On Languages.

This past weekend, Melanie and I challenged ourselves to speak French and only French for an entire week. We wrote up a contract and signed it (whoever loses has to pay for our next night out, and I'm cheap!), and we have been speaking French (to the annoyance of the English-speakers around us.. sorry!) constantly, omitting English and math class, and this blog post, of course. If you're thinking, well, what's the difference between you speaking French constantly and a regular day? You see, I go to a school with 59 other English-speaking students. It can be a lot easier to just speak English to each other, despite our French-based classes. Speaking French consistently - it's been incredible. My host mom even told me last night that I have made much progress (cheering over here by myself, woo)!

Speaking so much French is so little time, I've begun to notice things. French and English are different. The French language is a very precise language, and the English language is a very specific language. Those are two completely different things. French is a very literal language - English is not. Shall we look at some examples?

On precision vs. specificity: Colors
Let's use the color red. Picture red in your mind - just your basic red. Rouge, in French. Now, we want to get a little bit darker. Can you see it? Good, now let's name it. In French you would have rouge foncé (dark red), but we could delve a bit deeper. We could say rouge bordeaux. Bordeaux? It's a type of wine, and a dark shade of red! There's also rouge bourgogne, another wine, and another shade of dark red. Precision! In English you would have brick red, mahogany, rust. The French give you a precise shade of red, but the English are pretty specific.

French is literal. Literally.
Rainbows -
English: Bows of rain? No. Bows coming from rain? Still no. They come after rain, but bow?
French: Arc en ciel. Arc in the sky. Pretty self explanatory.
Eggplant -
English: Not of an egg, not resembling an egg, not the color of an egg, not coming from an egg.. Yes, it's a plant.
French: Well, aubergine. It's just a word, but at least it doesn't mention eggs.

And then there are the words and phrases that are the direct translation, from English to French, French to English, and it's just so silly when you think about it.
Honeymoon. We all know what that is - it has nothing to do with the literal moon, or honey. In French: la lune de miel, it is literally the moon of honey. In English, although it doesn't make sense, the French don't do any better, they just make it more literal. And from what I've heard, honeymoons have nothing to do with moons made of honey.

I found this link really funny, especially since I completely understand. It talks about how each word in French is either feminine or masculine, and sometimes without rhyme or reason. Then there's English, and all words are unisex - it's odd that dishes are feminine but bowls are masculine. What gives?

Living in France, living with a French family, being surrounded by the French world.. You pick up the slang terms. So.. swears. The thing about swearing is, when you don't know the full effect behind it, it's not quite as offensive. It's just a word! It has no negative connotation (that you know of) behind it, and therefore it may or may not be used freely in between English conversation because, well hey, only you know that you're swearing like a sailor! Last night at dinner we were having raspberries with fromage blanc and sugar for dessert. The whole family was there - even Frédérique's mother. I was adding sugar to my fromage blanc, straight from the box, when way too much came out. My first instinct? "Merde!"(Don't worry, it's not too bad). And then I slapped my hand over my mouth and started apologizing to everyone - the word meant nothing to me, but it did to them! I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect them to all laugh and cheer and congratulate me - which is what they did. She's swearing in French, look at her go! I guess my lack of grace is a sign of my improvement. And I'm sure my parents will love that I'm using my best manners! :)

Then there is the really amusing, slightly awkward English-words-in-French fun. A couple of nights ago, I was eating dinner with my family, and we had salad with beets. My host dad pointed to the beets in the salad and asked what they were called, and I replied "beets". Everyone at the table started giggling, and Gabriel said that the Americans are funny. I was thinking, well sure, I guess beets is a funny sounding word. But then Nathanel, who was sitting across the table, was pointing down and yelling "Beets, beets, beets!". I started to get why they were laughing, but just to clarify, Jean Baptiste turned to me and said, "You know.. Penis." So if you're looking for a beet salad in France, be sure to skip the Franglais and just ask for "betterave", because you definitely don't want to order "bites".

