When it rains, it dumps

So here I am at an Irish pub in Strasbourg with two peepe from Galway watching a rugby match, and I'm talking about my wisdom teeth. I say how great it is to have more molars with which to chew things.

"But they're wasted on you," the Irish kid says, "you're a vegetarian. You're not even going to rip meat apart with them or anything."

He has a point. We talk, laugh, drink; conversation over. I wake up the next morning with a throbbing ceek, a burgeoning pain that increases internally and begins to manifest itself externally (read: chipmunk cheek). My Couchhost is kind, tries to help me whiskey-drink my way out of it, to no avail. I spend the night not sleeping and thinking about how much energy it takes to be in pain.

I went this morning to a dentist, presented myself abruptly, told her I was going to Paris the next day at 7am, and wanted her to rip my wisdom tooth out, there and then. It was the only option, in my head; I'd re-configured my whole trip on the TGV under the assumption that I'd be woozy and in extreme pain, lugging my huge backpack around and slurring my speech, plastic bags trailing out of my pockets that I'd have ready for impromptu vomiting.

But no. La dentiste laughs at me, and tells me that I have an infection in my gum that snuck in through the little cracks in between my dent de sagesse and my gum while the tooth was busy growing in. She can't possibly take my tooth out because I can barely open my mouth (I'm here spoon-feeding myself eggs with the facility of a baby bird... woops, cannibalistic analogy), and if she took a knife to my gums, it would only spread the infection deeper, leading to a swollen, infected mouth.

She promptly writes me five prescriptions (an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, two painkillers and an antiseptic mouthwash) and charges me 21 euro. Don't worry, though, she says; here's a form that you can fill out and send to the MGEN (the national health care provider) and get reimbursed. I run to the pharmacy, fill all five ordonnances immediately, am charged another negligible fee, and now am here trying to take all these ridiculous pills with a semblance of a meal so that I don't vomit all over the Strasbourg cathedral (though I have a plan in case I do!)

Verdict: French health care system, you win.

Paris tomorrow for Christmas with the Smucker clan!

WWOOFing on Wednesdays

Another reason to like Wednesdays -- I WWOOF! I finally bought the WWOOFing catalog for France (15 euro, eh, but the organization has to support itself somehow) and looked up some local farmers in the Vosges, hoping to maybe learn how to make chevre or something on the weekends. I got in contact with a woman in nearby Anould who runs a horse farm, and met up with her on Wednesday. Though the possibility of riding is slim (most of the horses are old, and the frozen ground isn't too friendly on hooves right now), it was so nice just to be around horses again. There must be a reason people willingly shovel their feces; horses are incredible creatures. The woman, Suzanne, also has a bunch of colts at the farm, who are super friendly (super genial!) and love nuzzling humans.

WWOOFing is normally done by travelers who are looking to explore to agricultural life of a certain area, and will work on a farm somewhere in exchange for room and board. Since I'm only doing this on Wednesdays, Suzanne and I have agreed that I'll work in exchange for a meal and German lessons (she's German).

I'm hoping to WWOOF somewhere in the south of France for my February vacation (after I take the GREs in Paris...). I've already gotten positive responses from women in Corsica and near Perpingnan, a city in the waaaaay south that's just about on the Spanish border. I have to decide if I want to fly or take the TGV, which is really only a matter of convenience, since they'll cost about the same. Although, I'm thinking Corsica might be really nice to visit in the spring after I'm done with work... any takers?

Mind-bending en francais

As it turns out, I've been assigned as an assistant in Gerardmer not only to teach English, but to explain certain very special things to the French students here that no one other than an American can explain.

1. Geography. At least once a week, I'm asked if I go home to New York every day. I patiently explain that no, I live in Gerardmer because New York is far, far away, and it takes me six hours (six!) by plane to reach the United States. By plane, do I mean tunnel? No, I don't mean tunnel. Let's look at a map.

2. Religion. Last Friday, I decided to briefly talk about Hanukkah because it was, well, the first day of Hanukkah, and Hanukkah in New York means matzo, potato latkes, and extra-festive bagelries. But before I started drawing menorahs on the board, I asked if anyone in my class of ten and eleven year-olds was Jewish. Silence, then: "what's Jewish?"

3. The meaning of an accent. Many of my younger students think that I actually am French, since I speak it in the classroom, albeit with an accent. Who knows why I come from America; it's just where I'm from. They ask me when I learned English, and if I learned it in America. Many of them also ask me to translate their names into English, meaning that they want me to pronounce their names with an English accent (as in, turning "Thomas" from "toe-mah" into "tom-iss"). Everything is all mixed up in their little minds and they have no idea why I talk funny or how I know how to communicate with them or why their names change in pronunciation from one language to another.

Today was also picture day, and my students wanted me to be in their class pictures with them. We all lined up and said, "ouistiti!" (marmoset). This whole thing is a nice experience.

