Thanksgiving à la française

Sunrise: 8:30
Vocab: avoir le mal du pays - to be homesick

Well, and I will be honest. I've been hard pressed to work up the gumption to write this blog post. Officially three weeks away, my imminent return home has fostered a lot of reflection and not a little lethargy. The Mal du Pays struck pretty hard after Thanksgiving and I needed to spend a lot of Friday locked in my room going on facebook and pretending to be in America. Don't get me wrong, I had an amazing birthday and the food at Thanksgiving was delicious (both to be discussed!), but the distance between me and my friends and family just seemed that much greater when I realized how separate our experiences of this week had been; for me, Thanksgiving was more or less just another day with a fancy dinner at the end, and for them, my birthday was just a 24-hour window in which they had an excuse to write on my facebook wall. Well, maybe that's a bit much, but you see what I mean -- inverse experiences.

I'm eager to get home for Christmas, but my looming departure has also induced a certain amount of clinging; I still have so much left to see and do, it seems, and French friends who I may not see again for a long time once I leave. No question about it, I will return, but it won't be the same. This desire to see and do has not combined well with my approaching finals -- not a lot of work, but more work than I have been doing, to be honest. Mixing two such volatile ingredients in a vessel primed with homesickness has led to lethargy and a generally sedentary lifestyle these past few days. I'm overwhelmed. And thus the W descends again. This is a study abroad blog, after all, and I ought to document every aspect of this experience -- which includes the occasional period of emotional turmoil. During my solitary Friday, I watched L'auberge espagnole, a really fantastic French film with Audrey Tautou (in a role much smaller than and different from Amélie) that follows a young French university student on his year abroad in Spain with ERASMUS. He cries all the time.

But, on to happier things. My birthday was incredible; I was on such a high then that I guess my current crash was somewhat inevitable (again, tragedy?). Turning 21, for some unexplained reason, induced a day of delirious happiness. In between my two classes at the fac, as I was sitting in the open study space in the lobby Censive (the humanities building, basically), I could hardly control my impulse to laugh. Fortunately, that night I found an outlet for all of my suppressed mirth: Nantes Comedy Club. Naturally, it was Angèle's suggestion, and so after my inaugural G&T, we headed over to the show. Well, to make a long story short, it didn't take long for the MC to discover that I was an American student celebrating her 21st birthday, and naturally he started to tease me -- and I bantered back! I don't know what came over me, but I was actually funny, and that discovery was probably the best birthday gift I could have received. Other comedians that night seemed to pick up on my willingness to play with them and to speak in English and French, but the moral of the story is: I have a French sense of humor!

Two days later, it was Thursday, time for Thanksgiving à la française. IES had booked a restaurant out in the middle of nowhere -- on the outskirts of town, if you will -- because they had to find somewhere large enough to accommodate a group as formidable as ours: IES students, French host families, and visiting American parents. Marie couldn't make it because of another obligation, so I was really all alone in the midst of so many families and pseudo-families. Luckily, I found a place at the table with my friend Lauren and her host siblings: Comb, Elois, and Fauste (approximated spellings). Comb and Elois, the two older brothers, are 17 and 15 respectively, leaving their 13-year-old sister Fauste rather at a disadvantage when it comes to teasing. She holds her own though, and the three of them put on quite a show over dinner. I spent the most time speaking with Comb because he is absolutely obsessed with America; no sooner had I mentioned my New York upbringing when he began to grill me with Gossip Girl related questions ("is it really like that?").

I can't say I minded, though. French kids are funny. Most of the ones I've met have been incredibly poised and gracious, good conversationalists, and sharp dressers, but there are always little details here and there that give away how young they are -- the way they fidget when the conversation gets boring, or bite their nails, or laugh too loud. I was lucky to spend my Thanksgiving with such a lively group of siblings. But even these America-fixated, Abercrombie-American-Eagle-Hollister-wearing French adolescents had never experienced Thanksgiving before. I think the menu puzzled them a bit...it confused me, too, honestly, because all of the right ingredients were there, but it just didn't feel like home. The dishes were too polished. Here is what we ate...

