rebecca_in_blue | Entries tagged with adventures in french food

In the last 48 hours, Rebecca has....

Bought three goat cheese pizzas and eaten two. Also had Heather take pictures of me eating the pizza. (Yeah, we all know what I’m going to miss.)
Bought a chocolate bar, a bag of nougat (it's a little different from what we know as nougat in the US; it's little white cubes of dough with peanuts in it, and damn, is it delicious), and two île flottant desserts (these are basically meringue with English cream and caramel sauce – so good). I’m determined to stuff as many French desserts as I can into my body during my last few days.
Donated the English-language books that I can’t take back with me to the médiathèque.
Made three visits to the bank to arrange to have my money transferred into my American bank account. The third time I came in, I said, “Okay, this is the last time, really.” The woman who sat at the front desk all day said, “Oh, but we’ve missed you.”

The left side of my neck has been very stiff lately. I thought I might have slept on it at an odd angle, but there also seems to be something wrong with the left side of my jaw, which is sore, and my left ear, which feels funny, like I have a head cold or something. The teeth and gums on the bottom right side of my mouth are also sore, but I think this is from my last appointment to the dentist. It wasn’t really painful this time, but there was a lot of pressure on my mouth.

A list for future reference:

( Songs I Want to Add to My iPod When I Get Back )

Current Mood: stiff
Current Music: Whistling Away the Dark, Julie Andrews

The town library has the first two Lord of the Rings movies but not the third one, which drove Marlene crazy. Fortunately the lycée library has the third one, so I checked it out yesterday and we stayed up until past midnight watching it. Marlene has a Ron-Weasley-like fear of spiders and had to cover her eyes every time the giant spider came on.

I think I may have to scrap one of my favorite meals, which is a package of goat cheese microwaved and spread over a big baguette. (I usually eat this for dinner every Friday. I had it last night while we were watching Return of the King, and Marlene said, “Oh yeah, it’s Friday.”) But the last two times I’ve eaten it, I’ve felt strangely ill afterwards – very hot, thirsty, and out-of-breath. Last night it was so bad that for a minute I thought I was going to pass out. But I don’t know if I have the willpower to resist goat cheese, no matter what ill effects it might have on me. (Or should that be "affects"? Eh, who knows?)

The other day there was a debate on CNN between spokespeople from the Clinton and Obama campaigns, who spent most of their time saying, “Can I finish?” and, “I didn’t interrupt you.” In the past two weeks or so, I’ve seen the dollar hit a record-low against the euro separate three separate times (it’s now at €1.54, I think). Ugh! If the economy doesn’t get better soon, it’s tempting to just stay in France.

Current Mood: it's dark outside
Current Music: The Freshman, Verve Pipe

The weather forecast on CNN International says that a cold front is moving across Europe, and believe me, Rebecca is feeling it. I don't think it's been this cold here since December, if ever. And I know it has never been this cold in Louisiana, at least not in my lifetime.

Snow was predicted for yesterday, which gave me fantasies of snowball fights the entire town blanketed in white. But there was no snow yesterday, just a lot of wind. It was still cold today, although it wasn't quite as bad since the sun came out. Maybe the sunshine is one reason why I caught so off-guard during lunch. Halfway through another gross cafeteria meal (it was a pile of beans and a piece of sausage so oily that oil literally spurted out when I pierced it with my fork), I happened to look out the window. What I saw made me nudge Sarah and point. "Sarah, what is that? Out there, do you see it? That white stuff falling from the sky, what is that?"

That's right, the first time Rebecca saw snow, she didn't even recognize it. But neither did Sarah, since she's used to the big snowflakes of Beijing, not these light, tiny ones that disappeared as soon as they hit the ground. I stood at the window and watched it for as long as I could, but it only lasted a few minutes. At least my first reaction to snow was a bit better than Scout Finch's.

