lunchtime wasted time.

I honestly like the long, leisurely lunch breaks in France. People usually SIT while they eat. They may even have a mutli-course meal. With wine! That's not to say that people don't eat on the go, but most people do actually take time to eat because eating in France is THAT important.

So when lunchtime is the only time of the day you can run your various errands, the French lunch break is really annoying. Since most stores close early (the supermarket near me is open until 9pm. Woo hoo! but closed on Sunday) and the other stores in the center close by 7pm, the lunch break is the only time to do those random things like getting buttons for the fireman raincoat that's been unworn for 5 months because it's missing a button or picking up a birthday present for a 4 year old or collecting the concert tickets for next week's concert (another woo hoo here please).

And being that it IS lunchtime and I'm not the ONLY one running such errands, you'd think that the stores would make an effort to open ALL of the cash registers, not just 2 of the 6. Maybe I'm being extremely unrealistic or maybe I'm just that American that I expect to be done with my errand after waiting in line for over 10 minutes, not walking away mumbling expletives under my breath having accomplished absolutely nothing.

In either case, I just wasted 45 minutes and have nothing to show for it except a bag of goldfish crackers, which are a nice consulation in these times of need (yes, I found actual goldfish crackers!)

Unexpected encounters in Wazemmes

My older sister has very beautiful curly hair, what some may call a Jew-fro. When my mother was visiting, my sister sent me out on a mission : find some haircare products specifically for curly hair in my heavily north african neighborhood.

I walked around my neighborhood and finally walked into a store on rue Jules Guesde whose sign outside read: Cheveux africains, maghrebins et européens. When I walked in, there was a really friendly man behind the counter and a second equally friendly second man standing next to the counter talking to the shop owner.

I looked around, feeling a bit dumb and very white, and explained that my sister had very curly hair and did they have any special products for her. The owner looked at me like I was nuts and told me he didn't have anything that you can't find in the US. In fact, his entire stock of "African" haircare products is imported from the US. Indeed as I looked around, I saw logos and names that I recognized from my days as a cashier at my local CVS.

Now, let's go back 16 years to my semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence. Around Passover time, after living with my host family for 3 months, I began preping my host mom for my upcoming week of non-baguettes. She said to me, "why didn't you tell me you were Jewish? In France, we aren't against Jews, we're against Arabs". I'm pretty sure at the time, she meant "we" as a general "we" and not her specifically, but at the time I didn't pick up on the non-verbal cues and was fairly shocked. 

So when the owner's friend said to me, "donc votre soeur a des cheveux juifs, quoi?" I sort of looked down sheepishly and said, "well, um, yeah". So the well dressed, very black man says to me, "Ca ne se voit pas mais (it doesn't show but...) but my grandfather was an Italian Jew."

I stayed in the store for over an hour as they talked to me about the political situation in their native Guinea Bissau. We also talked about the economy, US and French politics and being a foreigner in France. The most interesting part of the discussion - if you can call it that because I kept quiet most of the time since I didn't even know who they were talking about (it happened to be the ex-president of their home country) - were all the stories the men had about the grandiose parties hosted by the representation in Brussels and the family connections they both had with him.

I think the first lesson that day was don't judge a book by its cover. And the second lesson was, don't walk into a small African shop when you only have a couple minutes to spare (it's a good thing I didn't have ice cream in my shopping bags).  

The 15 year bitch

A couple days ago, someone asked me how long I'd been living in France. I couldn't remember. Has it been 15 years? 16 years? 14 years? I couldn't remember at first, but I also couldn't figure out when I really started living here. Was it during my junior semester abroad or was it when I came here after graduating from college or was it when I moved to Lille? The best I could do was "most of the past 15 years".

And, those 15 years along with my dual citizenship, give me the right to criticize and make the overarching stereotypical statements about French people that are about to follow...

Maybe I'm just having an anti-French moment, but I have been seething with annoyance for the past couple weeks.

First on the list of french annoyances is "c'est pas possible". Why is it that anything outside the norm is not possible? why is it impossible to have mustard instead of mayonnaise on my sandwich? why would the idiot in Giverny not sell me just the hotdog without the bread since I was going to throw the bread out anyway even after I explained it was for my daughter who was on a gluten free diet? Part of it is annoyance at having to adapt to the customer, but some of it is thinking in the customer's place. The sausage girl told me she couldn't sell me the sausage sans bread. why why why I asked. She said, "c'est pour vous...ça fait cher pour une saucisse." Well, if I'm willing to pay for it, then it's my problem...

