Happy Halloween

Hopefully this blog will be nice and long enough to make up for my absence the last few days. It’s not for lack of wanting to write to you guys, only for lack of having a computer! So to tell you what I’ve been doing I think I may have to start all the way back on Thursday…

Last Thursday afternoon was lovely day which continued the train of family visits that have followed little Noha’s birth. Generally speaking when family comes to visit or we go to visit family the whole afternoon centers around an elaborate lunch lasting roughly four hours. Thursday’s visit was from my host dad’s brother and his family. Yesterday, Sunday, was spent in nearly the same way, except that it was the family of my host dad’s other brother who was visiting. Don’t worry if you can’t keep track of my host family’s family- I know that I can barely keep up!

These lunches include the following courses, with a description of yesterday’s meal in parenthesis:

·         appetizers of drinks and small bowls of things to nibble on (olives, tiny cheeses, nuts)

·         a large salad (with blue cheese and walnuts)

·         the main course (pork roast, roasted balls of creamed potatoes and cooked green beans)

·         the cheese platter (sheep, goat, and cow in all imaginable forms; it also included the cheese produced by my host dad’s brother and his family)

·         dessert (chocolate cake with cream)

·         coffee for those who want it (coffee here means espresso- and the people I know who have tried American coffee didn’t like it very much)

These lunches truly take hours because they are eaten so leisurely. Time passes during serving, between courses, and after finishing a course. The point of being at the table is to pass time together almost more so than it is to eat.

However, I left on Thursday before the coffee since I was picked up by my third host family to spend the night with them. I will be honest to say that I have been a little nervous about my third host family since they live a fair ways out of town. I didn’t know how easy it would be to continue the connections and activities I’ve been making in Bourges. Yet as of Thursday I no longer have a single worry about what living with my last host family will be like, because I absolutely love them. I’m not the first exchange student they’ve had so they were comfortable around me, and I honestly felt at home within the first five minutes of arrival. I passed the evening helping in the kitchen and talking with my future host sisters and a family friend who also stayed the night (I sense that it is a very lending household in terms of hospitality. In my bedroom, there were notes written on the wall from all the other visitors and travelers who have stayed there).

The next morning we passed cooking together, making lunch as well as a butternut squash tart which tasted like pumpkin pie. After eating, my third host mom, two sisters and I went to gather wild chestnuts. The trick to finding a tree is to be able to distinguish from the big inedible marrons, the buckeyes that I remember from fall in Oregon, and the smaller châtaignes which Nat King Cole always seemed so excited about roasting, but which I’ve never tasted. After walking a ways through the autumn woods we found a tree and started searching for the tiny treasures in the detritus of the forest floor. The trick to finding wild chestnuts is root through the leave with a stick, in order to unearth the chestnuts yet undiscovered by other hikers or by wild boars.

After our forest scavenging we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in town- of which a fair amount of time was allotted to one of my favorite pastimes: admiring the magnificent sugary creations in the windows of the pâtisseries on every corner.

At the end of the day, they dropped me off at the next stage in my whirlwind weekend: a couple of overnights at a Rotarian’s house with her granddaughter, Audrey. Thanks to said granddaughter, who is a fan of ’80s American pop culture, I think that I watched more MTV music videos during the two days I was there than I have ever watched before in my life! She also introduced me to a great ’80s TV show about kids at a performing arts school (to those who have seen Victorious, this show is the original and infinitely better, especially when watched in French). As a side note, I can actually thank my host sister and various friends here for introducing me to such American classics as Friends and Gossip Girl; I guess I’m just woefully behind on my own country’s pop culture. The Rotarian, Mme Dot has a magnificent old house dating from the beginning of the 20^th century, a block away from the Cathedral and downtown.

Between delicious home cooked meals we talked about Mme Dot’s recent tour of the American west (guided group tours road tripping the Southwest seems to be a common method of visiting the US. To be honest, it seems horrifically touristy to me but I’ve never been a fan of bus tours in general). It’s interesting to see your country from the eyes of a visitor, and to read descriptions of the US in guide books and things like that. If there’s one thing that people here really appreciate when they visit the US, and one thing that I’m really proud of in the US, it’s the national parks and the abundance of natural beauty. Mme Dot may not have thought much of the hotel coffee and the all-you-can eat service she found here, but the Great Sequoias, the Grand Canyon, and Lake Powell were all dubbed ‘manifique’. (Warning to the reader: the author may be biased after hearing that her family got to spend a fall weekend in Yosemite not too long ago. I would love to see the Sierras this time of year.)