"Les eleves font de la neige"

Les eleves (the students) can also font de l'orage (make hurricanes) as well as la neige (snow), meaning that they're getting wild and generally making crazy. But don't say this anywhere outside of the Vosges, because everyone else in France will think you're talking about children manning artifical snow machines.

I'm slowly picking up (and being happily taught by various Vosgiens) some local slang, which is at once hilarious and worrisome, knowing that when I travel out to Paris for Christmas this year, I might actually end up sounding like une vraie plouc (a real hick).

Besides the rather thick accent (which elongates o's and is a very round, in-the-mouth kind of accent), some words and phrases that won't make it past Champagne include:

"ca caille!" (it's freezing!)
"vain dieux!" (literally, "vain gods," used as a vulgar exclamation)
"c'est fin bon" or "fin nul" (it's really good, or it really sucks)
"il pleut comme les vaches qui pissent!" (it's raining like pissing cows!)
"moooooooh" (strange noise people make when something is extreme)

And these are just a few. The slang is based on Patois, the old language of the Lorraine region that has basically died out (similar to what's happening to Alsacian) and is only remembered by the old and spoken via slang by the young. For as much as I complain about being stuck au milieu de nulle part (in the middle of nowhere), it is pretty cool to be living in a community so steeped in tradition.

Cheese comme d'habitude:

Morbier: the middle line is not actually mold, as this is not a blue cheese; it's vegetable ash. Traditionally, when the farmers made this cheese, they would throw their milk into the cheese tub, then pour vegetable ash over it to protect the milk from outside bacteria. The next day, they would pour more milk over the ash, leaving a gray line in the middle of the cheese. Aromatic almost like camembert, but in a sharp kind of way. Really good.

It's been such a fascinating experience trying all these different cheeses, most of them made relatively close to Gerardmer. Not only have I learned so many cool new facts, but so many things about what cheese means to the French people, how much pride they take in creating it, how to eat it properly, everything. A traditional French meal begins with an aperitif, then an entree (appetizer), then the meal, then maybe a salad, then dessert, and lastly: the cheese. I'm not sure what might be going on chemically on biologically, but there's something about having ate an entire meal and having already drunk some wine that very seriously changes the flavor of the cheese in your mouth. (I credit this theory to my friend Danny.) No one would ever start their meal with cheese; it would be far too strong. You eat a lot, you drink a lot, and then eat your cheese, which reacts with the wine and becomes this practically tangible yet ethereal type of sensory experience that for some reason, works better with your already-primed palette than it would have a few hours ago. In other words, it's worth it to be a cheese snob. You won't regret what you paid for.

Frightening Lives

At the very least, living in France has made me even more aware of what I'm putting into, on, and around my body -- in the form of food, body products, house cleaners, dishware, n'importe quoi (whatever). A short blog post by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, Cancer from the Kitchen, sums up my sentiments exactly when it comes to environmental toxins and how shockingly blase people are about ignoring obvious problems. It disgusts me and frightens me and makes me wonder how much damage I've already done.

Update

I my Internet is partially back -- in the classroom a few doors down the hall from me. However, I can only use it on the weekends and after dark (when the students and/or construction workers aren't there), meaning that I have to bundle up tight, since the heat is turned off during these times. It's better than nothing.

Speaking of which, it has been cold -- hovering just above freezing for the past few weeks, which makes for misery: near-freezing rain, wind (can't use an umbrella), and no snow. This is my normal get-up:

This is also pretty much what I'm wearing right now (in the unheated classroom), plus a vest and a sweatshirt. Meh.

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These are the cheeses of the past few weeks:

 

 Tomme des Vosges: sharp, smoky, and tastes a bit like dirt. Rather like the Vosges themselves. I really like it.

Chevre frais (fresh goat cheese -- not affine, or aged) rolled in sun-dried tomatoes and herbs, with reblochon, a runny fromage de lait cru (raw milk cheese) that's like a very strong camembert with pronouned smokiness.

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Latest local event: Saint Nicolas. Different from le pere Noel (Santa Claus), Saint Nicolas is based on the Catholic Nicolas de Myre who, according to Wikipedia, is the patron saint of students, teachers, boatsmen, barren women and sterile men, glaziers, butchers, and travelers. I can attest at least to the butcher, because he was up there in the sledge alongside Saint Nicolas and pere Fouettard (Father Whipper), who is Saint Nicolas' partner in crime when it comes to doling out gifts. The "Naughty List" doesn't exist here; you just get thrashed.

I didn't have my camera on me (of course), but Becca, my roommate, did, so here are a few pictures from Gerardmer's celebration last night:

 

Sledge that led le defile (parade) through the streets of Gerardmer; you can see Saint Nicolas standing up in his pope-like hat, with Pere Fouettard right next to him (dressed all in black, as per the tradition), and then the butcher.

 Some pretty great fireworks were let loose.

