Christmas Oysters

Merry belated Christmas! My Christmas was lovely. And very oyster-filled. I do not eat oysters, but everyone else does – it's a traditional dish for both the 24^th and the 25^th of December. This means that everyone in my family works double shifts just before Christmas for my host uncle, preparing and selling the oysters that everyone else will enjoy as their Christmas entrée and that will ensure my uncle's financial well-being for the year ahead. The oyster business tends to hinge directly on the sales of the week before Christmas, so it is a very important time of the year for the family business.

Thus, when I remember “my Christmas in France” in future years, it'll be oysters that I think of. And my post about Christmas living abroad won't be about homesickness or coal in my stocking, but about oysters.

On the 23^rd of December, we prepared the oysters we'd be selling at market on the 24^th. I only stopped by the oyster hut briefly, as they already had enough workers, but I packed a few boxes and watched long enough to figure out how it works. Most of that day's work was preparing the pre-orders. Many people pre-ordered their oysters if they had a very large quantity, usually 4 to 16 dozen (~ 50 to 200), to ensure they would get their oysters and to make it easier for us. We filled those orders, packing the oysters into crates stapled together from scrap wood, making sure the oysters were right side-up (so they wouldn't empty out their water and die and go bad), packing them in tightly so they wouldn't move, covering them with wet seaweed, and tying the lids on. This, of course, was already after all the work of sifting out the mud, dunking the oysters in boiling water to kill off the parasites that live on their shells, and sorting them into different sizes depending on their weight and shape. Then we loaded the pre-orders and cases of unpackaged oysters into the trucks for the next day.

The next day, Maman and I left the house at six to pick up cousin Nathan and drive the hour and a half to St. Georges-sur-Loire, a village near Angers where we'd be selling our oysters. My host brother and sister worked at the Nantes market the same day, but got to sleep in an extra half-hour since Nantes is much closer to home. In total, my uncle sent out 6 or 7 trucks to different markets that day, so there was enough employment opportunities for every one of my cousins and I. When we got there, we set up three tables piled high with pre-orders for Nathan to deal with, and the truck for Maman and me to take of.

 Me in the truck:

 Me and Nathan with the truck and the tables of pre-orders:

Selling oysters is a complicated business. First you have to ascertain if the customer has pre-ordered or not, since often they haven't figured out whether they should be talking to the people in the truck or the guy standing by the massive pile of pre-orders. (Don't judge them – French people are a little slow, okay? ;) ) If they haven't pre-ordered, you need to find out what kind of oyster (or clams, or bigorneaux) they want, and how many. Bigorneaux, by the way, are something that my dictionary tells me is a “winkle” in English, but I've never heard of winkles, so maybe we don't have them in the US. Anyway, they're a kind of snail. Sometimes the customer knows right away, and comes up to you saying “Hello! I'd like 3 dozen oysters, caliber 3, please.” But sometimes they don't know what kind of oysters they want, and then you have to explain it to them.

Oysters get sorted into 5 sizes, depending on weight. The very biggest ones are ones, and the very smallest are fives, with medium-size oysters therefore being threes and fours and big-ish oysters being twos. Oysters that are too long to be considered an ideal shape get sorted into their own category – longs, which are cheaper. Because longs come in all different sizes, it is the only type of oyster we sell by weight and not by the dozen. Sometimes people will ask for a round number of kilos of longs, which is easy (3.50€ per kg x nmb kg = price), but sometimes they stubbornly want, for example, two dozen longs, in which case you have to count two dozen longs, weigh them, and multiply 3.50€ by a number that isn't necessarily round, which is just unnecessarily cruel.

Here are the different calibers of oysters:

Now, I'd like to impress you with just how difficult it is to sell oysters. If someone asks for 4 dozen oysters of caliber 4, you first have to multiply 4 x 13 (a baker's dozen, just in case some of the oysters are bad) to get 52. Then you look on our handy price chart to multiply the price of that caliber times the number of dozens. I don't remember how much it is exactly, but let's say 3.30€ per dozen, which sounds about right. So while you're getting out the right size bag for 4 dozen oysters, you tell the customer, “That'll be 13.20€, please,” so they can get their money in order while you count. Then you have to count 52 oysters, while at the same time conversing with the customer so they feel that you're a friendly around-the-corner oyster seller, and listening for oysters that ring.

I don't know how to describe the sound that bad oysters make, but in French they call it “ringing.” Oysters with holes in their shells make a dry, hollow sound when they clack against other oysters. If an oyster has a hole, that means it didn't survive the boiling water bath to kill off the parasites, and therefore it's already been dead for awhile. Oysters have to be eaten right after they die or they aren't good, so a dead oyster is an unsellable one. So as you're counting to 52 under your breath and asking the customer if they're having a nice holiday season, you also have to listen for oysters that ring hollowly as you throw them in the bag, so you can take them out and not sell bad oysters. It is one of the most challenging multi-tasking manoeuvers I've ever been asked to perform, somewhat on the level of playing a challenging piano accompaniment to a choir of confused singers who need cues.

After you've successfully counted 52 oysters, you have to deal with the change. The customer gives you a 20€ bill, you kindly ask if he wouldn't have 3.20€ of change (because we always run out of change), but often he doesn't. Oh well, 20 minus... how much was the price again? 13.20. You count out 80 cents, having to double-check the markings on the coins since (we're pretending you're me) you're still unfamiliar with euro coins. 50 cents plus 20 cents plus 10 cents. Now we're at 14€, so I still owe 6€. That's one 5€ bill and a 1€ coin, since the smallest paper denomination in euros is 5€. Once you've finally got the change right, you have to hand it to the customer in a way that shows them you've counted correctly – generally I try to start with large denominations, handing them the bill, the euro coin, and then sort of saying “and 80 cents” and putting the other three coins on top, since I doubt they really care if I got the 80 cents wrong. (I could be wrong, I'm not a professional!) At first it doesn't sound that bad, but you ought to be terrified of making a mistake and short-changing the customer or short-changing your boss, and after a full morning of mental math, it's pretty exhausting, especially since it's in French, and I'm incapable of doing math in French – numbers remain the only thing I have to translate.

