Chapitre 9: le fin s'approche.

Note: I wrote this, as you will see, 3 days ago, but I wanted to add some pictures so I didn't post it.  I decided to leave it in its original form though.

Marche de Noël in Place Grenette - same place our hotel was when I first got here

It seems my time here is going by faster than ever as I'll be home in a mere 4 days.  I'm sure there's a quote from the Ghost of Christmas Present in "A Muppet Christmas Carol" that sums up this feeling well, but I can't remember it exactly*.  This week is full of tests and papers, but I'll be done with everything on Thursday.  With that being said, I've still managed to find ample time to do things like makes list about my experience here.  So without further ado, I present The Lists:

Pretty Christmas decorations all over the place

List 1: Things I have learned in France

Fancy buches de Noël at a patisserie

1. I love cheese. I used to like cheese, but now I REALLY love cheese.
2. Colonisation was a bad thing.
3. French grammar is hard.  As soon as you think you've mastered one thing, SIKE!  Not yet!  There are infinitely more rules and exceptions yet to learn!
4. Despite the difficulty, living in a country is definitely the best way to learn a language.  Granted, I spent 10 hours a week in language class, but I feel like I learned as much in this semester (and really learned, not just thought about for 1 class and then forgot)  than I did in years of French class.  Which is not to say that my french classes were pointless, but it is much harder to really absorb things when only speak french for an hour every other day.   
5. I haven't figured this one out yet, but the other day I learned that "vair" is a french word for a fur used for lining and trimmming clothes in the middle ages.  My professor told us the only time she's heard it is in the story of "Cendrillon", which is the French version of Cinderella.  Interestingly, the french word for glass is "verre" which is pronounced the same way as "vair".  This leads me to believe that this whole glass slipper debacle was one big misunderstanding.  Maybe she had squirrel-fur slippers but some english bloke translated it the wrong way?  Or, did she really have glass slippers and some French person misheard and wrote it down wrong?  Moral of this story:  I learned that homophones are tricky.
6. French eclairs are different than Maine eclairs.  They have chocolate or coffee flavored filling.  Different, not better.
7. There are a lot of problems in France/Europe.  Sometimes it seems like Europe is some magical, progressive problem free land, but it turns out that although their fashion trends may be ahead of the curve, their solutions to social and economic problems are not.  It's not any better or worse than in the U.S., just different.  And not perfect.
8. Addendum to #7.  Europeans, contrary to popular belief, do not always dress stylishly.  I've seen 6 mullets in the last 2 weeks. 
9. The word for magic wand in French is "baguette" like the bread.  This made for hilarious Harry Potter subtitles.

Marche de Noël

List 2:  Things I am excited to go home for

1. Toilet seats.  Most of the public restrooms (not that there are many here...) don't have toilet seats.  I've been doing just fine without them, but I'm looking forward to not worrying about falling in a toilet for a long long time. 
2. On a related subject, public bathrooms.  I know I've talked about this before, but you never really notice how useful they are until they don't exist.  My (french) professor agreed that French and European bathrooms in general, are not up to par with American bathrooms (except for the Swiss, because they've got their ducks all in a row). 
3. Margaret, cutest guinea pig in the world, and the rest of my dearly beloved.
4. Milk.  Not demi-creme lait, I'm ready for some good ole skim milk.
5. Snack food.  I guess I could have been snacking the whole time I've been here, but it's just not so popular here.  Better have some Cheez-its ready Mom!  Maybe in the car on the way home?
6. English.  As much as I love French, its going to be nice to not have to think really hard while trying to eavesdrop on people in public.  Or think really hard while I watch TV.  Or think about the best way to say "I'd like some chips with my sandwich too".   
7. America, in general.  I'm a patriot.

My professor bought us coffee/hot chocolate for our last class!

List 3: Things I will miss about this place

1. Fluffy, cutest dog in the world... and the rest of the Von Trapps.  
2. The food.  Looking forward to some American cooking, but I'm already dreading the cheese withdrawal.  And what will I do without my daily dose of pain au chocolat?
3. Old buildings.  A country that's only some 234 years old (I mean the U.S.A., if history's not your thing) just can't compete with centuries of architectural development.
4. French people.  Maybe its just because I find french a funny language sometimes, but French people really crack me up and I'm going to miss them.  
5. The Grenoble area - I'll miss looking out my window at the Alps every morning.  Everything about this place is beautiful in a very special way.
6. Generally living here.  I think part of the study abroad experience is very personal and independent, and I'll miss that.  It's sort of an odd contradiction because I'm excited to go home and not have to be so independent (even though I lived with a family here), but at the same time I'll miss that part of the experience.  

jam for sale at the Marche de Noël

In conclusion, I've had a really great experience here.  It was difficult at times and absolutely incredible at others, and I know that I learned so much, both academically and personally.  It's hard to share every aspect of the experience through a blog, emails or even talking, but I've tried to share what I could.  Best wishes to you all!  And don't worry, you can expect another blog post when I'm waiting in the airport!

*I found the quotes I was thinking of.  They are "My time grows short" and "My time upon this globe is very brief, I believe it will end when the clock strikes 12".  I guess they're not as astoundingly elegant as I thought, but I'm in a Christmasy mood.

Chapitre 8: Cooking conquests, but only in french.

