Thing(s) I like about France

This post almost didn't come to be.  A few weeks ago I thought about making March the unofficial "say something nice about your host country" month with the ambitious idea of posting one positive France post a week.  But I wasn't sure I could come up with enough reasons! 

Before you tell me I'm being negative, let me say I'm in a more positive place about my adopted homeland than before.  But like so many expats, there are times when nostalgia and the urgent need for Krispy Kreme doughnuts makes me want to hop the next direct flight to Atlanta.  And perhaps the French griping gene has made its way into my system. 

But as I've mentioned before, there is one thing I really like around here and that is market day.  This is something you can see in America but you've got to admit that the Europeans do it in such a colorful and quaint way.  I also like that I can just set out by foot with my bag and in ten minutes be surrounded by all sorts of goodies.  It's a nice Saturday errand that makes me feel like I've gotten out into the world.  Even if I just buy an organic lemon to make madeleines (recipe coming soon) and a kilo of potatoes for some hachis parmentier, I have at least made contact with people.

So since market day is all about the visuals (and smells but you don't have smell-o-vision), I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Colorful awnings and a rainbow of produce.

 

Cheese lovers have plenty to choose from too.

 

Chickens, anyone?  For egg-laying, I assume.

 

My Saturday shopping bag- great for library books and lemons ;)

 

 Chocolate Easter eggs at a bakery near the market. 

As you can tell by these pictures, it's still cold around here.  But imagine it all on a sunny spring day and it's all the nicer.  So now it's your turn: what do you like about your country or adopted country?

A few things to iron out

I was at a mixed nationaliy tea party this weekend when my Singaporean friend said she would be heading off and had a lot of ironing to do.  The French lady there sympathized.  I couldn't resist.  I said, ladies, get thee a dryer.  Actually, my Singaporean friend does have one.  But apparently she still ends up ironing a lot.

Maybe I'm not a highly demanding person in terms of wrinkle-free clothes.  But since I've had my dryer (that golden moment in 2010) I have really done very little ironing.  I do as little as possible in fact.  Only when something is really wrinkly or I have a job interview do I haul out the board and iron.  Otherwise I make sure I take the most sensitive stuff out of the dryer right away and fold it in the basket and that's it.  End of story.

I first realized I was not crazy (er, jury's still out on that one...) when I read an American expat's article on ironing back in 2005.  I literally laughed out loud and was so comforted to know that it was normal that I didn't list ironing as a hobby.

I checked it out with my American family when I was back there in July.  My sister, mom and aunt all confirmed that they very rarely iron.  They just take stuff out of the dryer, air it out a bit and voilà!  My aunt, I should point out, even lives in West Palm Beach where appearance matters and has eaten at Donald Trump's restaurant, so she obviously cares about dressing well.  And still, not a big ironer (aside from her sheets, but that's another story).

I even noticed a US tv show while there where the dad used going home to get the stuff out of the dryer as an excuse to get out of something.  Otherwise the clothes will be all wrinkly, he said.  You see!

That's the difference between the US and France, my friends.  Whereas the dryer phenomenon is so well known in the US that it is mentioned on sitcoms, in France we get ads like this one:



This woman is so desperate to get the limescale out of her iron!

Or this one, where the woman feels compelled to get the wrinkles out of her man's shirt. The ad is for a system for quick ironing (not a bad idea, really).



So I'm wondering if maybe it's a cultural thing.  Do French women feel the need to iron?  If you like ironing and it relaxes you to do it front of the telly on a cold and grey winter's day, go for it.  But if you're doing it cause your husband refuses to (my case in the past), then rise up, my sisters!  You don't need to spend all that time with the steam in your face.  There are other more fulfilling hobbies awaiting you.  So my advice to you, if you can, get a dryer and take those clothes out right away.  It is to our generation what burning their bras was to the women in the 60s! 

Weird week

Some weeks are just not predictable.  Blizzards.  Sick child.  Potential jobs and house loan dramas and, please, somebody stop the world and let me off! 

You see, I'm kind of like Monk in some ways, as I've mentioned before.  I'm still not quite a "go with the flow" kind of gal.  I dream of a world that is orderly and goes as planned.  Preferably with big black arrows telling you which way to go and what choice to make.  Ah, wouldn't it be just great?!

But instead, we got some insane amount of snow and snow drifts that made Tuesday a surreal day.  Four hours of lessons cancelled, trips to and from Juliette's school only to find her teacher couldn't make it in.  Battling whirls of flurries and bitter wind and sidewalks full of white stuff.  As we tried to make our way to the school with the little Tunisian mom in her black veil and her kids in their parkas, we all giggled and marvelled at our strange white world. 

Remi set out to go to the greenhouse, 30 minutes south of us, because the weight of the snow on the glass had broken some panes. Arctic air was filling the greenhouse and hurting the plants so he felt he needed to go and help his parents.  Only the snow drifts were so bad that way he had to abandon his car at one point and walk to a café.  And be pulled by SUVs and a tractor on three separate occasions.  After leaving here around 7 a.m. he came back at 1 p.m., never having reached the greenhouse.