It wasn't an exceptionally busy market day (not that I would know; it was my first), but we sold 7 crates of oysters and had a decent amount of pre-orders. As our number of customers dropped off steeply, Nathan and I headed around the corner to the boulangerie and the charcuterie to buy two baguettes, three slices of ham, and some rillettes to make sandwiches. After lunch, we packed up our tables, organized our cash register (though I'm not sure if you can call a box full of money a cash register), and drove home. Well, Maman drove. Nathan and I slept. Heehee. Sometimes I'm glad I can't drive in France.

And sometimes I can't believe the story I'm living. I feel incredibly lucky that when I'm old, this will be one of my stories. That I'll be able to casually mention “When I was young and living in France, I spent Christmas eve selling oysters for my host uncle.” No big deal. Not only is a year abroad already a good story, but the typical exchange student would be talking about buying oysters from the quaint, charming little oyster stand on the corner. But not me. I was inside the oyster stand, trying to figure out how many oysters six baker's dozens make (it's 78). I win.

Now that you know everything there is to know about oysters, I suppose I'll tell you how my Christmas was, too. On Christmas eve (after a hot shower to wash off the oyster smell and a short nap) we went across the street to my aunt's house for a dinner that lasted until midnight. I was pretty sleepy, so was glad to come home and fall into bed despite enjoying the dinner. On Christmas morning, we found that Père Noël (Father Christmas, aka Santa Claus) had come by despite the fact that we hadn't put our slippers under the tree (the French equivalent of stockings). My favorite present is the veritable mountain of Kinder chocolate that my host sister gave me, since she can't believe that we don't have Kinder in the US.

A sample of my mountain of Kinder (because some of them are in the fridge and I already ate some of them):

 

I also got a wonderful warm winter scarf knitted by my mother, as well as socks and mittens and tights and dried tapioca so I can make bubble milk tea, and a lovely necklace and massage appointment with my host sister from my host mom. I gave a Hollister shirt to my sister, an Apple t-shirt to my brother (who loves everything Apple), and miscellaneous presents for my parents. It was a pretty cheerful and fun Christmas morning, with everyone being pleased and appreciative of their presents.

For lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day for most French holidays, we went back to our aunt's house, bringing along presents for the little cousins. The only other remarkable event of the day is that I tried an oyster, which I already knew I wouldn't like (seafood is the only thing I don't eat) but thought I should make sure. It was gross. I enjoy selling oysters and now I know a lot about them, but I still don't like eating them. After lunch, which finished around 6pm, I spent the rest of the day skyping back home to watch my family open presents and catch up with them. All in all, it was a lovely Christmas, and I didn't even feel homesick. I think the fact that I was involved in festivities, even if they weren't my family's festivities, means that I didn't feel the distance as acutely as I might have. As it was, I felt more sad about missing Thanksgiving and Hanukkah than about Christmas.

Now we're just waiting for January 1^st, when we leave for the Alps. I have very little to do, so I've been running, painting things for Maman, and watching hysterical old French comedies with my host sister. Life is good.

Now for some good old French-Canadian music, because our Canadian cousins do it best.

Garolou, La Vendée

Mes Aïeux, Dégéneration

La Bottine Souriante, La Montagne du Loup

Searching for Happiness

Much of my life has been an active search for happiness – not an idle desire, but an actual concentrated effort, conducted with the scientific approach I grew up with. Happiness is one of my top goals, right next to being a generally good person and being an intelligent and rational being.

Life has a lot of factors to it. (I hereby present myself with the Understatement of the Year award.) It's hard to know what things make a difference and what things don't. For example, why was junior year so great and sophomore year so terrible? I know that I liked my classes better and my group of friends better, but which is a bigger factor in overall happiness? Being content with school or having a good group of friends? Similarly, the happiest I ever am is at summer camp. Why? It's easy enough to say “Well, it isn't specifically the canoeing, or the being in nature, or the Voyageur traditions, or even the people. It's just the ensemble of everything that makes it so great.” And while that may be somewhat true, it is not a useful statement. It means that I cannot try to apply camp to my everyday life to improve my overall happiness.

So I try to experiment with little things, refusing to give up. I speculated that waking up early to morning light might be part of the difference, so I switched rooms with my brother to catch the morning light and tried to stick with my camp sleeping habits. Did it work? Who knows. That was right around the beginning of junior year, when I did indeed get happier, but I also had better classes and better friends, as I mentioned before.

One thing that is a rare obvious difference is exercise. That is well-researched and known to be hugely effective. If you could make an anti-depression pill with the same benefits that regular exercise gives you, you'd be a millionaire. I know that I personally am extraordinarily influenced by this effect. Exercise correlates almost perfectly to my weekly ups and downs. Now that I have Ultimate, I go for runs much less often, but together they are still two of my greatest sources of happiness.

The very fact of conducting this search is also a source of happiness. I think it could go either way – there are people who try to be happy in a melancholy, “look how horrible the world is” kind of way, like they're looking for it just to prove someone wrong. A lot of moody teenagers are like this, and I sort of imagine that a lot of great poets were the same way. Can't you just imagine Edgar Allan Poe saying “Okay, I guess I'll play laser tag with you, but do you really think it will make the emptiness in my heart go away?”

On the contrary, my search for happiness is genuine, and that means that the things I notice often bring joy in themselves. Noticing that I'm happy is pleasing: when I'm laughing with friends, there's that incessant introspective part of me that's saying “hey, good job, it looks to me like you're fitting in,” and makes me smile for a different reason than the original one. When I see a dew-laden spiderweb outside my window, I stop and admire it, and it makes me smile because there's beauty in the world, and because I'm glad I can appreciate it.