Saturday I went with Audrey to see the Tintin movie, and those of you who know my standards for movies based on book adaptations will know what it means when I say that I truly enjoyed it. While I thought that some aspects of the plot were changed far too much (Rastapopulous didn’t even make an appearance as the villain!) I think that the movie did manage to capture the spirit of the comics. Not that I plan to let a movie take the place of the originals: in fact, I’ve started my collection of Tintin and Asterix books in the original French. It’s well worth it since the word play is so ingenious, that it can’t ever really be translated.

After the movie we walked around town, with the foliage bright yellow and the sky grey, we enjoyed the turning weather after a surprisingly long summer.

My host family picked me up on Sunday morning, just in time for another family lunch which didn’t end until everyone left at 8:00 than night. (We weren’t eating lunch the entire time, of course, just from 12:30 until 5:00).

So today was passed quietly at home, something I was grateful for after such a long weekend. I was even more grateful to realize that it really did feel like I was coming home. After two months, I’ve started to consider my host family as family more than I realized. The most exciting thing I’ve done to far today is make cookies- they turned out well despite a difference in brown sugar which made the consistency slightly grainier. I’m pleased to say that my host family enjoyed their first taste of homemade chocolate-chip cookies!

Since it is Halloween, I should put in a note about how it’s celebrated here in France. For the most part, it isn’t. My host sister went to a Halloween party last night (which I opted out of at the last minute. It takes more patience for me to be around drunk teenagers for a whole night than I had at that point in time. I really am not a party person). But beyond that, Halloween never really took off here in France for two reasons: 1) as a holiday introduced by stores and the media it’s too commercial to really be enjoyed in the true spirit things and 2) Toussaint (All Saint’s Day) takes place on Nov. 1, and is a day spent in remembrance of loved ones who have passed away. Which I guess is something of a downer in terms of ghostly merrymaking the night before.

So we’ll see if we get any trick-or-treaters, but otherwise I’m going to see if I can find It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! online in French to show my host family. If I don’t succeed, I can content myself with the knowledge that I have at least today introduced them to the most classic of American desserts, the chocolate-chip cookie. In fact, I might have to go get another one to congratulate myself on that account. But before I go I have one last thing to say...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Two Months

Yesterday was my two months anniversary of arriving here in France. All in all, I think that everything is going really well and I’m starting to settle in here even while I’m still making progress and discoveries every day. I think that the biggest challenge of being here is how proactive you have to be. In order to meet people, ask questions, and make conversation you have to cross language and culture differences in addition to the innate difficulty of trying new things. Every moment I try to be ‘on’ and ready to take the leap, whether it’s talking to a new group of people or discovering a culture difference, and I know I don’t always succeed at being as active as I’d like. However, the biggest reward of being here is to see how my efforts are rewarded a hundred times over. Most every time that I do reach out, people respond and reach back to me.

Yesterday, for example, one of my friends invited me to go ice skating with a group. Of the people there, there was me, two girls I know from school, one of the girl’s boyfriend and his friend visiting from out of town. Ice skating was really fun- it’s amazing how much I retained considering that I only ice skate about once every four years. At one point, the rink set up an area for the experts who had been whizzing by us to practice on their own. We were amazed to see an entirely new form of ice skating, which appeared to be based on break dancing and street dancing. Handstands and fancy foot work are pretty impressive when done in ice skates.

Afterwards, we went to the bowling complex just across the plaza where I did neither terribly or wonderfully, and was able to translate the little animations on the screen for everyone else asked. You know the animation of the pins doing funny things after every score, which has been the same in every bowling alley I’ve been to for as long as I can remember? Well, it’s even the same in France. Luckily that makes the bowling terminology easy since “strike” “spare” and “bowling” are all the same.

I came back home by bus, and watched several episodes of Friends and the third Indiana Jones which was on TV with my family, all dubbed over in French. Two months in and I caught all the punch lines and understood nearly every word!

The French Countryside

My day, though the first day of break, started early. I left with my host parents at 8:15 for drive an hour into the country to the town where my host father was born. He family was attending the 9:30 mass in a local church, held in the name of my host father’s niece who passed away three years ago of a disease which (from the description) sounds similar to muscular dystrophy..

