The Bubble Tea :: Le Thé aux Perles

I went to a Moroccan restaurant with my host family. What's nice about France is that you can walk to the restaurant in three minutes.  What sucks about France is that it's cold.  Or, at least where I live.

My town is the type of place with a lot of rain (or at least, this week) and wind, and it's cold, and it becomes night at 15h, and without the loveliness of snow.  Though that's probably a good thing, because there aren't any lawns to be covered by snow.  Just cobblestone roads.

Those cobblestone roads look really pretty, but I suppose they're a bit impractical for rain, since they catch all the drops and form little puddles.  My only pair of shoes, since yesterday when I finally admitted a necessity of a new pair, were ballet flats, and they got completely soaked.

I'll make sure to get waterproof ones next time

Back to the Moroccan restaurant.  Except not really.  I think Moroccan food is common in France, or at least, from what I can tell.  My host family eats it a lot, since there are a bunch of new restaurants from all the immigrants a while back.  Or something like that, I was distracted from the explanation by the food.

As good as the Moroccan dish was, I couldn't finish my plate.  Usually, that's fine, in the States I get a takeout box and I can finish it tomorrow.  Haha, NOT IN FRANCE.  Restaurants don't offer doggie bags.

"Is this what you requested, Madame?"

I felt incredibly guilty when I found out that I wouldn't be able to finish my food.  I can't stand waste of food, but only to an extent, like when the food is good, expensive, and took a lot of effort.  McDonald for me (though I honestly don't eat it a lot) isn't something I force myself to finish.

But wait!  My host family explained to the waitress that I was American and usually we take the food home, as to not waste it.  She understood, and I got my takeout, uh, not box, since it's not common and restaurants don't have those on hand here.  I got couscous wrapped up in tin foil and a styrofoam box.

Whatever, it still tasted good.

I completely forgot the point of this post.  I tried explaining bubble tea to my host parents.  My friends got me addicted to it before I left for France, like RIGHT before I left for France.  

So naturally, I tried to see if I could get it here.  The thing is, there's a way smaller Asian community in France, at least from what I know.  There aren't any Korean stores or Chinese supermarkets here.  Of course, there are the Chinese restaurants, but those are everywhere, and here, they usually just lump all of the oriental cooking in the Chinese category.  

the circles make the characters look a little Korean

Ask for asian food and people only think of ramen, rice, and sushi.  All good things, of course, but never pho or bubble tea.

I don't think I realized how weird bubble tea was until I tried to describe it in French.

No clear cut picture could be drawn

"Um, you know how when you blend a bunch of fruit together with milk or ice cream?  What's that called?  Oh, it's called a smoothie?  Okay, ummmmmmmm well what I'm talking about, it's like a smoothie, but at the bottom is tea, no, not hot tea, it's cold, there's ice in the drink, okay, so in the tea, there's like....pasta????"

I'm eloquent.  I know.  I gave up though, and searched it on Wikipedia, who's like my new internet best friend.  Seriously, if you search something in Wikipedia, you can change it to the French page and find a much better translation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea
if you change the "en" in the link to "fr" then it automatically goes to the French version!

...as opposed to Google

Names for things in French are so much prettier too!  Though of course the country of love has a bunch of euphemisms. 

• Beads = "pearls"
• caramel apples = "apples of love"
• mother in law ="beautiful mother" (even if she's not beautiful, per se)  
• acne = "buttons"