Homesick :: Nostalgique

Perhaps some of you will think I'm terrible for this, but I've only been homesick once.  It wasn't for a good reason either, like skyping my parents, or messaging my friends.

I went to a birthday party for one of my host family's (many) relatives.  My host family is extremely close, and I think it's easier to be so when everyone lives in a country the size of Texas.  My family isn't like that, of course, considering how it takes an entire news program just to talk about what happens on the other coast of the USA, never mind across the ocean.

too big to be friends with everyone

If you've ever been to a party with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you'd understand what I mean.  It's like a huge clan of people that are connected to each other, and then there's you.

I'd be a tiny box in chilling in the white space next to a family on the side

Alright, so never mind the fact that I was surrounded by French people.  That's normal!  I do that everyday.

The birthday girl was turning 20 something years old, so all the adults left in respect of the college kids that wanted to party.  Me, being one of the kids, was left behind with the other cousins and the party-ers.

Slightly less normal.  At least when I'm at school or at (my French) home, I know my French friends or (direct) host family members.  Well, my host parents left, and my host brothers were off who knows where playing a video game on a DS or talking with their family members.  So there I was, surrounded by a bunch of people I didn't know, that also spoke a different language. 

Of course, there was some music, and some people started dancing.  At that point, I was slightly relieved, because at least dance floors are familiar.  Everyone forms a mass of moves that are universal.  I could just copy what others did.

maybe then they wouldn't notice that I was different

Except, just kidding.  I guess dancing is less liked in France, since only six people were on the dance floor at a time.  They always formed those circles too, so you can't join in.  Even worse, they danced properly, with partners.  By that I mean, a guy and girl would take each other by hand and waist and start twirling and dipping.

Now see, at first, it was cool to watch all the people spinning and twisting, and it was cool to listen all the French music.  That's all fine until you realize that you want to dance, and there's no one to dance with.  I sat on a (at least it was comfy) leather couch and just stared at people whirling by me. 

they could learn from French college students

Then I got hit with all the feelings of missing my friends and wanting to be with them when I heard one song.  It wasn't a sad song either, nor a love song, not even a classic.

Homesick: *********** Me:0

Why?? Because one, that is a really addictive song to dance to (something I couldn't do at the moment), two, I learned the entire rap to it because of my friends, and three, I remembered the last time I got to dance WITH MY FRIENDS, and not surrounded by a bunch of twirling Francophones.

I'm so glad that I wasn't wearing mascara or eyeliner because I'm pretty sure it would have been ruined.  I had to rinse my face TWICE.   

properly though, this girl clearly doesn't understand how to wash her face

At that point, I was pissed.  First, at the fact that no one was on Facebook so I could gripe to them (indeed, I searched for one of the family members to hook me up to the Internet), then because I was spending time in France, EXPENSIVE TIME IN FRANCE (I calculated out that each minute is about €0,02 for me), trying to talk to Americans that I could talk to after my 0,02€ per minute year.  It's like a REALLY bad cell phone contract, and your phone is calling people ALL the time.

I made sure that I got off my couch of depression and talk to the other people.  I was not going to waste my expensive year moping.  That night, I met some people that went to various parts of the United Kingdom (just try to imagine their accents in English) and I got an invitation for a tour of Paris.

Oh, that's right, I can just go over to Paris if I want to

Sometimes I forget I'm in France.  After getting used to the fact that everyone speaks a different language (duh), honestly it feels like a very long sleepover at a friend's house while going to a boarding school.  I muddle through the day, and then I mechanically fall asleep.

I was told that dreaming in French means that you're well-adjusted to France.  I haven't exactly been spewing Voltaire and Molière in my sleep.  Honestly, I haven't been as immersed in French as I should be.

seeing it oughta shock my subconscious into Frenchiness

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"

Jigglypuff :: Rondoudou

Everyday I like to believe that my French is getting better.  Certainly, that was the goal for a year in France.  I'd hoped that I'd be fluent by the time I return, though that dream seems to be getting further and further away whenever I say a French word that has an R.

Seriously, for such a pretty language, the Rs sound très guttural.  Except not even, it's just that when I attempt to say it, I sound like a cat hacking up a hairball.  I bet that Minette could still make a prettier sound than I though.

PARFAIT! Except I can't even say that properly

Apparently, for pronunciation, northern French people don't have a lot of tonality.  They place emphasis on every syllable, and that's why the French accents sounds so funny to us.  I can't pronounce the Rs and I place accents where it's unnecessary.

My friends and I tease each other about our accents.  I'm not too sensitive about it.  I think it's more of, they tease my accent, and I tease their English grammar.  Or actually, they tease my accent and grammar.  I accept that my French is terrible...or Teh-HIRRRgh-bleh.