"Hey, where am I gonna sleep?"

He stayed home Wednesday since the roads were still terrible that way and built a mega snow "mouse" with Juliette.  

Meanwhile my colleagues and I carpooled into work not knowing if the highway would still be blocked on the way back.  We saw big trucks and the poor cars stuck in between them at a standstill on the other side of the highway.  The truckers and drivers were standing by their cars talking since there was nothing better to do.  Luckily the highway cleared when it was time for us to go home in the evening.

Then in the wee hours of Thursday morning Juju called out and I felt her burning forehead.  She had a fever so I had to keep her at home.  Four more hours of lessons lost, salesguy not so happy, but what can you do.  My little girl has to come first.  She was a little droopy in the morning but back to her dolls and stuffed animals in the afternoon. After a nice nap, that is...

And in between it all there was a cancelled job interview (due to the weather) and issues with the loan that seem to have been ironed out... we hope.  Sometimes life is just so... confusing. And it can be too much for a non-spontaneous girl to cope with.  Do you think there are night classes on how to deal with life?  Sign me up.













 

"Lazy girl" lives up to her name

Lately I really feel lazy...

Last year when I was in school was quite the opposite.  I never had much time to chill.  Even evenings were usually spent studying or making notecards.  When I finished last June I tried to be very gung ho about writing cover letters and calling companies for lab jobs.  Now the French economy is not doing very well and jobs are hard to come by.  My work teaching English is kind of slow lately due to the school vacation period.  So I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. 

And I'm starting to wonder if I need to kick things back into gear a bit.  My typical evening nowadays consists of chilling on the couch and checking my smart phone for emails or FB updates (evil technology that prevents me from being efficient!).  Last year I kept telling myself how great it would be to have all this free time again and how much I could get done.  But my motivation to do those tasks seems to have withered.

Like finishing Juliette's baby albums.  I've just recently finished her first year of pictures and still have a hefty pile to put in the album.  Not to mention all the photos I still need to print out that I have stored on the computer!

I could blame it on winter (and I will).  It has been cold and snowy lately and that's not conducive to getting out there and getting things done. Seriously.  As I write this I'm kind of shivery and drinking tea to warm myself up.  Not exactly get-up-and-overhaul-your-life kind of weather.  More like curl-up-and-pet-your-fat-cat kind of weather.

Snowy weather is beautiful but...
you can only take so many brisk walks in sub-freezing temps!

"Let me suck you into my world of naps..."

I am slowly trying to clean and organize things in my apartment in preparation for the move (let's hope).   One day, ONE DAY!, people, my house will resemble the Ikea catalog closet section.  Everything in its place.  We're not there yet but it's a dream.  I feel much cleaner mentally when things are clean.  Too bad the inertia of the couch prevents me from cleaning more. 

I also feel that I'm not physically moving around as much as I should.  I do walk into town sometimes but that's it.  I know I need some kind of aerobic exercise but am somewhat restricted by when Remi gets home.  Or I could use some of those holes in my work schedule to do something. But I've been saying that for about five years now...

This is nowhere near the magnitude of a mid-life crisis (though the big 4-0 is not far off...) but I think if I don't make a change in my lifestyle soon I might get "stuck" this way.

So how do YOU get motivated?

Four and a half

I've been a bad blogger lately (how many of us start posts with that line...?).  Especially when it comes to chronicling my Juju.  I also started a journal to write down some of the funny things she says but there again I'm not very regular about doing it.  Sometimes you just have to be in the moment without trying to "capture" it.  Or something about the light or the purity of that moment tells you you're not going to forget it anyway.

But I've sort of got a chronicler's soul so I'll recap the highlights of this four and a half-year old.  She can be funny as all get out.  Like the time she told me quite seriously she was going to the bathroom and that I should stay in the living room and do some "activities" and that she would be right back.  I don't where the heck she could have picked that up.  (Yes, it's me.)

Or how she tells me her African American Fisher Price figurine and the blond-haired one are "brudders" cause they both have blue shirts.  On the subject of brothers she told me she wants a "brudder" who speaks French and a sister who speaks English.  Hmmm.

She might need to learn to share a bit more anyway, cause just last Saturday she whined nearly all the walk home because I split a cookie with her instead of giving her the whole thing.  "I want the other part..." was her mantra for at least five minutes.

She likes to let her hair tickle her back when she takes a bath and as she arches her head back she'll tell me hair is getting long.  In fact since it's curly it's still shoulder length.  I've only cut her bangs about three times in her life and the back only once to get rid of some split ends.

Lately she's into making her dolls, or rather making me make her dolls talk.  I am told to make Rapunzel and Flynn talk and if I don't do it fast enough or constantly, she'll whine in the way only little children can. And though I treasure the moments playing with her, sometimes when she says this it's like the proverbial knife being brandished in a horror movie moment, with suspenseful shrieking music in the background.  Because I am totally out of inspiration to make her dollies talk and just want to veg....