One can become blind to beauty. I love the rain, but when it rains all the time, I can fall into the trap of looking outside and saying “ugh, it's still raining!” Completely forgetting the fact that I love the rain and could watch it streaming down and painting bull's-eyes on puddles for days on end. I try to avoid this line of thinking just by reminding myself that the rain is pretty. It usually works.

On an interestingly symmetrical note, one can become immune to discomfort. This is something I appreciate much more. I read in a book about the Holocaust that one can get used to anything. The German people just stopped reacting to atrocities after a while. The Jews got used to the conditions in the ghettos. And so no one really fought back, because the whole thing got started bit-by-bit, so people had time to get used to it. The same principle has been at work recently: in no way whatsoever do I want to compare my stay in France with the Holocaust, but I'm getting used to things I don't particularly like. I thought I'd never get used to being clumsy with words. I thought I would always resent that social disadvantage and be embarrassed by it. But lately I have been able to go days without remembering that my native language isn't French. I've become used to the struggle to find my words sometimes. The struggle lessens but doesn't go away, but objecting to that struggle does go away. I have become accustomed to a lot of things that aren't really my favorite: not cooking my own food, the TV and radio always being on, the immense quantities of free time at school, not being with my family, etc.

For a long time I thought happiness would be permanently out of my reach: that I, too, had fallen victim to the mental illness genes that lurk in one half of my family and would be forever adrift in depression, bipolar disorder, and whatever else lay in wait for me. Discovering that I was wrong and that I just had an unusually bad adolescent hormone experience between the ages of 11 and 15 was gratifying. Last year was a pretty darn good year. This year started off rough for a couple reasons, mostly starting with too high expectations for the “great adventure” of my year abroad (which seems to end up containing less adventure than my life at home did), the realization that I'd be happier at home, and homesickness.

But it's better now. I truly don't know if I would've been happier at home. At home I would've been bored and frustrated from my wanderlust, regretting that I hadn't taken the year to go abroad. Even if study abroad isn't everything I hoped and dreamed of, it has its fun moments, and at least I know now. It's good to know. It's good to have the experience. And now that I really am finding friends and fitting in, gaining in confidence, and learning to accept the difficulties of not being a French native, it is pretty fun. The number of good moments in my day has multiplied since a month or two ago.

The other day my frisbee coach told me that I have, without a doubt, made the best decision in my life in coming to France. Americans who speak fluent French are rare enough that I'll never have to worry about unemployment ever – the world of international business will always want me. I agreed with him, that it's a priceless experience, and that now I'm starting to really enjoy it even if a month or two ago I wasn't so sure. He looked at me for a moment and said “It was the frisbee, wasn't it?” The frisbee that gave me something to occupy myself with, a reason to stay, the confidence to speak out a little more and make friends and follow my own desires. Yup. Pretty much. And how lucky was I, to randomly end up neighbors with the frisbee coach for the ONE frisbee team in the Vendée.

Who knows what the secret to happiness is. But little by little I'm figuring out the things that help and the things that hurt. Exercise is necessary, as is having a passion. My passion used to be music, but now it can be Ultimate. Friends are necessary. I'm working on that, and I think I've found some pretty darn good ones. Confidence is necessary. I struggle with that one. But it'll be my New Year's resolution to stop being shy, because being shy is a stupid counterproductive emotion that can probably be defeated by intentional forced bravery. I think it'll also help that I'm turning 18 in February. Though it's only a number, it'll mean that I'm officially an adult, that I run my own life, have the right to make my own decisions, and can't take crap from nobody. 17 year olds have the right to their opinions and eccentricities as well, but they don't have the “I'm a responsible independent adult and I do what I want” card.

It turns out CIEE was right. My homesickness/culture shock pretty much followed their pattern exactly. Month one was scary but not too bad. I started to get settled in after that and enjoyed the beginning of month two, with a “you've got this!” kind of attitude. In the middle of month two, culture shock struck. Oh, how I was irritated at France (specifically the Vendée) and its lack of intellectualism, its parties, its judgemental females, its free time, and at the cultural and linguistic wall that kept me from feeling like I could make real friends. This lasted for about a month – it was about month 3.5 before I started forgetting how irritated I was and getting really into the activities I enjoy (aka frisbee) and hanging out with the people I like at school. December is month 4. (Holy mackerel, at the end of this month I've already been here four months. That's a third of a year! That's a pretty long time.)

It turns out time works just like it does in real life.

Wait a minute, that sentence totally didn't say what I wanted it to say. Let me try again: It turns out the way that time goes by in the space of a year mimics how time passes as we grow up. (Better.) See, when you're four, a year is a REALLY long time, because it's a fourth of your life. When you're 16, a year is not so long – only a little more than 6% of your life. Similarly, during a year abroad, the first week seems incredibly long. Every day is filled with so much new information and so much to get used to, and you evaluate all of it in the context of “this is what I'm seeing just now for the first time, and what I will have to live with for the next 10 months.” So the first week and the first month seem incredibly long and it seems unimaginable to live a whole 10 months that slowly. Fortunately, just like living, time speeds up. After you establish a weekly routine, the weeks pass quicker and quicker, each week a smaller fraction of the total time you've been abroad. And now, time just seems to be whizzing by. Each month doesn't take very much time, so in just a little bit it'll be the end of January, which is my halfway point, and then it'll be just a few months from over, and then it'll be... over. How bizarre. How incredibly weird to think about the end, when it's still just the beginning.

10 months is not a long time. Especially not in the grand scheme of things, the 100 or so years I get in total to search for happiness. And since living abroad changes everything, it gives a bucketload of new changing variables to help diversify (/confuse) the experiment. Bit by bit, life is getting better. Or I'm getting better at life. And you know what? This year is helping. I'm glad I came.