They always give me a bunch of sentences with an abundance of Rs.  A couple days ago, they gave me a sentence with "Rondoudou" and I was like, as always, "c'est quoi, un rondoudou?" (I hope my French teacher never finds out about my terrible grammar here.  I got back a test paragraph I wrote and I could barely see what I'd written past all the red corrections).

Anyways, they gave Jigglypuff such a sad description!  It took me two minutes to realize that they were talking about a Pokemon!  

"Blue eyes, pink, fat, short, no one likes to hear it's singing.  It's got something sticking out the top of it's head."  I thought they were talking about a type of person!

maybe I didn't understand the words for cute and cuddly

In case you haven't realized by this point, yes Pokemon have different names in France.  There are some that have the same name, like Pikachu, but most of them have different names.  One of my host brothers was playing Black and White yesterday (though here it's Noir et Blanc) and all of the attack moves have different names too.

It surprises me that I was surprised that everything had a different name.  I forgot that Pokemon is Japanese.

should've thought of the spiky hair

I keep finding out that thing aren't American!  How close-minded I am!  I got my host brother an angry birds hat, as I've said before, but I found out that Rovio, the company for Angry Birds, is Finnish.

The Potato Bags :: Les Sacs en Fécule de Pomme de Terre

I'm sure I make too many comparisons here.  I'm always thinking about how things would be done in the USA.  I'm not complaining about France when I make the comparisons though, just noting how it's different, and usually better most of the time.

green apples here are really good

For example,  France seems to be way more green than the States.  From what I learned from Wikipedia, France has contributed about 1% to the world's CO2 emissions.  The States? 18%, and those numbers are from last year.

Cars are rarely used here, at least where I live.  I used to have to drive around 15 minutes to get to my friend's house.  Here, kids just walk to the town center.  It takes fewer than five minutes.  That's probably why there's way less obesity in France too, so it's better all around.

The French guy is missing the three foot long baguette

There are no cars at all in the high school parking lot.  In France, kids can get their driver's permit at 17, and their license at 18.  I'm sure that saving on fuel wasn't the intended goal of postponing the age, but it's a nice bonus.  Then again, I think my host parents told me that it's like 2000€ each month for driver's insurance for a teenager.

They still keep the lights on in the class room during the day.  It's the same in the USA, but I still don't understand it.  It'd be way better if teachers just let light in from the windows and turned the lights off.  May as well use the sun before it explodes and kills us all.

it'll still conveniently give us light while doing so

I haven't seen any automatically flushing toilets yet.  I don't like the heart attack I get every time they go off before warning, or how they waste water.  I think they're meant to keep people's hands clean, but people normally wash their hands afterwards anyways.  If they're trying to avoid germs, just develop a button that people can kick.  No one I know regularly eats with their shoes.

I had another caption, but what the f§!$ is the red hairball??

My host family recycles glass and plastic, but not paper.  Not at all.  Paper is put in a straw basket next to the fire place.  Today an entire magazine was used to make a fire.  And three logs.  And seven matches.  At least the petrol is safe in France, if not the trees.

Speaking of trees, as in not at all, my host mother told me that grocery bags are made from potatoes.  I think she said that, maybe she was saying that the plastic bags that hold potatoes are biodegradable.  Then again, I wouldn't really know, because she brings the reusable bags with her whenever we go to the supermarket.  Not because she wants to be earth friendly, but because you have to pay 0,03€ for each grocery bag you use.

I can buy 33 plastic bags with this!

It's really weird because plastic bags in the USA are free, but thinking about it, that's a lot of plastic bags for just one euro.  

I'm way more stingy about money here since I mentally convert everything into dollars.  One euro is $1.30, so I always add 30% to all the price tags I see.  Doesn't seem like too much, until you realize that a €30 sweater is $40.  Everything seems immediately more expensive.  

Converse here are 65€!  That's 84$!  Legit, one of the websites I read before I came to France said, "don't buy anything, it'll be there in the new country," IGNORE THAT.  First, find out if your new country is going to be expensive as crap (bad example), and then decide if you need to buy stuff before you leave for a YEAR in a country where shoes are 34$ more expensive.

The Cookies :: Les Biscuits

Admittedly, I didn't prepare very much.  My dad took care of practically everything, from making sure I got a visa to paying for my year in France.  So imagine my surprise when I found out that I had to make some dessert from my region in the USA.

Luckily for me, past-me got super into cooking (which basically means that past-me watched a bunch of cooking shows), so current-me now has a bunch of recipes saved on my iTouch (not even my blog is safe from the reaches of Apple).

I would call this promotion, but have you seen that PRICE??

So I flipped through my notes app, and found my chocolate chip cookie recipes from five years ago, and became all hyped up about eating cookies, and was like, "Let's do this!"

