noel / balader

street musicians in Montpellier

Well I kind of failed at celebrating Christmas in France, but it wasn't my fault...Scottie and I were both sick, so we spent it mostly in bed watching cheesy Christmas movies (if you ever get the urge to watch a film called Noel, don't because it is horrid and weird). I got the gastro, again. I was going to call this entry "gastro, part 2," but I didn't want to give it that much credit. By again I mean I got it the last time I lived in France 2 years ago.

But it was still nice, we had Christmas eve dinner with my host family, and Mamie came over and me and Scottie sang some tunes, and everyone had their fill of foie gras.

But before that, we were in Toulouse where Scottie and Julia were both getting non-American boys to fall in love with them, and I was, well, drinking vin chaud.

me and julia eating pastries in the cold while we wait for scottie to arrive

Then in Montpellier we did a lot of the same thing, except there were also boxes with animals in them. First a box with a goat in it, then two different boxes with piglets and kittens together. I'm not sure why, but I guess it's a winning combination.

piglet + kittens

The day after Christmas, Scottie and I headed to Rennes, and I was nervous about seeing my old host family and everyone, but it was really nice. It was really surreal to be there though. The night I got there, their newest grand-child (une petite fille!) was born literally right as I walked in the door. Chaos! And it was Marc's birthday, so they are birthday twins. Grandpa and babygirl. Patricia told me that me coming to visit them fait chaud au coeur, which was a nice thing to say. There were new teenagers living there, who I instantly bonded with, which made me wonder what went wrong with the ones who lived there while I lived there. I made them pancakes the morning before I left. The girl from Mongolia, who had only been there 3 days and didn't speak hardly any French, did know how to say c'est trop bon, which she said about most things that were edible, including my pancakes. Tant mieux.

I spent an afternoon/evening with Scottie and her host family, which includes three little girls who remembered me somehow from two years ago. Hanging out with kids makes me miss being 4 years old when driving around a parking garage is equally as fun as being on the carousel, both of which we did that afternoon. J'aime bien quand ca monte, said Brune, the littlest. About the parking garage, not about the carousel.

The morning I left, I walked outside to the crachin breton, the spit-rain. It even made me smile a little because it brought back so many memories of living there and walking outside to the sky spitting on my face nearly every single day.

The trip back was kind of a disaster, but it all worked out somehow. Always does. Scottie and I were in different cars on our first train, and she wasn't paying attention and didn't get off at our first connection. By the time I realized she hadn't gotten off, the train was rolling away as I was rapping on her window telling her to get the heck off that train. Trop tard. Bye, Scottie.

Then my long long train to Toulouse, which was already a 7-hour train ride, broke down about halfway through in the middle of nowhere. Un probleme locomotif. We were told that we would be sitting there for a  periode indeterminee. Super. The girl sitting next to me, who was French and reading a book in English (sitting next to me, an American reading a book in French) got up to smoke a cigarette and came back laughing saying they told her the train was too heavy. Well then. But about an hour later, we were on our way. Unfortunately, this meant that I would not make it to Toulouse in time to make the last train back to Albi. I spent a few hours (because I had plennnnty of time) racking my brain trying to figure out what I was going to do. When, all of a sudden, the man on the intercom miraculously announced that if anyone on the train happened to be going to Albi (only me, I'm pretty sure), they should get off at Montauban where they can take a bus that leaves at 21h40. Whew! So I got off at Montauban, where I have never been before, hoping I would be able to find said bus. Found it, started to get on with my giant water bottle in one hand and an instant coffee in the other, and the bus driver was like, "I'll take the coffee, I don't drink water." Huh? Oh, he's joking. French people are always joking. I smiled kind of and then offered to go get him a coffee from the machine if he wanted, he declined so I installed myself in the front seat and waited for the bus to take off. He didn't even look at my ticket, which was good because I hadn't actually paid to go all the way to Albi, only to Toulouse. I didn't really think too much of it, he didn't really seem like he would have minded anyway, and he kept joking with me, but I couldn't hardly understand a word he said because his accent was so thick. So I got a free ride from Montauban to Albi. I was so relieved to be off that train that a bus ride was a welcome change. I like sitting up front with the driver, who was listening to rugby announcers on the radio. I listened for a little, but quickly resorted to my headphones and Abigail Washburn and Bob Dylan. Speaking of whom, he was my age when this video was made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN88vWk8obo

I felt kind of like I was on the cat bus, come to save the day. Relic from my childhood . Also because the driver drove kinda crazy. Faut pas conduire comme ca, he said to me. Thanks for the advice?

Tonight there will be du monde in Toulouse for New Years and we are going to have a nuit blanche. Oh boy...

gourmand(e)

chocolate ginger cookies for micka

The other day some family friends came over for dinner and we had a feast. I've spent a few evenings with them already...their names are Marie-Noelle and Alain. Marie-Noelle's birthday is Christmas, which is why she's called Marie-Noelle. It was Alain's birthday, which is why we were having a feast. They look like movie stars. Marie-Noelle is 64, but she doesn't look a day older than 50. She has perfect skin. I don't think she has ever been in the sun. They both wear these hip, big glasses that sometimes match their outfits. It was a funny evening. We had dinner for four hours.

Another feast I had was yesterday. Well yesterday I had two feasts. One was with Dominique, who is my responsable I think, that is to say, she is the English teacher in charge of me. I think. Stephanie, the other English assistant at Bellevue, had to show me where her house was. She was confused about that fact that I didn't already know where it was. Dominique didn't invite you over at the beginning when you first got here? No.....awkward. It was a nice lunch though. Kind of odd, I guess. I thought it was going to be an assistants lunch, but it was just me, Steph, Dominique, her husband, and her mother. And a biology teacher. Her mother  has all metal teeth.

Anyway the other feast was a raclette at Brent/Samira/Domi's house with a bunch of masters students. It was pretty great.

this is a raclette. copyright bnm

copywrite bnm

I really talk about food a lot don't I. Well its one of the most tangible things I can share with you. You can imagine melty raclette cheese on top of potatoes, but it might be harder for you to imagine me riding my bike to school (work? what do I call it now?) or attempting to have a philosophical conversation in French. The attitude towards food here is completely different than in the States. No one in France would ever eat something because it's good for you. They eat things because they find them delicious. And they pay attention to how much they eat or how often they eat things that are definitely not good for you, but they don't think to themselves, tonight I'm going to eat quinoa because its fibrous and protein-rich and I'm going to put craisins in it for antioxidents or something, and also I'm going to eat an entire head of kale for vitamin A. They are more interested in eating in a way that is equilibre, that is to say, well-balanced. I'm not really convinced that they do eat equilibre when they think they do, but I guess it works for them. I could go on about how maybe the French attitude toward food is against my general philosophy, but then I wouldn't really have an excuse to eat cheese every day. In the States I would never eat cheese every day. Sometimes I think about Julia Child and her love affair with butter, which was totally merited. It doesn't matter what you tell yourself, butter is delicious. So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm conflicted. At home I only cook with butter once in a blue moon, but here it's like a staple. La base quoi. If you run out of butter, it's a catastrophe.


Today I was giving an English lesson to Francois after dinner, and by English lesson I mean we were chatting about music mostly. Anyway he was very distracted, dans la lune, as we say, staring into the fire and just smiling and smiling to himself. Corinne and I think he's in love.

rencontres

Rencontres. Encounters. I had many of them last night. A bunch of the assistants in Gaillac and Albi and a handful of teachers got together to have a drink and meet everybody (why didn't we do this two and a half months ago?). People from everywhere really. Well not everywhere, because that would be impossible. I met a guy from Yemen named Ammar who is getting a masters in linguistics in Toulouse. He teaches Arabic. He taught me some sounds. The sounds are so hard in Arabic. Some of them come from places in my throat that I didn't even know were there. He convinced me that I successfully imitated a few of his throat-noises after several tries. I don't know why, but the people I know who speak Arabic seem to love nothing more than hearing me try to make Arabic sounds. And failing, nearly always. They smile kindly and make me do it again. And again. A French man (who was he anyway?) suddenly started speaking Arabic with Ammar, then in French, to be polite, asked him why he chose French to study, of all languages. Ammar told us, translated from Arabic to French and now to English that they say that French is la langue des oiseaux, the language of the birds. I'm not sure why anyone would say that because French doesn't really sound like birds to me. Except when Edith Piaf makes her voice sound all gutteral and rolls her 'r's. Piaf is argot for sparrow. So its not very original of me to say that I guess.