Luckily my little girl has been well trained by (guess who again?) me to enjoy being "cozy on the couch."  From a young age I would say, come on, let's rest on the couch.  And sometimes to coax me into playing with her dolls she'll put pillows on the carpet for me or suggest we play on the couch. She also loves for me to stroke her hair on the couch. "Do it every day, mommy," she'll say.

She sometimes astounds us with her wisdom then says things that remind us she's still just a little girl.  And though she has her Runaway Bunny moments where she says she wants to fly away from me and that I'm "not her friend" (a major pre-school insult), usually by the evening she's come around again.  And she'll say sweetly, "Mommy, you be the mommy and I'll be the baby."  Those are roles I'm perfectly fine with. 

House Hunters International Edition

My mom was just mentioning this show a while back.  Where people with generally ginormous budgets look for palaces in Italian fairy tale landscapes.  Or even the Amerian edition where some young couple with no kids is ready to put 300 thousand bucks on a "little" cottage starter home.  

Such is not our budget.  And if you're a follower of the Lazy Girl's life you'll know that what it's really been about for, well, years, is location, location, location!  A few years back and even just a few months back, my hubby and I just couldn't come to an agreement on where to live.  I was more of a city mouse, and he a decidedly entrenched country mouse.  If I had a dime for every argument or suppressed argument on that subject, I'd have enough money to buy two Italian palaces.

Flash forward to January 2013 when hubby and I compromised. A place south of our current city that would cut out traffic for him and only add about ten minutes for me.  Still close to my work and work opportunities in the future.  I was stunned he was now considering this area.  Literally five minutes from two of my friends and fifteen minutes from another.  I was holding my breath waiting for him to change his mind.

And we started a furious few weeks of home-touring looking for one that struck our fancy and that we could both agree on.  It's actually pretty tiring to spend evenings and Saturdays visiting homes, trekking from one part of the city to another.  Most of our visits also took place during the two-week period when we had snow on the ground and bitter temperatures.  A few uninhabited houses we visited were absolutely freezing inside.

It was kind of fun seeing how other people live and decorate.  We learned a few things along the way.  Take a look at the hall of fame/shame...

Classy closets make a difference.

That 70s show bathroom... wow, that hurts my eyes.

Groovy wallpaper is NOT where it's at.

Some people out their DO have taste.  But their houses are generally pricier.

But none of these houses made it on our short-list (aside from the closet place, briefly).  We came to realize the perfect house didn't exist.  But that the pretty good one we'd visited kept coming back in our minds.  And so last Monday we made an offer on one we BOTH (gasp) agreed on.  I won't show you it yet because we haven't signed for it and must get the official green light from the bank. 

I will tell you it's white brick with a blue door, something we had both actually put on our cute house wishlist.  Keep your fingers crossed, guys, and maybe a picture will be coming soon...

Change is good. Right?!

You would think after having left my home country and adapted all along these last ten years that change would be easy for me now.  Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. 

I can meet new people every week in my job as a teacher and now barely blink an eye.  But when it comes to making personal decisions, even small ones, I sometimes freeze.  And put off said decisions for years.

Like changing my cell phone.  I was a loyal (and lazy) client of SFR for eight years.  Got my first little mobile phone from them in 2004.  I used it to send my my MMS messages she received on her email box.  I would anticipate the buzz of my phone around 12:25 p.m. my time meaning my mom had sent me an email that I would receive as an MMS.  Complicated, but it was the best I had back then when I had no phone jack and thus modem in my tiny studio apartment. 

Flash forward to late 2012 when I finally decided to trade in my now rinky dink model for a smart phone.   I could have upgraded years ago.  I could have been paying the same price per month for more features.  Or I could have up and left SFR for another, cheaper company. 

So I take my sparkly new phone home and use a bit of 3G while I'm out and about, even with my students to do some listening with BBC podcasts.  I start sending way more messages cause I have unlimited texts.  Or so I thought!  Until suddenly I get my bill.  112 euros!!!  Seems my new subscription plan didn't start till the end of January whereas my phone was purchased at the end of December.  Because I'm always billed towards the end of the month and you can't dare ask a French company to change their ways.

So I marched down to the store today and tried to put on my best "unhappy customer" face while staying respectful.  The moment I started saying this was an unpleasant suprise, etc., the sales agent's faced turned harder and unsmiley.  The same agent who'd been all too happy to get me set up with the new phone last month. 

She had pointed this issue of the date out to me, she said.  I thought she was just talking about billing, not using the phone.  But she hadn't ever said, don't use all the new features of your phone or you'll pay out the wazoo.  And there it hit me.  You're not in Alabama anymore, Milam.  This is France.  Where rules are rules and customers are rarely right. 

My only victory is that I got her to take off 20 euros cause I had seen there was an internet connection while still in the agency when she must have updated the phone.  That wasn't me.  But she wasn't too happy to do it.  And I left the store with a feeling of dismay. 

Change is scary, guys...

Next time: changing houses.  And you thought phones were tough!