The street at night. 

It was quite a festive atmosphere. Saint Nicolas threw some bonbons from the sledge to all the kids sitting on their dad's shoulders, while Pere Fouettard looked like an insane Jack Nicholas wearing sunglasses at night  and grinning like a maniac. The butcher just waved.

As cheesy as this all sounds, what made this event kind of cool was that it is very strictly regional. Lorraine and Alsace are the only regions of France that celebrate la fete de saint Nicolas on December 6th since it's a tradition that has spread over from Germany and the Netherlands. The whole event is so winter- and mountain-oriented: you go to the parade, shop at the Christmas market, drink vin chaud (hot wine mulled with spices), eat choucroute garni (sauerkraut with many meats) and tartiflette (a mess of potato, ham, and cheese baked in a casserole dish), and march back home, up the mountain, to get drunk on homemade mirabelle liquor beside your indoor wood furnace. They take pride in this kind of stuff, you know?

The night before the festivities, I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner by my friend Danny and an grizzled old man friend of his, Claude. A crusty-handed mountaineer who distills his own pear liquor from fruit he gathers wild in the Vosges, Claude served us a veritable (and unfortunately meat-laden) Vosgien meal: quiche lorraine, a casserole of spiced potatoes, chunks of local ham, an assorted cheese plate (chevre affine, comte, etorki, roquefort, aged munster), a plate of choux pastries, fresh walnuts from his backyard. All of this was accompanied by proper drinks: la biere de Noel (spiced beer) for the quiche, Alsacien white wine for the potatoes and ham, Bordeaux for the cheese, a post-dessert cafe, and a variety of homemade liquors for digestifs.

The French don't drink water (it's true!), so I was an overstuffed and staggering mess by 11:30 -- the time that dinner was officially "over." If there's one French tradition that I've truly come to love, it's multiple-course meals (minimum of four) and everything that comes with them: lazy chatting, eating slowly and savoring flavors, not having anywhere to be (because after a French dinner, you simply can't have other plans). It's an art that shouldn't have to be.

Makin' money, coppin' hoes

The Economist paid me, finally -- 75 USD! And they're interested in another article I pitched them, which will be an abridged version of my post here on suburbia.

I think this means I have to take these two blog posts down since my words now belong to The Economist... I'll have to read the copyright form I just signed. Yikes.

Wednesday is the new Saturday

It snowed here a few days ago, but only settled on the mountaintops. I wanted to go for a hike in the snow -- so I ran up to the top of the mountain and did it. Once again, I left my camera at home -- who wants to carry a camera on a jog? -- but found that there's something selfishly thrilling about seeing something beautiful and not being able to share it.

And this is how it went: I felt like a magical deer in the woods, running around in my blue leggings and knitted winter hat with braids dangling down my shoulders like a Jan Brett character, grinning and singing a little (there's nothing like the twangy background of "Red Squirrel Rising" to make you feel like a forest creature). I got lost a bit, as I always do on especially good excursions, and ran into a couple cool dogs. After about two and a half hours of this, I walked back down the mountain, where it was about six degrees (celcius) warmer and stinky with car exhaust.

?

I woke up this morning thinking and half-wishing that I was at home in my little bed, and I didn't know why. It made me sad and confused, two feelings that are being reinforced even as I type and make French keyboard-related errors on my own American laptop. What's going on?

I guess it's a timely question to ask myself, as the French seem to be going through a similar crisis of national identity. I've been here for scarcely two months, and I already feel some gurgling and bubbling going on under the surface of my placid brain lake. What does it mean when you don't feel at home with the supposed national ideals and attitudes of your country? What do you do when, after taking a few steps back and looking at your former life from an objectively high perspective, you see national trends and patterns that you've never before seen (or wanted to see)? In other words: what do you do when you don't feel comfortable with the idea of your own country?

I don't know if things have gotten to that point in my head yet, but it's hard not to notice how well the French government treats its citizens. Get past the slow-moving bureaucracy, suffer through the mounds of paperwork, but in the end, win -- because you now have the right to see a doctor whenever you need, get whatever medicine you need, have each and every part of your body treated with the same level of monetary and political respect. What on earth does the American government mean when it agrees to cover the cost of only one broken tooth, and not two? Of my ankles, but not my eyes? (My eye coverage was taken away last year.) Or, conversely, of doctor's advice, but not the medication required to follow through with the advice? Who is this mysterious figure telling me what parts of my body are more valuable than others?

If being a good American means spreading some good old-fashioned Uncle Sam love around the world and touting the values of my country, then I'm George Washington. I showed my students pictures of my life in the United States last week, explaining how diverse the country was (beaches, mountains, cities), how cool New York is (they gasped when they saw a picture of the Empire State Building), how we celebrate our holidays, and, wow, what language do we speak? Anglais! They ate it up.

