The Year Elsewhere

In no particular order:

Things that I miss from the U.S.

1.) Having a clue of what’s going on at any given time: I don’t consider myself an intuitive person by any means, but at home, I at least have the advantage of reading between the lines about half of the time. The other half, I’m lost. Here, I’m lost all the time. Mme told me that her daughter, Patricia, would be throwing a fête at the house this Saturday night just for fun, but what I didn’t pick up on, I guess, is that the entire family would be coming home for it. I woke up on the morning of the fête, and there was someone living in the empty room across from mine. Two someones. Her son, Christophe, and his girlfriend, Claire, who’s my new best friend because she told Christophe to slow down when he was talking to me. She understands my needs.
Also, I really need to vacuum my room. Do I just take the vacuum and go to it? Do I ask permission to use the vacuum? Will they think it’s weird that I’m asking for their blessing to do housework? Will they think it’s weirder if I just hijack their equipment? If I ask, will I have to suffer a tutorial, about how I need to press the button to turn it on and press it again to turn it off, like I had to for the porch light? If I don’t ask, will I blow up the house?
Only one way to find out.

2.) Raiding the refrigerator (likewise, Having a refrigerator): The time has come that our host families now give us every breakfast, but only three dinners a week. I’m incredibly lucky in that Mme is alone during the week and has no desire to eat alone, so I get dinner Monday through Thursday. However, once her husband comes home on Friday afternoon through Monday morning, I’m out of luck. (I really like her husband. I’m kind of bummed that I never get to eat with him now, but I understand. He’s definitely not a vegetarian, so making meals for the two of us together would increase the difficulty exponentially.) Anyway, a fridge would come in handy over the weekend for storing yogurts or leftovers or other healthy items. But I don’t know if I’m allowed any kitchen/fridge privileges, and I feel that it’s a little awkward to ask (see Thing I Miss #1), given how little the fridge is.

3.) Natural California raisins (Golden or otherwise): If you look on the ingredient list of a box of raisins in the U.S., you’ll read “California raisins,” or something to that effect (and sunshine!). Here, it’s still “Raisins secs” (dry grapes), but there’s also the “agent d’enrobage,” which is always some sort of vegetable oil. It seems very not-French, adding fat to a fat-free item, but I guess that’s also the idea behind fruit tarts, so touché.

4.) Chocolate chips: Guittard Semisweet, how I long for thee. There’s something so different about little morsels of chocolate in comparison to a big hunk of chocolate. Although a plus to big hunks of chocolate is that they can contain little morsels of other things.

5.) Recommended serving sizes: They tell you how many Calories and nutrients are in 100g grams, but then it’s up to you to determine how many hundreds of grams are in the package, and to divide them up into what you believe is the best serving size for you. I’ve discovered that it’s easier to just eat the whole package, in some cases. Mostly in cookie (gâteaux) cases. There are some packages that explicitly state the recommendation, or contain individual packages of 100 grams (or whatever is recommended), but they aren’t very common. It’s possible that I’m missing something though, like “suggestion de presentation” has to do with quantity, not with aesthetics.

6.) Coffee shops: A whole restaurant devoted to coffee and tea. With a scone thrown in for good measure. The only scone I’ve seen here was at a grocery store, beside the prepackaged half-baked baguettes. But they really know how to do chocolats chauds here.

7.) Payless Shoesource: Taking a break from food nostalgia, it was nigh on impossible to find comfortable, affordable, classy, vegetarian black boots with zippered sides, not too much heel and only ankle high. Or maybe I’m just a tidge bit picky (take out the “affordable” and the “vegetarian,” and you have a vast array laid out before you). I finally found some that were all of the above except perhaps “affordable” at 39€90. Check them out: http://www.batashop.fr/fr/Femme/boots/Talonplat/produit/5016099.htm A month ago, I wouldn’t even have considered them at that price. Now, I told myself to think about it, after a month of lusting after plenty of leather boots that start around 90€. That night, the blister that I accrued in Paris (from my $7.00 Payless Airwalks that are too small (should have brought the Pumas)) woke me at 3h00 with what felt like flames burning from the inside out. I tried to ignore it, but it was impossible, so I got out of bed and spent a half hour to forty-five minutes doctoring it, soaking it and cleansing it with Cetaphil and applying a Bandaid (that’s how you know it’s serious) and finally went back to sleep around 4h30. I had lots of time to ponder those boots. Lindsey and I went back the next day, I hmmed and hawed about it some more, and then bought them after a long process of decision-making, involving going to another store to buy different socks to try them on. So, even though Payless got me into this situation, I still miss it, and how they offer decent quality for ridiculously low prices (although, have you noticed that the prices are getting less ridiculous? I have.).