The evening started with...how to describe it...I suppose it was something like bruschetta (only monster sized) with roasted peppers and vinaigrette dressing. (Sorry the photo quality is not wonderful; I blame the ambient lighting and my aversion to flash photography.):



After the appetizer came the true test, though -- the turkey. I have to say, I was impressed with my dinde à la française. The perfectly cooked meat was tender and juicy, dribbled over with a cranberry (wine?) sauce that artfully combined savory and sweet. Also on the plate were cooked chestnuts (a recurring theme here that I'm beginning to enjoy) and mushrooms...perhaps an attempt at stuffing. What I really missed though, was mashed potatoes. I guess purée de pommes de terre just doesn't fly in the land of wine and cheese, and each plate came with two measly, scrawny boiled potatos. Alas (oh, but note the red wine):



We rounded out our night of French portions with an insufficient amount of dessert; then again, when the primary confection is pumpkin flan, perhaps it's better to have only a sliver. I've never been a huge pumpkin pie fan, but this Thanksgiving, I finally came to appreciate the art of the pumpkin pie (although, as Garrison Keillor so accurately states, "The best pumpkin pie you eat isn't much different from the worst"). Our pumpkin flan wouldn't have been that bad if it hadn't been for one very out of place spice; we suspect it may have been curry, and I, personally, suspect that they based their pumpkin flan recipe on a recipe for pumpkin soup (a much more common dish in France):



Well and there you have it. In spite of my semi-sarcastic commentary, it really was a lovely meal -- if for no other reason than the company!

Addendum: And how could I forget to mention another amazing birthday present?! I was sitting next to Lauren's host dad at dinner, so naturally we chatted a little bit about my studies and experiences in Nantes. And, do you know what he told me? "You speak French very well. You have no accent." YES!

The W: A Rambling Study of Photoless Blogging

Sunrise Today:
7:57am

French Vocabulary Lesson:
claquettes - flip flops
acariâtre - cantaknerous

You'll notice a few things about this blog post. First: the brief account of practical knowledge prefacing the body of this literary chef d'œuvre. I have my reasons. To explain the second item first (because I'm all about digressions and convolutedness), I've been keeping a running list of the new words I'm learning. I haven't recorded all of them, but I have made a point of noting words that I find particularly useful and/or amusing. (Case in point: above.) The former item, the sunrise time, relates to a brief anecdote from the week:

My courses at the University of Nantes started this week, and my very first class (The Literary History of the 19th Century) commenced at 8:00am on Tuesday morning. Factoring in the 15 minute walk to the tram, the amount of time I would spend waiting for and riding the tram, the walk to the building, and the inevitable time I would spend being lost, I decided to leave myself a generous hour to get from home to class. In other words, I planned to leave at 7:00am. Much to my chagrin, the sky was absolutely pitch black when my alarm sounded at 6:00am. Figuring the sun would start to rise as I slouched through the necessary morning ablutions, I hauled myself out of bed and into the bathroom. Half an hour passed and I was dressed. Fifteen minutes later I had eaten breakfast (I've been doing that here). That adds up to forty five minutes, and even in the time it took me to calculate that sum, the sky remained decidedly, stubbornly dark.

I checked the weather: no rain. I checked my email: nothing doing. I read the newspaper online: that was depressing. Finally, I googled "global sunrise times" and discovered that the sun did not plan to grace Nantes with its presence until nearly 8:00am. So, at 7:10, I plunged into the night of morning. While the walk to the tram doesn't take me down any sketchy alleyways or narrow streets, it's long, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little afraid. Although I generally feel quite safe here, there are times when I am rudely reminded that I am a woman traveling in a foreign country. Sometimes, the young men here think it's okay to slink up to me while I'm staring at the ground waiting for the tram in the evening and shove their faces into my line of vision, forcing me into the eye-contact I've been told to avoid. It's no real threat, but it's a display of power -- no, machismo -- that I find quite off-putting. But, I digress.

Fortunately, though the sky could have been a 2:00am sky, the streets were what anyone might expect of pre-rush-hour morning streets. Businesspeople, uniformed school children, bedraggled university students. Soon, I was reveling in the crisp air of an autumn morning in Nantes. Crammed into my tram car with all the other morning commuters, I watched the sunrise. The sky turned purple, then pink, and was still working on blue by the time I found the amphitheater for my class. Moral of the story: the sun rises very late here. I find this both disturbing and amusing. I would like to document the gradual decrease of daylight hours here in Nantes, and I'd like to take you along for the ride -- hence the sunrise report.