Later we were at a weird bar where the German girls couldn't understand why no one wanted to dance and the DJ told us when we asked if he could play some dubstep that dubstep is "kind of out" in France, but that he could play a little. Never did, and his terrible pop-techno mashups are really in? Is that it? Anyway a French boy named Benoit came with us. Benoit never brings friends, he always comes alone wearing black pants black shoes black t-shirt black suitcoat and a knowing smile. He and I aren't very acquainted yet. Standing next to me in the bar, he leaned over and said, toi, t'es francaise, non ? I smiled and said no. Putting his hand on mine and smiling, tu parles vachement bien le francais ! Merci, I said. Ah. Alors, tu viens d'ou ? South Carolina, I said. Oh, now it all makes sense, he says and begins speaking English to me. Very suave, Benoit. Like he didn't hear my accent. Like he didn't make the connection that he always sees me with the other Americans he has recently made the acquaintance of. At least he made me laugh.

Today I dragged Brent with me to Castres, which is a town that's not Albi. It was a beautiful day! Sunny and cold, my favorite. Castres is very very Christmasy right about now. That's why we went I guess. There was a big 'ol Christmas market that we wandered around. I ate a crepe with nutella inside, which was a good idea. Oddly, I don't really like nutella that much. Its too sweet and people eat it way too much here. And for breakfast. But today the crepe-to-nutella ratio was perfect.

Brent and I are always on the lookout for a good used bookstore. Used bookstores are called bouquineries. Albi is severely lacking in bouquineries, so we search elsewhere for them. Today we found a great one. It smelled kind of like pickles but I didn't mind. I bought three books. One: Babar Patissier, in which Babar bakes a birthday cake. Two: a novel called Stupeur et tremblements that Brent recommended. Three: La Premiere Gorgee de Biere et autres plaisirs miniscules : The first sip of beer and other small pleasures. Probably I'm most excited about this one. They are tiny vignettes about the littlest things that give pleasure to life. The smell of apples, the newspaper at breakfast, a day when you can almost eat outside.
Speaking of smells, in France when you walk outside after being inside at about 4:00 in the afternoon, it smells like croissants. Because everyone is thinking to themselves, hm, I'd really go for a croissant right about now. Or a chocolatine, which is what they call chocolate croissants here in the Tarn. So all the bakeries are pulling a ton of croissants out of the oven I suppose right around 4:00 because its l'heure du gouter. It annoys me that I can't use accents on this blog because it makes the font all wonky. Just imagine a little circonflexe carrot on top of that 'u' in gouter, ok? Otherwise I feel inauthentic.

This is a thing I saw in the past few minutes, and it's really worth five minutes of your time. Just goes to show that there have always been people with an excellent sense of humor.
.http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

The family I live with, I'm learning, thrives on laughter. I feel like we are joking always. Not an hour goes by without someone poking fun at someone else. All in good fun, of course.

