
funny.

*oh, wait. This is a blog. So, mission accomplished!