Hark the Herald angels shout… two more days till we get out!!
Did you ever have that chant in the weeks before Christmas? I learned that from Coach Cox when I was in lower school.
Anyway. It’s Wednesday morning, and I have 4 hours of class left to teach over two days before I’m on break for two weeks! I’m heading home for the holidays as well as Brad and Elaine’s wedding. Looking forward to seeing everyone! I’m also going to miss my assistant-peeps from Dijon as well, but I’ll get to see them again soon enough :)
This post is a random smattering of things that I’ve been meaning to post. If you want to skim through, I’ve conveniently highlighted summary sentences in green. Let’s begin!
- Taigne (the kitten who lives at my apartment and is adorable) has recently become more affectionate; this means that whenever you’re sitting on the couch watching TV or reading, she is all up ons, purring and trying to have as much physical contact as possible. When you inevitably get up to go do something else, this sudden need for contact produces what I’m calling the parrot effect: elle devient un perroquet (she becomes a parrot, sitting on your shoulder). It’s adorable to see her sitting on someone’s – usually Annabelle’s or my – shoulder as he or she walks around the kitchen, organizes a binder, etc. When I get back from break, I don’t know if she’ll still be small enough to sit on my shoulder!
- I never realized how American North Face jackets look until I saw a French person in one, and he immediately transformed into an American college student. My third host sibling, Benjamin, is in Dijon for a few days for a surprise visit. I’m glad I got to meet him! He flew in from New York from vacation, and while on vacation he needed a jacket. So he bought a North Face (“lifetime guarantee!” he said) and that is how I saw a Frenchman in a North Face jacket. It’s subtle, but the style is definitely American and not French.
- For some unknown reason, my towel keeps on disappearing from the bathroom towel rack; in the past week I must have changed towels four times! I don’t understand why this keeps happening… it’s a very minor thing, but still annoying. The first time (aka the first week) Annabelle mistook my blue towel for her blue towel and used it; understandable, and now I don’t use blue towels. I pick towels that look distinct from the rest, I try to put them in the same spot each day… and more often than not, recently, I walk in the salle de bain in the morning to find my towel gone, thrown in the wash. URG. I realize that it’s just Isabelle trying to straighten things up, but I asked her in the beginning which towel I should pick, and she said that it didn’t matter. I’ve been picking the same two towels, and they keep on getting washed over and over again. I don’t smell that bad, honest!
- Aside from seeing people, there are three things in particular that I’m looking forward to when I return home: my American cell phone, broccoli, and going to the grocery store on Sunday.
- For my cell phone, I’m looking forward to hearing my ringtone(s – Mallory, you’d better call me!), having close to unlimited talk and texting, and being able to send picture messages!! Although now that I think about it, I can’t actually picture what my phone looks like. I know it’s purple… ah, yes, the Motorola. As I was typing this, I had a hard time getting the image of both my French Samsung phone and my old-old LG phone out out of my head. Yes, Tonia and Susan, that’s the one whose blue plastic sticker-cover I saved.
- Broccoli – I know that broccoli exists in France, but it is one of my favorite vegetables and my host family here never eats it! I mentioned it to Isabelle, but I guess they’re just not fans of broccoli. Anyway, these three months have probably been the longest time that I have gone in my life without eating broccoli. Yes, I’m serious (it’s healthy, Elaine!).
- Regarding going to the grocery store – pretty much everything closes in France on Sundays, which can trip you up when you’re used to 24/7 grocery stores. I really want to go to the grocery store at midnight on Sunday the 26th, just because I can. Anyone want to go with??
- France and the US have a different attitude toward decorating for the holidays.
- As a first example, in France the cities put up lights along the streets and go all-out with lights shows, but individual families rarely put up anything. In the US it’s the individual families who decorate, while towns and cities might put up some decorative holiday banners or a few lights on the skyscrapers, but that’s about it in my experience.
- Secondly, Americans tend to buy Christmas trees (which can be HUGE!) many, many weeks in advance; the French buy a small tree, maybe 2-3 feet tall (because they often don’t have the means to transport a bigger tree) only a week or two before Christmas. For example, Isabelle is planning to buy her tree on Saturday the 18th.
- Thirdly, in the US many radio stations start playing Christmas music on December first and don’t stop until I after I want to scratch off my ears. In stores, you can’t escape it. In France, I’ve heard just enough Christmas music to be lovely without overwhelming. This is my opinion, obviously, and others may feel differently.
- My English vocabulary now contains many more British words than it did 3 months ago, thanks to the 6 Brits I hang out with in Dijon. I’ve recently found myself saying “proper” much more frequently, and earlier this week (and now) when I typed the word “niche” I could only hear the British pronunciation in my head. The British pronunciation of some words is the same as the French, of which niche is an example, but that doesn’t mean that I will start calling zucchinis courgettes! Oh come on Brits, don’t get the face on, it’s called a zucchini!
- Yesterday I had the class with Quentin, the kid who I made sit in the corner last week. I’m please to report that he and his friends were model students this time around! I could tell that they understood the message, and it stuck with them. Yay!
That’s all for now, folks!
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