From Nightmare to Nirvana

For me, this Christmas was the most special one I've had so far. While I've known that the holidays are not just about presents, Santa, and decorations for a long time, this year in particular I really recognized and appreciated how important family is not only during Christmas, but also throughout the rest of the year. If not for the love and support of my family I'd be without the emotional and financial means to make it home. I never would have had the drive to fight so hard to be here if I didn't know and appreciate exactly what it was that I would be coming home to. So for those of you that I haven't seen over the past couple of days, I'm going to give you the CliffNotes version of the adventure that was me coming back stateside.

I could hardly sleep on the 20th, knowing that the airports in London and Paris had canceled all their flights that day, yet I still had hope that my flights would leave the next day and that I'd be able to make it home. I had a taxi booked for 7.30 AM because I didn't know if the buses would be running because of the snow and black ice, but at 6.00, a half-hour before I wanted to get up, I picked up my phone and saw a text message from my cousin telling me that both of our flights had been canceled. Immediately, I jumped out of bed, flipped on the lights and started up my computer. I got on the phone with Katie and we scrambled to find a flight home. After several calls back and forth to one another, as well as 3 or 4 to my parents (who I woke up in the middle of the night), I was able to secure a ticket home. However, the only catch was that it left from Geneva, Switzerland and went to Rome before ultimately ending up at JFK. At that point, now that I had a ticket that was the least of my worries because I still wasn't sure if I could make it to the train station. Still in my pajamas, I ran down the steps, went outside and slid down the street to the bus stop to see if the buses were running. Luckily they were so on my way back I called and canceled the taxi and once I was back at the school I started looking for a room with a printer so that I could print my confirmation emails. Thankfully I have the master keys for the school so after visiting a couple of classrooms, I sprinted through the darkened hallways and down the steps to the teacher's lounge where I was able to open and print what I needed to.

I tried to order my train tickets to Geneva online, but my French debit card was denied and I knew I didn't have enough money in my American account, so I knocked on the door of my Chinese neighbor to see if she could come to the train station with me so that I could use her card to buy the tickets. Together we slid down the street trying not to face-plant on the pavement or get hit by a car while carrying my massive suitcase. We made it to the train station in plenty of time and my French card was accepted, and I was glad to be able to sit down for a while on the hour-long ride to Paris. Once in Paris, I got on the metro to Gare de Lyon and waited for my track assignment to Geneva.

I only dozed off for a couple of minutes during the 4 hour ride down thanks to the enormous old man next to me who smelled like sour milk, pig manure and litter box. I was starving, but couldn't stand to eat while sitting next to that. I breezed through customs in Geneva before I took yet another train to the airport. At the airport I decided to see if I could get on an earlier flight since mine wasn't until 11.30 AM the next day. I handed over my confirmation email, and after a couple of minutes of eyebrow raises and "je comprends pas" I finally asked what was wrong, and the woman told me that I had no ticket and my reservation had been canceled. Stupefied, I asked the woman how that was possible; I had the confirmations from the airlines, they'd taken the money for the tickets and no-one had notified me that the reservation had been canceled.

Three hours later thanks to a phone call to an American representative at Delta, a nice lady who let me use her iPhone and gave me a phone card, my reservation had been found, I had a boarding pass and my suitcase had been checked. Spending the night at the airport was no treat since I only had 6 juice boxes, 2 apples, 2 pears and a stale baguette to eat and my glasses were in my suitcase, but I made my way through 2 books and 3 different playlists. I didn't sleep out of fear that my stuff would be stolen or I wouldn't wake up in time for my flight, so when Katie finally got to the airport the next morning, I looked terrible and felt worse; especially when I found out that she didn't have a spot on her flight home.