Feminism

Although in general I would not consider myself “anti-feminist” (because I am for equal rights of women), I wouldn't choose to identify myself with the feminist movement either. I could go into the reasons, but I couldn't possibly write it better than one of my favorite bloggers, who did a series of brilliant posts about feminism, trying to understand it and sympathize with it, and sometimes feeling victimized by it. You're probably saying to yourself “Tl;dr” right now (Dear Grandma and Grandpa: Tl;dr is short for “too long; didn't read”) but I promise that if you even just start to scroll through the meditations, you'll end up reading all of them and your time will not be wasted:

First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Meditations on the subject of being a privileged white guy feeling terrorized by militant feminists, and other related topics.

If you really did skip over that section (no really! Read them!), I'll take a moment to summarize my negative feelings about feminism with a first analogy to race, which I believe to be an even more flagrant issue.

I am not racist if I refuse to give a black person something. Yes, I have been accused of this, and no, that is not acceptable. I am not racist if I acknowledge the fact that there are differences between races, such as Ashkenazim having long lifespans, or even (God forbid I attribute positive or negative attributes to races!) the fact that Chinese people are on average more intelligent than other races, second only to Ashkenazim. No, I am not racist if I acknowledge these differences, even if I mention that Ashkenazim have long lifespans and are the most intelligent ethnic group and I also happen to be half-Ashkenazi myself. Yes, I do believe that racism is an over-used word (a “superweapon,” if you read the blog I linked to above). Yes, I do acknowledge the fact that there is still racism in the world and that we should fight it, but accusing non-racist people of racism does not help your case.

The other problem I have with militant anti-racists is Affirmative Action, which deserves a whole post of his own and I wrote an essay on it last year that I got a bad grade on because my teacher was pro-affirmative action. (Grumble grumble bitterness bitterness.) But let's just leave it at this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” --MLK Jr. This is what I want – I don't want it to be easier for blacks to get into Harvard than Asians, nor vice versa. I have read Tim Wise's “White Like Me” and didn't agree with most of it. It is true that blacks, on average, are disadvantaged in the race to success in college and jobs: growing up in poverty, with worse schools and a lower cultural value on education. But it is unfair and inaccurate to assume that all blacks are disadvantaged by an arbitrary 280 SAT points and that no whites or Asians are poor and disadvantaged. (To clarify, being black instead of Asian is as helpful as having scored 280 higher on the SAT in terms of getting admitted to college, on the old 1600 point scale. So you can picture it, that would be a 420 point difference on the new scale, for example, 2200 for an Asian and 1780 for a black.) This is why we have application essays: to get to know the person behind the application. But it is far too inaccurate to sort based on race, and it isn't fair to whites, blacks, or Asians to do so. (If you think it is to the advantage of African-Americans, keep in mind that affirmative action creates a different meaning of the phrase “Harvard diploma” for different races – since studies have shown that it is the type of student admitted to the top colleges and not the education provided by the top college that makes a successful graduate, if you admit a lower caliber of black people and a higher caliber of Asian people to Harvard, this will generate “Hey, this job applicant is a Harvard grad!” “Oh, this one too!” “...Well, the Asian Harvard graduate obviously had to be a more impressive candidate than the black one to get admitted, so we'll hire that one.” (Disclaimer: I do not know if this actually happens or not; it's just a theory. Let me know if you find any studies on it!)

This is approximately how I felt about feminism until rather recently.

(My brother read this post and said 'It sounds like you're saying "There's too little sexism to effect [sic] us anymore" and then immediately after that saying "Okay, well there could be enough to effect [sic] us somewhat, but not so much that it deserves to be made a big hairy deal of."' So just to clarify, yes, that's what this post is about, but with the emphasis being on how my views on the subject have evolved over time, partly thanks to the differences in treatment of women between the US and France.)

My thought process goes something like this:

I am aware that sexism was a huge problem in the past and still is a problem in many parts of the world for many people. But we have made so much progress against it that I have never felt denied an opportunity because of my sex. I have no reason to be feminist because I have never felt like my path to success is more difficult because I am female. The obvious challenges that still exist often have other reasons besides sexism behind them: There are many more male US senators than females, which is not because all men are misogynistic oppressive rapists, but because

1. Men “look” more like senators, which is probably partly a social construct and partly a natural evolutionary urge since we look at men as the alpha wolves of the pack, and their natural height and brawn (to fight off the other potential pack leaders!) is clearly authoritative and a desirable trait in a leader. This is not necessarily a good thing, but I don't consider it a sexist thing either. It's an unfortunate, somewhat natural phenomenon.
2. I don't have enough information about this to say anything, but it is true that there are natural differences in male and female brains. To choose a random example, the average male has better spatial skills than the average female. There might be biological, rather than societally-imposed (and therefore sexist) differences in our brains that account for highly skewed gender distribution in jobs such as politics, fashion, science research, etc.
3. Sexism.

I promise you, I really do acknowledge that this is an issue. I just think we tend to exaggerate. And the last thing I want is a 50/50 female/male ratio in Congress. I want our politicians to be elected for their legal knowledge, their logical thinking, their effective policy-making, and their competence, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, or religion. I will still rejoice for the victory against prejudice when we succeed in electing a gay muslim athiest, but I won't vote for them if they aren't competent.

I still feel this way, but feminism is multi-faceted. There are certainly more issues than this, but most feminism I've encountered falls either into the discrimination-in-jobs category or the objectification-of-women category. The first category is the one I've discussed above, that I accept as an existing problem but don't get up in arms against because I've never personally experienced it. But the second one is one I've been thinking a lot more about lately.

