Recently in French Category

The Christmas package I sent Kevin from France arrived yesterday. It was one of the funniest things that's ever happened. Everything was intact, mostly. I got to watch Kev open his presents. It had apparently been sent to the states, returned to France, then sent back to the states, to our house. The French postal workers misread the address the first time because French people write numbers and letters differently than we do. I knew that, and should have been more careful. The crazy part is that I was able to navigate French bureaucracy effectively enough to actually get them to send it to the right place after all that. I was like, there is no way this is going to work, but I've got to at least be able to say I made some sort of effort. It took seven months, but the chocolates are still good, if a little banged up. I now have renewed faith in French bureaucracy. Maybe someday my grades will come.

I can't afford to go out, so instead I made the party come to me. Stergios the Greek and Eva the American came to the ole' dorm and I whipped up an "it's all that was left in the house" specialty: garbanzo beans and canned shrimp with pepper, garlic, and tomato sauce over rice. Amazingly enough, it turned out not that bad, unlike the fish at the cafeteria today, which seemed much closer to fin than filet. Stergios and Eva both being shameless francophiles, they both coincidentally brought red wine and chocolate - hey, who's complaining? (You would think that you would have to be a francophile just to be here... but no! You would think differently after seeing the English kids who absolutely refuse to speak French!) Am now totally cracked out thanks to said chocolate. There was store-brand "onctuex" caramel milk chocolate, which kicked Caramello's butt a thousand times over, and Lindt orange-almond dark chocolate, with little bits of orange and of almond, which rendered us dumb of happiness. Stergios also introduced us to mousse de canard, basically duck frosting with a layer of pork fat on top. YUM!! It's funny because you can also get the inverse, pork products flavored with duck fat. Or for that manner, just about anything flavored with duck fat. Oh, he also brought shredded carrots and celery, which was nice of him but for me seemed unnecessary, since I'd already had a vegetable at lunch.

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE SHREDDED CARROTS?

In the USA, or at least in Portland, or at least between Kevin and I, "shredded carrots" is a sort of updated version of "crunchy granola" and basically refers to the kind of sandwiches you get at Whole Foods or People's and the people who eat them. Here in France, "shredded carrots" is one of very few opportunities for "fresh vegetables." It is a salad all by itself, which may or may not be gussied up with lemon juice, mustard vinaigrette, raisins, and/or corn kernels. It is often paired with something with the exact same shape and consistency but that is ghostly white. I learned that it was something called "celeri," which confused me because it seemed nothing like celery. I later realized that when the French talk about celery, half the time they mean the giant, round, crazy-looking root of the plant, which they shred like carrots and dress with mayonnaise. It's not as scary once you know where it comes from. The worst part about the salads here is that most of the time I have no idea what they are or if they even come from vegetables. The and/or clause in the cafeteria kind of freaks me the heck out. As in, "volaille": chicken, turkey, and/or duck. "Merguez": sausage of lamb and/or beef. Etc. Well, whatever, it usually does the job and/or tastes pretty good regardless, not counting today's fin of whale.

Woo! I am on vacation. Except, I really wouldn't mind another few weeks of intensive French classes, to tell you the truth. I hit my stride about three-quarters into the semester, and now all I want to do is study and read instead of traveling to stupid Paris. No, just kidding, I am excited to travel again.

I rode my bike to Centre Ville this afternoon to meet up with Mathilde, a friend from the college. She kind of looks like my friend Christian except female and French: tall and skinny with long, poofy, crazy hair and odd style. But while Christian wears paint-splattered jeans and cute kitten teeshirts, Mathilde dresses crazy French kid style: today she was wearing weird puffy clown pants, a big red coat, and a floppy pompom hat, and looked like some sort of old-fashioned European village doll you might find at a Waldorf school. OK, that probably made no sense to anybody but me, but whatever.

