mais, non.

Revenue!

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:09:24 +0100

Salut, everyone. Are you still reading this? Hooray! Welp, I have made myself a new blog, un-France related but hopefully still entertaining, and it is here.

Go! Read! Or do something productive with yourself!

Le départ

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 06:37:00 +0100

Well, le jour de gloire est arrivé, mes amis. I’m quitte-ing la France. All that remains for me is a nebulously-defined checkout procedure with the fruitcake-eating securityman, an hour-long trainride to CDG, and a long plane ride. Also, a croissant may occur in there somewhere.

I’m sad, obviously. For all the fairy-tale crap and intense angst that is the prescribed right of the Student Abroad, it was actually an amazing time. I learned Things About Myself. And things about l’articulation d’un paragraphe, I suppose. And I saw more castles than my memory has room for.

So what have I got to show? I don’t know yet. A better accent, let’s hope, and a hard drive of 1700 photos. I don’t really want to be sentimental yet, or maybe ever, because as much as I ended up liking being here, I know that I want to be home.

Looking at these pictures for 11 weeks is not the same as being with people. Studying in France is like being in a long distance relationship with everyone I know in North America, including my dogs. It’s tough. And they are awesome, let me tell you (the people and the dogs).

Bon. Thank you for reading this. I really liked writing it. I know that blogging (ugh, what a word) is an inherently narcissistic endeavor, and that yes, I just did it because my mom asked me, but every time I heard that someone enjoyed some dumb post I wrote about baguettes or getting a fork stolen by a security guard it made me feel like I was actually making something nifty and worthwhile.

And so I leave you, but only to come back to you. À bientôt, everyone. Can we go to Wawa on the way home?

Petite confession

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:47:14 +0100

Internet, I never went to the Eiffel Tower. Forgive me.

Jour de naissance

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:34:44 +0100

My mom has said once or twice (I think jokingly) that it should be the mother of the birthday person who gets all the presents and credits, seeing as she did all the work. She has also pointed out (usually as I am berating her for something stupid and teenagerly) that she doesn’t deserve to be sulked or screamed at. She’s just somebody who had a baby, once.

Well, I am that baby, and today is my birthday. And as I am unbelievably lucky enough to have survived twenty-one (oh God) years on Earth, I would like to take this opportunity to give credit where credit is due.

Mom: if you’ll forgive me for being corny, thank you for everything. I’m glad that once upon a time you and dad were crazy kids who wore yuppie sweaters and loafers with no socks and decided to start a family. Maybe today I’m a Real Grown-Up, but it’s still hard to be away from you. Especially today.

Thanks for being the great weird kind of parents who raised me to do this; this being everything from going to college to studying in France to writing romance novels to drinking screwdrivers when I was only 17 to covering me in Christmas bows when I was two weeks old and using me as a centerpiece.

And look! I have a kind of real life now, and I can sort of speak this other language, and I am going to turn out all right, I think. So, here’s to a long succession of Decembers eleventh and my continuation as your project and your kid. One day I might even have a yuppie sweater of my own.

Bon courage, alors

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:50:40 +0100

Classes whose final exams I could probably pass today, based on the kind of studying I did yesterday:

The care and eating of brie sandwiches
How to get through the métro using a child’s ticket, because you are cheap
Theories of fancy French grocery stores
Giggling Studies
Societal and cultural implications of looking up one’s own name on Urban Dictionary
Speculoos 101

Classes whose final exams I actually have to take:

Civilisation française et européenne

Le Défecit de l'Attention

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:49:19 +0100

Since my parents may read this, it’s probably not wise to admit that I can’t focus on a damn thing lately. Reading for class, which ordinarily sort of goes in one ear and out the other, so to speak, is now almost utterly incomprehensible. Don’t ask me about le structuralisme. I can assure you I don’t know what it is.

But I am still making a valid attempt to profiter from my last days in Paris. I’ve been doing productive things like eating croissants, going to the movies, and wandering the Champs-Elysées in the rain.

