to be reconnaissante

First of all, I promised visual aids, so here they are. Not of the house, since they're Anna's photos that I stole from Facebook and they were all taken at 2bis (I forgot my camera last night), but at least you can see our Cambrai Thanksgiving. It was delightful. Out of the ten of us in Cambrai, five are American, and then we have two Germans, an Austrian, a Costa Rican, and a Brit, so it was the first Thanksgiving for more than half of the people last night, which was very endearing. We tried to do it up right, with a turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and brussels sprouts and green bean casserole and stuffed mushrooms and all the things that go along with Thanksgiving, including a prayer, listening to "Alice's Restaurant" and that Adam Sandler song, and forcing the others to say what they were thankful for. It was fairly wonderful. Matthias carved the turkey under my supervision (which I thought was amusing, since I'm a vegetarian girl, but I was the one who knew how), and we all stuffed ourselves silly and then sat around playing cards and finishing off the Beaujolais Nouveau (and remembering why it's supposed to be chilled) and some Orangina made from blood oranges.

It was a good week. Out of the twelve hours I'm supposed to teach, I did around six. I'm not sure I've ever actually worked twelve hours in a week since I got here, actually. Well, I am at work for more than twelve hours, I'm just not doing anything most of the time. There are some organizational problems at the moment because one of the teachers is out sick and she just got a replacement. I think it will work itself out, though. We had to go to Lille this week for a second teacher training day, but now we're apparently fully fledged assistants and can handle anything! Always good to know.

Things are exciting in Cambrai! The faire last week for Ste. Catherine's day (even though it was what, yesterday?) was huge and fairly amazing. Anna and I bought a kitchen gadget that I later found cheaper somewhere else, but that's fine. We each paid less than one of us would have at the store. It was a huge market, basically, that stretched from the grande place up to the train station and back down almost to the office of tourism. I suppose that doesn't sound that big, but if you look at the map you can see that it goes from the Rue de Lille down the Rue d'Alsace-Lorraine, across the Place Aristide Briande, and down the Avenue de la Victoire to the Rue de Noyon or so, and then up and down all the little streets around the Place, of course. (Then if you want to learn more about Cambrai, here is the Wikipedia page - I am so amused that it's twinned with Houma, where Aunt Patty lives.)

So we had Ste. Catherine's, which is a feast day that celebrates unmarried women between the ages of about 18 and 25 (hurray! except that it's to try to inspire us to get husbands), and we had our Cambrai Thanksgiving, and soon enough the Christmas Market will open, which we're all really excited about because apparently there's going to be ice skating, and no matter how grownup we like to say we are these days (for instance, I cooked yesterday without spilling anything on myself), we're all really, really excited about ice skating, especially Cata, who wants to see all this snow and ice stuff that we've been talking about and she's never experienced. Michelle has promised us a proper English Christmas dinner, with mince pies and all - we'll be celebrating early, before everyone leaves for the holidays, and it will be wonderful.

Tonight we're going to see The Queen in English. Should be excellent. We saw Scoop the other day, since there's some special thing going on this week where they show movies in their original versions with subtitles. I didn't like it very much, thought it was choppy, but it was still good fun. When Cata and I have to go into Lille on Tuesday for more paperwork, we might see Borat if we can find it in English. French movies are fun, but English movies are a nice change of pace.

Ste. Catherine knows how to party

Today I was going to do photos of the house, but there's a faire going on in the middle of town for Ste. Catherine's day, so I think I won't instead, but expect photos next week. Big news! We bought a washing machine for la maison blanche! No more doing laundry in the tub (oh, it takes so long), no more hauling laundry to the lavamatic to do a small load for 4 Euro (especially tough after my bag broke), no more desperate wringing. No dryer, but that's fine: we have a couple of drying racks, and at least the washer spins the water out. We collectively decided that the purchase of a large appliance makes us feel like official grownups, even if the cost (split among eight people) was only about as much as a ticket to Paris with the youth discount.

I am entertained by my school schedule. Out of twelve classes that I was supposed to teach last week, I think I taught three. I was sick one of my busier days, but still, I end up teaching maybe seven out of twelve, due to classes having meetings to go to or the bad classes just outright skipping and the fact that the replacement teacher for the one who's out pregnant never remembers to send her kids to me. It's been okay lessons, though. We talked about politics a little more, about stereotypes, and about Thanksgiving. They don't really understand Thanksgiving, and it's difficult to explain. But no matter! It's really only the Americans who care. We've gotten the others excited by talking up what a fabulous dinner we're going to prepare on Saturday (given that we'll be in Lille on Thursday, and if we weren't, we'd have work). Thanks to various care packages (thanks!), we now have most of the tough-to-find ingredients for the construction of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and the like. I'll probably make my stuffed mushrooms again. We'll probably have a turkey. It'll be excellent. Alas, no football on in the background, but what can one do? (Tangentially, go Hogs.)

The funny thing about the fourth week angst/drama is that the drama didn't really go away, but we've all adjusted to it. So now we get cranky sometimes because we've all been around each other a little too long, but we're happy about it. I think it's because we now own two decks of regular cards and an Uno set. We've been thinking about buying Monopoly, but it's a little expensive. Things to pass the time!

It's so strange to think that this time last year I was getting ready to leave Madurai and my host family, and dreaming about home every night. It was hot and rainy and I had papers to finish and I was pining for my winter clothes. Now I have all my winter clothes and I miss my salwars and saris, and Jaya's chutney, and my bike ride home, and the SITA kids. In May, when I get home, I will have spent a year out of the past two years out of the country, and that's interesting to think about. But for now, I think I'll spend my brain power figuring out Mom's visit, potential visits to Belgium and the Netherlands and England, and various school-related things.

Armistice is a good memory

I have now officially been in France long enough to acculturate a bit: the church bells no longer wake me. I barely notice them. They sort of blend into the holiday decorations that have been going up. If the Diwali lights in Lille are any indication, Cambrai is going to be gorgeous when they finally turn the Christmas lights on. Everything's gearing up for the Noel season. Apparently in Vienna, the Christmas markets open next week, and I've been listening to Christmas music all week. I listened at school on day in the teachers' lounge and the teachers were amused but wanted to listen to more.

It's been back to school this week. This is the time I appreciate the end of daylight savings. My walk across town is better lit, and the sun is actually up by the time I get to school, so it feels less like the middle of the night. The students were good this week, though I had significantly fewer classes than I expected. One of the English teachers is out on early maternity leave and has been for a couple of weeks, and they just found a replacement for her, so none of her students came to my classes. But everything was good: I tried to explain American politics to my students and coax them to talk about French politics. As it turns out, politics are difficult to explain in any language. So it goes. At least they know a little bit about the Congress now.

Our Germanophones have started teaching us German, and Cata's teaching us Spanish, so expect me to come back a bizarre polyglot. And soon I should have my titre de sejour and be able to leave the country! That means a delightful trip to Belgium, hopefully, and who knows where else? Everything in Europe is so much closer than anything in the U.S. That's been fun to explain - all my students are startled when I tell them France is about the size of Texas. Yes, it's small, this place, but it's the center of the world.

Yesterday was Armistice Day. They put blue, white, and red lights on the World War One memorial statue and a lot of the shops were closed. We watched The Sound of Music in celebration and ate cake. And there's already a train strike on (or was last week), so they didn't even have to close the SNCF station. So convenient, France, and so full of memories sometimes.

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.