Reason 1) I've already mentioned being intimidated by the fashionable French. Perhaps most of the US is just as fashionable as France, but I doubt it. My theory is that the Silicon Valley is particularly unfashionable because we value education above all else (and thus Harvard sweatshirt = fashionable, plus we don't give a damn), that the rest of the US is a little more fashionable than us, and that France is much more fashionable than the US in general. It is true that this holds true for the men as well as the women, but it's not equal. In the US the problem is that we're so homophobic that men could be afraid to dress nicely. Fitted khakis and shirt, a wool coat, a fashion scarf, and hair gel (completely normal in France) borders on metrosexual in the US. In the US, social pressure does not give men much choice, whereas women can dress like tomboys or femininely or however they want. In France, men can either dress nicely or in jeans and a sweatshirt (like the majority of American men) – they have free choice. It's the women in France who don't have a choice.

Before coming to France, I never would've imagined that (outside of TV shows about catty rich high school blondes) someone would actually say “Ew, look at what she's wearing!” in response to an ugly or unfashionable garment such as a T-shirt. Most people have heard “...well, that's an interesting fashion choice,” referring to a very short skirt or too many colors or very gothic or very cheerleader or any fashion choice that is deliberately extreme. To my social-o-meter, it is acceptable but not kind to comment negatively on deliberately extreme fashion choices, but not acceptable to call a person ugly (ever) or to call their garments ugly if they are simply plain. During the last 3 months, I've heard insults like that many times – not intended to be mean, but mean to my ears anyway. This is the sort of comment that people imagine others say of them but in my previous experience, no one ever says. In short, it's paranoia. But whereas I have never been too concerned with my appearance and rarely experienced such paranoia, now it's reality and not paranoia, as I realize I should be careful with how I dress so as not to put myself at a social disadvantage.

This, to me, smells awfully of objectification of women. Please let me know if there's another explanation that doesn't involve sexism (and that passes Occam's Razor), but that's what it sounds like to me. Remembering that I said in the US it's men who don't have a choice, let's acknowledge that that is a problem, too – not sexism, but closer to homophobia, in my opinion. But the lack of choice for women in France smells like sexism. We're obligated to look nice. Why would that be? I can't think of any other explanation besides the fact that a woman's role is to be decorative (aka a sex object, depending on how far you want to stretch the argument). They're all perfectly made-up. Clothes that I consider normal (T-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts) are not acceptable for girls to wear. Skirts and dresses and heels are much more common at Truffaut than at Homestead, and an amount of jewelry that would look skanky at Homestead is common at Truffaut. It's one of those things that in theory I don't support, but you can't fight a country and a culture. It's easier to conform and not make life harder for myself. (Don't worry; I still rebelliously wear my giant blue sweatshirt once every couple weeks or so just to remind myself that I'm American.)

Naturally, these girls don't think of it as an obligation. When I mentioned it to my BFF Julia, she seemed surprised. “It's just a habit!” But when she forgot to put on makeup one day a few weeks ago, she was desperate to find someone with an emergency makeup kit so she could fix the situation. That doesn't sound like a habit to me – it sounds like an obligation. And naturally there are girls who don't obey the rules. There will always be the nerds and the social outcasts who either haven't realized the rules exist (like many of my friends and family), don't have the confidence to give themselves a make-over and be like everyone else (once a late bloomer, always an awkward egg, just like me!), or just don't want to, strongly enough to overcome the societal pressure. But back home, at least at a high school full of nerds like Homestead, it was perfectly acceptable to choose whether or not to be fashionable. Fashionable people, like this cool fashion blogger from Homestead, aren't outcast for not being nerds (as far as I know; I have no personal data on this), and nerds are not ostracized for their sweatpants and Harvard sweatshirts. We are respected for our choices, and whatever we choose is generally not so unusual as to be remarkable. Here in France, it doesn't feel that way at all.

Reason 2 that feminism has become more of an issue for me since coming to France: I'm going to touch on this only briefly because I have little data on the matter, but French boys seem to be a lot pushier than American boys. You know that image we have of sexy, romantic Frenchmen who are slightly obsessed with chasing pretty girls but they're handsome so it's okay? Well, yeah, that. It's only charming in romantic comedies – in real life it doesn't fly. (Man, there are so many things wrong with romantic comedies... PLEASE don't think these are good stories to emulate!) Most of the American boys I knew were adorably shy with girls. This is clearly why the modern tie was invented by Anglo-Saxons: Anglo-Saxon girls need a handle for their men, or they'll never get kisses. This is not at all true for the typical French boy. Needless to say, I am a big believer in asking permission and respecting a negative answer as the final word – none of this “playing hard to get” nonsense. In Amurika, we teach our boys to respect womenfolk, or Pops'll shoot ya with his bear gun.

And last and least, Reason 3 is that my French teacher is a serious raging feminist. I do not always agree with her, but she does bring up some good points. My favorite one is this short video which is in French, but you'll get the gist even if you don't speak French. It swaps the gender roles of standard western society simply to shock you and realize that some things that we consider normal really shouldn't be. We shouldn't have to be afraid if we're walking down the street and there's a group of big strong guys leering at us. Granted, most guys are not rapists and would feel wounded if a woman was afraid to be alone in an elevator with him, for example. “I didn't do anything!” he would think, indignantly. And he would be right, most likely. And when a guy asks a girl out, sometimes she might be afraid as well. We don't know if it's just a guy asking us out, or if a refusal will be met with unwanted persistence and harassment. This, too, is unfair to the poor average guy who's just trying to get a date. I wish we could tell the difference, so we'd never say “Get away from me, creep!” to a nice guy who just wants to buy you a coffee, and we'd never accept a cup of coffee from a rapist. Unfortunately, men don't come with labels, and the fact that they are the physically stronger sex means that sometimes women will be afraid of innocent men, and sometimes women will trust men who will take advantage of them. Sure, women are mind-readers, but not infallibly.

...Shoot, I totally had other things to say, but then I got distracted and forgot what they were.