It was all very charming and Parisian, but hard-nosed non-romantic that I am, I couldn’t help but bleat incessantly about losing feeling in my hands.

Luckily, I found a cure.

Santé, tout le monde.

La découverte

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:57:00 +0100

Let me show you something delicious.

I know! You’re like, “Blair, is France really so awful that you are going to off yourself by ingesting a deadly legume spread? Have you completely lost your mind?!”

Answers: No, and kind of.

For starters, it’s not peanut butter! Ha ha, I have fooled you with my excellent trick photography and the fact that this does, in fact, look a lot like beurre d’arachide. So much so that I still feel a little nervous eating it (what can I say, I’m a creature of habit).

Speculoos are gingerbread-esque cookies that are often served alongside cups of coffee here. That or chocolate covered almonds, go figure. But! Some brilliant genius figured out how to get all the sweet and somewhat spicy taste of ginger cookies into a spread. And it’s delicious. And it goes so well on crepes. And spoons. And, like, my finger straight into my mouth.

Is this what Nutella is like for you normals? This magical substance that you can put on anything and make it tasty? Because if so, putain but I’m jealous. I just had to discover this with only 6 days left in France.

The downside is that unlike Nutella or other similarly semi-continental snack foods that have migrated to Whole Foodses across America, Speculoos spread hasn’t really caught on stateside.

No worries, though. This should tide me over for most of winter break. Hopefully none of those professional 4th-amendment violators and amateur frotteurs at the TSA will have a sweet tooth and relieve my checked bags of my cache. I will totally sue.

L'hippie

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:54:57 +0100

Somehow, France has made my downward spiral into crunchiness even more of a chute rapide. See:

my tendency to shop at farmers’ markets
yoga every morning, both as a stress-reducer and a way to offset wine consumption
my newfound penchant for harem pants
listening to Enya’s Christmas album while studying without even a hint of irony
spending time at tea houses talking about global injustice
making spicy lentil curry so often for dinner that I almost forget it’s vegan

At least they don’t sell Tom’s of Maine toothpaste here, or I might be tempted to brush my teeth with that crap.

Nantes

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:02:51 +0100

Nantes, aka the fifth-largest city in France and also aka where my dear friend Erica is passing her semester* abroad, is quite lovely. I would say it was lovely despite the fact that I had to get up so early that I saw the sun rise on my two-hour TGV ride, but I actually like doing that.

In other words, the whole day was great.

There were oodles of Christmas-themed things. According to Erica, Nantes is super-duper Catholic (laïcité be damned) and so they kind of go all out.

Her host family invited me over for lunch, and proceeding to be the nicest people ever. It was a great moment of feeling competent enough in French to enjoy getting to know people (and of tactfully sidestepping any uncomfortable political discussion when I admitted to liking Pres. Obama’s intelligence. It’s pretty indisputable that he’s smart, no?) I had fleeting moments of jealousy, because in my experience when living with a host family is good, it tends to be great, and these were definitely folks of the latter school. They fed us a 4-course meal with things I don’t usually consider delicious (fish) and things that are universally known to be tasty (cheese, chocolate éclairs).

But it was really wonderful just to get to see one of my oldest friends again. When her host mom asked us how long we’d known each other, we couldn’t even remember. And now we’re both in France. How about that?

Unfortunately, I could only stay in town for like, 8 hours, due to the train schedule and the dissertation that still awaits completion (I’ve made great progress! I swear!), so we spent a bit more time walking before heading to La Cigale, the most beautiful ornate restaurant in all of Nantes, for coffee. And since the Gods of Karma had granted me such a wonderful day, it was fitting that my train had a one-hour delay going home. Grande vitesse, mon cul.

Not that I’m complaining. Quite the opposite.

*She gets way more bonus points for the length of her stay. Three and a half months?! Incredible. I would die. I just would.

