Some things you do for money, and some you do for love (also to win points with your girlfriend's family)

Okay, so imagine your name is Lara, and you are supremely courageous because EVEN THOUGH you were living the good life in the US of A, you decided to come to France for a year to teach high school kids how to say "Obama is king" with a perfect accent. Coming to France meant saying goodbye to your long-time beau, Lucas, and EVEN THOUGH you and Lucas decided you'd get married once you're back from your temporary insanity, you find it pretty hard to endure the separation. France can be a lonely place sometimes (except for your super-awesome friend Megan!!).

but THEN!

on a dreary WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON!

there is a KNOCK on your DOOR!!! Who could it be?!

IT'S LUCAS!!!

Oh my goodness, I was SOOO glad he finally arrived, because that meant I could stop jabbing myself with a pen to make sure I didn't give away the surprise every time Lara was around. I think they had a good time together, and I EVEN think that she has fogiven me for lying to her about twenty million times in order to keep her unoccupied and in Lille for the week of his arrival. And he turned out to be super-cool, too. Not that I ever doubted he would be. We ate lots of pizza and drank lots of beer, which is my official bonding ritual with new people. In fact, the first time I ever hung out with Lara, we ate lots of pizza and drank lots of beer. Points for consistency!

Meanwhile, as the Ls were enjoying their brief respite from missing each other, I went to the Emergency Room.


But don't worry, it wasn't for an emergency! I was just having my brain examined by aliens. Aliens, and Felipe.

He's doing doctoral research and needs some subjects, which means putting your head in this thing:

and clicking a lot of buttons. It's definitely an easier way to make money than teaching!! Plus, we had a picnic, and I got to take a lot of pictures of everything, until Felipe confiscated my camera.

(Re. comments on the last post: Andrew, you ask some interesting Qs, and I will respond sometime soon!)

To the extent that it's absurd

I was doing this:

But soon I will be doing THIS!

and it will be AMAZING because I feel like I've only slept for a total of five seconds this whole week!

Change of subject: BEST PUMPKIN PIE EVER. Made by Lara.

Every time I write "pumpkin" I type "pumpking." What's that?? A verb? I am pumpking? What does it mean, to pumpk? Or maybe it's vegetable royalty. Long Live the Pump King! King of Pumps!

Less than a month until Christmas, and I'm waking up in the morning with "All I Want For Christmas is You" stuck in my head. Looking for any reason to be festive. Like making Christmas stir fry!!

Also, I think it should be IMMEDIATELY NOTED (in red ink, with plenty of exclamation marks) that tonight, thanks to Claire, I ATE SNAILS. Um, I mean .... ESCARGOTS. I tried to feel all French and sophisticated and not at all nauseous, but there were two problems: (1) we ate them while standing around the Faidherbe kitchen, which lacks something in both Frenchness and sophistication, but is more than abundant in nausea... and (2) all I could think about the whole time was the slime trail left behind a traveling snail.

But I ate THREE of them and didn't die, so I guess they aren't so bad. In fact... they might have even been a little bit good.

The snails, tactfully hidden beneath a layer of pesto and inside a pillow of pastry (which I think says something about how weird it is to eat a snail):

Eating snails for the first time in my life:

Hmmmm... not dead yet....

Lara is also still alive! That's all the proof I need. Snails are safe.

Verdict: I could hold my own at a Parisian wine & hors d'oeuvres, but I'd take a giant, greasy plate of poutine over a snail if given the choice. Canadian to the very end!

Jen + Poutine = why can't I have poutine in front of me this very second? And while I'm at it, why can't Jen be here, too?

If you want to read more about snails (who wouldn't?), I highly recommend Sharon's post about her husband, Rafa, and his unorthodox culinary tastes! And while you're there, you might as well read about his unorthodox (and thusly hilarious) storytelling techniques, all in one convenient post.

As a final note for the night: I MISS MY CAT. Sometimes, when I look at pictures of him (which is kind of often), it physically hurts.



Ouch!

Change is hard.

Not so far from Canada after all

It SNOWED! In LILLE! Land of eternal rain!!!!

It started coming down last night in damp, uncommitted flakes while I was at my friend Claire's house.

Attempt at an artistic snow shot under the glass ceiling:

After I took this picture I ran into the rest of our motley Faidherbe crew on the last metro home, and we frolicked like mad, thinking that by morning the snow would have disappeared.

Swarming around the streetlights at midnight:

But then! This morning!!

My groggy early-morning lope to the toilet became a meandering stroll outside, after I realized the dusting had survived the night...