Not only do I feel slighted for my international efforts, I feel like I'm being punished somehow. I will return to my home country without the right to keep my own body healthy (all parts of it), leading to a whole cycle of American-style madness: searching for a job with "benefits" so I can "earn" this health, but working too hard so that I have to go to the doctor more often anyway; living a life too afraid to mess up or take days off because, god forbid, if I lose this job, I not only have no money, but no way to pay for my contacts, birth control, or anitbiotics when I get H1N1. Next thing you know, I'm blind, pregnant, and coughing up a lung all because Starbucks wasn't hiring full-time employees.

It seems like I'm exaggerating and, maybe in my relatively financially stable case, I am -- but this exact situation replicates itself like cancer among those in the next income bracket down. Ain't that a shame, our Congressmen say -- you should've worked harder.

The whole thing just seems absurd from my perspective. My brain is still processing all of it, reacting and trying to adjust to what I know lies in my near, if possibly not forever, future. I'm going to come home to America and live in New York and I love New York -- but I'm having a hard time not feeling like I'm being given a fat smack by my government. And for what? Graduating college and teaching English.

On another note, I made tapenade the other day and it turned out extremely well. I added some dried figs to the mixture of kalamata olives, herbs, garlic, lemon, capers, and olive oil, which I mashed together with the rounded bottom of my sesame oil bottle. Falafel's next.

Inconvenienced! Impeded! Imbétant!

I'm not really that mad. But I am quite annoyed at having my Internet ripped away from me for a week (at least) and without notice (if you don't count the rhythmic and constant banging coming from the floor above me). And I am annoyed that one of my classes this afternoon decided to go to the movies without telling me, leaving me with a fully-prepared slideshow, Thanksgiving lesson, and a handful of fruit and vegetable flashcards -- and sweating, since I practically ran to class so I could get there early. Dommage, they say. Yeah, dommage.

Three Important Things: Cheese, Children, and My Future

There was a sale on cheese...

Fromage blanc: also the name of a yogurt-like product that tastes nothing like this cheese, which is simple and tangy, almost to the point of being sour. I think it's what farmers make when they have nothing else to do with leftover milk (I see a lot of it at the market).

Saint Nectaire: has a too-smooth texture that's akin to that of a Kraft's Single, but with a whole lot more complexity -- the taste changes as you eat it, from sort of smoky and sour to a rich, brie-like cheesiness. I'm sure that's not the correct way to describe this cheese.

Etorki: a fromage au lait de brebis (cheese made from sheep's milk) that hails from the Basque region of France. An honest cheese.

I only included one photo because all three cheeses kinda look like this one (Etorki). I think I'm going to start hitting up the runnier ones next week.

..........

And in between shoving cheese down my maw and braising salmon steaks and climbing rock walls, I go to school. I go to two schools, actually: Ecole Jean Mace and Ecole Marie Curie, both primary schools located in the town center of Gerardmer (i.e., far away from me).

Yes, I have a job -- and I like it, quasiment (kinda). I work 12 hours per week, all school days except Wednesdays ("the kids need a day to rest," one of the teachers told me). I get a two-hour lunch break, seven weeks of paid vacation, and all the tiny cups of coffee I can possibly drink in a day. It's a nice setup.

But it did take me some getting used to. I work in ten different classes (one of which is a videoconference, a near-useless 40-minute session that suffers mostly because of poor video quality and short attention spans), all of which have at least 20 students each. I've been here scarcely two months and I'm just now settling into my role as "teacher," which I most certainly am to these kids -- when I arrive, the normal teachers go into the back of the room and grade papers. So much for being an "assistant."

Working at the primary school, I get to use a great deal of French -- mostly French, actually, for the littlest guys. I've learned some great school-related vocabulary (like how the word for a pushpin, une punaise, is the same word for "stinkbug") and a lot of meaningless chit-chat filler words. After 10 years of countless hours of studying irregular verb conjugations, reading post-WWII absurdist French lit, and discussing how Baudelaire's Spleen uses metaphor, I can finally talk about how my day is going with a French person. Maybe if I majored in French at college, I would be able to make a joke, too!

..........

Lastly: I kind of wanted to keep this one a secret for a little longer, but things have escalated so quickly and I had so many questions to ask of my friends that the cat is really out of the bagel now. I'm applying to graduate school -- for a Master's degree in Comparative Literature. I'm only applying to two programs for now, at Columbia and at The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. They seemed to be the only schools in New York that had comp. lit. as MA programs (NYU had only a PhD program, the idea of which triggers an unavoidable gag reflex in me), which turned out to be convenient, since they were also the schools with the latest deadlines (April 15th).

I know a Master's degree in Comparative Literature sounds about as useful as does an associate's degree in Liberal Studies, but I have my reasons. First and foremost, I miss school. I miss the academic atmosphere; I miss discussing books with other people who care about them as much as I do; I miss researching; I miss putting my thoughts together formally for someone else to critique and help develop. It's like practicing my violin here -- sure, I still do it, and set my own "practice goals" for myself, but would I prefer to be in an orchestra, playing with dozens of others in harmony, constantly developing and improving my playing in an ever-changing musical atmosphere? Absolutely.