The family was very gracious about me showing up with my host parents despite how personal the occasion was. I won’t really go into the service or memorial; it was a moment which was very simply not about me.

I was excited to see the mass, since I wanted to compare it to the Catholic masses I attended with my family at home. But before describing it, perhaps I should describe what I can tell about religion in France. Historically, France has a very strong Roman Catholic tradition. Certainly, they had a Protestant presence, notably in the context of the Hundred Years War which included several massacres of said Protestants. However, French society has always been nearly entirely Catholic, and to this day even the tiniest village has a grand old Church at its center and the school vacations are scheduled around All Saints’ Day, Christmas, and Easter. Most weddings, funerals, and baptisms are celebrated in church.

Yet France is at the same time very secular. Mass is hardly attended by most people outside of the special occasions I listed and public displays of religion aren’t quite considered polite. (This, I think, stems from the struggle they had to separate religion and government. The French revolution wasn’t exactly a smooth transition from the ideology of divine right, so the secularism of government is guarded fiercely here.) You may have heard about the issues surrounding Islamic veils in France? Well, girls aren’t allowed to hear their headscarves to public schools here because all displays of religion are forbidden in public schools. Technically, the same principle applies to wearing crucifixes. But this isn’t the post to go into issues regarding the integration of Muslim immigrants in France. In fact, I won’t even pretend to understand the subtleties of that social issue.

Before attending the mass, I had been wondering why such a strong religious tradition had been somewhat lost in modern France. I think that today I have discovered the answer: those old churches aren’t heated. At least not enough for the small congregation to even loosen their winter coats. Moreover, the mass was, just as my host family warned me, far more solemn than I was used to at home. The tone of the songs, to some of which the lyrics were familiar, were, in the words my host mother said, lugubre (which translates conveniently to ‘lugubrious’. I just love cognates. They make my life so much easier). If the Vatican wants my advice on how to increase religious participation in France I have two suggestions: happier songs and space heaters. But otherwise, it was nice to finally see a mass in one of the beautiful churches I had been admiring for so long.

After the mass and coffee with my host dad’s family, we left to have lunch with my host mother’s family who lives nearby. Both my host mom and host dad grew up in the true countryside, not too far away from each other. When we left we had a box of meat from the neighborhood of my host mom’s parents and some cheese from my host dad’s brother’s farm. I can also personally attest to the quality of the potatoes, green beans, apples, apply juice, and various other products produced on or near the farm Laurie’s Mamie and Papie. For lunch, we had a salad which included duck gizzards, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, and lettuce. It was very good, I recommend it if you have the courage! The main course was a roast with garden potatoes, the cheese course included the cheese from my host father’s brother’s farm, and desert was a prune tart. The tart was also a lot better than it sounds, as the prunes were cooked in tea before being made into the filling. It was all delicious. My advice to travels is not to be afraid to try things like duck gizzards and prune tarts- because you just may find them to be delicious!

The farm house was old, old enough for both my host mom’s parents to have been born in it. (Her father’s family moved after he was born, in time for her mother’s family to move in and give birth to her. How’s that for fate?) The ancient stables have now been converted to a party room, but still retain the mangers, which I’m told that the little children actually do sleep in when the family parties go late.

I thought that I had seen the French country side before today, but I really hadn’t. It was so beautiful and peaceful it actually gave me a new appreciation for pastoral poetry. Before I had thought that Wordsworth was overrated, but having seen the beauty of the countryside, I can understand what he was so excited about. The farms, fields, and forest can indeed be described ‘quaint’ and ‘charming’ as they so often are. But they contain their own majesty, quieter but no less impressive magnitude of Nature found in the US.

October School Break

As this break comes up I have several goals that I’d like to accomplish I thought that I would share them with you:

1)      Spend time with my friends from school. I see them all day at school (and today I was at school from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm, so that’s no small thing) but the weekends always seem to be full before they’ve begun!

2)      Read the books and texts which have been assigned by my French and Literature teachers. Considering how long it’s taking me to read the French copy of “The Princess Diaries” which a friend lent me, this may be a little optimistic. But I’ve always been a reader and I don’t plan to let a little thing like language stop me from reading my books.