Les chouchous

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 22:55:21 +0100

Given my recent post, I feel that I’ve come off as unfairly negative towards France. It’s not true! There are definitely some things I like! Despite the awful UHT milk and 8€ pints!

Take today, for example.

Crossing this bridge, and looking at all the locks stuck on here as a monument to the True Love of many many couples (except those that used combination locks. Come on!), I was struck by how damn Parisian it all looked. In a good way, of course.

Great Thing #2 was this store, which was positively stuffed with kitchen things. Copper pots and pans, itty-bitty little ramekins, whisks of all shapes and sizes, a Dutch oven large enough to cook a labrador-sized pot roast…it was awesome and confusing all at once. Especially when the salesguy, realizing we were Americans, just started throwing random celebrity names at us, starting inexplicably with Justin Bieber.

The point is, I’m going back there next week to buy myself a 50€ knife, and damned if I’m not excited to do it.

And finally, I have an incurable fondness for the Monoprix store-brand canned goods. The design is super snappy and very typographical, and I enjoy the little quip at the bottom that says “When we’re bored, we peel tomatoes.” I’m glad you do that for me, Monoprix guys. Merci beaucoup.

La neige*

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:46:00 +0100

It’s been snowing kind of a lot in Paris. Today I woke up to a whisper-light dusting of about, oh, 2.5 centimeters, only to see a headline later on the Daily French Whatever that said something to the effect of COUNTRY PARALYZED BY KILLER SNOWFALL. Given that I come sort of from Chicago, I find this hilarious.

But apparently snow isn’t really a thing here. I’ve nearly killed myself by slipping on some hardcore ice slicks several times, despite the diligent droves of green-jumpsuited city employees chucking rock salt everywhere. People look more miserable than usual on the morning tram.

Still, I find it kind of comforting, perhaps because it’s so un-Parisian. After no Halloween and no Thanksgiving, I need something to signal that winter is actually coming. Snow does that nicely, and so I am content with it, even if the cold temperatures are making my fingers all stiff and purpley-pink, even with gloves.

The other signs of approaching holidayness are there: Christmas lights at the Asian-food-cum-vegetable-market, un “party de Noël” planned for this Friday night in my dorm, the guys who sell roast corncobs in shopping carts by the metro switching over to roasting chestnuts. And then there’s me, making my own traditions, like asking for an after-class thé au whiskey at the British-themed pub by school, which is the best translation I can manage for hot toddy**, or listening to Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas album like, every morning. France may be paralyzed, but I’m doing okay.

*To be pronounced à la Québecois: la NAYGE
**It had whipped cream on it, but it was still delicious.

Cahier de doléance

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:07:09 +0100

Things I Am Officially Over

Toilets with buttons to flush, microwaves with dials to cook
Lacking a freezer and a teakettle
Having to double-sock just not to freeze my toes off, because France is not supposed to have Real Winter
The jackass on the floor below me who blasts reggae late into the night
The security guards of my residence hall who come to my room at 3 AM to tell me that they have work to do and I shouldn’t call them when said jackass wakes me up
That fuzzy feeling of being unable to focus and power through when I am on page 3 of some very important French treatise on humanism
Expensive coffee
Come to think of it, the idea that a croissant, coffee, and orange juice is a “big breakfast” and deserves to cost 7€
Le métro and its constant smell of le piss
Not being home, really, I think

Un aspet d'ironie

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:15:38 +0100

Places that are not quiet in Paris:

The catacombs. You would think that l’empire de la mort would be silent as the grave since it, well, is a giant grave, but no; the tourists chatter in all languages there just like they do in every other place in the city.

Not to say that I minded. Frankly, all the creepy inscriptions, low, drippy ceilings, and massive piles of human bones were making me a little too mementa morior. Constant reassurance of being alive = always nice.

Places that are quiet in Paris:

Montmartre at 7h45 on a Sunday morning. After all of the tourists coming up the hill to faire la fête Saturday nights, the streets are almost eerily quiet, with nothing but gobs of cigarette butts mushed in the cobblestones to indicate that anyone had been there.