Secondly, comparative literature seems like the next logical step, education-wise, for me. I live comparative literature -- I make sure that I'm reading something in English and something in French at all times, and find no greater pleasure than comparing the nuances between the English and France languages and cultures. My ultimate goal (in life, I suppose) is to become a better writer, which I believe occurs as the result of other sorts of education -- experiencing other writers, history, life itself, writing, developing, criticizing, READING, thinking creatively -- and not from studying writing itself, which is too didactic for me, I think. I don't want to learn how to improve my writing by having someone tell me how to improve my writing; I want to learn about things in life that interest me, and improve by accident, essentially.

I also want to study part-time. I know, even if my GRE scores blow through the roof (which they won't), that I won't be able to get much funding as a Master's student, and I'm not about to go applying for a PhD just because I want money. Sure, getting paid to study and research is pretty cool, but not getting paid off, which is how I feel this money thing works. You apply for "fellowships" to get "stipends" and get "funded" -- and you'd better be motivated, because this whole shebang is going to take about eight years. And in the end, it doesn't even matter if you're motivated by your subject matter, because you can still certainly be motivated by the money, which will continue to dump itself into your student account for as long as you can cogently pull together possibly unrelated facts about Byron's personal life for your next paper.

I don't want that. I'm not about to go living the sickeningly competitive academic life that so many doctoral students live, trying to come up with a dissertation so original that it barely makes sense anymore. I want to study what I want, when I want, and be able to devote as much time to it as I want -- while having a social life, a job, and hobbies. There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than being enrolled in a course that you absolutely love, and being too stressed to write proper papers or do all the reading. This isn't undergrad; I feel like I've wasted too many fantastic courses by being busy, trying to graduate with six majors and forty-five minors, while also assuming as many "leadership positions" as possible. Gross.

If anything, I've learned from living in France that it's okay to live the slow life; in fact, it's healthier, and I prefer it. I don't want to cram my life full of too many classes, and taking four or more graduate-level classes at one time while trying to pay rent on an apartment in New York City doesn't exactly sound like my idea of a jolly good education.

I've been biting my nails and having mini-mental breakdowns about three times a day because of all this, but it's been about two weeks since I've started the application process, and I've calmed down a bit. It's not easy doing all this nonsense from France; I'm crossing my fingers that UD will even send an official transcript overseas.

I jes wanna git me an educashin!

Well!

About a month ago, I sent an article to More Intelligent Life, a "culture blog" put out by The Economist. I heard very little from the editor until a week ago, when she notified me that my article was in its final stages of editing and was about to be posted. I was browsing through the site today when I noticed that it had actually been published here.

I'm excited, of course (and always thrilled when I see scathing comments at the bottom of my articles), but am slightly miffed because she'd promised me that blog posts receive $40 from the company. It's only been a couple of days, but I'm waiting...

Which brings up another topic: how on earth do you protect your work when it's being published online? At least I have an email-trail of that monetary promise...

Living up to My Name

I'm not trying to get all "Julie & Julia" on you with this excessive food blogging, but I do want to talk about jam for just a minute.

I used about ten tiny purple plums and three handfuls of granulated sugar to make enough jam to fill a Bonne Maman jam jar. Heat, stir, cool.

I'm learning that in order to make a thing, in general, you heat it, stir it, and cool it. Hot fruit, hot milk, hot beans. This makes thinking about cooking much easier. It also helps to think about what an Ancient Greek might have done to preserve whatever you're trying to cook. How can I eat all this rotten fruit? What can I do with this sour milk? How can I prevent this meat from going bad in this damp Aegean heat?

I like that my understanding of the principles of food preparation is about as basic as learning to speak another language, starting with nouns and moving onto verb conjugation…

…which is something I have to do, stat. Does anyone have a crack copy of a German Rosetta Stone I can borrow?

Suburbia: The Perfect Starter for the Sourdough of Life

Every Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and all other holidays where stuffing your face with festively-spiced carbohydrates is appropriate, thousands of Long Islanders flock to the Milleridge Inn for overpriced five-course meals served by Spanish waiters in a dilapidated building. The charm is obvious; it's not a real Christmas without the Milleridge, you see -- not without the faux-copper pots hanging above the real fireplace that dates back to the Revolutionary War era, or the real exposed wooden beams -- look, they're even crooked! That means they're old. 

Before I came to Europe, the oldest thing I'd seen outside of a museum was the Milleridge Inn. 

Like most Long Islanders, I appreciated any building that was not made out of plywood, cement, or asphalt. The Milleridge boasted real wooden shingles and a massive brick fireplace; I fell in love. The building possessed more years of dusty (and probably bloody) history than did any building I'd seen as a child. 