Okay, moving on. Here's my random PERSONAL UPDATES:

I GOT INTO UW-MADISON! :D If you'll remember from this post a super long time ago, my tour of Madison convinced me that that's where I wanted to go. I'm still going to wait for Berkeley to reject me before I say yes to Madison, but I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going. And I might end up rooming with one of my awesome Voyageur friends if she decides to go there as well! I'm getting pretty stoked for all of it – for living in Madison, which is a beautiful little city, and for the snowy cold, for living near the Boundary Waters and also my aunt and other assorted family and friends in Minneapolis, for getting to retake up band and all the musical opportunities I'm missing out on this year, for frisbee, for being gloriously undecided and getting to decide what I want to do with my life, for more study abroad, for making friends and Hoofers and sledding down Bascom Hill on cafeteria trays and getting to restart my life again, but this time in English and with a little more confidence.

On the other hand, I think I have to mention that last week I felt sad instead of excited for the first time at the thought of going home. My frisbee coach was talking about how we're going to play beach frisbee this summer and learn to run in the sand and how much fun diving for the disk is in beach frisbee. Then he asked me if I'd like to come help out with the mini Friday night practices for the younger kids he's going to set up next year, before remembering that I wouldn't be there. It really startled me, the feeling of wishing I'd be here to play beach frisbee and help out with the little ones. I'm having a good time, but normally I think of June with nothing but excitement.

In other news, we just got our grades for this trimester. I have an average of 15, which is equivalent to an A and is about the 4^th highest in my class. It makes me feel half guilty, because I didn't do any work this trimester and I'm doing far better than I would've done at home with a full load of AP classes.

Just a note for any future exchange students reading this – I don't know why it works like this for me, but this is not a result you can expect. All the other American exchange students I know in France are not doing so well, and they don't get graded because if they were they'd get zeros. (And here is where Julia would tell me to shut up and stop being arrogant, but no, I'm just telling the truth.) The German students I met in Paris, on the other hand, they're right along with me, acing school. So I'm guessing it has something to do with good education (Homestead not being a typical US high school) and something to do with mastery of the language. I don't really know. But for whatever reason, exchange students either succeed or fail. They don't do anything in between. Just a heads-up.

All is going well. I have friends, at least, a few. School's fine, and now that first trimester grades are done, I'm essentially a second semester senior. I have another Ultimate tournament this weekend. And it's almost Christmas vacation, which means skiing at Méribel!

Here are your complimentary songs for the day. They're all good ones this time, too. (I've decided it looks much prettier to use hyperlinks instead of pasting youtube links all over the place. Maybe the perverse French obsession with things looking nice is getting to me.)

Tryo “Ce que l'on sème”

Kyo “Dernière Danse”

Patrick Bruel “Lequel de nous” (My host mom has a crush on Patrick Bruel! It's adorable.)

Ultimate

Last weekend I went with my Ultimate Frisbee team to a tournament at La Rochelle. It was awesome.

I had to get up at 7 am on Saturday, which felt unfortunately like getting up for school. Then we had the 2 hour drive south to La Rochelle. Once there, we had an hour or so to change and warm up before our first match. Our first match was against the weakest team of the tournament, and we pretty well slaughtered them 13 to 4, if memory serves. That was great for us because especially us inexperienced young'uns were pretty nervous and adrenaline-pumped. The match helped calm our nerves a little and gave us the confidence to do better in the next matches. The second one was also a good match, and we won 13 to 7. The third one was against the top team of the tournament. At the beginning it was a total slaughter, with me and the other young'uns losing confidence and focus a little after a solid first two games. In the end we caught up a little, so it actually ended up being a messy messy game on both sides, where we lost 8 or 9 to 13, or somewhere around there. Our coach was not super happy, but he always knows exactly the right things to say to get us back in the good spirit of the thing and motivating us to do better instead of letting one bad match get us down. He's a great coach, and like all great coaches, simultaneously irritating and inspiring. He holds you accountable for your errors and congratulates you on things well done all in the same breath. He knows what to say to improve you -- whether what you have to fix is your wrist flick or your pivot foot or your mental attitude. (He's told me often that what I need most to improve my game is more confidence, which is completely true.)

Anyway, we had three matches that first day, from around 11 in the morning til 5 pm or so. In between matches, we watched other frisbee games, tossed a disk around, went for warm-up runs around the neighborhood, practiced our "upsides" (hammers) and scoobers and other obscure throws, and played "passe-à-dix" which is what Ultimate players do when there aren't enough players or enough field space for a real game (like Box Frisbee). You score a point with 10 completed passes between your team, and at that point the disk goes to the other team. Very simple, no endzones or anything. It's usually played in a quite small rectangle, so it's tricky because you have to have a good strategy and coherent cuts, otherwise it's just a mass of people on the field and you'll never complete a single throw. Oh, also usually for passe-à-dix we mark until the count of 5, not 10. Speed! So basically it was occasional frisbee matches, with frisbee and more frisbee in between matches. After our third game we showered and changed and headed out to a pizza restaurant where the service was very slow but the food was pretty good.

Then we went back to the sketchy grody hostel, where we all hung out until around midnight, when we all staggered back to our rooms and fell asleep. It must be mentioned that since I only paid 15€ for tournament participation -- that's for the room AND gas money -- the fact that it was a seriously sketchy hostel is forgivable.

We were originally 10 players, so I was going to be in a room with the other teenagers (the coach asked me well in advance if that was okay, which was thoughtful), but we ended up being only 9, so we had enough rooms for me to get one to myself, since I am the only girl on the team. That was nice, getting my own room, even though I was literally only in my room for the 8 hours that I was asleep, plus about 15 minutes on either side.

On Sunday we had breakfast at 9 and checked out of the hostel by 9:30. I was happy we didn't have the first match of the day – that would've been rough. Again we won our first game pretty well, though it wasn't our neatest game. It was 13 to 9 or something like that. Our second game was awful, though we won. We played against the team with a lot of teenagers and a lot of women, both of which are very unusual. Usually there's two or three teens per team and one woman per team. (I don't know why there's always one woman, but I've definitely seen a pattern there.) They were pretty darn good, fast and coordinated and all that. But our game was just MESSY and frustrating. So we won, in the end, 9 to 7 or so I think. It's usually game until 13 unless we run out of time (25 minutes per game) and then it's until the next odd number, or something like that (yeah, I haven't exactly studied the rulebook...). So clearly it was both a very close game and a game with a lot of drops if we ended up with a final score of 9 to 7.