We wandered through the chaotic swarms of children with warm sugary treats and their respective shopping bag-laden parents in the town center. The carousel was playing a disco version of "Viens boire un petit coup à la maison." Our plans for an afternoon bike ride degenerated into 10 minutes of picking our way through crowded sidewalks of one-way streets followed by a 30-second descent down the hill that reminds me of San Francisco, ending in a tiny corner of a park on the edge of the hill overlooking the other side of the city.

Poitiers is like Portland, with two facing slopes rising out of a river, except much smaller. Sitting on the wall that hemmed in the park, we could see somebody's futon in the house across the street, my residence on the hill across the river, and two little white clouds which may or may not have risen from our vicinity's nuclear plant. We talked about asbestos and maybe going to Nantes in January. When we parted ways the sun went down and it felt like the temperature dropped 10 degrees in as many minutes. Too cold to bike in 99 cent magic stretch gloves, even with an insulating layer of dried snot. Crap, it was so cold. I walked stiffly back to the dorm and vowed to never leave the house again.

At the hypermarché they always have some special promotional theme going on. In September it was foire aux vins, where they featured all the different kinds of wine. They do it at the normal wine shops too. I am ashamed to say I still haven't been to a wine shop or even bought a single bottle of wine. That has got to change. Anyway, lately the hypermarché has been doing a "tastes of the regions" type thing where they showcase different specialties, especially meats and cheese, from different parts of France. I got this thing called "grattons de canard," which would probably be marketed under a name like "popcorn duck" in the US. It's crispy little bits of fried, seasoned duck. Sooo good. I couldn't figure out what you would do with them in a meal, apart from putting them on little toothpicks for an aperitif, so I just ate them. I think they would be good stir-fried with brocolli and stuff, in fact I was going to do that, but the grattons de canard never made it into the pan.

In Poitiers near the campus there are two hypermarchés, Géant Casino and Leclerc, both located in centres commercials (small shopping centers) with a handful of other shops. The two hypermarchés and their accompanying centres commercials are more or less the same, leading me to guess that there are places like this all over France that have the same stuff and feel the same. It's very much the side of France that romantic luddites don't want to believe exists, but I really like it because it's useful and comforting. In your centre commercial you have your hypermarché, which is like the mothership Fred Meyer in Hollywood, or like Target plus a supermarket plus Circuit City. Spreading out from the hypermarché there is a cafeteria/boulangerie combo and everything you need for basic survival: a pharmacy, a locksmith,a cobbler's, a post office, Claires, and a perfume shop. That's the basic formula, and then maybe you'll also get a laundry or a news shop or a sewing shop or a parapharmacie which, from looking in the window, seems like all the neat, non-medicine parts of a drugstore: all of the shampoo (phyto of course) with none of the allergy pills. I just like that it's called the parapharmacie because that's the most fitting, logical name it could possibly have.

The Leclerc centre commercial is a 10-minute walk from my house and is where I do most of my shopping, except when I'm feeling like a romantic luddite and go to the open-air market. The cafeteria/boulangerie there is one of my favorite places outside of centre ville. Sometimes at the boulangerie side they open up the counter and put out these giant baskets with piles of croissants and pains au chocolate up to your head, hundreds of pastries, more than I've ever seen in my life. They do a special, four croissants and four pains au chocolat for two euros. It seems like a really good deal, but I'm afraid of what would happen if I had four croissants and four pains au chocolat. They also make crepes and waffles. In France you eat belgian waffles as a snack, from a napkin, without a fork or anything. It seems pretty obvious considering how utterly snacky they are, so I don't know why this hasn't caught on yet in the States. It makes the idea of eating a waffle on a plate with silverware in a restaurant vaguely ridiculous, but then, the more waffles the more often, the better. The snack waffles, at least at Leclerc, are eggy and crispy, something like a square popover. They are always just shy of burnt, but I'm not sure whether or not they're supposed to be like that. You can get them dusted with sugar, with jam, or with chocolate (nutella of course). Best thing ever. You eat them sitting on a bench with an old lady in front of the perfume shop or something. The old people in France are cool because they actually get around - you see them walking their dogs or buying bread or riding bikes around town. But it might not be that they're more active here, just that there are demographically more old people per capita or something. Anyway, Leclerc. They have a big, sunny cafeteria that totally reminds me of Ihop or something. You can get a cheap coffee or a full meal like in the university cafeterias. Even the cheap coffee is still decent espresso and comes with the little tubes of sugar and piece of chocolate. I love that. I go there a lot on Saturdays when I go to do my shopping. There are families with little kids eating lunch, old people having coffee, guys reading the paper, people doing whatever their Saturday ritual is.