Of course, I've since seen some honest-to-god old buildings in Quebec City with Madame Vert's French class of '99; in Oxford and London with my mother; and in France, everywhere. But simply looking at these buildings is besides the point -- what makes the centuries-old cathedrals of France different from the Milleridge Inn is not their annual tourism revenue (which is probably about the same, considering what the Milleridge charges per plate), but their normalcy. 

Churches, fountains, cobblestone roads, and town halls, scattered shamelessly across Europe for all pedestrians and motorists to underappreciate. Going to la boulangerie? Make a right at the Gothic cathedral, follow the tiny road that's too small to fit a SmartCar, and pass under the 12th-century bridge, you'll see it in the old Roman bath building. I know, it's a real pain to get to; I just buy my bread at Monoprix. 

I appreciate neither the giddiness of Long Islanders, nor the blasé attitude of the French. You're missing half the world in both cases, either because you're too busy staring at the handmade musket replicas to notice the scenery, or because you're not looking at all. And this is why I'm glad that I grew up in suburbia. 

During my travels in Provence, I noticed a pattern in the way I would respond (physically, emotionally, intellectually, fastidiously) to each impressively-aged batiment. Without fail, I would smile a little, take a breath, and feel a physically refreshing sense of childlike wonder pass through my body, imbued with the appreciation of an adult. It's quite a nice feeling. 

I felt this when I first saw le Palais des papes in Avignon; when I saw the tiny, twisted streets of Aix-en-Provence for the first time; when I saw the Roman amphitheatre in Arles; when I realized that the garden in the back of the monastery at La Chartreuse in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon was still a fully functional kitchen garden (complete with almonds, limes, persimmons, oranges, olives, and roses!). 

I owe my sense of appreciative wonder to my completely average and thus fantastic background. [I'm using the word average in its literal sense, and without pejorative connotation.] Levittown, true to its roots, is an utterly average place. It's relatively close to the beach, the mountains, and the city; the houses are basically the same size; there is no great disparity between classes; the schools are decent; crime is relatively low, but not nonexistent. In the opinion of a person who is still young and has traveled only a little in her lifetime and is open to disagreement with this statement, Levittown is one of the most average places I have come ever across. 

I have been nourished, educated, and socialized just enough -- the perfect amount -- and in a modern context (meaning, with average exposure to technology). I've never been truly hungry, cold, or unhappy, nor have I ever gone on lavish vacations, eaten at a five-star restaurant, or gotten whatever I've asked for. Located at exactly the middle of the American social and economic spectrum, my life as a child was essentially a blank slate, perfectly capable of ascension or descension. (Or, as many choose, stagnation. Suburbia can be a dangerous place when it happens to people who are a bit too content to rest on their laurels.) 

Thus, my constant smiling and gasping. My purely mediocre upbringing has allowed me to view the world with the eyes of someone who is very slightly experienced, enough to be familiar with most things in life without ever becoming either overwrought with wonder, or bored. Churches? Yeah, I know what those are, but I've never seen one like that. 

Perhaps this all has nothing to do with my suburban upbringing. Perhaps I'm playing down the individual importance of family life, friends, personal level of intelligence, genetics, and so on. But how well can you thrive if you're never given access to the proper tools for maturation, like nature, books, colors, music? Or, at the opposite extreme, given so many tools that you're never given the chance to challenge yourself? 

Wouldn't you prefer the chance to take your middling education, your public swimming pools and dingy town library, and turn them into something great? 

The world is and always will be my oyster. 

....................

"One of [the brain's] functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, and turn the unusual into the usual -- because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big, stupid grins; they'd say "wow!" a lot. Part of the brain wants to stop this from happening. It is very efficient. It can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels." 

-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

This is my dog, Penny

She has a potentially cancerous lump on her leg, and the other day she tried to gnaw it off. This is what she looks like:

Some things that surpise French people about America:

You have to pay for school.

Chicken's eggs are white.

You have to pay for the doctor.

An average bottle of wine costs more than the equivalent of 5 euro.

You buy bread only once a week.

You can enter university as "undeclared."

You have less than 5 weeks of vacation a year.

Your lunch break is 45 minutes long.

Cheese is processed.

Endeavors, Adventures, and the Weather

I wanted to wait until my experiment had come to fruition before writing this post, in case I poisoned myself or created something gross. Did I make absinthe, more shampoo, a not-so-savory anti-flu tonic? No. I made yogurt.

That glop in the middle is a scoopful of mirabelle preserves, something I also plan on making as soon its jar is empty. It blended well with the yogurt, which was plain and quite runny -- homemade yogurt tends to be less solid than its commercial counterparts since it doesn't contain any added thickeners. But I didn't mind the barely-there viscosity; slurping up a bowlful of tangy dairy product -- fresh from the teats of a nearby Alsatian heifer -- is something I could do everyday.

