a holiday mood

Now that we're off Daylight Savings, it gets dark here very early, and very quickly. At 6, it's black outside. It's getting chilly, too. I went to the stores the other day for a comforter and some new sweaters, and carrying all the bags home through the cold felt like Christmas shopping. We're having the end of October sales at the moment (I think they ended yesterday), so things were nicely priced. We're all getting holiday fever, I think. Anna and I are attempting to make a pumpkin pie today, though we have no evaporated milk and no real way to get any, as far as we know. If anyone would like to send Craisins so that we can make cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, that would be very welcome.

School starts again tomorrow (not for me, since I don't work Mondays), and that will be a good thing. We've all been going through the sort of culture shock crash, when the high of being somewhere new has worn off, and that's lead to a little drama and some snappishness among the assistants. Life is complicated when you have nothing to occupy your mind! It will be good to have something else to do with our time than play endless rounds of cards (although that was fun, and we went through many bottles of water and bars of chocolate staying up until 4.30 a.m.). And hey, House is off hiatus, so that's good for me (except it's still the only show that isn't on French tv, so we're forced to watch Faith and Hope instead, which kills me).

Chez la maison blanche, we've been redecorating and rearranging and now our house is cuter and more girly than ever. I should take pictures of my redone room and the rest of it. There are new photos of Cambrai, the outside of the house, Julia's visit, Lille, and my first fishing trip in who knows how many years here on my new France-only photos page. Yes, I went fishing. Twice! I am a bloodthirsty vegetarian, apparently, except that we play catch and release, and it's mostly an excuse to be outside instead of spending the whole day in the house, because with the air getting chilly, it's tough to get motivated to move unless you've got a goal. It's quite nice by the canal, and the old fishermen think I'm funny, I think, as does Steffen, when he taps the end of the rod to make me think I've got a bite (but I am no longer fooled). We were out on Halloween, and groups of small children kept going by in costume, which was sweet.

It's a sunny day. We have a makeshift pie in the oven, and my hands smell like the ginger and nutmeg that I grated. I can already tell that my memories of France are going to be very scent oriented. The smell of bread wafting out of the boulangerie as I make my sad way across town in the dark, dark, cold early mornings to catch the bus, the flowers that they put up all over the centre-ville, the perfume that the teachers I share rides with wear, the cedar soap I bought, the smell of the fabric softener we use when we wash our clothes in the tub. France is a strange mix of expensive and cheap: you can get a bottle of very drinkable cider for 85 cents, or table wine for 1.15, but a little load of laundry is 4Euro to wash, and 1E for ten minutes of drying time. It's been interesting walking around Cambrai and Lille trying to find the little shops that have the good deals, and stumbling across the giant hypermarchés (sort of Wal-Martesque) that have okay prices on things. Kitchen utensils are expensive. DVDs are cheap(ish). But everything is fairly well furnished now, and we've just gotten paid, so life is good in terms of being able to buy things. The maison blanche has potholders to protect our hands from the things that we bake in our frightening gas oven, and towels so that we can dry our hands, and my new comforter is fabulous (especially in comparison to the ratty blankets I had in the first place).

It is funny: we are all in holiday moods because of all the Christmas lights, but it's still most of two months away. Or maybe it's just autumn and France that make life so good. Hard to say.