An American Girl in Avignon
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Nutella is a big No-No
Today was the third day of classes, and since I was up until three in the morning the night before finishing my journals, the consequences of procrastination, I was a bit of a mess today. The alarm did not go off, so Kristina and I woke up startled to discover that we had to be in our seats in thirty minutes. I don’t think I have ever gotten ready faster in my life. Rushing to the bathroom to dress and wash my face, I threw on some clothes without showering and tossed my hair back in a messy pony tail before running out the door. I looked like a “disast” (Sakinah’s abbreviated form of “disaster” that has been adopted as the unofficial word of our trip), so no hopes for attracting the attention of any creepy French boys today. Kind of glad about that actually…
Sliding into our seats without a second to spare, I started to feel my fatigue and lack of caffeine as soon as my back hit the chair. It was going to be a long day. Our first class was writing with a petite, gentle woman named Mademoiselle Mathis. She spoke very clearly and even taught us words to be avoided if we were worried about our pronunciation errors, such as the f-word. Unfortunately, the f-word clearly resembles the verb for “to kiss” and another word commonly used in French called le bisou (the term for the French greeting of kissing one another on the cheeks when you meet and when you part. Two kisses in Paris. Three kisses here). We have to be careful, because the mispronunciation of one letter can lead to us saying something we didn’t mean…at least she warned us, and now we all know how to tell someone to f-off in French
The class continued with us making acrostics using the letters of our name with adjectives that describe ourselves. Unfortunately, I used a word that I didn’t know, thinking that it meant I was tactile, but it really meant that I was touchy. Lovely. She understood that I made an error when we shared our adjectives with class, and laughed jokingly at my mistake. We then wrote poems about things we liked and things we didn’t like, and it was surprisingly enjoyable. Well I know one thing I do like: this class; it was such a breath of fresh hair after my mess of a morning.
Since I decided to opt out of the resistance course, I had a four hour break during which I had lunch, met with Katy to talk about my travel journal, and returned to the house to take possibly the longest, hottest, most enjoyable shower of my life.
Lunch today was probably the weirdest thing I have seen. The plat du jour was a Creole dish of rice and peppers with cooked crawdads (which were still in the shell and had their legs!!) mixed with clams. What kind of school serves this kind of stuff? If I didn’t look at the thing staring back at me, I could eat it. I tried to convince myself that it was lobster or plain old shrimp. Since I like seafood, it worked. But I just don’t like the feeling of my food staring back at me on my plate! I want my food to look like food, not the animal it came from; that is just too strange. It’s safe to say that I won’t be eating that again, and now I know why the cafeteria food is so cheap: some of it is inedible.
Our last two hour class of the day was oral production, and I definitely started the course off on the wrong foot. I arrived early, but set my books down and left to go to the bathroom and grab coffee before class. When I returned, everyone was gone! The class had been moved (without my knowledge), so Lance, Brad, Melissa, and I wandered the halls searching for the new location. I texted several people, without getting a response, since they were in class, but finally managed to arrive at the classroom with the others…thirty minutes late. The teacher was not happy at all. We apologized and explained what happened, but she didn’t seem to care. This is going to be an interesting quarter indeed. There was no syllabus for the class, and she didn’t explain what the class was about, or what we were doing. She just rambled about different types of speaking in French without explanation. People asked questions, but she didn’t answer them directly. She ended class with assigning us a partner project and a topic without telling us what we had to do. Kyle and I took “L’Interrogation” (French question words). We thought it would be easy to do a project on the different ways to ask questions in French, yet I still don’t quite know where to begin or what to do. Ahh, if only everything was in English! It’s bad enough not understanding what a professor wants in English, try figuring it out in French. It’s exhausting, but this quarter, I’m up for the challenge.