To make yogurt, all you have to do is make your milk a hospitable environment for bacteria growth, which, as anyone who's left a glass of milk out overnight, knows is not hard. Translated into the language of my limited kitchen, this means leaving a bowl of hot milk on my radiator for seven hours. Voila, yogurt.

This experiment is the first of many that I plan on executing this winter (yes, winter: see below photo).

 

Fig tapenade, poached quail eggs, braised fennel, naan, falafel, and plum preserves are all on my list for the season, among others. In addition, I have specific foods and flavors that I just want to work with, in general -- figure them out: persimmons, various types of seafood and cheeses, bulgur, fenugreek.

I'm sick of not knowing what to do with certain foods. I want to be able to have any fruit, vegetable, spice, dairy product, or legume put in front of me, and generally know what to do with it. What on earth do you do with a bulb of fennel? a pinch of coriander? a black radish? I know, of course, that I'm still quite limited in my ingredients, being in the Vosges and all. I don't have access to hordes of spices, fruits, and nuts, but I'm going to do the best I can.

That was point one. Point deux is an update on my life outside the kitchen, which has recently involved some hours at the nearby indoor rock wall, a new crochet hook, and my violin. I've decided to join le club alpin which, for 60 euro, not only gives you access to the rock wall, but allows you to go on numerous winter-related excursions (cross-country and downhill skiing, mountain hikes, climbing trips) with the club as well. There were also a few jeunes (young people) at the rock wall, and so naturally I jumped at any chance to mingle with my own kind -- a rare breed in these parts.

My new crochet hook is a No. 3, a teeny-tiny one for my teeny-tiny strands of alpaca yarn I bought the other day to make myself a scarf. Crocheting: an activity for domesticated animals using the hair of other domesticated animals.

Oh, and I almost forgot: le fromage de la semaine: comte. Subtle, tangy, firm, best eaten on its own. The best one so far.

Les Raisins de Colere

I think part of becoming an adult is realizing how much time you think you've wasted not taking the advice of your elders and betters. Of course, your time hasn't been wasted at all -- had I listened to my high school English teachers 8 years ago and read The Grapes of Wrath, I would not have even come close to understanding the level of profundity that Steinbeck expresses in between each line of his circa-1930 dialect. To read Of Mice and Men, not like it, read some trendy garbage, revisit my brain, and then read The Grapes of Wrath was an absolutely necessary order of operations for my literary maturation.

In my opinion, this one goes right up there with Don DeLillo's Underworld and James Joyce's Ulysses -- big, fat, heavyweights of novels whose last pages you read over and over because you can't believe the story is actually done and just sit there staring at the back cover for fifteen minutes letting your brain work over what just happened to you and the characters and how, good lord, you're actually out of breath.

My friend Danny mentioned that I take a look at the photos of Dorothea Lange, a photographer during the Great Depression whose pictures best illustrate, as far as I can tell, what The Grapes of Wrath is all about:

 

 

 

"[These here folks] wanta eat an' get drunk and work. An' that's it -- they wanta jus' fling their goddamn muscles aroun' an' get tired. Christ! What am I talkin' about?" - Casy the preacher

Cont'd...

Avignon. Home to quite a bit of history; one of my favorite cities in the south. Around the time of the Black Plague, the seat of the papacy was moved from Italy to Avignon due to civil unrest. Only nine popes were housed at the Palais des papes during this time, but apparently this was enough to have the French build a palace and cathedral. The palace, the largest Gothic palace in Europe, was constructed in only four years (and this was during the height of the plague -- just imagine the number of deaths that are built into those walls).

I know all this, and a whole lot more, thanks to the enormously touristy and extremely informative self-guided tour the palace provided for about 7 euro. For three hours, I walked at an elderly pace from room to room in the Palais des papes, learning about what type of metals were used in the construction of the palace, how much money each pope spent on food and entertainment, how long the coronation ceremonies lasted (nine hours!), and about how, both in general and very specifically, each of the popes learned to become a master at what remains today as one of the world's most effective methods of crowd control -- which is why I love old religious structures. I have never seen such shameless and solid fixtures of insanity in my life.

And they're still making money! I hope the maintenance crew is paid well.

 Top: street view; cheesy shot through arrow slit in palace; the Grand Chapel in the palace; Pont de Saint Benezet.

Top: Palais des papes; map of Avignon made in 1525 (the city looks the same today).

I took a bus out to a nearby village across the river called Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. It too had some fantastically old buildings, like La Chartreuse du Val de Benediction, a monastery built during the 1350s, and Fort Saint-Andre, a Medieval military structure built around a 10^th-century abbey. These guys were not messing around.

Top: water reservoir at La Chartreuse; entranceway at La Chartreuse; view of Avignon from a distance; Fort Saint Andre.