After lunch Sarah and I went to the library, which we do every Wednesday. First we walked to Nakeisha's room to borrow the key to her gate, because it's much quicker getting to the library by her gate (we borrow it from her every Wednesday, and in return we check her out a movie from the library). But Nakeisha wasn't in her room, so we walked back to the main building and left through the front gate. We were almost to the library when Sarah realized that she had forgotten her card and I had forgotten the disc of the DVD I checked out last week (I had only brought the case, which was empty). So we walked all the way back to the school, picked up the things we had forgotten, and left for the library again. I spent the whole time saying, "Jesus, it's cold," to which Sarah always replied, "You do not know what is cold. You come to Beijing, you will know." That maybe true, but I told Sarah she doesn't know hot until she comes to Louisiana in June to August.

An American French teacher visited the school yesterday; he's from a prep school in Connecticut that does a student exchange with the lycée every year. He worked as an assistant a few years ago, and when I mentioned to him that I haven't noticed much improvement in my French, he said that he didn't only realized how much better his French had gotten after he came back to the United States.

P.S. Would somebody please ask Grandma if she ever got a package from me with some candies and photos in it?

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Little Wonders, Rob Thomas

What’s the only thing better than a nice cheesy episode of Walker, Texas Ranger? That same episode in French! I was eating in the kitchen earlier with Sarah, who was flipping around channels, when suddenly: "Sarah! Go back! I thought I just saw… Oh my God, it is! It’s Walker, Texas Ranger in French!" I only saw the last few minutes, but it was just as horrible as I could have hoped. Walker found the bad guys (of course) and beat them up in a slow-motion karate fight, then rescued two kids from a burning building with the help of a Lassie-like yellow Labrador who was easily the best actor in the whole damn thing. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to think up a good Chuck Norris saying related to France, something like, "When Chuck Norris comes to France, French people lower their flags."

Last week I went by the médiathèque and checked out Ben-Hur, which I hadn’t seen since the sixth grade, when my history teacher at SJ Welsh (aka Hell on Earth and the worst school I’ve ever been to) decided to show it to our class. Looking back now, I don’t know why the hell she thought she could show such a religious movie in a public school, and I wish I had tried to get her fired over it. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was 11 (I remember being blown away by it), and the whole thing was almost ruined by Haya Harareet’s truly horrible performance. I was reminded of a poem I love, "My Life Before I Knew It," by Lawrence Raab:

I hated to dance, I hated baseball,
and collected airplane cards instead.
I learned to laugh at jokes I didn’t get.
The death of Christ moved me,
but only at the end of Ben-Hur.

In the last few days I’ve bought two galettes des rois, but don’t worry, I didn’t eat them by myself, the other assistants helped. They’re French King Cakes, but the differences are 1) they’re eaten to celebrate the Epiphany, not Mardi Gras, 2) hidden inside is a beautiful little man carved out of porcelain and painted, not a pink plastic baby, and 3) they’re infinitely better than the King Cakes we eat in Louisiana, which I’ve always thought were dry and tasteless. These are big flaky pastries with this sweet filling made from sugar, eggs, and almonds. They probably won’t be selling them much longer, since the Epiphany was two weeks, but my goal is to eat as many as I can while they’re still in stores.

The English students and I got a nice treat on Friday when the English teachers decided to cancel classes and take all the students to see Enchanted at the local cinema, which had worked out some deal with the lycée to let us all watch it for free. I enjoyed it; it was a cute movie with some really catchy songs, and I was impressed with Disney’s ability to make fun of itself after all the wrongs it’s committed (don’t even get me started on what they did to Peter Pan).

Current Mood: je déteste le dimanche

Earlier this week, Heather, Nakeisha, Sarah, and I all simultaneously realized that we simply can't deal with dinners in the cantine anymore. (The M assistants, Marlene, Mariana, and Marina, are apparently smarter than us, because they reached this conclusion a long time ago.) I'm still going to be eating breakfast and lunch in the cantine, because lunch is usually good and breakfast always is, but I'll be making dinner for myself in the kitchen.