8.) Walking on the sidewalk without worrying about getting run over: People drive on the sidewalks, or at least what I take for being a sidewalk. It’s probably just a slightly raised street that people happen to walk on.

9.) Certain people and another: You know. And being able to call those people spontaneously, without setting up a date and time, for which I’m invariably late. Let’s take a moment to ponder the cuteness of that other, shall we?
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Things I thought I would miss terribly, but I don’t

1.) Peanut butter: Nutella is dirt cheap here, especially the off-brand variety, and it comes in any quantity imaginable. The best part? It’s not even supposed to be refrigerated (see Thing I Miss #2).

2.) Driving: I miss the car, not the transport (see Unforeseen Love #1).

Things I love that were unforeseen

1.) Walking everywhere: Despite certain drawbacks (see Things I Miss #6), it’s great to walk everywhere, mostly because the fact that everyone walks or bikes means that everything worth doing is within easy reach. The mall is 10 minutes to the north, the little market is five minutes to the west, school is 20 minutes in whatever direction school is. For a longer walk, you can go to the other side of the river and walk along the lake where the swans live. Yeah, that’s right. We have swans, just past the castle.

2.) Fresh baguettes and cheese: Mme buys a new baguette every couple of days, always from a different boulanger. When I told her that I’d heard that it was important to be faithful to one’s charcuteur and traiteur and boulanger and vendeur, she said no, that they all make things slightly differently, so people go to different ones for variety. However, she also classified herself as “atypique,” although not in reference to that. Actually, that was Hélène who said that, in relation to the whole family. “Nous sommes vraiment atypiques.” (Funny, since they seem so traditionally French to me.) I told her that I would fit right in. So, bread. It’s good. I like bread.

3.) Fresh fruit: Most notably, the grapes, which still have their seeds. I love that crunch. I try to explain about seedless fruits of America, and no one understands what I’m talking about. Really, it sounds ridiculous. “Seedless? Then how do they keep growing them?” “Bien…je ne sais pas.” I just ate a big bunch of Muscat grapes for snack, crunching down on every seed. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Also, I’m discovering new varieties of fruit left and right: Reine des Reinettes apples, little green plums that I think are Reine Claudettes, or something like that, pears that I can’t keep straight in my head, but are so ripe in the stores that you can’t even carry them home. It’s all you can do to keep them together until you pay for them. Ideally, you would just pick one up, slurp it down and then pay for it. But I think they frown on that, especially since you pay by weight. You would just have to be weighed upon entry and exit of the market. It’s the only way.

4.) Friends: Moving away from food once again. I was apprehensive about coming to Angers with such a small group because I thought we would be inseparable. And we are, but the miracle is that we all get along so well, even with the other AHA students who don’t come from Willamette. Summer’s from UofO, and she tagged along on our excursion to Paris, and it was as though we had all been friends forever instead of just meeting her for the first time a month ago. I mean, granted, there were tense moments in Paris just for the reason of being literally inseparable. We went everywhere together and then came back to the same room (more on that later in the Paris post). But here, we all have our own rooms, so we can at least decompress a little between encounters and sorties before venturing out again. Lindsey and I walked to and from school together almost every day of the month of intensives, and I never got sick of her. It must have been because of her wonderfully infectious and vivacious personality (she reads this occasionally, if you were wondering), coupled with our combined enthusiasm for France and being here (I’m so glad you decided to come to Angers, Lindsey. I can’t even imagine it without you now.).

So looking back on this entry, I guess it’s a little depressing that I seem to miss so much more than I don’t, but it’s not like I spend my days pining for the States. Really, I’m happy most moments that I’m here (except truly, it’s exhausting, this whole not-having-a-clue thing. Literally exhausting. I sleep so much.). And really, I wasn’t planning on missing a whole lot of concrete qualities from home (I guess you could say I was planning on loving everything), so there’s not much that I could write for that. It's just funny what you end up missing. Like free public toilets. I forgot to add that one. That's first on the list. Let's put that in bold. FREE PUBLIC TOILETS.