In the spirit of digressions and disorderliness (and postmodernism), before I continue with my linear narrative, I'll briefly point out (and explain) another thing you might notice (or have noticed) about this entry (aside from my excessive use of parentheses...but that's not too out of the ordinary, anyway, is it?). There are no photos. I have no new photos to show you right now. Last Saturday night, I had a serious case of "The Plunge," as depicted in a graphical representation of "The W" earlier in this blog. Therefore, I did not go out with my friends or make plans with them for Sunday (no Planetarium, in the end). As much as I love it here, and as happy as I am with my friends and with Marie, sometimes a girl's just gotta cry.

Things took a turn for the better on Sunday, which I spent with Marie. I hope that these Sundays we spend together continue. This past Sunday, we went to two exhibitions in Nantes: a photo exhibit at Lieu Unique -- or LU, that's right the original Lefevre-Utile, LU cookie factory that's been converted into a bar/art space. Nantes: home to the industrial chic avant garde. Among the displays, there was an incredibly disturbing display on domestic slavery and violence, but I also found the artistic activism of the whole piece to be incredibly refreshing. Each panel comprised a simple photo of the façade of a building on one side, and one woman's story of abuse on the other. It made me feel how easily a façade of normalcy can conceal abuse and how sometimes closed doors are all it takes to deter prying eyes. It was a bit much for me in my fragile, W-ridden emotional state, but I'm glad I saw it. LU also apparently hosts artists, and we stopped by the "studio" where the current artist-in-residence had been working on these enormous wall-sized sketches of a young boy. Really stunning.

After that, we went to Scopitone, a very new age exhibit in one of the hangars over on Ile de Nantes (not far from the Elephant). Most of the displays at Scopitone incorporated multimedia and had some interactive component. I won't even attempt to describe any of what I saw there, but you can check out the website if you're curious. (If you can't tell, I just figured out how to add hyperlinks to blog posts.)

Marie's nephew Arnault and his friend Sarah actually came with us, and that just added to the fun, since they're much closer to my age -- mid-20s. It was also totally refreshing to spend the day speaking French with real French people. I haven't done enough of that yet since I'm kind of scared of the university students, but I can tell I'm getting better. There's still a lot of practical vocabulary that I'm lacking, but I'm learning, and the people I speak to are patient enough to teach me -- and hey, Conversation Club started this week! It's about half IES students and half local French students; we break off into smaller groups, each with a discussion-leader (animateur) and spend half the time speaking in French and half in English. We met some really nice French people this week, and every time someone actually understands what I'm saying, I feel more confident in my speaking ability, which just makes me giddy to practice some more. For once, a productive cycle.

Now, we return to my classes -- but there's a logical segue! I still haven't gotten up the courage to strike up a conversation with any university students. On the bright side, I understood about 80% of what my professors said this week, and I'd say that's a pretty respectable portion for the first week of class. Two of my classes (Literary History and African History) are lecture (or CM) classes in huge amphitheaters. In the spirit of cultural relativism, I've tried not to let my small liberal arts school sensibilities get in the way. The professors are very smart and with each passing year I stand more in awe of educators who engage a room with their verbal essay-writing. I miss having professors who care about my opinions, but for the time being I'm just as happy to keep them to myself in a packed amphitheater. In fact, my smaller class (a TD) is by far the most intimidating. The professor allows the students to speak up and expects each of us to deliver an oral presentation at some point this semester... I don't want to talk about it. At any rate, we're reading 18th Century erotic literature and philosophy, and the salacious reading material is engaging and easy enough to understand, so I'm content. Incidentally, textbooks are so much cheaper in France!

I stand both in awe and horror at how much I have managed to write of the mundane facts of my existence (albeit, a French existence). I will conclude by informing you that I had my first Salsa class today (my ju-jitsu alternative) and I'm making progress, both dance-floor-deftness-wise and French-friend-making-wise.

Tomorrow, I will again wake up before sunrise for an IES excursion to Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo, just north of here. Photographic evidence of history and hijinks to come.

To my devoted readers who have gotten this far, I thank you and wish you the bonne-est of bonne nuits!

The W (at last)

This is a visual approximation of my predicted emotional trajectory during my time abroad (and subsequent return home), courtesy the Student Handbook. Click to enlarge: