Life

Hello, internet.

So it's time for a blog post. It's been awhile. I've sort of been waiting for inspiration to come for me for an interesting blog subject. I had a few ideas, but most of them were uninteresting. So I'm just gonna see where this blog post takes me:

First order of business: some very very exciting news. I think I'm just about fluent in French. I feel dumb saying that, because of course I am constantly still making mistakes all over the place, but here is how I see it: there are many, many levels to being fluent. The highest being that of a native speaker. The lowest being... well, me probably. I understand most everything that comes my way, I can hold up a conversation, I can be slightly charming and interesting (I recently started being able to make jokes!!! Which feels AWESOME. Not so awesome, probably, for the people around me...), and the biggest reason I believe I am nearing the point of fluency is this: FRENCH HAS STOPPED BEING HARD. I'm not sure when it happened, maybe like a few weeks ago? I only really noticed it a few days ago. Suddenly... well I can't really describe it. There was a definite change. Suddenly French feels comfortable. It no longer feels awkward coming out of my mouth. I'm sure I still sound awkward, but I don't notice it.

It feels incredible. And with this shift has come a whole new level of comfort. Suddenly I feel so completely integrated. Not just adjusted or comfortable, integrated. Like I belong here. What a beautiful feeling! I am four months in, meaning I have six months ahead of me to spend in this place. YahooooooooOOOOOoooooo!!!

So anyways, I feel like some of the sentiments expressed above are the same old things I always write about.

Here is some newsy stuff:

1. I went to Paris! All on my own, at the beginning of winter break. I spent three days wandering the city in the snow on my own, seeing neighborhoods, seeing famous things, taking the métro all over the place, spending more money than I rally should have, getting lost and not caring, seeing various friends who were in town. Et cetera. Paris was magical in its pre-christmas state.

2. Christmas happened. Only it was called Noël. Without snow and without my family and their traditions it didn't really feel like Christmas, more like some really good family meals and time spent by our huge fireplace. With presents. It was a calm, quiet christmas. Very sweet. I have a hard time saying how Christmas differs in France, because I don't think my host family is incredibly traditional in terms of the holidays. But I found christmas to be in general a bit calmer, less commercial and in-your-face. But very present, nonetheless. Voilà.

3. I have recently decided to pass the high school exams at the end of the year. In France, students take really big tests at the end of the last two years of high school, so I'll be taking French (as in litterature), Math, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry exams in June. My class will pass their other exams next year. It should be a pretty interesting experience, preparing for/taking these tests. I'm sort of just doing it because all of my friends here will be doing it anyway, and also because I figured, Why not give it a shot if my results do not matter whatsoever? Also I mostly find it very classy to be able to say that I have my French Bacculaureat (that is the name of the exam. Except they call it the "Bac.")

As for more current news, I don't have much. We're back at school, life is good. I'm loving French, loving France, loving the French.

My host mom is making something that smells very rich and creamy and hearty and delicious. So I should probably go.

A plus tard,

Nora

Adaptation

Hello, world. So this is a blog post about adaptation, a very prominent theme in my experience over here. I recently passed the three month mark of being in France, and most people say that the first three months is the the period of adaptation. So now I'm supposed to be all done adapting. No more excuses! I've been here for three months. Things are gonna get serious.

As I've said before, I really feel well-adjusted to my new lifestyle. People are starting to tell me that I am fluent in French, which is a nice sign of adaptation. I don't feel fluent, but I think it's coming soon. The amount of daily mistakes I make (i.e. missing the bus, misunderstanding instructions, etc.) has been greatly reduced. Now the mistakes that I make just come from my own spacey, ditzy nature (and yes, Mom, I'm trying to work on it, but it's sort of out of my control sometimes).

One thing I am trying to get used to is the formality of the culture here. I think in the United States we have drifted away from having a "code of conduct." That is not to say that we are necessarily an impolite culture (although you could certainly say that, especially compared with France). I think the biggest difference is that in the United States, there are many accepted rules of politeness, but if someone breaks one it is not necessarily a big deal or doesn't have big implications. Here there are many unspoken rules that are always abided by, and I find it hard to pick up on/keep track of all of them. I will give some examples to make my point clearer:
For instance, saying hello: a few weekends ago some of my friends slept over at my host family's house. In the morning, my friend's mom came to pick her up. Normally, as soon as someone walks in the door, you go say hello, do the little kissy "bisous" thing, etc. The French are very precise about saying hello. It always always always must be done. But I was busy cleaning up or distracted or I'm not really sure why, but I forgot to greet my friend's mom and that clearly disgruntled her. Again, it's not that in the U.S. we don't say hello to people. The difference is that here, the fact that I broke that rule was a much bigger deal. Now I pay much closer attention to saying hello to people.

Also, formality. At school, teachers are addressed as "vous" not "toi" (two different forms of the word "you"). Since I am used to addressing my friends and host family with "toi," plus the fact that in English we only have one kind of "you," I have made the mistake of calling my teachers "toi"- essentially addressing them as a friend- several times, which my classmates find very amusing.

There are an infinite number of other examples and anecdotes I could give, but I think I am the only one that finds them interesting. Suffice it to say that there are a shocking number of unspoken customs/rules to learn when you are not in your native country. And it means that you end up looking like a dumb-ass quite often. I think I will come home a much more respectful and polite young woman.

In addition to adapting to living in a foreign country, I am also in the midst of adapting to the idea of winter without snow. I really never thought much about it, until abou mid-November when I started hearing about snow falling in Minneapolis. and then I suddenly realized what a prescence snow has and what a difference it makes. Just thinking about the way that we have to climb through snowbanks and the way that the roads get so caked with snow that it becomes like a new layer of cement. And the quiet feeling of the city when it's snowing and the woodstove in our living room in the evening or on Sunday afternoons. And how sometimes my sister and I go outside in the winter with plastic bags on our feet instead of boots just cause it feels so cool to walk through fresh snow in your socks.

These are things that mean "winter" to me, and I have trouble imagining how winter is possible without them. So you can imagine how happy I was two weeks ago, when I woke up at my friend Lora's house and THERE WAS SNOW FALLING OUTSIDE. It snows very rarely here since it's close to the ocean, so everyone was completely enchanted by it. No one cared about the fact that it was practically slush and hardly staying on the ground. The following week, we hardly had school because the roads were icy and there was a lot more snow in other parts of the district so buses were cancelled. I went to one and a half days of school; it was excellent. I taught my friends how to make snow ice cream, another thing my sister and I love to do in the winter, and showed off my snowball fighting strategies (tackling people and shoving snow in their face). We tried to go sledding- which meant dragging each other around on patches of slushy grass. the snow melted after six days, but a week of seeing everything covered in white did a lot of good for my Minnesotan soul. Now I just have to figure out how to do Christmas sans neige... And try not to read the Facebook statuses about the incredible blizzard that hit Minneapolis (why, God, why does this have to happen the winter that I am gone?). My host mom heard about it on French radio. This stuff is international news! Be proud, Minnesotans.
There is so much state pride in this post. Being away from home will do that to you, I guess.

Go Twinkies!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy holidays, everyone.

Nora

Happy Sanks-geev-eeng

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Right now it is just around 2:30 PM in Minneapolis, meaning my family is probably sitting around our dining room table right this minute. It sure is weird to not be there.

Yesterday afternoon I made a pumpkin pie for my host family which we will eat tonight. Technically it is made with squash, but I think it will turn out the same. Yesterday when I was in the middle of making it, an older woman who lives across the street stopped by to see my host mom. My host mom wasn't home, but the visit timed out perfectly because I had just realized that I needed three eggs and only had one. So I asked the neighbor if she could lend me some eggs, which she happily did. Tonight I went back to her house with a piece of pie as repayment. She and her husband are really friendly and great, and immediately invited me into their home. They knew I was American, so they asked about where I was from in the US, how I liked France, etc. Her husband, who fought in World War II, took me into the living room to show me a picture representing his experience with America- a recently-taken photo of him on Utah Beach (where the Allies landed in Normandy on D-Day).
It was so cool to meet these wonderful French people. Granted, I have found all French people to be wonderful, but this was an especially nice encounter. And I just loved the feeling of running across the street to bring my French neighbors a piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.