The centres commercials are cool because they're one of the places you see the interface between traditional French culture and contemporary life. They're homogenous, but the same stuff they all have, perhaps excluding Claire's, is the same stuff you find in all the old neighborhoods. It's impersonal, but you still see friends and neighbors running into eachother and hanging out in the cafeteria and there's still a sense of a community that has its traditions. Even Leclerc has its boulangerie with fresh baguettes and regional specialties. But they're shrinkwrapped. Everything is generic enough that I feel at home, but weird and specifically French enough that I know I'm somewhere different and unique.

Did I ever mention how much I love jambon cru? It's cured ham, and runs between salami and lox in terms of consistency and apparent doneness. It's really pungent, salty and addictive. Yum. There is a whole prepared pork section in the supermarket, with ten thousand kinds of sausage. The French supermarkets basically break down like this: yogurt, cheese, sausage, cookies, bread, fountain pen cartridges. Gum at the checkout counters.

My plans for tonight fell through so instead I screwed around on the internet, looking at pictures of Portland cyclocross races and getting nostalgic, while listening to random cool junk on the radio and eating jambon cru. Most of the time the radio is a choice between trashy French and American top 40 (not that there's anything wrong with that) and talk radio, but every now and then, particularly at night on the weekends, you hit on some gems. The station I have on has been playing pleasant, somewhat arty electronic music with no commercials for the last two hours, only occasionally lapsing into the tasteless and corny.

Toussaint vacation started today and almost everybody I know promptly fled the city: the French to visit their parents, the foreigners to travel to Paris and wherever else. I know I should probably be traveling too, but I really just want to stick around Poitiers all week. Partly it's because I prefer getting to know a small area deeply rather than many different places superficially, and partly it's because I just want to catch up on my studying and writing and do the things I never get around to when I have classes all the time. Today I finally opened a membership at the Mediatheque, and it was like, "Why didn't I do this two months ago?" On the other hand, it's nice to have another cool new thing to discover. The mediatheque is really beautiful and modern inside in a way that reminds me of the UC Berkeley art museum, and apparently you can check out CDs, books, movies, and all kinds of stuff. There were new, interesting-looking people inside and a cafe, where I looked for the counter and instead found vending machines. I think I'm going to spend a lot of time there on Friday. Tomorrow I'm going to La Rochelle, on the coast, if I can make it to the train station in time.

I hear there's going to be an Ikea in Portland. So I guess I'll come back from France after all.

Tonight my dorm neighbors and I watched Sex & the City in French! It was less funny because I didn't catch all the jokes, but it was more funny, because it was in French. And also because there were French commercials. For example, there was a commercial for apericubes. In the commercial, there were a bunch of cave people having a party, and the cave hostess passed around a tray of apericubes, and the guests were like, "Mammoth flavor! My favorite!" There was also a commercial for a special laundry detergent for black clothes, to keep them looking blacker longer. That is so French!

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J'ai entendu dire qu'il y aura un Ikea à Portland, alors peut-être je vais y retourner.