In case you're wondering how bad it really is, Rebecca has compiled this list of things that she and the other assistants have said while eating cantine food. Almost of them were said dinner, although a few of them are about lunch. And I'm not making this up; these comments are verbatim from our mouths.

“Maybe it’s better not to know what it is.”
“Does this pasta taste like arsenic to you?”
“I swear I have never seen meat this rare before.”
”I think now I know why French bread is called pain.”
“This bread is so hard, we could beat our students with it.”
“Don’t you just love it when they give us nothing but bread to eat?”
“Oh great, they’re serving that cheese that tastes like a pine tree again.”
“Does this chicken taste like dirt to you?” -- “Yeah, it does a dirt undertaste to it.”
“But no matter how bad it is, Sarah just keeps on eating it.” -- “Yeah, Sarah’s my hero.”
“Are they serving anything good today?” -- “When have they ever served anything good? Because I wasn’t here that day.”
“I don’t understand how they can serve food like this to all those students. If any of them got sick on it, the school would be responsible.”

Current Mood: worried
Current Music: At the Well Below the Valley, Christy Moore

Things that have pissed me off…

This afternoon I taught a new class for the first time, and they were easily the wost class I've had so far. They were a 2-class, so they didn't speak English very well, but rather than clam up like most of the 2-classes, they just decided to be loud and disruptive in French. The hour could not be over fast enough. Afterwards I told Madame G about it – assistants are supposed to report any discipline problems to the teachers, immediately – and she said she wouldn't leave me alone with them next time. Fortunately next time is two weeks away.

For dinner in the cafeteria tonight they served what they claimed was boudin, but it certainly didn't look or taste like any boudin I had ever seen. I couldn't get it down, so I went to kitchen and had a bowl of cereal instead. (I recently found a French cereal that is exactly like American Honey Smacks!) Nakeisha didn't eat the boudin either, but Sara did, and when Nakeisha asked her in amazement, "You actually like that stuff?" Sara replied, "No, of course no, very bad," and cotinued eating. She has a remarkable talent for eating even the most disgusting cafeteria food.

As some of you know, I've been trying to make YouTube videos ever since I got here but haven't been able to. I really wouldn't mind being unable to make videos so much, but suddenly the school computers aren't letting me visit YouTube at all. Every time I try to go there, the "C'est interdit!" blocker comes up, telling me that it's a pornographic site. I know it sounds pathetic, but I'm scared by the thought that I wouldn't be able to log in, moderate comments, or edit video information (which I do regularly) for a very long time – possibly not until April. I simply can't not log into YouTube until April. There's not an Internet cafe in this small town, but if I have to, I'll find one, wherever it is, and start going there regularly.

Things that have made me happy…

This morning I got two pieces of mail, one of them a check from Mom, one of them a package of magazines from Grandma (and getting packages from home is like Christmas). Two of the magazines Grandma mailed me were old issues of The Sun from 2003 and 2004. I was floored by them, because Sara had a subscription to The Sun at that time, and I remembered these two issues clearly, even though I hadn't seen them for such a long time. Sara and I were living in our old apartment, and we used to read Readers Write to each other every time we got a new issue. When we were done reading them we stuck them on the black end table, next to the pink couch, and later I stacked them beside my bed – this was before I moved my mattress into the closet – so I could reread Readers Write and Sunbeams before I went to sleep.

Adam scanned several pages of The LSU Gumbo and e-mailed them to me. It was wonderful to finally see some of it, because I worked so hard on it last year and have been waiting so long to see how it turned out. One of the articles Adam sent me was "LSU in the Rain" – it's hard to read those words now and know that I wrote them over a year ago.

I finally got a key to my very own classroom. It's less than half the size of all the other classrooms, but that's okay, because I don't feel fully comfortable in front of rooms that big anyway. Today I decorated my room a little with posters I had stolen from the LSU Union Art Gallery and brought with me here. One of them is a poster of "Where We Live," a show of photos taken by kids living in a FEMA village. It's a powerful feeling to look at the photos of those kids standing between the white trailers, a world away from France.