3)      Get a winter coat and shoes. After the cold this morning, I don’t think I want to put it off much longer.

4)      Skype home. I love talking with you Mom and Dad, and but I admit I’m not one of those students whose problem is calling home too much!

5)      Do my homework. I get it all done, even if it’s just a quick attempt at analyzing French literature squeezed in between whatever else I’m doing.

6)      Make Halloween cupcakes with my host family.

7)      Meet up with my third host family to spend time with them.

8)      Review my French- as much as I get better every day, I still think that a review of basic conjugations and vocabulary wouldn’t hurt.

9)      Sleep. Which is what I’m actually going to go do in a few minutes, since I’d like to get over my cold.

So there are some Great Expectations. It seems feasible and fun, and we'll see how much of it actually gets done! (For me, it's the principle of having a to-do list which gives my life direction, rather than it's perfect completion.)

Spontaneous Adventures

This past weekend was all about family, as everyone came into town to see little Noha and his parents. Noha’s cousin, the three-year-old son of Laurie’s brother, was the darling of the house for the two days that he and his parents stayed here. However, they forgot to explain to him that not only was a stranger going to be present, but that that stranger was living in his grandparents’ house, and spoke differently from everyone else he had ever met. As he stared at me silently, I could practically see his mind trying to process the ideas that his parents and I were hastily trying to explain- “USA”, “other side of the world”, “differently language” and “staying in Tata Coralie’s old room” are a number of difficult ideas to assimilate all at once. However, once the initial shock wore off we had a grand old time for the rest of the weekend. Though I have to say that watching Alvin and the Chipmunks dubbed in French adds yet another bizarre layer to the auto-tuned pseudo reality already present in the film. As for the other aunts, uncles, and cousins I met this last weekend, I won’t even begin to try to explain it here. In fact by the third family visit, my host mom pulled an old album off the shelf to show me who belonged to who between her five siblings and their children. I think this Christmas I may get a taste of what it’s like for newcomers at my well-loved King Family reunions. (On the topic of family, thanks to Aunt Lisa and Uncle John for the package- it was a pleasure to see my host family try cheez-its, candy corn, and Reese’s peanutbutter cups for the first time!)

But since it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, I have to continue my catch-up with the rest of the week. Let’s see…

I had a truly magnificent day yesterday (Tuesday). It started off by finding a fat letter from home on the table this morning before school, which as I discovered during English included clipping of the latest plot twists of my favorite comic strip back home. (For leisurely plot development and boldface statements, there’s nothing like good old Mark Trail). I then found when we got out of PE for lunch, that my French teacher was going to be absent today, which in the French system means I had no French class. My only other class wasn’t until 4:30, so when I ran into Dora (the exchange student from Iceland) and realized that she was in the same boat we decided to spend the afternoon out. We went to the Subway next to the school because it met the following three criteria: it’s fast, cheap, and better than McDonalds. While we eating, a friend in my class who was also there told me that my only other class that day, Earth Science, was also cancelled. So I was free for the rest of the day!

We thought about seeing a movie, but there were any that finished early enough for Dora to get back to class on time. So we walked into the downtown, which is not at all far from school, to enjoy the shopping of two girls who are equally impressed by French fashion and would like winter wardrobes which are not over equipped (being from Iceland) or under equipped (being from California).  It was also, however, the shopping of two girls who are very well aware of the unfortunate exchange rates and their teenage budgets.

After this, when I told Dora that I have not yet had a crêpe since arriving in France, that we decided to go on an adventurous crêpe-hunt. I had one memory of passing a crêpe stand at the bottom of a certain narrow staircase between two streets, located near the Gallo-Roman ramparts. While we had formerly felt extremely French and culturally sophisticated on our afternoon out, we quickly lost all credibility as being real French inhabitants, because we eventually stopped by the Cathedrale and office of tourism for a map. Armed with our maps and ready for crêpes we only got mildly lost as we made our way through the ramparts and up several streets (it turns out the ramparts weren’t anywhere near the staircase) before finally stumping upon the staircase. I’m sure that this staircase dates from at least the Middle Ages, because it’s quite a specimen. A flight and a half high, you enter the should-wide passage and find that by the time you spill out onto the cobble-street below it has widened to nearly four times the width. When we stumbled off of the stairs, we were pleased to find our quest successful and enjoyed the nutella-filled reward together on a bench.