Second on the list is self-righteousness and lack of respect for others. Standing under a nosmoking sign smoking. Letting your dog poop right under a clean up after your dog sign. Parking in front of someone's garage. Peeing on someone's garage door. All of these examples come from the Frenchman/woman's belief that their personal rights come before the general well being of others. It pisses me off to no end. Lack of respect of rules and lack of respect of other's makes me want to punch people.

Third is snobbiness about the French language. My parents, the kids and I were staying at my favorite hotel in Paris. We decided to eat at the lovely restaurant out in the courtyard garden. We were given English menus which meant less work for me. But when the waitress came over, I ordered une carafe de minervois. she looked at me like I was speaking jibberish. Pardon? she said. So I repeated and she spoke in near perfect English. so I thought, hey, she's not French. But then I heard her speaking French to someone else. so when she came back, I ordered my meal in French figuring maybe she just didn't expect me to speak in French. Once again, she couldn't understand me and gave me a look like I was green and speaking jibberish. The fact was, she just didn't want me to speak french at all. She made it very clear. I felt like slapping her and saying listen girly, my French is damn good, better than your English so don't give me that shit. But I didn't...I just shot bullets out of my eyes.

And lastly, dog crap. What more can I say?

I hope that one day I will always have enough American in me to respect others, to clean up after myself and to clean up after myself and to always respect difference.

Les vacances

Not just any vacances, but les grandes vacances. In France, when people refer to les vacances, it's generally the 2 month summer break during which most people take a month or so off. I'm lucky enough to have a lot of time to spend with my kids. But my husband has less time so we go away as a family for about 3 weeks.

Vacation time is one of those "quality of life" things that I would never trade in. So, I guess I can't move to the US until I can be guaranteed at least 4 weeks of vacation a year.

We are leaving on Wednesday to spend a couple days outside of Tour, then heading to the Southwest near Toulouse to spend time at my in-laws' vacation house. Then we rented a house in Auvergne for a week in August. When we get back, my parents invade/arrive. :)

Something that's always hit me during the summer months is all of the cahiers de vacances that you find in the supermarket, book stores and news stands. In the US, I remember having summer reading lists. But here, there are special vacation workbooks so your child can work during vacation. For example, the books for 5 year olds include learning to write cursive and coloring books where you need to copy the model. No free hand or free thinking allowed! I remember hours of fun with Richard Scary's rainday activity book during our summer vacations (I do have a copy of it which I am desperately looking for. I put it away last year so it wouldn't get ruined and now I can't find it! Typical). Richard Scary was all about cutting, folding and coloring. No writing allowed! (I got this Barbapapa one for Suzanne....it has stickers and a puzzle in it, on top of cursive skills).

Which reminds me of when I worked in HR at a very large French company in Paris and all of the candidates' handwritten letters were sent for handwriting analysis, called graphologie in French. I was told that handwriting analysis on non-French writers wasn't valid because it's not the same writing rules. And I can confirm that it wasn't because I "stumbled" on my own handwriting analysis while going through the HR files one day. I now understand where the formated handwriting comes from.

Grève season is open!

I'm not actually sure grève season ever ended this year. It would be an understatement to say that much of French society is unhappy with the recent changes in France - both proposed and accepted.

My college French professor told us that striking was France's favorite passtime. The first time I came to France, I was told that the French only strike when the weather is nice. It seems true enough, but there's a reason for that. When the weather's nicest, you can affect the most people.

It's true that the winter's been particularly bad so is it a coincidence that the striking has picked up again now that it's no longer uncomfortable to be outside? Or maybe it's that there are local elections coming up in a couple months...

I still have trouble with the strikes at times, they get on my nerves, I have to use vacation time to watch my school-age daughter. But, the longer I stay here, the more I appreciate the freedom to strike. Striking in the US just isn't the same. Changing the current system - retirement, social security, the centralized education system, job security - touches the heart of most French people. All of these points are so engrained in French society (for most people I'll hasten to say) that any change becomes very personal.

Sometimes I laugh to myself (or outloud) like when they changed full retirement to 62. HAHAHAHA! But, as a full-fledged member of French society, I also appreciate the current social advantages which give my kids free education from the age of 3, subsidized housing, subsidized child-care for children under 3, full maternity leave for a couple months (better than the US for sure!), parental leave, low cost healthcare, 5 weeks plus of leave per year...The bottom line is, all of these things contribute to a happier and healthier society as a whole. And believe it or not, France is a very productive country . Personally, it doesn't feel like a bastion of productivity, but I guess they manage to get things done. Somehow.

les quatre coins de la France

Being a hexagone, I guess France really has 5 corners. And technically, we didn't really go to all 5 of them but it sure felt like it...