...Speaking of "bites", guess what Melanie accidentally got for lunch on Tuesday! (It's true - we were deceived by what we thought was saucisson (sausage) and instead got the bite of a cow!). Oh, French cuisine, how you woe us with your diversity.

Thanksgiving in France

I'd like to clear some things up. It may seem crazy to many Americans reading this, but Thanksgiving doesn't exist in France! Think about the history.. The French don't really have a reason to celebrate the Mayflower coming to America and the pilgrims feasting with the Indians. And perhaps you're thinking, well of course I knew that! Who wouldn't? Well, it's hard to imagine a world without a day devoted to overstuffing yourself with delicious foods and drifting off to sleep to the sound of family bickering (love you guys!) - it's safer just to imagine that I'm over here in France doing the exact same thing as everyone back home, just in a different language and with better cheese.

In lieu of Thanksgiving dinner with my family, I had a Thanksgiving lunch with my school. All 60 of us, after waiting an extra hour and a half for lunch, walked over to one of the local schools where we have lunch. Our teachers, our advisors, our classmates - all of us. And in the school's cafeteria, they had several tables pushed together, set for a Thanksgiving feast, American flags and all.

We had a pumpkin-squash soup, then turkey with gravy and mashed potatoes, and finished our "dinner" with an apple crisp. We even had the honor of having our English teacher and our Culture et Société Française (CESF) teacher perform a little skit for us!

After school, I got home (with a huge package in tow - thank you Grandma and Papa!) and started to make an apple pie. For me, pies are usually made by Roger's Orchard and brought to my house via my grandparents. But Roger's Orchard isn't here for me to buy a pie from - heck, there isn't a single place where I could find a pie, because they don't really exist here! Sure, there are tarts and all of their fruity desserts, but an apple or pumpkin pie? Not here. So I made the entire pie, the crust and the apples with their spices and I put it all together and put it in the oven, and even though the crust fell from the side of the pan, it came out pretty good! And my family doesn't even know that it's not supposed to do that! They loved the pie. Partial Thanksgiving in France = success.

Even though it's not Thanksgiving over here, I feel like I should follow in the blogging community's footsteps and let you know a few of the things I'm thankful for, since I'm thankful for them regardless of what day it is (but mashed potatoes and assorted pies always make it even easier to be thankful). I'm thankful for my family, in the United States and here in France. I'm thankful for the country that I am from, and the country that I am in, for all of my amazing friends (co-dependency at it's best), my good health (just don't be around when I come back from a run or you may question that statement),  and the incredible opportunity I have to be here in France. I am thankful for all of the things that I don't realize I should be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours!

Fall Has Arrived

Finally. And it's probably headed right out the door pretty soon, too.

So yes, it may look like fall here, but it doesn't actually look like fall here. Autumn is like a non-existant season. I'm going through a serious fall-withdrawal: no Halloween, no Thanksgiving, no crunchy leaves to step on, the smell of cinnamon and apple has been replaced by a smell of the city (can one even define what it is exactly?), and the world around me hasn't changed into the glorious red-orange-yellow-purple in-between stage. I think I'm ok with trading fall for France, though - that's fair, right?

La Patinoire

This weekend went by way too fast. It was just Friday.. and now it's Monday morning and I can't seem to fall asleep!

This Friday I made chocolate chip cookies (without Melanie, sadly). Thank you, Peggy & Shap, for sending me chocolate chips and light brown sugar! My cookies came out looking like cookies this time, not whole wheat chips. They were such beautiful cookies, all 30 of them. Quick survey: How many cookies do you think were left on Friday night? Remember, 5 siblings (although one was in Paris!), and 2 parents. Think of your number.. 5 left? 8 left? 2 left? Wrong. There were 0 left. Not a single crumb. Those cookies were devoured so fast - Jean Baptiste was so kind as to give me permission to make cookies whenever I'd like!