As for today, there wasn’t a great deal out of the ordinary which happened. Though my ballet friends may be interested to know that during conditioning at rugby practice, someone commented on the ease at which I was able to hold an abdominal strengthening position. They laughed when I gave them the very true explanation: “It’s nothing next to ballet!” . People may think that rugby is an intense sport, but when it comes to strength building it doesn’t even compare to class at Hanneke’s!

A Very Special Day

The baby has arrived! I don’t remember if I told you that Laurie’s older sister, Coralie is pregnant? Well, she isn’t anymore.  Last evening was spend in the living room with each member of my host family holding tight to their cell phone, with the TV playing in the back ground as we waited to hear if the time had really come. It was with much exclamation that we learned that it had and she was really going into labor. We went to bed with the news and my host mom woke us up at 3:00 in the morning with the first picture of a healthy baby boy. Today after school I made the acquaintance of little Noha (pronounced like ‘Noah’) for the first time, and while I would love to show you a picture I’ll abstain from putting pictures of someone else’s baby all over the internet.

To make up for the lack, I’ll give you a description of the precious little bundle who barely cries at all. He has quite the head of hair for such a little thing, and, except for his mouth, takes almost entirely after his dad. He peeped his eyes open while we were there, clearly still groping with the new reality which was busy cooing at him. His dad was tired and his mom more so (since it was a caesarian and she’s still recovering) but they were both in fine form as new parents. All I could think while I held little Noha after we arrived was how lucky I am to be taken into a family like this for just four months. It was a privilege to be privy to a scene like this one and I know Noha is going to be one lucky little boy.

Joyeux Anniversaire, little one!

Busy, Busy, Busy

It just seems like I don’t have any more time in the week! At first while I was here, I had hours with nothing to do, but now it seems like I hardly have time to fit everything in. In between class ending late, volleyball, rugby, badminton, the Rotary meetings and events, and everything else in-between time is really flying. It’s nice to have my life here really humming along, but I’m also going to appreciate our two week long fall break, in just another week!

Subway, Vegemite, and Another Strike

Yesterday there was a second strike- this time by all state employees who were demanding a pay raise and more time off. What this meant was that there was still school and all my classes, but there were no buses and no cantine. It worked out fine, since Laurie and I got a ride to school and I got a ride home from a friend who lives near-by. Since the cantine was closed I went to a French Subway for the first time with Laurie and her friends. There was no difference whatsoever, expect that the menu was in French, and the cheese selection was actually smaller than in the US. (Of course, the cheese they did have was better). Afterwards, we went to the house of one of her friends, since the lunches are long, and I helped three of the group practice their monologue for English. I like being able to help with my friends’ English homework, since it seem like the least I can do for everything they explain to me. This dialogue was especially interesting for me because the mistakes gave me insight in to which speech patterns and vocabulary are the most natural to native French speakers.

Usually on Tuesdays, I have a Rotary meeting, but since it was the second Tuesday of the month, the meeting was at noon and I couldn’t go. So after school, my host family and I ate an early dinner at 7:30, because my host mother’s drama club met at our house at 8:00. She started drama with an amateurs club a few weeks ago, and since they haven’t yet found a location, by 8:30 we were all sitting around the dining room table with the teacher at the head. Laurie and I were there only to watch, since we’re both too busy to sign up for a drama club, but the other members were nervously preparing to give their monologues. It interesting to sit and listen to the goings on, because I not only picked up quite a few words, but even when I didn’t understand what the teacher was saying, I could follow his drift because he had such a dramatic ability to express himself.

Today my morning started off well. Since I don’t start until 11:00 on Wednesday, I usually don’t have much to do in the morning, but today I got up early and walked to the library. I had to return Le Jour des Abeilles, but it was nice to talk a fall morning walk, since the air already smells crisp with a hint of wood smoke. That smell is one of my favorite things about this season. After getting to school, I stopped briefly to talk with a group of Australian students who are visiting France and my lycée for two weeks. They have each been matched up with a French correspondent who will return the visit in February.  Since it being in a foreign country can be so intimidating and they already knew each other in Australia, they tend to group together during breaks and at lunch. For me, it was very disconcerting on the first day they were here to suddenly walk into a group of English speakers in the middle of a French high school. However, they are all extremely friendly and this morning thanks to them I tried something called vegemite which is apparently the Australian version of marmite. I had always thought that marmite was sweet (since it sounds like marmalade), but instead vegemite was an extremely salty and spread which I was told is eaten on toast with butter. They all laughed at my expression after tasting it. It wasn’t bad, just surprising.  Of course, am in no position to say what you should or should not be homesick for- one person’s vegemite on toast is another person’s PB&J sandwich.