As it got closer to boarding time, Katie and I had to go our separate ways and I had no news of her until I saw my mom and brother some 13 hours later. When I got to Rome I had to do that awkward speed walk from one terminal to another 15 minutes away because I still needed a boarding pass for the second leg of the journey. I pushed my way to the front of the line (yes, I was one of those people that everyone hates) and after my boarding pass had been printed, I was told I could get it in 5 minutes. Even though I thought that was kind of odd, after what I'd been through already 5 minutes wasn't the end of the world. However as minute 4 came and went, I looked around me and noticed the flock of passengers on stand by. I inched my way back to the counter where a guy was printing and exchanging tickets of Italian passengers. He picked up my seat-less boarding pass and looked at it before another Italian came up to exchange tickets. Realizing that if I didn't speak up soon, I wouldn't be going home, I interrupted him as he started to work on the next passenger and asked if he could get back on mine since all I needed was a seat. The next 30 seconds were the longest 30 seconds of my life and as he handed me my boarding pass it took a huge effort to not cry out or jump or something. I was going home.

I slept on the plane and inhaled the food, and as we circled JFK I enjoyed the high of being back in America. Even though I still had 3 train rides ahead of me until I got home, at that point I was just happy that everything was in English again.

After that day, I've got a new appreciation for what it means to be an American. I know the rest of the world thinks we're loud and obnoxious, fat and arrogant, but there's honestly no place that I'd rather come from. At the beginning of this experience I thought it'd be so awesome to be French (or European in general), but now that temporarily - for all legal intents and purposes - I am a French citizen, it's not what I thought it would be. Sure the French have some things working in their favor, but at the end of the day, America rules. End of story. Just like people, no country is perfect, but I've got a newfound admiration for both the people and the places in this country I call home.

"There's that French blood!"

Tonight, I learned an interesting French saying that (roughly) translates to, "spending time with good friends is like eating a steak." At first I didn't get it, but once Sylviane motioned to her cheeks and continued to explain - she must have picked up on the deer in the headlights look on my face - it really does make sense. So when you spend time with good friends and family, like I did tonight at our "soirée crêpes," you do a lot of talking and laughing, which causes your cheeks and stomach to be sore. Similarly, when you're trying to chew your way through a good steak, by the time you're finished your jaw is tired and your stomach is full. C'est sympa, non? 

Sylviane invited Lisa and I over for crêpes and I was told last week to prepare myself for a competition, as we would have to cook and flip the crêpes ourselves. While I am confident in my cooking abilities, my last encounter with blueberry pancakes didn't exactly turn out as planned, so I was a little apprehensive. But after a demonstration by Jean-François, as Sylviane said, my French blood came through and I'm now a crêpe-flipping master. Granted, Lisa also got hers on the first try and they're not that complicated to make, but she had a hole in hers, so I win by default.

Seven days until I return stateside and I've got to say I'm looking forward to eating lots of steak with everyone.

Noël à Paris

Sacré Coeur.

Christmas tree inside Galeries Lafayette.

Again.

The façade.

Ferris wheel at the the entrance to le jardin des Tuileries. Eiffel Tower on the left.

The Louvre.

Lights along the Champs-Élysées.

Printemps.

The Land of the Ch’ti

Last Saturday and Sunday a group of assistants and I visited Lille, the land of the Ch’ti. The word “Ch’ti” designates not only the people who live in the region called “Nord,” but also the dialect that they speak and a brand of beer. It’s very difficult to understand, even more so than Québécois (which the French enjoy making fun of). It snowed the whole train ride up, and because of the weather we arrived later than expected so we weren’t able to drop off our bags at the hostel before it closed for the afternoon. After trudging around in the snow for 45 minutes we found a restaurant that was open for lunch and warmed up. I didn’t think that France would be cold, but for the past week or so it has been colder than normal. Just to give you an idea of how cold that is, on the news last week they talked about how it was warmer in Greenland than in France.

Once we got into the hostel and dropped our bags off we headed out to the Christmas market where we browsed the selection of 100+ booths while sipping on onion soup and vin chaud. After we’d seen all that there was to see, we headed to the main square where a 150 foot Ferris wheel was waiting for us. Why we thought it was a good idea to go on an open Ferris wheel when it was freezing cold, windy and sleeting I don’t know, but once it had finished loading passengers and we weren’t stuck at the top it was actually really fun.

One of many vin chaud booths.

The Ferris wheel.

View from halfway up.