Current Mood: in need of a YouTube fix
Current Music: Marlene humming

Here are some details of my daily life here in France...

Breakfast here is my favorite meal of the day, because I always know exactly what I'm going to get. (Sometimes I can't identify what they serve for lunch and dinner, even after I've eaten it.) Breakfast is a stick of bread, an orange, a bowl of cereal, and a cup of orange juice. The cereal is usually something like Coco-Puffs, although sometimes it's something like Frosted Flakes, and they serve it with hot milk. I know that sounds weird, but it's actually good, because it's cold here in the mornings, and it's nice to have something warm.

Lunch and dinner, as I said, is sometimes food that I have trouble identifying, although they seem to serve a lot of pork dishes. I rarely eat the entire meal, so I always eat the entire stick of bread that is served with every meal here to help me fill up. It used to be a chore, but then I discovered that they served little packets of goat cheese to spread on the bread, and I love, love, love goat cheese. I always tell myself on my way to the cafeteria that no matter how weird the main course may be, at least I'm going to get my bread and goat cheese. It's like dessert, really.

I eat most of my meals with the other assistants. I've gotten into the bad habit of hanging around people who I know speak English, which is stupid, because I came to France to improve my French. But often when I'm around a native speaker or a non-native speaker who speaks it better than I do (and that includes most of the other assistants), I clam up because I'm afraid I'll make a mistake.

I'm still observing classes. I introduce myself to the students and tell them a little bit about myself at the start of each class, and sometimes they ask me questions. I always tell them that I'm from Baton Rouge, because almost every class wants to know why my city has a French name. Most of them speak very, very quietly in English, I guess because they're not sure of what they're saying, so I often have to ask them to repeat themselves when they talk to me. One of the most common mistakes is that they think to rest means to stay (They ask, "How long you rest here?"), which is expected because in French rester means to stay. I made the same mistake until I was in Brager's class. A lot of them either don't use the -ing form of verbs when they should or use it when they shouldn't. But this is also expected, since there is no French equivalent of the -ing form in French.

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: White & Nerdy, Weird Al Yankovic

I'm sorry that I haven't updated this journal lately, but I've been very busy. An assistant from Germany, Marlena, arrived on Thursday, and that evening, Corinne, one of the English teachers, invited me and Hanna, an American exchange student from Connecticut, to eat dinner at her apartment. She served us chicken and potatoes au gratin, salad, and apple pie. It was very delicious and a lot of fun; Hanna's French was intimidatingly better than mine, but we spoke in English on and off. I discovered that Hanna was also a big fan of Harry Potter, David Sedaris, and Shakespeare, and we had a lot of fun discussing all of them. Unfortunately I didn't get back until very late.

This is fantastic proof of what a big nerd I am. Here I am in France, and do I stay up late drinking wine and experiencing the culture? No, I stay up late talking about Harry Potter with a fellow expatriate.

Yesterday, another assistant arrived, Heather from Virginia. Usually Nathalie, one of the school's staff, shows the assistants around when they arrive, but for some reason Nathalie couldn't be found, and so I was asked to do it because I'm American too. So I spent the afternoon giving Heather a tour of the school and the town, and our tour of the town was actually pretty unpleasant, because it began raining very hard and absolutely refused to stop. Rebecca stepped in a deep pile of mud that she just finished cleaning off her shoes.

Tomorrow morning Nakeisha and I will be taking the train into Amiens, where we will stay until Monday evening. Heather will be going to Amiens too, but I think she found another means of transportation.