Arles. Tiny, but rich -- the Romans were all over this place in their heyday, so there is an enormous amount of ancient Rome stamped on top of what is really just a simple Provencal city. Outside of Rome, I think that Arles has the most number of Roman structures and relics in the world. There is a fully-functional Roman arena in the center of the city (where Arles continues to hold its bullfights, a sickening but well-attended tradition), as well as a thermal Roman bath and a theatre. The Arles history museum contains the rest -- jugs, busts, mosaics, statues, tools, pipes, everything.

But despite the attractive history, Arles remains relatively unimpeded by tourism. It has managed to preserve a small-town feel, meaning that its aura is generally calm. (I'm comparing this to Aix, which essentially screams at you, demanding you to tell it that it's cute.)

All my good pictures of Arles have yet to be developed (I took them on my manual camera). Coming soon!

Salon-de-Provence. I went here by accident because I didn't have enough cash to get myself to Arles by bus. A rather pleasant accident, I suppose, but all I really wanted out of it was to make change from my 50 euro bill. I bought a toothbrush here.

Marseille. Take the density of midtown, blend it with the almost-kitchsy cuteness of the corner of Macdougal and Bleecker Streets, add the dirty-yet-festive atmosphere of an Astoria street fair, and put the whole mess on a Mediterranean seaport. Now throw in a bunch of North Africans, some extra garbage on the streets, and a few superb cathedrals, and you have Marseille.

Top: view of the city; eglise Notre Dame de-la-Garde.

I felt right at home. I might be jumping to a too-good conclusion on that one, but the vibe was right, the diversity of people and cuisine was fantastic, and its location is phenomenal. Take a bus 25 minutes to the south and you're in the calanques, a stretch of coast that offers stunning rock formations and hiking opportunities; take a bus or walk a bit to the southwest, and you have the beach. Awesome.

Incredible, all of it. The map is to give you an idea of close Marseille is to the calanques, and of how large the area actually is. In about half a day of serious hiking (and I mean climbing with both hands and feet at some points), I only managed to see Morgiou, Sugiton, and one of those pointy triangles that mean mountains.

Coast: Cassis, Le Ciotat, Toulon. I was lucky enough to be staying with a friend with a car (until it got towed, then broken into...), which enabled me to see parts of Provence I probably would have never been able to see. The coastal stretch between these three cities is stunning -- calanque-like, mountainous, Mediterranean flora. Cassis and Le Ciotat are rather small port cities, while Toulon is considered a somewhat major city in the area.Toulon, however, was probably my least favorite city on the trip. Albeit, I was only in it for a couple of hours, and at night, so I know I'm missing a few integral pieces here. But it was glitzy, almost Miami-like, with wide boulevards and palm trees lining the roads; it was practically bereft of people (and I'm not using that word lightly; some major town squares were completely empty) on a Saturday night. I don't know, it didn't seem very friendly. Whatever, it's technically not even part of Provence anyway. Pffft.

And in between all these daytrips, I jogged, explored, cooked, read, tasted, touched, smelled, wrote, and thought. Thought! I've never done so much thinking in my life -- The Grapes of Wrath was too big to fit in my bag along with my water bottle, guidebook, camera, and wallet, so I never brought it with me. But I did bring a pen! Gotta write down all them idears.

Aha!

Welcome home -- to rain, near-freezing weather, and no hot water, heating, or Internet. Hello, autumn.
But is is nice to be back in my own bed, not sleeping on a couch or floor and living out of a dirty backpack. I was starting to smell like a serious hippie in my last few days, too cheap to do laundry and too busy to take a shower...

Aix-en-Provence. My home base, where both of my Couchhosts and my friend Remi lived. It's an adorable, but extremely touristy town, and full of students. It's actually the second most expensive city in France (behind Paris, naturally) for students, which inevitably drives up the price of housing for everyone else. It is also the birthplace (and deathplace) of Cezanne, a point of tourism attraction that is both interesting and hilarious. It's like exploiting William Faulkner.

 Clockwise from top left: eglise Saint-Jean-de-Malte; street in Aix; cool Picasso exhibit at the Musee Granet; street near Picasso's chateau; Cezanne's atelier; church near Picasso's chateau.

From top: last lavender bloom of summer; view of Mont Saint-Victoire; pistachio macaron; unbelievably fresh olive oil.
  

Panoramics, from top: view of chateau where Picasso stayed for awhile; view of the city of Aix from the top of le Grand Theatre; Aix countryside from the top of some little mountain.

Because of its thriving student life, however, Aix does does possess quite a bit of culture and entertainment. I went to see a great orchestra concert at le Grand Theatre (real Baroque music -- wooden woodwinds, lutes, not chinrests for the violins, no vibrato... AWESOME), snuck into a movie (La Tempete des boulettes geants -- or, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"), saw a couple museums, and went to lots of markets -- the rich people kind, the ones that are open every day during the hours that most people have jobs. Some real nice stuff.