People in France don't really know what Thanksgiving is, or if they do it is just from seeing American movies. My host dad thought it was called "Panksgibbing."
Today I tried to explain to my English class (in English) what Thanksgiving is all about, but from the blank stares I received in response, I'm not sure if they understood. After I finished talking, my teacher summarized what I had said: "So basically it is a holiday to say thank you." Upon hearing the phrase "Say thank you," all my classmates very obediently and automatically said "Thank you" in unison. It was hilarious.

Also, to continue with the benign anecdotes:
I went to the supermarket after school today because I was hungry and needed to buy whipped cream for my pie. So I bought a can of Pringles and a can of whipped cream. The check-out lanes were really busy, but finally I got to the front of the line. Sometimes my American credit card doesn't work so well here, so I held up the line for a good five minutes while the check-out girl tried to get it to work. Everyone in line was really annoyed. There I was, the stupid American, holding up the line with my stupid American credit card, buying a can of Pringles and a can of whipped cream. Embarrassing. Really really embarrassing.


So that is what Thanksgiving looks like in France, if any of you were wondering.

I hope everyone had (or has, since the day is not yet over) a great holiday, and I hope you all find some really killer deals at Target or wherever the hell tomorrow.

New Direction

Bon soir, everyone. It is 5:30 PM here. Very gray and very rainy.

I just got home from school. I had to bike because my alarm clock broke and I woke up at 10:00. Whooops! But this means that I got to ride my bike through the misty French countryside this morning, and doing that doesn't bother me one bit. Riding home uphill in the rain wasn't as much fun, unfortunately. But now I'm in my cozy house with a cup of tea and Les Simpsons is coming on TV in 15 minutes. Tout va bien. Later tonight my friends are coming over and I will make them Fried Egg Pasta, a super awesome thing we used to have all the time at home when I was in elementary school.
Check it:
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/recipe-of-the-day-spaghetti-with-fried-eggs/

Change of subject:
So I was thinking. About my blog. My life as a blogger. I think it is time for a little change...
Right now I do not write on here very much. I would like to change that a bit. Not a whole lot, because why would I want to spend my year in France blogging about my year in France? How stupid. I would prefer to spend my year in France in France, if that is alright with you all.
So what I would like to change is this:
I'm going to try to write shorter, more regular blog posts. And incorporate more interesting things than just my personal sentiments. Instead of writing broad, all-inclusive posts, I'm going try to keep things a little more solidified. I call it microblogging. That is a term that I have invented for it.
I'm having a hard time articulating this idea I have of my "new direction." So if you don't understand you'll just have to wait and see, I guess. It will be good, trust me. Change, as they say, is good. Change is also hard (I should know, look what I'm doing), but I have faith. We can do this, readers. Yes We Can.

Alright, let's go!

Les Simpsons! Fried Egg Pasta! France!

A toute à l'heure,
Nora

P.S.
I'm fully aware that I didn't invent the term "microblogging." That was a joke. Ha. Ha.

Love and finding a home

Hello. Hi. It's me, (Vi)Nora. I am not dead. Au contraire, I am very much alive and too busy LIVING to be bothered with things like blogging. But seriously I apologize to all of you out there who I know live to read my blog. I have been selfish and neglectful.

Let's seeee. Where I left off, we were in the middle of fête-ing and grève-ing. The strikes have died down and are basically finished around here. The fêtes, on the other hand, are not finished. This is Bretagne, after all. Things must be celebrated.

This past Wednesday was my birthday and Tuesday was my host sister's birthday. We are the same age- born exactly 14 hours apart. How weird is that? And our dads were born on the same day too. There is some serious zodiac alignment happening here I think. To celebrate, we had a wonderful family dinner on Tuesday night with fondue and cake and presents and champagne. Not only do Maïwenn and I have the same birthday, we also bought each other the same birthday presents- gloves that we saw one day when we were shopping and both really liked. Later, we both went back to the store (seperately) and bought them for each other. Pretty adorable. My friends gave me little boxes of knick knacks they had assembled for me- things with sentimental value or some kind of use or absolutely no value or use at all. I loved it.