I didn’t catch much of a sunrise, like I’d hoped, but oh well. I think I’ve accidentally become a kind of morning person (thanks, paternal genes), because there is something wonderful about having the world to yourself that early in the morning. The day starts! And you are there to watch it! Beautiful!

Assuming, of course, that you get a bol de café* and a tartine after clomping around in the chilliness.

*Literally, it was a bowl of coffee. I could have wept from joy.

Le stuffing, à la moi

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:08:43 +0100

Sausage-less Apple and Sage Stuffing
serves at least 5

You will need:

1 baguette
1 apple
1 onion
2-3 cloves garlic
3 sticks of celery
handful of sage leaves
handful of parsley leaves
broth of some kind
milk
2 eggs
butter, duh

Buy a baguette. Do this the day before you want stuffing (this requires forethought). Don’t eat it.
The next day, whack the baguette on the table. If it doesn’t break, it’s adequately stale. Cut it up into inch-ish cubes.
Chop up the apple, onion, celery, garlic, and herbes. Sauté everything in some butter until it smells really really good. If attempting to sneak pieces out of the skillet, let them cool before you put them in your mouth because apples get so damn hot.
Meanwhile, butter a baking vessel. It can literally be anything. I used a pie plate, and basically just mushed the butter in with my fingers. Oh, the class.
Dump in the bread bits and sauté mixture and mix them. If you’re making vegetable broth with one of those tea-bag things, you probably should have done that already.
Add the broth and mix some more.
Realize that your pie dish is too big for the toaster oven. Decide it doesn’t matter and proceed. Preheat to 175 Celsius.
Whisk together about a cup of milk and the eggs. Pour over the stuffing and mix, again. Add salt and pepper to taste (meaning lots).
Put the dish in the oven. When the door doesn’t close, cover the gap with tinfoil and have a glass of wine. It doesn’t matter. Just rotate the dish about 20 minutes in so that you don’t end up with one corner of raw bread crumbs.
Wait. Sample homemade applesauce.
40 minutes later, remove dish (use a dishtowel, for God’s sake). Give thanks.

Merci-donnant

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:57:39 +0100

I love Thanksgiving. It may be my favorite holiday. In my opinion, nothing beats a day of being sleepy and making hand turkeys with your family in a house that smells like turkey fat, sage, and pumpkin pie spices. There’s the parade and football, too, but I don’t really go for either. And one can never forget the traditional waiting for the corn pudding to be done so that we can finally eat the damn turkey.

But I am in France, and my family is not. I wasn’t home for Thanksgiving last year, either, but this is different. I was still in the right country, at least.

I am nevertheless determined to be grateful. I was planning to make a list of things I was thankful for and post it here, being semi-sarcastic and snarky so as to avoid seeming too mushy and sentimental. But then, as a bunch of friends and I were cooking up a Friday-night Fakesgiving dinner, doing our best with no cranberries or turkey or even oven, I realized that I am actually genuinely grateful for this.

I’ve got to be honest: I sort of thought I was done making friends at the end of last year. Like I had somehow exhausted all the social connections I could make at UChicago and that there was no one new to meet. Or at least no one new I would want to meet.

But then I got to France, and I actually made more friends. Like, real, good friends. Not just the single-serving kind you make, Tyler-Durden-style, to tide yourself over until you get home, but the kind that you have profoundly stupid inside jokes with and who will tolerate you when you are trying to walk to the tram after 3 glasses of school-provided wine and speaking atrocious franglais.

And who will, as it were, gather together and make Thanksgiving with you.

Sure, our turkey might have been a rotisserie chicken from the Halal boucherie, and we might have had almost exclusively potato-based side dishes, and we might have been drinking wine out of empty applesauce jars, but, damn it, it was Thanksgiving, and we were together. As the first snow of the season was falling outside with a vengeance, we were boiling and mashing and cutting and toasting and making fun of me for playing the organ version of “We Gather Together” on repeat.