Ce soir j'ai regardé "Sex & the City" en français! C'était moins marrant parce que je n'ai pas tout compris les blagues, mais en revanche c'était plus marrant parce que c'était en Français! Et aussi parce qu'il y avait des pubs français. Par exemple, il y avait un pub pour les apericubes. En ce pub, il s'agissait des gens de grotte à une fête. On passait un plat des apéricubes, et des invitées ont dit, "Ah, mammouth! J'adore ça!" Il y avait aussi un pub pour un lessive qui gardera plus noir les vêtements noir. C'est tellement français, ça!

Socializing here is a double-edged sword. It's fun and relaxing, but it's difficult and stressful because you still have to speak French. Then when you decide to take a break and speak English, it's refreshing but guilt-inducing. That's one reason I love Eurodiscos. You don't have to talk to anyone.

Last night Summer and I were going to check out Les Bacchantes, this bar that's supposed to be fun and cool and that has swing, rock, and traditional French dancing with free lessons and stuff. So we got there, and looked in the little window in the door, and saw people dancing, but it was locked so we knocked on the door. This guy came to the door, looked at us, and closed the window. Um, OK. So we went back home and drank Betsy's Irish cream and formulated a plan B. Betsy is totally the American Southern cardigan-wearing college girl, and she is totally adorable. She keeps the cabinets stocked with Malibu and Irish Cream and stuff. And it's kind of just like, GEEZ, come on, you're in France. But then it's like, mmmm, Irish Cream.

So we met up with some French and Australian students at the tail end of some random concert which was conveniently three minutes from our house, and went with them to a Eurodisco called, I think le Tisonnier. In one room they were playing Dr. Dre. I got to dance to Dr. Dre in France! That is so wrong! In the other room they were playing 80s and 90s pop and stuff. When we arrived they were seriously playing a bunch of third wave ska, which I didn't think still existed in the world, and I actually skanked for the first time since 1996. I can't believe I just admitted that on the internet. (For the uninitiated, skanking is the kind of dancing you do to ska. It's totally ridiculous.) Then they played YMCA and a bunch of neato Frenchy stuff, like this song about le Champs-Elysees. Everyone was singing along. It was the best.

I got home at four and slept till noon. I haven't lived this decadently since I don't even know when, but I've been doing lots of purely voluntary vocabulary work too so it all kind of evens out, I guess. Sundays here are the best. Nearly everything is closed, so you're practically obligated to either go to church or sleep till noon. Then you have to do things like laundry or cleaning the house, and then you have to walk aimlessly around town and marvel at the unbelievably quiet, peaceful streets. Today it is sunny and crisp, a perfect fall day. We've been having my favorite kind of weather, where it's cool enough to be cozy but not uncomfortable. This weekend is J'aime mon patrimoine, where you're supposed to do lots of regional historical type stuff. Summer and I wandered over to the Hotel de ville, or city hall, and checked out the cool stained glass and the mayor's office and stuff. Then we got fries at le Quick.

Later I might study l'Equipe to broaden my vocabulary. I'm learning lots of useful new words, like "emmerder," as in "Je veux courir le Tour encore une fois pour emmerder les français," and "échantillons," as in "échantillons de urine dans lesquelles il y avait de l'EPO." Génial!

Last night I almost died of happiness when a french girl mistook me for a french girl. I think it was because of the scarf. It was at the big ass Eurotrash bash they had for all the newly arrived erasmus students. Erasmus is a program where if you live in the European Union you can spend a semester abroad in any other country in the EU and it costs the same as going to your own university. That is cool. The party was at this bar le Pilori on la place de la liberté around the corner from our apartment. French people don't capitalize anything. We hung out in the square and drank tall boys of 1664 from home and watched freshmen climb the mini statue of liberty replica, then went to this dance club la luna. We were packed in like sardines in lemon and basil with barely enough room to shake it to the tackiest, gayest Euro disco mixes. It was great! When I started feeling like maybe it was time to go I looked at my watch and it was 3h30. What?!