After lunch and then volleyball practice (I swear I’m improving, slowly but surely!) Laurie and I can back home and I had a few hours to do homework before leaving for Rugby. In between buses I stopped by the post office downtown (those Rotarians reading this should let me know if my quarterly report doesn’t arrive in a few days, since I wasn’t entirely sure I put the envelope in the right slot). Just this short trip made me realize how much progress I’ve made since arriving here. Just being downtown, I run into all sorts of different people who I know from school and from other activities. I saw no less than four different friends to say hello to just in the time it took for me to run to the post office and back. It seems that I’m really finally carving out my niche here, at the same time as I’m still busy exploring and finding everything and everyone new.

Visa Validated

Well the official visit in Orléans went fine. I just got back, with a fresh stamp on my visa and all the paperwork in order. Since my counselor wasn’t able to miss work to drive me into Orléans an hour away, another Rotarian volunteered to escort me there and back. I really enjoyed talking to him on the way there and back, since he had plenty to say in answer to some of my questions that my classmates aren’t often interested in. We discussed everything from France’s history, to the coming elections to the changes in French society due to immigration.

I also saw part of Orléans for the first time, but as my Rotarian guide explained, a great deal of Orléans was destroyed during the first and second world wars and so despite its rich history (it was the city which Joan of Arc saved during the Hundred Years War) it lost its historic buildings and does not have the reputation of being the most beautiful of French cities. Rather, it is the administrative center of the region- which was why I was summoned there to register my visa.

Since we arrived early, we got a coffee before the doors were opened. In Europe, a coffee is always what we would consider an espresso, so they find our coffee extremely watery.

When the doors opened to the building, spent the next hour and a half alternating between waiting and being summoned to different offices to some papers and have other papers signed. In between waiting I met another American, who recognized me by my passport, from Virginia who had finished his undergrad and was spending the year being an assistant English teacher. Since he is the second person I’ve met here working as a teaching assistant (a girl from Wisconsin is now doing the same in my English Literature class), it seems like an interesting idea to keep in the back of my mind for the next four years.

All the official business dealt with briefly and efficiently, and I had no trouble understanding the French, so the visit passed quickly. As for the medical examination, I was measured and weighed and it was verified that my glasses sufficiently corrected my vision (this was actually the only part of the visit which took any effort, since read the eye chart required remembering the French alphabet and I always mix up the vowel pronunciations). They also took a radiological picture of my chest, which seemed strange to me until the American I met in the waiting room explained that it was to look for tuberculosis, something which isn’t often worried about in the US. Luckily, I’m TB free which I suppose is something nice to know.

Besides that, all it took was one final stamp, I was free to spend the rest of the year in France!

Fall in France

Is there anything more wonderful than listening to the rain outside while curled up with a good book? After these last few weeks of a strangely warm September, fall has moved in swiftly. It has been cold and rainy here for the last few days, which I’m told is much more keeping with the usual season. I’m enjoying the change- I finally get to wear sweaters and use my umbrella during the fall, since in Davis summer always seemed to drop off abruptly into a gray winter without anytime in between. However, I’m still waiting to see if the leaves with change colors. Since there aren’t any Maples here, there may not be the same fireworks as fall in the Pacific Northwest, despite the similarities of climate. (There are lots of Sycamores here, however, and I enjoy seeing them surrounded by such a lush environment since I’m used to thinking of them as trees that grow in more arid climates.)

On Friday night after rugby practice I was able to stay for the dinner that the rugby club prepared on Friday nights. It was a good meal, and it was really enjoyable to spend time with the team outside of practice. The girls range in age from 15 to 25 and in person they lack all the aggression that they show on the field. Since the practices are in Bourges on Wednesday nights and St Florent (which is even farther from St Doulchard than Bourges) on Friday nights, I usually don’t stay for the dinner since I get I ride home from one of the women who help organize the team’s affairs. This Friday, however, both she and I stayed until nearly 11:30- which wouldn’t have been late if I didn’t have class on Saturday morning.