On Wednesday night we had a joint birthday party at the house, because Thursday (November 11th) is a national holiday in France and there is no school. Too bad I don't live in France- I could have a party every year the day of my birthday, regardless of if it's on a weekend or not. Damn.

The party was a whole lot of fun. Overall, it was a very good 48 hours of celebrating our births.

In other news, since my last blog post I feel like I've really turned a corner in terms of adjustment and well, I don't know, being here. I have been saying "I love it here!!" basically since I got here, but I feel like now it is becoming more and more true. It is funny to think that I was proclaiming my love for this place way back then, before I really knew it. And I'm sure in another few months I will love it and feel that I know it just that much more.

But right now it really has become a new home. My friends have really become wonderful, dear friends, not just nice people who let me, the dumb american, tag along with them. I am actually completely in awe of the way that I was taken in by them, and the fact that they immediately liked me before knowing me. Now that my French is better and I'm more adjusted, I can come out of my shell more and we are all just one big happy clan of copines. I adore them all and feel so incredibly lucky and happy to be here with them.

I have figured out how to exist among my host family and the awkwardness of being a stranger in someone else's home has completely slipped away. They are hilarious, humorous and remarkably on the same plane as my family at home.

French flows much more easily out of my mouth and people don't have to repeat themselves quite so much. There is still a long way to go in terms of the language, but that whole problem is becoming more and more obsolete.

I just feel so unbelievably blissfully happy. It's probably really annoying to read all this gushiness (I feel annoyed just writing it), but gosh, what can I say...

France, I- I think... I might... Be in love with you.

(et je ne veux jamais te quitter)

Marques de Fabriques

Sorry people. Blogging has fallen by the wayside. WHOOPS!
Life is good here in Bretagne. That is the region of France I am in, for those of you who are not versed in French culture.
My days have been full of autumn sunshine and eating way too much food and of coure, lots of French.

Bretagne (also known as Brittany) is a very distinct region culturally. People who live here are Breton first and French second- they like to say that Bretagne is not France.
My host parents aren't from Bretagne but they've lived here for a long time, so they really understand and love the Bretagne culture, but not in a heritage-y kind of way.

One classic regional thing here is FÊTES! Festivals. There is a festival in some neighoring village or another every single weekend. Each fête has a theme that has to do with the Bretagne culture. Or sometimes when they run out of cultural elements to celebrate they have a fête in honor of...well, anything they can think of. For instance, about a month ago my host parents went to a fête in honor of cows. My host mother told me it was boring. I wasn't surprised. My image of a cow fête is a bunch of people standing under tents in a field chewing cud with hunched shoulders and glazed eyes.

Anyways, last weekend we went to a fête in a nearby village called La Fête de Fruits d'Automne. A harvest festival, basically. In the morning we did this thing called a Ballade Chantée where you walk around the countryside in a big group and sing french songs. Apparently that it is a classic Bretagne thing- to sing while walking. In the afternoon we ate traditional food (roasted chestnuts and Galettes and hard apple cider), listened to bands play and danced the traditional Breton dance, which is a goofy, celtic-influenced line dance involving very rhythmic little steps. It's really fun.

This weekend there is a great big fête here in Redon in honor of chestnuts. Chestnuts (especially roasted chestnuts) are a big thing here. People are crazy for them. And I must say, they are really delicious. Roasted chestnuts by a fire on a rainy saturday afternoon... What could be better? They also have this stuff here called Crème de Marrons which is a sort of a chestnut spread that you eat in yogurt or on crêpes and it's AWESOME.
I don't think I'd really ever eaten a chestnut before coming here. I have a newfound respect for them.

Besides alcoholism, rain, and stubbornness, fêtes are a "marque de fabrique" of Bretagne. That is a french expression that I know! My friend Louis taught it to me. It means like a signature thing that a place/people are known for. I know there is an expression like that in English, but I can't remember it.

For example, a marque de fabrique of France would be...
GREVES.
Also known as strikes.
When the French are unhappy they go on strike. And the French are never happy. Therefore, the French are known for striking a whole lot.
You may or may not be aware of this, but things are getting a little tumultuous (<-- is that how you spell that? I have no idea, spell check is in French on this computer...) here in France. The french, in general, are really unhappy with the government. Most of the unhappiness has been targeted at the retirment system, but there are really just a whole lot of problems in France right now and it is all Nicolas Sarkozy and his administration's fault. I know there is a lot more to it than that, but people have been explaining it to me in rapid French, and well... I don't really understand.