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: Don't Tell Me, Avril Lavigne

Today was another day I spent walking around the town. Did I mention that an elderly couple who keeps chickens and geese lives just down the street from the school? I can sometimes hear their roosters crowing in the morning. They also have a German Shepherd named Leo (pronounced Lay-O); I know his name because he spends most of his time barking and one of his owners is always yelling at him to stop. Today I found the town's park, a war memorial, and train station. I'm hoping to go there this week and buy a ticket for Amiens, where there's a mandatory training day on October 1. After that, I'm told, I'll spend about a week observing classes before I start teaching myself. I still find the idea very scary. These students are uncomfortably close to my own age – I'm sure it won't take them long to figure out I'm really one of them.

And my adventures with French dining still continue. Today for dinner I microwaved a can of beef ravioli, and it didn't taste much like the Chef Boyardee brand, which is good, because I ate so many cans of that during my four years of college that I may never eat it again. So far the supermarket food has been pretty tasty. And I finally tried some of Marcel Proust's little madelines. They tasted a lot like angel food cake.

Sara gave me a copy of this really wonderful book, The Dogs of Babel, just before I left. The main character, Paul, is a linguistics professor who plays a lot of different word games, his favorite being to make as many words as you can out of a person's name. I got bored last night and gave it a try. My first and last names can form a surprising number of words; tell me in comments if you think of any new ones, although I'm pretty sure I've exhausted all the possibilities.

( Long list of words )

Current Mood: fatiguée
Current Music: pas de musique

I am going to try to update this journal every day until I get the hang of this keyboard.

I walked around the town a little today, and I found a small supermarket where I was able to buy most of the things I need. Not only do they not bag your groceries for you in France, but they don't even give you any bags. Fortunately I had forseen this and worn my backpack, which was able to fit most of my groceries, and it wasn't a long walk from the store to the school. One familiar thing was the smell; it smelt just like all supermarkets, and if I had closed my eyes, I could have been in the Market Basket in Lake Charles or the Winn-Dixie in Baton Rouge.

I hope to get out and see more of the town tomorrow. I need to open a bank account and find a place that sells tape, because I brought a lot of family photos with me and my bedroom walls are terribly bare. The town is really very lovely. There are so many growing things – an apple and pear orchard across the street from the school, big bushes of red things that look like a cross between a radish and a tomato, blooming flowers in almost every windowbox, and Chinese Sarah and I found trees with some kind of nuts on them (walnuts, she thinks). It's very cold in the mornings, but in the afternoon the weather is warmer and very nice.

Today I had my first three meals in France, and I have to say that thus far, I am not terribly impressed. The food was edible and filling and none of it made me sick, but after everything I've heard about French food, I was expecting to be blown away, and I just wasn't. Maybe it's because I'm eating in a school cafeteria, or maybe it's because everything here is still so foreign to me.

People keep telling me that the school is small, but I saw more of it today and it seems big to me – certainly bigger than St. Louis. I wonder what the French people would say if they could see that. I still don't know my mailing address here, but I will try to find out before noon in Louisiana on Friday.

Current Mood: plein d'espoir
Current Music: Beyond the Sea, Bobby Darrin

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rebecca_in_blue

March 2013

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Page Summary

How do you pick up the threads of an old life?
Rebecca's love of goat cheese has become an obsession.
Rebecca can't feel her fingers anymore.
Chuck Norris, Ben-Hur, Disney -- make a movie out of that!
Kristy Thomas thought she had bad cafeteria food.
The French did boudin first, but the Cajuns did it better.
Rebecca loves goat cheese and goat cheese loves her!
Raining all over this girl's world...
This is what Rebecca does when she gets bored.
Well, Rebecca's settling in...

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on your journey, i will bless you...

...and you will be a blessing

Entries tagged with adventures in french food

How do you pick up the threads of an old life?

Rebecca's love of goat cheese has become an obsession.

Rebecca can't feel her fingers anymore.

Chuck Norris, Ben-Hur, Disney -- make a movie out of that!

Kristy Thomas thought she had bad cafeteria food.

The French did boudin first, but the Cajuns did it better.

Rebecca loves goat cheese and goat cheese loves her!

Raining all over this girl's world...

This is what Rebecca does when she gets bored.

Well, Rebecca's settling in...