Completely deserted campus.

Sigur Rós on the iPod.

Uh, bliss? You bet.


The only thing missing was the company of my favourite pooch for some romping and snow-flinging.

Hopefully all of that sub-zero air has jolted awake all the right neurons in my brain. Lots to get done today to ease the Mondayness of Monday!

Writing on a blackboard is HARD.

I don't know about fancy science, but evidence suggests that writing on a blackboard dramatically decreases one's capacity for being any kind of smart. Spelling, simple math, grammar... it's all twenty times harder when it's done on a giant vertical surface in front of a gaggle of bored teenagers. Potato? Or potatoe? Alligator or aligator? ....Vicadin or Vicodin? (If you've seen House then you know where I got the inspiration for my haphazard conversation class about abusing pharmaceuticals.)

Also related to blackboards: DROPPING THE CHALK. Even before France, I think I already spent about 70% of my day picking up things that I dropped. Keys, cutlery, keys, my iPod, keys. And now I have to add chalk to the mix. The problem is that when the students are talking and good things are happening, I kind of start to toss the chalk up and down in my palm, you know, to encourage them to keep the momentum up, and for the love of god to KEEP TALKING because I have no idea how I'm going to fill the WHOLE HOUR... and then I inevitably give a little too much enthusiasm to my tossing, and the chalk goes flying and I have to go get it and my Teacher's Authority Rating dives to about zero.

I think I am going to stop writing on the blackboard altogether and start using that sneaky teacher trick that I learned in university: "That's a good question, Jimmy. Can anyone tell Jimmy how to spell Connecticut [please please please please]?"

Part Two of this blog is entirely unrelated to Part One, and so I will give it a new title:

"Why I Love Cheese Now (Alternative Title: Christina Was Right All Along - see comments on the last blog post)"

Before I start: let me just say that while yes, it's true, I've begun to actually LIKE cheese that isn't mozzerella or cheddar, I stand firm on my belief that some cheese is beyond even the remotest contemplation of consumption. Example: my roommate Nate has this wheel of cheese that smells like a Victorian sewer and clears the kitchen every time he unwraps it. Well... to be fair, it only clears ME from the kitchen. I run to my room and inhale a noseful of shampoo to get my balance back. If cheese violently assaults every available sense like that, it can't really be all that good for your insides, can it? I think I've figured out the essential problem, though. I like a nice, tender side of denial with all of my meals. I like my chicken to look nothing like a chicken, and my shrimp to taste nothing like seafood, and my cheese to smell nothing like what it is: curdled milk with a film of mould.

BUT!

I am now 25 years old. By some accounts, a capital-A Adult. So it's time that I put aside my old cheese prejudice and give some (SOME!) of it a try. And thus I found myself at a dinner party the featured cheese! Melted cheese! Delicious, gooey, hot, stinky CHEESE! And I liked it!! The meal was Raclette, the mood was merry, the conversation went far and wide.

What I learned about enjoying Raclette, a step-by-step guide:

1. Pet the dog.


2. Open the champagne.

3. Pet the dog again (she's a big dog, lots of surface area to cover)

4. Get some cheese!!!

5. You need a little oven that sits in the middle of the table. You get a tiny frying pan to put inside the little oven to melt the cheese of your choice, or fry an egg if that's your thing.

That little oven works really hard! Not only does it melt the cheese and cook the eggs, it also keeps the Mr. Potato Heads warm on top!

6. The eggs! I didn't actually manage to find out what kind they were, but I do know that the bird looks like the egg. A small bird? With brown speckles? And lots of deliciousness inside?

7. Pour the hot gooey cheese/egg all over the potatoes and moosh it all up together! Add some smoked meat! And some white wine!!

8. Add a GIANT PIECE OF CAKE! (because if there's one thing I learned when I turned 25, it's that desserts should always come in MASSIVE PORTIONS. Go big or go eat a vegetable.)

Oh boy I am getting hungry just by typing this....

btw, I fixed the problem that was preventing non-registered users from commenting on this blog. The last couple of posts have had mega comments (ha, MEGAN comments)!! That makes me feel all bright and sunny inside!

Aside: I just saw a fantastic student play at Faidherbe that involved ABBA and a lot of spandex. Got me thinking: how did I go from living at the Zoo in London to teaching undergrads in Montreal to listening to ABBA in Lille? Life is weird.

And on the seventh day, my stomach rested.