Earlier in the day everyone from the CFLE (Center for French as a foreign language) program went to this village in the country to see this farm where they build houses out of mud. It is kind of like the cob houses in Portland, except they look good and are functional. Like normal houses. It totally blew my mind because I didn't think you could make mud look good. They did really innovative things, like using tools and making flat surfaces. Then we ate a bunch of duck and learned how to do French folk dances, which are basically the same as any other European or Mediterranean country's folk dances. It was hella fun. On the way to the village we passed by a real, live nuclear plant where alot of our energy comes from, and the ruins of a castle from like the fifth century or something.

Today on campus I saw a lowered citroen with a spoiler.

We went to the university today for the first time. We took a test to see how badly we murder the language and then went to the cafeterias. There are lots of cafeterias throughout the city - I approve. Being at the big, cool, new, exciting campus I totally got the awesome back-to-school jitters, strong like the first day of junior high or the first day of the first university I attended, SF State, which was foggy and cozy like Poitiers. It's begun to rain here, and even though it's still warm the mood immediately shifted and I began craving knee socks mere hours after coveting the strappy, flat leather sandals you see around. My roommate Carine, who is Swedish, has a pair that has sparkles and straps that wrap around the ankles, and she wears them with old-school running shorts and looks amazing. Anyway, somewhere in some magazine they were saying that fall always feels like new beginnings no matter how old you are, even if you are a grownup and don't go back to school. I think this is especially true in France, where la rentrée, when everyone comes back to the city after summering in the country or at the coast, is a huge cultural tradition, this collective experience where the whole country gets to have back-to-school jitters.

On the bus I took back to Centre Ville we drove through the outlying areas of Poitiers, which are totally different from the ancient downtown. The cobblestones are replaced with strip malls and modern housing complexes and the familiar vague alienation that accompanies them, which was actually comforting because it was a feeling I recognized - like the walking through big parking lots, teenagers waiting for the bus, tired wishing you were home already feeling.

After getting home and devouring all of my groceries from Géant Casino I finally made it out for a run, through Centre Ville and around Parc Blossac. The sun was setting and all the houses were peachy and steamy and it was all ridiculously beautiful. It made me really happy to be here. Then I went home and ate more fromage blanc. Can someone (uhh...Joon?) please explain to me what is fromage blanc and hoz it is different from normal yogurt? All I know is I want to eat it all the time, when I'm not eating fish from a can. Mmm, fish from a can.

Bonjour tout le monde! Je suis en France! J'ai beaucoup écrit mais je ne peut pas le mettre sur la web maintenant... Joon- J'ai vu tout le yaourt au hypermarché - il y en a beaucoup! J'ai une nouvelle chose préférée à manger: le thon à la tomate. Mmmm. Avec du pain. Il y a si beaucoup de sortes de poisson préparé. Le fromage avec des épices (je ne sais pas le mot pour cumin) et délicieux aussi.

J'ai dormi peut-être 4 ou 6 heures dans les deux derniers jours. Ca me fait folle! J'ai attendu toute la dernière nuit pour pouvoir dormir... et rien!

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Hi everybody! I'm in France! I wrote a lot but won't be able to upload it till later... no internet connection yet. Joon - I saw the giant yogurt aisle, there really is alot! But it seems like maybe some of what's there is cheating, not really yogurt but something else, but so what: I have a new favorite food - canned tuna with tomato sauce, YUM!There are so many different kinds of delicious canned fish products. Also the cheese with cumin is yummy.
I've slept maybe 4-6 hours over the last two days. GOOD TIMES! I spent all last night waiting to fall asleep and it didn't happen.

I'm living in a fifty thousand year old house. It's kinda cool but the interior decor is so offensively bad that I'm considering moving when I have a chance next month just because of that. And because the shower is in the kitchen. OK, end of patience with differently laid out keyboard, and also I'm racking up the minutes at the internet cafe. Ciao!! p.s. the title, it means thank you nice butt.