After class on Saturday, I came home to a lunch celebrating the birthday of Coralie, Laurie’s sister who lives in Bourges. Saturday night, I went with Louison, a the French teenager who spent last year in Peru with Rotary, and Dora who is the Icelandic exchange student at my lycée to the Bourges Ecological Film Festival. We arrived about an hour early by accident, but the docent let us into the award ceremony, which was by technically invitation only, for the different documentaries. After the ceremony there was free dessert, so everything worked out pretty. The films we had some to see didn’t start until late so I admit that I may have slept through the first one, which was about contaminants in drinking water. The second film, however, was a very interesting documentary about oil spills in Nigerian marshes.

This morning I was up early once again, since Louison and Dora had invited me to accompany them on a countryside “marche” or walk which their families were involved with planning for a local elementary school. Our job was to help lead three ponies which the kids took turns riding. While it was lovely to get outside for a walk, it was to my dismay that I realized “marche” could also translate to “three miles through the countryside in the rain”. If I had known I would have worn something besides my converse!  But despite the weather I made the acquaintance of Donald, a little devil of a pony for wanting to stop and nibble, and numerous six-year-olds who were happily tramping through the mud and asking for another turn. We stopped by a small family farm where the kids petted calves and saw cows, pigs, rabbits, chickens and two donkeys who, to the adults’ amusement and the kids’ confusion, decided to put on a rather age-inappropriate display in the middle of the field. It was about then that most of the students were whisked away for fresh picked apples and brioche.

Tonight I plan to spend at home with some homework and a good book (I recommend La Maison de Papier  by Françoise Mallet-Joris if you can find an English translation) since I have to leave early for Orléans  tomorrow. Unfortunately it’s not going to be a sight-seeing trip, rather since I’m technically an immigrant for the year, I have to complete paperwork and have an official medical exam at the Office of Immigration, which is located in Orléans. At least I’ll get to miss school tomorrow (though I’d rather be at school with my friends than jumping through hoops for my visa). I’ve heard from other students that it’s not a difficult trip, just a technicality, but I’ll let you know how it goes.

Moon Hanging Over a Rugby Field

Today I saw a new face in the moon.  It’s not much of a blog topic and it’s not strictly related to my exchange, but that's what I'd like to write about today.

Out on the rugby field tonight the floodlights blocked out all the stars, but I could still see the moon as I did sit-ups.  Usually to me the night sky is reassuringly familiar- when I close my shutters at night I always take a moment to look for the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia- but tonight the moon hung in the sky with an entirely new person. It was quite solemn, like a tragic mask from the ancient Greek theater, rather than my usual eye-crinkling friend.  But tonight the familiar lines of the face’s crow’s-feet ran down from his eye dramatically, as if representing Oedipus’ tragic fate.

This is not to say that I found the new moon upsetting. Moreover, I think it just shows what happens when you get in the habit of seeing things from new perspectives. It turns out that even the Man in the Moon had another side to him after all these years.

The USA

As I get used to living here I find that I have less and less to say about my everyday life, not because it’s uninteresting, but simply because the cultural differences which were so notable to me upon arrival now seem to me wholly unremarkable.

Perhaps what would be interesting is to talk about the French perception of America. Of course, there are as many opinions here as there are people, but one thing I’ve noticed almost universally among the teenagers here is the glamor which is attached to the US. Since, as Americans, we can be fairly critical of our own country, I expected to receive even more criticism from a country which has been on the receiving end of such stellar exports as MacDonald’s and reality TV. However, I’ve found in general that Hollywood and the American media have done their job; the vast majority of TV shows, movies, and music are American. I think it is as a result of this that there has been no small number of French teenagers who have used the phrase “la rêve américaine” to describe how they feel about the U.S.

I find the usage of this phrase extremely interesting since it captures perfectly the difference of perspective between living in the U.S. and viewing it from the outside. For us, or for me at least, “the American dream” evokes images of a self-made American, possibly an immigrant, who has managed to achieved white-picket bliss armed only with determination and grit. Here however, “the American dream” evokes an image of prosperity, but viewed more distantly. Attached to it are the images of movie stars and the spacious lifestyles seen in sitcoms; it is an abstract idea of the wealth and glamor as seen on TV. As one of my classmates said of going abroad, “England, well, it’s England. It’s right there. But the United State,s I mean… it’s the United States!“ .