Bonjour once more friends!  My semester is quickly coming to a close.  I really feel like just yesterday I was gaping at only having a month left, now here I am looking at single digits.  I feel like I have about a billion things I could post here right now, between summaries of my experience, feelings about going home, final exams and papers, and my life here, but I'll settle on just one thing for this post.  I'm sorry for the delay in posts, I guess life's been catching up with me, but I promise to post at least once more before going home.  

Domestic Goddess?

Anyway, in this post I decided to share a little more about french food - specifically, the french food that I've been making!  That's right, I've been learning to cook here!  One of the hosts mothers for our program, who went to culinary school and loves cooking, offers a cooking class to the students each year.  Since I don't (didn't) really know how to cook (assuming pasta, brownie mixes and grilled cheese don't count) I figured that there's no time like a semester in France to start learning.  After all, as one of my professors is fond of mentioning, France is renowned worldwide for its delicious meals.  Although I've yet to discover the passion for cooking that some people seem to have, I've learned quite a bit and I've been quite proud of how my dishes have turned out, which is to say, they've all been better-than-edible.

meal in progress (my soup is on the back left burner)

But here's the thing [and I hope this doesn't make me sound like a pretentious student who's gone abroad and pretends to only know french when they get back] : I'm afraid I only know how to cook in french.  Of course I know I'll be able to look at a recipe and understand what its saying, but cooking is more than just a recipe.  Maybe for my classmates who actually knew cooking terms in english before this class, this isn't the case; for me, I didn't know some of the terms or techniques until I learned them here.  Now I'm going to have to look them up online to translate them back into english!  Oh, the struggles.  As if that wasn't enough, French people don't use cups or the farenheit scale.  So not only do I have to translate the words, I'll have to do calculations if I want to use these recipes at home!  As much as I love America, I have to ask: why couldn't we have just switched to the metric system back in the 80's or whenever they tried to get that going?  But that's enough griping for one day.  Allow me to now make you salivate with tantalizing stories of my cooking conquests.

Two weeks ago, I made un gateau roulé (cake roll) with raspberry currant jelly inside.  Did I waste 3 eggs in my struggle to separate the whites from the yellow?  Did I not beat the egg whites for as long as necessary?  Did I forget the baking soda?  Did the cake taste wonderfully despite my errors?  Answers: Yes.

Cooking friends and I, minus Robert

The first week, I made the potage, vegetable soup.  I chose well, as this was essentially impossible to ruin.  I peeled and chopped the appropriate vegetables, put them in boiling water, and then blended it all up when the were done.  Success!  In fact, over the course of our 6 classes, I'm happy to say we had nothing but success.  A few errors here and there, but all in all everything tasted great to me.  For our last class, which was this Monday, I started back where I began with a vegetable soup, this time a bit more complicated and even more delicious, if I do say so myself.  It was a tomato soup with onions and cheese.  The true art of this soup lay in the cheese - you have to wait "au moment de servir" to put the cheese on so that it melts across the top just as it is served.  I was nervous, but it worked out.  The dessert for our last class was îles flottante and a bûche de Noël - directly translated as: floating islands and a Christmas log.  Sounds delicious, eh?  Îles flottante is meringue floating in a custardy-cream sauce, and it was quite a spectacle to watch it being made.  It's not my favorite type of dessert, as I'm not a huge fan of custard flavors, but it was genial nevertheless.  The Bûche de Noël is a traditional Christmas cake.  A cake roll filled with chocolate frosting, then frosted on the outside with chocolate and decorated to look like a yule log.  It was delicious and lots of fun to decorate, although I didn't actually make it.  

Buche de Noel

I'm really glad I decided to take the class, because I learned a lot and got over my fear of cooking and because it was another great oppurtunity to learn about French culture and spend time with a different French family (plus my wonderful classmates/friends!).  Our teacher, Nicole, made the whole experience wonderful.  She is a stereotypical older French woman - stern on the outside, but warm and kind on the inside.  Each time I made a mistake, she'd say "Ah, c'est pas TROP grave" in a way that made me fear for the future of our meal, while at the same time remedying what she could and showing me how to avoid the mistake or do it differently in the future.  She takes great pride in her work and rightfully so.  Some of the recipes we made were her own creations and they were all fantastic.  She'd tell us if something didn't come out quite right, adding in something like, "Well, I know the meat was good because I cooked the other half at lunch and that was perfect, and I know the problem wasn't the recipe, because I wrote that myself".  Ah, the French know how to be proud, but it was a nice, well-meaning and well-deserved pride in this case.

Meal from last week - I made the clafoutis de carottes (in the back left), we also had ratatouille and a beef dish

In conclusion, although I've always enjoyed eating, I've never felt like a food connaisseur.  In fact,  I still don't feel this way, but there are certain aspects of French cuisine that I've come to appreciate which I will certainly miss back at home, like unpasteurized cheese and undefined meat dishes.  I can't say I'll miss everything (no crême brulée for me please ... and no cow face) but I'll always cherish my Grenobloise and Savoyarde specialities.    (Cooking class photo credits go to one Callie Feingold, thanks!)

p.s.  My host family's puppy is the cutest thing in the world.  Her name is Fluffy, which was inspired by yours truly.  We pronounce it "Flooofy" though, since the "uh" sound doesn't really work in french.