And so it wasn’t even a Fakesgiving after all. We made all the food and felt all the warmth, and that’s the point, isn’t it? I wasn’t tiding myself over anymore; I’m pretty sure I was feasting.

In a literal sense too, of course.

Le "Princess movie"

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:40:00 +0100

A while ago, I began to see posters for this movie called La Princesse de Montpensier. It looked kind of awesome, meeting some of my most important criteria for movies, namely:

Fancy costumes
With attractive men in them
And smoldering looks

Doing minimal research, I discovered that the movie was actually about a period of French history I was studying at the time (la deuxième guerre de religion, if you must know). From what I could tell, it was about the Duc de Guise. Even though all I knew about said Duc was that he was assassinated in the Château de Blois, I was pretty sold on the film. For the next two weeks, I tried to convince anyone who possessed even a modicum of French-speaking ability that, yes, they really wanted to go see this princess movie with me. I even tried to sell going as a way to study for the final (no dice. Though given that I probably échoué’d anyway I might as well have gone).

Needless to say, no one was interested. Until last night, when I finally found a companion as interested in Gaspard Ulliel as I was in historical angst. We went out to a slightly-more-ghetto-than-average theater in our arrondissement and prepared to be floored with historicity.

In no particular order, here are my thoughts.

My French is either better or worse than I expected. Some vast swathes of dialogue were completely lost to me, but I kept up with the plot okay.
I completely forgot which side was the Catholic side and which was the Protestant side, despite having just learned about this in class, until about 2/3 of the way through the movie when someone brought it up.
I really wanted Philippe and Marie to be all cute and fall in love, but then she was all “ooh no I’m naïve and still in love with Henri even though he looks short” and Philippe was all “I am a jealous prick despite having a cute beta-wolf charm about me”
People are randomly naked in front of everyone like it’s no big deal. And the scene where Marie’s dad watches her get all perfumed up for her wifely deflowering was mo’ creepy.
François and Henri de Guise had two of the Frenchest noses I have ever seen on film, and this includes that of M. Depardieu.
The shots at Blois were really awkwardly aligned to avoid showing the part of the castle that was built in the eighteenth century, LOL.
Marie de Médicis kind of looks like Jabba the Hutt in this movie. Just sayin’.

All in all, I’d give it a solid thumbs up. I’d say you can catch it at a theater near you, but you are probably American* and so you can’t.

*Or Faux-nadian, but whatever.

Le cheval en vue de l'écurie

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:35:00 +0100

I have only two and a half weeks left in Paris.

It’s a strange realization. I feel like I just got over jetlag. And now that I’m almost done, my mental attitude is way better than it was at the beginning. It feels almost easy to live here. I know where to buy groceries, I can stay more-or-less on top of my schoolwork, I can take the métro without blinking. It’s like what one of my farmer bosses told me over the summer, watching my pace towards the last weeding job of the day becoming a fast clip when I realized I only had 15 minutes left in my workday: “it’s the horse in sight of the stable.” Once you can see where you’re going, can see home, you pick up the pace. Things get rosy.

But I’m also running out of time. As such, I’m trying to keep my vacation-y attitude in Paris and go see as many things as I can slash want to. Yesterday was a visit to the anglophone bookstores by St. Michel. First, Abbey Books, which is Canadian and gives you free maple-syrup coffee (no joke).

I couldn’t help it! The guy was so nice! So what if it was (gasp) 25 euros? I am genuinely interested in the history of Quebec, okay?

I also hit up the famous and slightly touristy Shakespeare and Co., just to say I did. It’s pretty neat on the inside, cozy and full of many shelves. They have an old typewriter where you can tap away at your novel* if you’re of that persuasion, and a ton of writer’s groups meet there, presumably to drink coffee and wine and whine. Me, I sat in a wicker rocking chair and read L’avenir de la science for class. Not a bad way to pass the afternoon.