But after that game we had a good three hours until the 6th and last match of the tournament, so we took advantage to decompress. I spent a good half-hour throwing hammers back and forth with a couple teammates. My hammers, formerly disastrous, are now starting to look like a actual passes! Right next door to the gym where the tournament was, there was a rock-climbing room. This led to all sorts of shenanigans, including practicing dives since there were mats stacked against the walls -- we could run across the concrete part of the gym and lay-out on the nice, squishy mats without undo harm, although that is why I currently have no skin on my elbows and knees. We also we played monkey-in-the-middle with some components of the circle perched on the rocks walls so we had to rely completely on our hands and our good balance to catch disks. Throwing is also pretty hard when you can't twist your body too much or you'll fall off the wall. And we played some passe-à-dix with the team we just defeated -- a nice friendly atmosphere that was good for deflating some of our competitive tension. (Our coach HATES to lose, and I think his attitude affected us a little. We got really into the tournament.) So our last game started off already with a great atmosphere, all of us laughing and in high spirits from all the shenanigans of the past three hours. We played a really nice clean game, well-thought out strategically and with a high completion ratio of throws. Nothing too risky. Well-organized stacks, not too much "brouillon" in the end zone, good communication between players. It was our best match of the six, a good note on which to end our tournament. We were hyper-focused at the beginning but even got a little silly towards the end, since we had a sizable lead, so we didn't end with as much of a lead as we started with -- I think it was 13 to 9 or so. The second to last point was just our coach and the four youths, though we usually never have more than two youths in per point and rotate. The last point was "les vieux," the oldsters. I say oldersters laughingly, because the oldest is 17 years younger than my father and my father still manages to play without complaining about his creaky old bones. So we got a little bit goofy towards the end, but nothing inexcusable.

So, end result of the tournament, we won 5 out of 6 matches and were 2nd place in the tournament, since there was one team that was significantly better than all the others (the one that slaughtered us while we were having a bad match) and won every match. Our team name, by the way, is Les Jets. This has a bit of a story to it because first of all, most Ultimate team names are in English, just because it's such an English-influenced sport. They even say "nice catch" to each other instead of "c'était bien attrapé." The first place team, for example, was the Raging Bananas, and one of the other teams was the Ré Flying Oysters. So the "Jets" partly is a headnod to the English, but also because of the immense amount of Vendéen pride around here. There is a bean called the mogette that is very representative of the Vendée. In any stereotype of the Vendée, or any joke about the region, the mogette will be mentioned. If you look closely at our team logo, you'll notice that the dot above the j in jets is in the shape of a mogette bean. So our battle cry when we put all our hands in the middle before a game works like this: our coach yells "Mo!" and we yell "Jets!" Get it? Mogette = Mo + Jets. Les Jets. Vendéen pride.

Among all the teams there was a good mix of skills just as our team is half inexperienced and half too experienced. There were always some athletic stars and some woman to match up with me, some old and some young, some skilled and some new-ish. Usually I'm not too impressed by the other women I meet in Ultimate, but there were three young ladies who really incredible this weekend. I have a ways to go to catch up with them.

I wrote one of my college essays about this, but there's something just so cool about losing yourself to an activity, whether it's marching band or theater or even APUSH or ultimate frisbee. It's just cool to be with a group of people where you all have that element in common -- where you never ask "well, what do we do now?" because obviously you go outside and play catch. There's a camaraderie that evolves, with French frisbee players even more than with Americans because that's the way they roll. They're so goshdarn polite that you can't get away with being shy and not talking -- the added formality in France means that they say hello specifically to you as they go around and give everyone the bise (same with saying goodbye) and they'll always tell you bon appétit when you start eating lunch and give you high-fives after every point and you are never ever ignored. Sometimes I don't appreciate this, but mostly it just builds a heckuva lot of team spirit. On Saturday especially I was in such good humor that anything could set me off laughing. On Monday I was sore all over after our two days of non-stop Ultimate, but I still went to practice on Tuesday night because I can't get enough of this sport and these people and the confidence it gives me and the fact that I'm finally doing something challenging and improving myself!

And then when I came home the first email I read told me that the University of Minnesota wants to give me a significant fraction of tuition in scholarships, so That was good news too. And THEN I went to school and history was really fun because we did theater exercises in English to build confidence speaking in English, since often the problem with foreign languages is as much one of confidence as of lack of knowledge. I know, it has little to do with history (besides that our last exercise was putting on a skit about the Blitz of London by the Luftwaffe in WWII), but our history teacher is so fantastic and our English teachers so terrible that I don't think it's a bad thing to use some of our history time to make up for the inefficacy of the English teachers. And I got to do it twice and skip math class, because the teacher wanted my help so we could both be walking around the room correcting peoples' accents at the same time. Fun stuff. And then I think I almost aced a physics test except that I ran out of time on the very last bit of the last problem. And then I got my last paper back in French, and I got 15/20, which is pretty darn amazing and you should all be proud of me.

In short, this has been a really good week.

Maybe it's too soon to say so, but I feel like this weekend was a turning point. I have a purpose now. Just as marching band was my heart and soul at home, so too can Ultimate be my passion here. These past few months have been aimless and boring, but now I finally have something to get me out of the house, something to work for, and something that's really my own. I didn't know anyone on my team before I joined, no host siblings to protect me or encourage me; all social interactions that succeed or fail are mine and all Ultimate improvements I make are my own as well. In a life situation where I have to be more dependent than I have been for many years, it's good to have something of my own. The fact that I'll have a weekend tournament every month or so and practices twice a week from here on out just makes me smile – I'll always have something to look forward to not too far in the future. I don't know if this'll turn out to be an unrealistic expectation, but I can picture in seven months looking back and saying, “Yeah, that first Ultimate tournament at La Rochelle – that was when I really started to have fun here. That was when I first found a reason to stay in France.”