The weather improved on Sunday and we spent the afternoon walking around Vieux Lille. I had planned to go to the Christmas market in Strasbourg – which supposedly is one of the top 5 best in the world – but when I saw that a one-way ticket is 97€ even with my 12-25 discount I decided to pass. Tatiana, one of my teachers at the collège, is from Strasbourg and while she said that it is really nice, the market isn’t that great because it’s all the same stuff. But the real reason it’s so popular, she said, is because of the lights… maybe next year.

The best I ever had.

As anyone who has shared a meal with me knows, I can put away quite a bit of food. But tonight - sorry Mom,  sorry relatives and friends who have cooked for me - I had the best meal I've ever had. Lycée Decrétot is a professional high school for students that want to work in restaurant and hotel management and they are lucky enough to have a restaurant d'application that they lovingly call "Le chateau." It's here, at the chateau that the students are able to practice what they learn in the classroom. They do everything here - from checking your coat and making cocktails, to cooking, serving and cleaning.

I was invited to eat there with one of my professors and a couple of her friends and all I can say is that it was unreal (I've almost exhausted my supply of appropriate adjectives to describe how first-class everything is here). In France meals last at least two and a half hours, and let me tell you, they do things right.

So we started with an apéritif, I chose the alcoholic version, a Cocktail Calypso, made with tequila and kiwi. Then came the "mise en bouche," which tonight was a quenelle (remember those salmon things I told you about in an earlier post), with roe and chives on a grillette de pain (think of a toasted slice of thin garlic bread). After that was a "déclinaison au foie gras" served with potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and a broccoli flan, followed by "marmite de canard en Trois mouvements et ses garnitures." This dish featured duck cooked three different ways - sauteed, braised, and steamed - all of which were indescribably good. An assortment of cheeses followed; all four were made from raw milk, three were cow and one was goat. Next came the dessert, "manège de sorbets" made from bananas, mangoes, berries, passion fruit and apples. The five scoops were served in a pastry shell (think of what a coffee filter looks like, but made out of pastry crust), garnished with mint, powdered sugar and fresh fruit. And after almost three hours of gluttony came the coffee and tea and some more pastries. 

I didn't think to bring a camera, and it wouldn't have been appropriate in the chateau anyway, but just so you can get an example at how "haute cuisine" the food actually is, this is the link to the cuisine moleculaire blog. It hasn't been updated recently, but it gives you an example of some of the awesome things that these students have done with food.

SNOW DAY!

Il en faut peu pour être heureux moi c’est tout ce que je sais. Today was a day that proved that the simple things in life are often the best. This morning I had a new class for the first time, which I think will probably turn out to be my favorite. The kids were all really nice and when their teacher put me in charge of them for the second hour (he had a meeting to go to) they were really cooperative and did what they were supposed to do. I took turns with each of them being a disgruntled customer who has a bunch of complaints about charges that have appeared on his hotel bill. I think I like them the best not only because they did really well, but also because they actually tried to figure stuff out and asked me questions if they needed help rather than just saying, “Ben, j’sais pas.”

After class, I headed back up to my room to email myself the worksheets I had prepared on prepositions for my afternoon classes at the collège. When I opened my email I saw the title of one that my teacher sent me: “cours annulé.” Involuntarily, I jumped out of my chair and got caught mid-celebratory dance by my Chinese neighbor who came over to read the email and see what all the excitement was about. After almost 5 years without a snow day, I was long overdue.

The Musée.

In all seriousness though, it was completely ridiculous that they cancelled school. There was, at most, an inch of snow on the ground and all the roads were clear, but the buses weren’t running, which means that the kids couldn’t get to school. In my morning class at the lycée the kids were asking me if it snowed much where I live and I told them about last winters’ storms. “In France,” one of them said, “we panic when there is anything more than 3cm.” And it’s true; half the départments (counties) in France are in “vigilance orange” because of the weather, and just like at home the news sensationalizes the impact of the storm.

One of the many "ruisseau" that run through Louviers.

In Normandy we have palm trees too.

I took advantage of my day off and caught up on sleep, but not before my neighbor and I took a walk around Louviers to appreciate my favorite type of precipitation.