Some of my YFU friends realized that they were in France as soon as they stepped off the plane.  Another got the feeling as soon as he saw his host family.  I honestly didn't really get that feeling until I realized that THEY DON'T HAVE MEASURING CUPS IN FRANCE.

only really cute red shoes

I changed schools a lot, so going to a new high school didn't really shock me.  Neither did living in a new house, since I've lived in five different places.  

But describing the measuring cup to a Frenchman will give you a feeling of alienation like no other.  At least in all of the five places I had measuring cups and all my friends knew what a measuring cup was (not that we excitedly collaborated over baking techniques).

After I got over my shock that I was, indeed, in France, I rationalized that I could just use Google to convert the measurement.  Didn't work, since, and I realized this after I tried, cups and grams don't measure the same thing.  Grams measure mass.  Cups measure volume.   

I tried the next best thing, Wikipedia, because who doesn't want the advice of a bajillion strangers? (though note that if you don't like strangers, you can't survive in a foreign country) After I gave up on reading Wikipedia in French, I found out that there's THREE TYPES OF MEASURING CUPS, since there's no "internationally agreed standard definition of the cup."

Judy Blume should have prepared me for that

So now I know three definitions for the cup.  From Wikipedia, the metric cup (250 mL), the US legal cup (240 mL), and the US customary cup (236.58823OMGWTF65 mL).

At this point I was just about ready to give up on the cookies (and life) when I remembered that I probably also had to look up conversions for tablespoons and teaspoons.

However, a Glinda the Good Witch arrived in my life in the form of a family friend called Muriel.  He went to New York and brought back some measuring spoons for my host family.  Evidently, my host sister hadn't known what they were, so when I told her that they were for making cookies she was all, "I APPROVE!"

So now, I had one American measurement that I could use for my cookies.  Luckily for me, you can use tablespoons to measure out cups.

guess what I did next

It just shows my dedication (and how much spare time I have) that I measured out the ingredients with just a tablespoon.  Haha, just kidding, I wasn't about to measure out 72 tablespoons of sugar, brown sugar, and flour.  Nah, I took one of their bowls and made a little line on the side to mark a cup.

my chemistry teacher will be proud to know about my precision

Close enough.  Then I remembered that I had to get baking soda as a leavening agent.  I translated it (with my love hate relationship with Google) into "bicarbonate de soude" = sodium bicarbonate.  My host family never used it for baking before, they only knew it was for whitening teeth or cleaning.

Then I had to ask them for chocolate chips! Ohh la la, after all my other problems!  I didn't have google translate with me the day I tried to say chocolate chips, so I ended up blurbing something like, well chocolate chips.

they interpreted it as chocolate covered fried potato slices (chocolate chips)

In the end I didn't even buy chocolate chips.  I just broke some chocolate bars into some tiny morsels (and ate half of them before I put them in the cookie dough...shhhhhh).

I wish I could say that all the cookies turned out perfect and golden, but no.  It's not like the last time, when I burned half of the cookies.  It's much worse than that.

SIX COOKIES WERE UNDERCOOKED

Thankfully (or not, depending on how you look at it), I live with three guys that happily ate over a quarter of the cookies the first day they could.  French people ate MY cookies....and they LIKED them!  

Though of course they told me I used too much butter.  Of course.

The Black Cat :: Le Chat Noir

My mother claimed to be allergic to animals to avoid getting my sister and me an actual pet.  Fish don't count.  They just swim until they die.  You can't do anything with fish.

not even if they have mustaches

I'm glad I'm not allergic, since my host family has a black cat that I wasn't told about.  Not exactly the most encouraging sign to have on your first couple of days in a new country, a black cat in your room.  I'm not superstitious, but I was about to grab the salt container and knock on wood when she galloped in front of me to claw at my window (through which she exits for who knows how long).

My host family isn't superstitious nor religious, though France in general has a very Catholic background (what western European country doesn't).  That's why "oh mon dieu" isn't said very much in France.  You can say it, but it used to be seen as blasphemy during the Inquisition, which was a huge discouragement to the statement's existence.

though now it's seen as a witness' statement 

My host family also got a hamster and some fish a couple of days ago, after I got here.  The hamsters were cute in the store, snuggled up against each other, cuddling for warmth.  So my host mother was like, okay, we'll get two.

Umm...about that.  What I deciphered from the conversation between the store assistant and my host mother is that if you get a male and female, they will have babies, and then eat them.  If you get two of the same gender, they'll just eat each other.  

ready to prepare his kids for dinner

My host mother wisely decided to only get one of the cannibalistic rodent demons.  I'm not sure how long Mr.Nameless the Hamster will last, considering how the fish have already died from, I'm sure, seeing Minette all the time.

...two days later

Considering how I always open the window for Minette (she likes to go out), I'm afraid she's going to thank me by dumping Mr.Nameless in my room, which she's often in because it's sunny a lot.