We left Lille on July 28th caravaning with some friends; we decided to make the trip to the Tarn-et-Garonne in 2 days. We really believed we'd get there so early that we'd be able to visit the Chaterau de Chambord in the evening thus saving us precious travel time the next day. I know it's against our better judgement to feed the whole princess obsession, but how can your resist? After an interminable drive and a terrible lunch, we arrived in the beautiful chambre d'hote well after 5pm due to a couple GPS snafus (ie our friends entered the wrong village into their GPS. Oops!) and a lot of Parisian traffic.

I highly recommend the Logis du Bois Renard in Nouan-sur-loire (near Chambord) which is a recently renovated stable, part of a family owned chateau (the owner's parents live in the chateau accross the field). There is a pool, a donkey and some chickens. The property was lovely and we almost got Suzanne and Marlow to believe this was the chateau we planned on visiting before we hit traffic...After we got the kids to sleep, we had a lovely meal at the table d'hôtes.

The next day, we decided to go see the outside of Chambord anyway - how can you pass it up when you're only 10 minutes away? We ate sandwiches on the grass outside the chateau and then hit the road. Everything instantly went pear shape. We had to get out of the cars to pay for the parking which we'd forgotten to do, we got twisted around leaving the chateau grounds, hit a number of dead ends...once the GPS finally got us on course, I was allowed to sleep an hour or so while the friends drove both cars (I am the only driver in our family so I needed a rest to be able to make it through the rest of the drive down south). I woke up with a start when we were completely stopped on the highway not even an hour away from our starting point. After 2 hours of waiting, we finally got to an exit and pulled off the highway. We turned the GPS off - and the traffic radio on to learn that there'd been a huge accident 30 kms away which meant 60 km of bouchon and it wasn't even on the highway we were on! Jerome studied the atlas and got us across the Loire valley by local roads. We finally arrived in the South at midnight...

Our time in Septfonds was marked by Max's firsth birthday, Suzanne falling in the pool and Jerome jumping in after her and some delicious local food. We also had lice, intestinal worms and strep throat.

After 2 lovely - albeit not very sunny weeks in the Southwest where I found some of the most lovely running paths through the woods- we headed to Burgundy where we (Jerome but me by extension) inherited a house from Jerome's grandmother. The house has been empty for 4 years. It was cold. It was musty. We had to light the fireplace and buy winter pyjamas.

The 5 hour drive to Burgundy took 8 hours thanks to the traffic jam only an hour from our starting point. After a lengthy stop at McDonald's (which exists exactly for this purpose!), we decided to take some back roads to Brugundy. We drove past the Puy de Dome, through Vichy and had a late afternoon snack at the Chateau in Lapalisse.

On the first morning in Burgundy, Jerome and I had a visit to the local ER. Max used his legs to push his highchair from the table and fell on his head; he was kind of scary looking and started to vomit. After the most harrowing 30 minute drive of my life, we got to the hospital in Paray-le-Monial (a scarily Catholic town - I have nothing against Catholics, but all the people I saw in Paray seemed to have a glazed look in their eyes. Apparently there was a conference going on for reborn Catholic youth.) The people at the hospital were great and Max was fine; but he and I had to stay overnight. At least we were warm.

On the third day, I went running and got lost in the woods. Jerome's GPS told me I was 20 kms away from where I actually was. I turned around and picked blackberries as I made my way home (I did get home without a problem).

After a week being woken by cows echoing in the valley, we decided to make the trip back North in 2 stages. We spent the night in Troyes - where all the women are rather short and stocky and have brown hair. People don't seem to smile much in Troyes, but we stayed at a really friendly hotel that I highly recommend - Hotel Arlequin in Troyes

When we left Troyes, we decided to stop in Reims for lunch. We found a nice table on the terrace at Edgar Bistrot where the food was great and the service was excellent. The waiters were all joking and even mocking some annoying customers. It was so nice, that Suzanne's precious doudou decided he wanted to stay there. After a moment of panic last night, I realized Suz had left "nana" sleeping on the window ledge. Luckily, they didn't throw nana in the trash. They are actually sending him to us today. Phew.

We had an uneventful drive back from Reims. Just like in the movie Bienvenue chez les chti, as we crossed passed the sign "Departement du Nord", it began raining and it didn't really stop until a few minutes ago.

So what are the conclusions of the past 3 weeks

1. vacationing with 2 kids under 5 cannot really be called vacation.
2. always know your local Emergency Rooms.
3. always check window ledges before leaving a restaurant
4. Atlas is more reliable than GPS.
5. always pack an extra set of warm pyjamas
6. always travel with anti-bacterial ointment, lice shampoo and fluvermal.
7. ...sleep....