I woke up Saturday to an invitation to Teresa's house! I stumbled around and got ready, and hopped on the metro to go to Teresa's where we had galettes and crêpes for lunch, thanks to Teresa's fabulous cooking.

A galette: Buckwheat crêpe + 1 egg + ham + cheese

And for dessert crêpes: Butter up the pan..

Add a dessert crêpe and add a healthy (not actually healthy, please) amount of Nutella..

And fold it up!

...This is not how crêpes should look completed. But who cares, it had Nutella - all is well! This one looks like a wanton. 

Then later on Saturday, Teresa and I decided to go ice skating! I don't know which was more interesting, skating or getting to the skating rink. We ate dinner and then checked to see what time we had to catch the bus. 8:15.. It was 8:05 already, so we knew that wasn't happening. Next bus? 8:30. That sounded easy, right? We were all set and ready to go, we left the house, and for some reason Teresa was following me. Even though we were at Teresa's house - Teresa's part of the hood (well this is embarrassing but it's 1:30 and Monday morning and we're just going to go with it) - Teresa followed me! And I had remembered there was a left turn, so I turned left.. but too early. We were one street off, and almost all the way down the street Teresa realized that we had gone the wrong way, and we had to turn back, walk all the way back up the street, and then continue on. And right as we turned the corner to the bus stop, our bus drove by us. Next bus: 8:47. And then Teresa did another not-so-bright thing. She said, "Do you think we can beat the bus to République?". The metro station is right next to the bus station, and République is the next common stop between the metro and the bus we needed. And me, being slightly over dare/bet-happy, thought that yes, we could beat the bus. And so I ran to the metro, holding tight onto my hat with Teresa yelling behind me "What are you doing?!". We may have beat the bus, who knows, because when we got to République.. we didn't know where our bus stop was. And therefore, we missed the bus. After being defeated by this fact, we boarded the metro again, went back to the bus stop by Teresa's house and waited until 9:05 for the next bus. 

We made that one at least.. And we rode it all through town, past République, past my house and my school, and then past our stop! We saw it on the screen, we had one stop before we had to get off and we were ready to press the stop button, and then it just disappeared! Our bus skipped over Le Blitz! So we got off at the stop that's after Le Blitz, crossed the street and waited for the bus going back. We get on the bus, and it's the same bus driver we'd just had. We said hello, recognized that yes, we were just on the bus, and yes, we had completely missed our stop. But not this time! We were prepared. At 9:35, we had finally made it to Le Blitz.

Bum bum bah!

Decked out in some skates..

And then we have some super awesome disco-tech skating. Woo! And of course, my obnoxiously nervous laughter because I'm about to fall on my face at any second.

Note: I didn't fall!

We made it home successfully Saturday night, and made virgin mimosas! Get it? ...It wasn't my joke, blame Teresa.

Today (Sunday), Teresa and I woke up very late (it's becoming the new normal) and did homework and ate crêpes and watched Vampire Diaries, and then parted our separate ways as the sun started to set at a ridiculously early time.. 5:30! And for dinner?

This giant loaf of bread. I thought we would have one or two loaves and cut off pieces for each person of the family? No! Everybody gets their own loaf! Slice it as you please, butter it, jam it, dip it in your hot chocolate! It was divine. (My hand makes it look smaller than it was.. It was super big and super thick and it was just an incredible amount of bread.)

Where did this weekend go?

Carnac With The Family

Toussaint break, oh how you treated me well. I cannot believe it has already been two weeks since I left for la campagne (the country). With our luxurious amount of free time, my family brought me to their beach house in Carnac. Now, before I continue, I want to set you all straight. I say beach house, and you're probably thinking about a warm sun, lots of sand, bathing suits and fold-up chairs and swimming? No. Just, forget everything you've ever learned about the beach. Now, replace it with chilly winds, a crazy current, hail, rain, and a dark sky that the sun randomly chooses to peek out from.. That would be Carnac. The beach house was situated on a temporary beach - low tide, it was a beach, high tide, it was filled with boats and lots and lots of water. I could just sit all day, watching out the window, at the boats and the wind and the rain.