That said, I have also fielded a large number of questions about our obesity and gasoline usage, so clearly not all aspects of American culture glitter like Hollywood.

Actually, the prevalence of American pop culture has created an interesting dilemma for me, since I have never been a real follower of American pop culture. I find that many of my classmates know a great deal more than I do about Lady Gaga lyrics and Desperate Housewives plotlines.

This is not to say that all of the French are falling over themselves to adopt American culture. Rather, American culture has marketing power, particularly with people my age. (And especially the state of California.)It’s similar to how most shampoos in the US sport French names, since France has a marketable connotation of sophistication to us.  

Though I find it interesting to try think about the French view of American culture, I clearly can’t give a definitive description. Beyond the surface stereotypes, both good and bad, there is also the understanding that the US is just another country and culture, with some differences with also just full of ordinary people. Perhaps this is the view which comes out strongest when you are face to face with someone from another country, at least it’s the view that I come around to again and again whenever I talk to someone (be they from France, Taiwan, Iceland, Australia, Romania, New York, Costa Rica…)

My Weekend

I want to apologize for the number of mistakes which I know are present in most of my blogs. Sometimes I go back and look at them, egotistically enough, and I cringe to see some of the garbled sentences and words I came up with. Today however, I finally had the bright idea of typing my blogs out in a Microsoft word document rather than directly on the site. The font may look a little different because of this, but hopefully the new presence of spellcheck will make a difference for both of us.

Now I do have a test in History tomorrow so I can’t stay up too late typing this; even if my grades don’t count this year, I’m still putting up a good effort in class for three main reasons: 1) It helps my French immensely, 2) I would be bored out of my mind all day if I didn’t, and 3) it’s hard to break a habit that I’ve had since kindergarten.

However, I thought that you would want to hear about my weekend! Saturday commenced with the usually two hours of class, making my Saturday feel surreally like another weekday and a weekend day mashed into one. After class I missed my bus, and read my book while I waited for the next one. I picked out La Maison de Papier from the school library, and I’m enjoying it even if it is more challenging to read than the last book I was working on. I actually enjoy my bus rides, even my 40 minute Friday bus ride to Rugby practice, because it carves a section out of my day where I get to read. The last few years I’ve found that it’s too easy to get swept up in the business of school, leaving whatever book I’m reading sitting lonely on the table. Since I not only have time on the bus, but also usually arrive early to wherever I’m going due to the bus schedule, it makes for the perfect time out of my day to get lost in a book.

But to get back to my Saturday, after I caught another bus home and had lunch with my host family, I went back into town to meet up with the other American exchange student who is with Rotary. There is one other Rotary exchange student from Taiwan, Joseph, but he couldn’t make it. The two of them go to another school, so this was the first time that I’ve seen another American (or native English speaker) since the Rotary Paris weekend. It was great to see Hana and we spent the time taking all the touristy pictures that we can’t take when we’re with our unimpressed French family and friends. Next time I’m hoping to get all the exchange students we can together, whether they’re with Rotary or not.

After our long walk we met up with two of my friends from class who were in town, and while I had to leave early (I wasn’t about to miss two busses in one day) it was really fun to spend time with them before I had to go. It may not sound very impressive, to say that it was fun, but for me to be able to casually meet up with classmates and not feel uncomfortable due to the pressure to try to imitate or conjugate correctly is a very fundamental breakthrough, which I’ve been really enjoying for the last few weeks.

That evening I visited my second host family’s house for the first time. They also live in St Doulchard, but a little bit closer into town. The daughter is a year younger than me and the son a few years older though I’m not sure exactly how many. The house is a vine-covered abode, stately for not being too large. We spent a few hours talking about nothing of great importance, but I left feeling that I will be as excited to live there as I will be sad to leave my currently host family.

Since I was gone all Friday (my rugby practice makes for a long day, since it take place in St Florent, which is located outside of Bourges and I have the take the bus directly there after school) and most of Saturday, I spent today home with my host family. I made marble cake for the first time with their help, and in honor of their older daughter’s birthday, she and her boyfriend come over for a big family lunch. Otherwise, today was spent with little excitement beyond that usual of living in France.