On my first day of school here there was a strike, but basically all that meant was that a few of my teachers were missing. A few weeks later, there was another strike and enough of my teachers were missing that I just didn't go to school. Last week there was a strike once again, which meant that I had a wonderful picnic/autumn afternoon in the park with friends.

The interesting thing is that in America, people threaten to go on strike, but hardly ever do, and the simple threat of a strike inspires people to start negotiating. Here people go on strike and they strike and strike and strike and protest for weeks but the government ignores it.

So after more than a month of pretty regular striking and protesting, France is getting fed up. I noticed a definite change last week- there have been protests and strikes and sit-ins everyday. The students joined the protests last Thursday. I went to a sit-in in town with some friends on Thursday afternoon, tons of students just sat down in the middle of one of the biggest intersections in town. It was a lot of fun.
For reasons that I don't really understand, the gas stations are on strike (or maybe it's the refineries that are striking and not the stations themselves) and so are a lot of trains and buses, making transportation very complicated. School has become sort of optional: if you don't want to go to class, you can go join the protests in town because they are literally always going on. Or you can just stay home, because half of the students and teachers aren't at school anyways. This morning students held a Blocus in front of school, meaning they blocked all the entrances to school so no one could go to class and was basically forced to go on strike. After standing around in the cold for an hour (first frost last night! woohoo), my host mom came and picked me and my host sister up. We spent the morning at home and then went back into town later for a student protest. Tomorrow is the last day of school before a ten-day vacation. I think the strikes will calm down during the vacation and pick up again afterwards. We'll see. Right now the government is just sitting on their fat asses (pardon my French), plugging their ears, repeating their mantra that everything is just fine.

Honestly, I am loving experiencing all this striking business. I find it so exciting. But for the sake of the French people, I hope something happens soon.


So there you go. Two marques de fabriques that I've been learning a whole lot about. Pretty fun cultural immersion stuff.

My next blog post will be sooner, I promise.

Until then,
(Vi)Nora

Some Information

Bonjour, tout le monde! Look at me, I'm speaking French ooh la la.

It's Thursday afternoon, the sun is out for the first time in about a week. It is a golden autumn day.
Tomorrow after school I'm going to drive to Paris with my host family. We're going to stay with my host brother who is 23 and lives there. On Saturday night we're going to see a soccer game! France vs. Romania. And on Sunday I will get to see my dear freind Kari Olk.

Well, I think now I will write some of the descriptions I promised in my last post.
I will start with where I am living:
I live in a house. The house is on a road which connects to the highway. The highway doesn't really feel like a highway at all, because it is about the width of the street I live on in Minneapolis (roads and cars are so much smaller here and everyone drives a LOT faster). Our road is lined with houses on either side, it's somewhere between a street and a road. It's very charming. My host family's house is a normal-sized house, with a sort of farmhouse vibe. The ceilings are low and the hallways are tight. The walls are painted warm, homey colors and everything feels cozy. There is a great big stone fireplace in the living room which I am guessing I will be spending lots of quality time with this winter. Out back there is a big old garden and and a pen of chickens and several sheds and garages, one of which has been rennovated into a little cottage (a college student is living there this year).
The road curves right after our house and takes you through the dirt road I described awhile ago. You may recall the pasture with the pooping cows. That road is one of my favorite places. It's lined with fields and pastures and and little patches of forest and beautiful stone and vine houses hidden in the distance. If you stand in this one spot on the road you can see a great big château which is lit up at night.
I wish I could describe everything, but word and even pictures don't do it justice.

I am ending this post here because the sun is setting and I want to go walk Zano and visit my pooping cow friends and stare at the countryside before it is dark.

One more thought:
It is silent at night here. I never noticed noise in the city, but now that I'm living in the country I notice the silence. And the darkness. No streetlights outside and no firetrucks on 36th street. Sleeping feels like hibernating.