When Kristina and I returned to our host family, we found Paul at the kitchen table sipping on hot chocolate and listening to the Doors. This surprised me very much. I wouldn’t have taken him for a classic American rock fan, but the more Kristina and I got to talking with him about music interests, we realized that we had more in common than we thought. He likes the Hives, Nirvana, the Eagles, Punk, Alternative, and all sorts of other American music. Sadly, he was not a Daft Punk fan, and explained to me that the reason I couldn’t find a French version of the CD was because there wasn’t one. It turns out that when they first started out, the French producers thought their music was horrible. As a result, the group had to launch their CD in England, and therefore make their music in English for globalization purposes. I like talking to Paul; I learn something new from him every day. He has turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He even offered to go out with us one night on the town and gave us advice to which college hangouts to go to…and which ones to avoid. I am going to like having him around. The fact that he speaks English pretty well is also a huge plus J
The Morveillez have a dinner tradition. When it rains, they make crêpes. In that case, I wish it would rain more often. Dinner, although supposed to be at the usual 8:00 sharp, didn’t start until 9. I went downstairs around 8:10 to see if it was ready, but they told me, “c’est presque prête, seulement dix minutes plus.” (It’s almost ready, only ten more minutes). The French have a flair for either being right on time, or extremely late… in a fashionable je ne sais quoi manner. But dinner was worth the wait. The first course was crêpes salées, crêpes with meat and vegetables. The meal ended with red wine and two crêpes sucres, dessert crepes. I felt kind of awkward when they placed out my peanut butter to mix in the sweet crepes, and commented on the reason that they didn’t keep that and yummy things like Nutella in the house was because they are so bad for you. Their children just smiled, slapped a mound of peanut butter and honey or jelly inside their crepes, and ate up. I felt like I had violates some strict family code. Oops. I don’t think I will be bringing peanut butter inside another French home again. The parents shot darting glances at each other as their children reached for a second helping. It was as if I had brought an illegal substance into the house that would corrupt their children. I honestly felt really bad about this too, but I don’t understand how they could use the excuse that the food is really bad for you, when they have all this other “bad” food in the house. Guess peanut butter and Nutella are considered to be worse than full-fat milk, butter, lard-covered red meat , rich wine, cheese, syrupy miel (honey substance), and an endless array of pastries and desserts. Hmm, and crêpes by themselves weren’t bad enough as is? Oh well; I meant well. I just smiled and ate in silence as the children happily devoured my “evil” gift. I just hope I didn't offended the family in any way, because I didn't know how to respond to their comments. I understood where they were coming from, but I felt really awkward about the whole situation. You live, and you learn.
Kristina and I agreed with best intentions that we would be in bed by 11 tonight, but of course, this didn’t happen. Since dinner was so late, we were both up past midnight finishing our homework and journals. I am making it my personal goal to get to bed before midnight one of these days!
Tomorrow I am going to meet my French correspondent at a bar called the Red Sky at 8:45, and I am a little nervous. She is coming along with her boyfriend and other friend, who is the correspondent of Elisse, and her boyfriend. I hope that she speaks a little English, because I may end up looking like a mute mime.
Sliding into our seats without a second to spare, I started to feel my fatigue and lack of caffeine as soon as my back hit the chair. It was going to be a long day. Our first class was writing with a petite, gentle woman named Mademoiselle Mathis. She spoke very clearly and even taught us words to be avoided if we were worried about our pronunciation errors, such as the f-word. Unfortunately, the f-word clearly resembles the verb for “to kiss” and another word commonly used in French called le bisou (the term for the French greeting of kissing one another on the cheeks when you meet and when you part. Two kisses in Paris. Three kisses here). We have to be careful, because the mispronunciation of one letter can lead to us saying something we didn’t mean…at least she warned us, and now we all know how to tell someone to f-off in French
The class continued with us making acrostics using the letters of our name with adjectives that describe ourselves. Unfortunately, I used a word that I didn’t know, thinking that it meant I was tactile, but it really meant that I was touchy. Lovely. She understood that I made an error when we shared our adjectives with class, and laughed jokingly at my mistake. We then wrote poems about things we liked and things we didn’t like, and it was surprisingly enjoyable. Well I know one thing I do like: this class; it was such a breath of fresh hair after my mess of a morning.
Since I decided to opt out of the resistance course, I had a four hour break during which I had lunch, met with Katy to talk about my travel journal, and returned to the house to take possibly the longest, hottest, most enjoyable shower of my life.
Lunch today was probably the weirdest thing I have seen. The plat du jour was a Creole dish of rice and peppers with cooked crawdads (which were still in the shell and had their legs!!) mixed with clams. What kind of school serves this kind of stuff? If I didn’t look at the thing staring back at me, I could eat it. I tried to convince myself that it was lobster or plain old shrimp. Since I like seafood, it worked. But I just don’t like the feeling of my food staring back at me on my plate! I want my food to look like food, not the animal it came from; that is just too strange. It’s safe to say that I won’t be eating that again, and now I know why the cafeteria food is so cheap: some of it is inedible.