My entire family stayed at the beach house, plus Frédérique's sister and her family, and their mom. We were quite the crowd, the 15 of us. And each day, we'd take a walk, walking along the ocean through the brush and the trees, or the sand and the rocks. It was absolutely gorgeous, and that's all I have to say!

Cookies & Christmas

I know, it's too early for this! But I'm allowed to, right? We're past All Saints Day, and there isn't Halloween or Thanksgiving here.

While most of my family is out of town, Melanie is staying over to keep me company. We woke up at an unacceptably late time and then made sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies while playing lots of Christmas music. It was glorious.

Ignore my singing. Think Christmas and cookies. 

Melanie is so pleased with her method of dough-rolling. 

She did something amazing with a glass, butter and sugar. 

The first batch of sugar cookies. Absolutely beautiful. 

Right?!

This butter.. The chocolate chip cookies called for melted butter that was cooled - not only did our butter cool, but it congealed itself into a disgusting mass of, well, this. 

These cookies look like whole-wheat cookies. Trust me, they aren't. 

Baking in France is a bit different than baking in America. For one, there is the fact that for some reason, the United States was so hipster as to make its own system of measurements for cooking. Thanks! The metric system would've worked just fine! There's the conversion from fahrenheit to celsius, then cups and tablespoons to grams and liters. Then, once you've successfully translated the measurements from US to metric, you have to translate the ingredients from English to French. Baking soda? Bicarbonate de soude. Brown sugar? Doesn't really exist in France! See what a fun game this translating can be? So yes, there is a name for brown sugar, but no, if you go into a grocery store looking for it, you may be lucky (as Melanie and I were) if you find small packets of this sort-of brown sugar stuff. It didn't smell quite right, and it was really dark, hence the "whole-wheat" look.

But despite the small difficulties in trying to bake like an American in France, it was worth it. Telling Marie that she could have all of the cookies? The look on her face (sheer joy, I must tell you) was priceless. 

Loire Valley

Toussaint Break! The children of France are all running around or sleeping or eating lots of bread while not going to school these days because we have two weeks off for all of the saints (Tous Saints = All Saints). I was MIA week one because I was in Loire Valley for a school trip, and then off to Carnac with my host family (but that's another post).

Loire Valley. We went château-fort exploring for three days, and it was superb. What is a château-fort (sha-toe)? Well, it's a strong, stately house - a military castle! After studying the architecture of these massive forts (and when I say fort this time, I do not mean it in the sense of the French adjective, but in the sense of an army post) for two weeks, we took a trip to Loire Valley - the valley of the Loire river, obviously.

We started at the Château Médiéval d'Angers. It was built in the 13th century, by Saint Louis:

'Twas old and big, this château.

And the classic. ©Teresa Chappell

And then we went on to the Cathédrale Saint-Maurice:

Next, the Château and the Jardins de Villandry:

Les Jardins

A 40-year-old-baby. He scares me, scroll on.

And then on to the hotel! On Tuesday, we started our day bright and early at Château de Chenonceau:

It's France. I tend to just casually stroll among the châteaux. ©Melanie Biles

And then we visited the big one, Château de Chambord:

©Laura Cassidy, Rennes Through The Lens

And then these 3 just always seem to be with me.. ©Teresa Chappell

On Wednesday, we visited the Cathédrale Saint-Gatien:

After a tour of the Musée de Beaux-Arts, we headed to our last stop, the Château d'Oiron. It was a château that is now a museum, and it was creepy and cool and had lots of dead animals in it. 

"Small Glass Pouring Light". This was in a tiny attic room, and it smelled horrible and it looked disgusting, these glasses all filled with old wine, but look - the shadows make light bulbs!

That was the end of our little trip. And later that day, I was whisked away to Carnac by my family...