Today I think for the first time since I got here, I had kind of a moment of panic about how little time I actually have here. All the times before when I would think about how much time I have left, I would think, seven months! Daunting! When in fact how could that be daunting? Such a minuscule amount of time. I will have days still to come where I will find it daunting, days when my students don't listen, when I can't explain to the lady at the bank that no, I don't owe them 70 euro, when I feel lonely. Its like in my new book, Babar patisser. All these things go wrong, like little Babar drops all the eggs on the ground, the milk boils over on the stove, the kids eat all the candied fruit that's supposed to go in it, etc. But he's still baking a cake, which is a pretty great thing to do I think.

it's december, put a feather in your hat

Oops it's December and it's getting away so fast. When I look back on my week sometimes I think, I didn't really do that much last week, but then I always feel so busy for some reason. But I did actually do things. For example I went to hear some garage rock at a dive bar. Sometimes when you live in France and everyone is all "hm! hm!" all the time, it's good to go to a tiny kind of grungy bar where the owner literally stands up on the bar to rock out with the band that's playing in the corner. And on Saturday I had a dinner party! Since I live in a real house with grownup things it's easier to pretend to be grownups. I did make rye bread, and it was real pretty but it didn't rise enough for some reason so it was kind of meh.

Have you ever roasted garlic? If you haven't, you should. I think it changed my life. You just cut off the top of a whole head, drizzle some olive oil on it, wrap it in foil, and stick it in the oven for like 25 minutes. Doing this simple thing turns sharp pointy garlic into a smooth buttery delight. You are laughing, but I'm serious. I put the whole dang head of garlic into a pot of soup, and voila, deliciousness. Also here in the Tarn we have this beautiful purple garlic that I bought a ton of when I first got here (never know when you'll need like 15 heads of purple garlic) and Corinne asked me if I was trying to keep out the vampires. Also the man who sells garlic at the market by my house is incredible. When he talks it sounds like there is a dying bird stuck in his throat, and he rolls all his 'r's. "mademoissshhheellle, vouzssch voulezcschhh un ptit essschchhhallot? Voussh n'avezzcssh pazz d'ail ! ! Tenezzsh, un peu d'ail. [throws a few heads of garlic into my basket] Mercchhhi, a la prrrrrroschhhhaine mademoissschhshheelle!"

The other day Brent and Neill and I went to Gaillac to a Christmas market. When I was riding my bike to the train station, it was raining and I discovered that my brakes don't work so much when the ground is wet. Wipeout! I was fine but the next day man that hurt. I was complaining about it to Micka in the kitchen saying, j'ai du mal partout, and he said, well it's not from playing sports. Laugh haha. "Today I played squash (whatever the hell squash is) and I did nine kilometers of 'marche nordique.'" I got sassy with him. Congratulations, I said. Tired of Micka always making comments about how I don't play sports. In the south of France if you don't play sports you're a loser. It's like high school, except I went to an arts high school so I never had to deal with it until the age of 22. One time a funny thing happened. Micka was again asking me why I don't play sports, I was getting tired of being apologetic about it. I'm not a couch potato, Micka. I eat less cheese than you. I also don't ever go anywhere in cars. Later that day, I was on a bike ride out in the country with Brent, and I saw Micka up ahead of us a ways walking the dogs. I hadn't really been paying attention to where we were going, and in fact we'd ridden bikes all the way out to where they take the dogs sometimes. MICKAAAAA I yelled at him, and he was thoroughly shocked indeed to see us all the way out there. Think I'm lazy now Micka, hmmmm???? That's right Micka, I'm gonna ride up that big hill in a minute when I'm done chatting with you so I can see the panoramic view of Albicountry. Hmph.

Anyway I was telling you about going to the Christmas market. There actually isn't much to say except Brent finally got his vin chaud (hot wine with spices, mm!) and we wandered around Gaillac in the rain. Neill is English and he says funny things sometimes, like "Gaillac is nice. I thought it was gonna be like two shops and a donkey or something." Then we stumbled upon an organic wine tasting. We peeked our heads in and a man standing in the doorway said, here is a list of all the wines that are here, here are some glasses, whites are in here, reds are in the other room, help yourselves. Yes we will, thank you. So we did. And a sweet little man came up to me and said, excuse me, where might you be coming from? The United States, I said. Oh, he said, you could be Spanish. Ha, I get that a lot, I said. That's partially true. I also get Turkish, Belgian, Italian, middle-eastern. I'm a mystery.

"for elves over 18" 

Gaillac: like Albi, only even tinier

have trouble sometimes resisting hot roasted chestnuts