Our last two hour class of the day was oral production, and I definitely started the course off on the wrong foot. I arrived early, but set my books down and left to go to the bathroom and grab coffee before class. When I returned, everyone was gone! The class had been moved (without my knowledge), so Lance, Brad, Melissa, and I wandered the halls searching for the new location. I texted several people, without getting a response, since they were in class, but finally managed to arrive at the classroom with the others…thirty minutes late. The teacher was not happy at all. We apologized and explained what happened, but she didn’t seem to care. This is going to be an interesting quarter indeed. There was no syllabus for the class, and she didn’t explain what the class was about, or what we were doing. She just rambled about different types of speaking in French without explanation. People asked questions, but she didn’t answer them directly. She ended class with assigning us a partner project and a topic without telling us what we had to do. Kyle and I took “L’Interrogation” (French question words). We thought it would be easy to do a project on the different ways to ask questions in French, yet I still don’t quite know where to begin or what to do. Ahh, if only everything was in English! It’s bad enough not understanding what a professor wants in English, try figuring it out in French. It’s exhausting, but this quarter, I’m up for the challenge.
When Kristina and I returned to our host family, we found Paul at the kitchen table sipping on hot chocolate and listening to the Doors. This surprised me very much. I wouldn’t have taken him for a classic American rock fan, but the more Kristina and I got to talking with him about music interests, we realized that we had more in common than we thought. He likes the Hives, Nirvana, the Eagles, Punk, Alternative, and all sorts of other American music. Sadly, he was not a Daft Punk fan, and explained to me that the reason I couldn’t find a French version of the CD was because there wasn’t one. It turns out that when they first started out, the French producers thought their music was horrible. As a result, the group had to launch their CD in England, and therefore make their music in English for globalization purposes. I like talking to Paul; I learn something new from him every day. He has turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He even offered to go out with us one night on the town and gave us advice to which college hangouts to go to…and which ones to avoid. I am going to like having him around. The fact that he speaks English pretty well is also a huge plus J
The Morveillez have a dinner tradition. When it rains, they make crêpes. In that case, I wish it would rain more often. Dinner, although supposed to be at the usual 8:00 sharp, didn’t start until 9. I went downstairs around 8:10 to see if it was ready, but they told me, “c’est presque prête, seulement dix minutes plus.” (It’s almost ready, only ten more minutes). The French have a flair for either being right on time, or extremely late… in a fashionable je ne sais quoi manner. But dinner was worth the wait. The first course was crêpes salées, crêpes with meat and vegetables. The meal ended with red wine and two crêpes sucres, dessert crepes. I felt kind of awkward when they placed out my peanut butter to mix in the sweet crepes, and commented on the reason that they didn’t keep that and yummy things like Nutella in the house was because they are so bad for you. Their children just smiled, slapped a mound of peanut butter and honey or jelly inside their crepes, and ate up. I felt like I had violates some strict family code. Oops. I don’t think I will be bringing peanut butter inside another French home again. The parents shot darting glances at each other as their children reached for a second helping. It was as if I had brought an illegal substance into the house that would corrupt their children. I honestly felt really bad about this too, but I don’t understand how they could use the excuse that the food is really bad for you, when they have all this other “bad” food in the house. Guess peanut butter and Nutella are considered to be worse than full-fat milk, butter, lard-covered red meat , rich wine, cheese, syrupy miel (honey substance), and an endless array of pastries and desserts. Hmm, and crêpes by themselves weren’t bad enough as is? Oh well; I meant well. I just smiled and ate in silence as the children happily devoured my “evil” gift. I just hope I didn't offended the family in any way, because I didn't know how to respond to their comments. I understood where they were coming from, but I felt really awkward about the whole situation. You live, and you learn.
Kristina and I agreed with best intentions that we would be in bed by 11 tonight, but of course, this didn’t happen. Since dinner was so late, we were both up past midnight finishing our homework and journals. I am making it my personal goal to get to bed before midnight one of these days!
Tomorrow I am going to meet my French correspondent at a bar called the Red Sky at 8:45, and I am a little nervous. She is coming along with her boyfriend and other friend, who is the correspondent of Elisse, and her boyfriend. I hope that she speaks a little English, because I may end up looking like a mute mime.
posted by Catherine at 12:51 PM
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