Oh my gosh, what a weekend. I totally loved turning 25. Can I do it again NEXT weekend? 25 and 1/52nd?

I got some pretty incredible bone-crushing hugs over the last few days, both in person and in written/emailed form, and it has completely blown me away. I am composing this blog entry by flailing a long stick towards the keyboard, because the G-force of all of those birthday wishes has plastered me against the far wall of my bedroom. Once I get my feet back on the ground I will answer each and every one of you with the love and sincerity that you deserve. Thanks for the totally great blog comments, the colossal number of facebook shout-outs, and - from my homeboys(and girls) in Montreal - for the construction-paper-and-stickers Book of Love and Tipsiness whose hilarity made me shoot Fanta out my nose.

This post has been a long time coming because of technical difficulties (in my brain). For now, a brief photo essay to sum up the main activities of the weekend:

1. Massive Amounts of Feasting, The First: chicken fajitas at "home" with my "peeps" (am I still allowed to say that now that I'm 25? Was I EVER allowed to say that?)



3. Massive Amounts of Feasting, The Second: Raclette with "work peeps" (the type of peep is important; note the difference in, uh, "table settings" from the first feast...)


3. Massive amounts of ice cream, which cancelled out any kind of vegetable consumption during feasts One and Two.

4. Ditto re. cake.


4. BEER + THE PARTY TABLE.

Can you see a theme beginning to develop? Things I Put In My Belly When I Turned 25. There is also the more general theme of Things That Are Massive: amounts of food, ice cream, and beer... as well as the size of this dog? Who was there during Feast the Second? I guess that's a workable tie-in. Basically I just wanted to post a picture of this dog because she is SO FANTASTIC.


_____

I actually wrote the above text a few days ago, but couldn't be arsed to upload the photos until right now. (Is saying "arse" okay in this situation? Do I need to be Irish or something? I'm not sure how the cultural ownership of slang works. I'm also not really clear on where "arsed" falls on the scale of rudeness, but for your reference I place it somewhere above "bothered" but below just about every other subsitution.) It feels like there are about fifty million different things happened right now, even though I could probably only list five, if pressed. The point is: Time, She is Flying. More blog posts are coming, I am saving them up by writing relevant subject lines in the "drafts" section of Blogger, like "Hazards of Fake Snow: a Study" and "Santa on a Ferris Wheel." Stay tuned.

GLORIOUS 25!!!

Most Appropriate Remembrance Day Ever

So I tutor a couple of little dudes who are just beginning to learn English at school, and I've become a giant fan of their whole family. I might even start parading outside of their house with a big foam finger and a placard that says "Lille's Most Awesome Bunch Of Folks Inside." Yesterday, for example, they fed me a massive, soul-boosting meal and took me on a road trip to the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge.

On the road leading to the memorial:


And me with my Little Dudes!

Patronizing Little History Lesson: Vimy Ridge was the site of a WWI battle in which Canadian troops spent three days facing down the German army and, astonishingly (because other Allies had tried and failed), capturing an important stretch of land. As we drove towards the ridge, we could see, high up and in the far distance, the outline of the gigantic stone pillars that form the official monument, designed by a Canadian in 1936. It's the largest of Canada's war monuments and, well, it's impressive.


I tried to capture it in the above picture and failed, but try to imagine a rainbow reaching across the sky and seeming to end right at the foot of the monument. I mean, uh, wow.

The monument was breathtaking, of course, but what really knocked on my skull and said "Hello? There was a WORLD WAR HERE" was the actual landscape.

Which is full of massive craters.

I noticed Anne, the mother in this family, giving the Little Dudes an extra-long hug as we all stood at the edge and stared down, trying to contort our brains around the statistics.

More than 3,500 dead and that, of course, is only the beginning. It's incredible how benign it all seems now.

Of course, that sense of the benign can't last long in a place like Vimy. This sign, for example, tells people to keep back because of undetonated explosives buried in the ground.

Interesting aside: in the picture below you can see two small peaks in the distance, which are in fact huge piles of residue left over from the days when Lille was a mining town.

They are everywhere outside the city, and the ones that have been sitting abandoned for ages have been almost completely reclaimed by trees and wildlife. Anne told me that you can even find apple trees growing from some of them, which is odd for this area, apparently. The story is that miners would toss their apple cores onto the ground before their descent, and eventually all those cores produced trees.

Totally unrelated conclusion: TWO MORE SLEEPS UNTIL 50 POUNDS OF GUILT-FREE ICE CREAM AND OTHER BIRTHDAY SHENANIGANS!!!