*Yeah, I kind of laissed mine tomber. Something had to give! I’m only human!

Quand est-ce qu'on mange?

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:26:59 +0100

Foodwise, it was a successful vacation.

So the traveluh huz landed in Lundun?

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:49:51 +0100

When I was a kid, we had this book about a stuffed rabbit who went on adventures and sent postcards home. I think it was called Travels of Felix or something? Anyway, at one point he sends his human-girl owner-friend a postcard from Big Ben, and her dad remarks “So the traveler has landed in London?” Only when my sister and I would read it aloud, she would always do this line in her most Liverpudlian Ringo Starr voice, which is really amusing to hear come out of an 8-year-old with a bowl cut.

This is just a long way of saying my sister is crazy. But she would love London, I’m sure.

Our first day there (and after a six AM flight, no less) we went to the British Museum. And yes, I got to see the Elgin Marbles (aka the ones stolen from the Parthenon. Yeah, kind of a big deal. To me). Tears of classical joy were wept.

I also got to hang out with some noted experts in my field of study.

I tried to go to a ska show my first night there, but the bar in which it was to be held was mysteriously…not existent when I got there. My despondency was alleviated on the way home by the presence of one Skoob Books, a wonderful used bookstore where I procured some Thurber and Trollope paperbacks, thus allowing me to become That Girl Reading Alone In The Hostel.

My second day started off with a visit to the Tate Museum of Modern Art, which had this wonderfully garish room of Andy Warhol stuff. It was eyebleedingly great.

Also checked out the Millenium Bridge, noted for “being in the Harry Potter movie and probably something else”.

Another thing that you should always do, I think, is go to farmers’ markets when you can. They are the best for lunch, and even if you are too cheap to buy food, you can pretty much make a meal out of cheese samples and bread scraps. I almost did, but then there was really good pumpkin soup.

Friday night was a night out alone. I convinced myself I was going on a date…with me. And you know what? Red wine and a tuna melt on your own followed by a candy bar and Bill Bailey doing standup is pretty damn great. I stand by my decision even if it makes me sound pathetically Forever Alone.

Saturday was the last day of vacation, but I was Not Deterred by fatigue and endeavored to go vintage shopping, which ended up being really awesome and not totally touristy, which is always a plus. I got some dresses and a skirt, the latter becoming part of my outfit that night to go see a ska show (this one existed!) Again, alone. But you know what? It’s very liberating to be by yourself in a strange city. Especially because it means you don’t have to worry about people mocking you, so you can skank your little heart out.

Which I did, duh.

Edinburgh

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:31:49 +0100

Briefly: it’s very cold, and very windy. Did you know it’s as far north as Moscow? This is the the sort of thing you should be aware of before booking a November vacation.

Seeing as I was there for all of two days, one of which I was rather sick, I can’t say much about it. There are many old stone buildings and winding streets and I ate a really good ye olde pub pie there.

The castle is pretty bitching as well. It’s built on a ridge between two tectonic plates* so that the way the wind was blowing meant that I nearly fell off the battlements and down about a mile and a half to the ground below.

The inside was neat—still tamer than Versailles, but with plenty of heraldry to keep things interesting. Lots of things about Mary, Queen of Scots, whom I know nothing about beyond that one Monty Python sketch with the radio drama. But history is kind of secondary on vacations, so no one cares. I also got to see the crown jewels, but photography was verboten, so just imagine a giant sword and a squishy-looking purple crown.

Walking around our last night, we found the café where J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter (or parts of it. Or at least got a cup of coffee once) and on the way back, I discovered my own street. It would have been awesome had there actually been anything there, but the most interesting business was a spa repair company. It was sort of like earlier that day when I’d tracked down my family tartan and discovered that it was orange and green, for God’s sake: you have to love it, even if it clashes horribly.

*Or something. I’m no geologist.