Paris

It was a good week.

I took an early morning train from Nantes to Paris. Once in Paris, I took the metro to my hostel, which was surprisingly uncomplicated and made me rather pleased with myself for being so at-ease in one of the largest cities in the world.

I'd like to go back to that question I was asked I while ago about my favorite experience in France so far. Here it is exactly as I wrote it in my journal:

“At the Chatelet stop, an old French man with an accordion got on right next to me, playing a lilting old waltz. The same thing could've conceivably happened in NYC among other places, but there was something profoundly French about it any way. The song, for one, that was just magical and old-timey and so very appropriate for the moment, like a well-chosen soundtrack in a 1950s film. And then secondly it was the man himself who was so perfect – an old, wrinkled character with all the world in laughter and joy, in suffering and strength and wisdom written on his tanned face and his calloused hands. I gave him a brilliant enraptured smile, and he smiled back. Like he knew exactly what I was thinking, knew me exactly for who I was, and smiled really at ME. It would've been creepy, how I had the impression that he could read my mind, were it not for that he was so benign. That he knew who I was and loved me anyway. Like how liberal Christians (i.e. UCC folks) view God. And his lilting waltz never faltered. I would've given him a coin or something to show my gratitude for the music, but first of all, I think he knew, and second, I didn't want to interrupt, and third, he got on at Chatelet and I got off one stop later at Les Halles. But I'll never forget him, even though I knew him for less than 5 minutes.”

After the metro I was in fine high spirits, buoyed up by the accordion player, having successfully taken the train and the metro, and simply by the magic of being in Paris. Then I proceeded to get lost, frustrated, and hungry. One of them I could fix. I bought a crepe and asked the lady who sold it to me how to find the youth hostel. It turned out she didn't speak French, so that didn't help much. Eventually I realized that there were two different parts of the street the hostel was on, and I'd been looking on the wrong one. So a confused phone call with my host dad later, I found the hostel, dropped off my baggage (not that I brought much, just a backpack with my toothbrush, a towel, and three clean shirts), and continued exploring. The main adventures of the day were 1) getting hit on by an older Indian man – slightly creepy, but I guess that's the risk you take when you talk to strangers and 2) getting accosted by all the charity people next to the Louvre and getting mad at them enough to start spouting off legal rights that exist in the US but I don't know about in France. I walked around a lot which ended up being useful later because I knew my way around (better than our tour guide, André, who is hopeless despite being Parisian).

We were supposed to meet at the hostel at 15:00, so I soon found myself settling into a small six-person room with 2 other Americans, 2 Brazilians, and a Czech. At first I was less than optimistic – they seemed like a bunch of gossipy, girly gigglers who I'd have nothing in common with. But I ended up really enjoying it. I liked almost every single one of the other foreign exchange students, not just my roommates. They're all wonderful individuals with their own great stories and a taste for adventure like my own. Our common languages were French, English, and sometimes Spanish, so everyone spoke in Frenglish with lapses into Spanish between the Mexicans, Ecuadorians, and Brazilians. I thought that was really cool.

Here's me and my roommates, having fun on the roof of the hostel (yes, we got in trouble):

 

After settling in, we went for a cruise on the Seine, which was beautiful although quite chilly. We mingled and got to know each other – as foreign exchange students, we were all pretty eager to get to know each other. A little starved for friendship, eager to hear about other peoples' experiences, and we've all learned by now that being shy doesn't get you anywhere. They were all fascinating and I loved talking with them. Although one of the most interesting people was André, our 50-ish year old guide. I have a habit of making friends with tour guides, because they're usually the most interesting people in the group and then you can ask them for special favors! So André and I discussed politics, his time in the US at UCLA, cultural differences, the history of Paris, and whatever else came to mind.

After the boat, we had dinner, went back to the hostel and fell asleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians and a German.

The next day, we walked. A lot. I don't even remember what we were supposed to be seeing, but it just involved a lot of walking. Normally that would be totally okay for me, but since I sprained my ankle a couple days before coming to Paris, it wasn't ideal. Oh, and we saw the Cathedrale de Notre Dame, which is impressive.

We ate boxed lunches next to the Louvre, sitting in a big circle and sharing a little bit about ourselves. After lunch we explored the Louvre. I probably would've enjoyed it more if I hadn't been so tired. But actually, it really made me wonder what makes art great or not. I know there's no definition of good or bad art, but all the art in the Louvre is really famous. Why? I'll take the Mona Lisa for an example, just because everyone knows what it is. It's just a woman. It doesn't awe me to look at it. To an untrained eye, it has no apparent value. I have some high school friends who can draw amazingly, either realistically or just in an intrinsically pleasing style. How come their art doesn't get a place in the Louvre? I know that there must be a reason. Just like how there is no good music or bad music, but my host brother listens to terrible electropop and wouldn't know quality classical music if it hit him in the face. And I know, because I've been trained in classical music. Even though music is a matter of opinion, I'm willing to state as a fact that Shostakovich's 8^th is just plain better than Rihanna. So I'm sure there must be some logic behind this art thing, but I am as uneducated as average as far as art goes, and therefore am incapable of appreciating the Shostakovich of art. Long story short, the Louvre was okay, but I just felt incapable of appreciating it for the masterpiece I'm sure it must be.

After the Louvre we went to the Champs Élysée to go shopping. I was hanging with the other two Americans, and we started by getting coffee and pains au chocolat (chocolate pastries) to fortify ourselves. I'm only writing this irrelevant detail because it was absolutely the best coffee I have ever tasted. The pastry wasn't too shabby either. Then we strolled through H&M, Promod, Zara, and a bunch of other nice stores. I didn't buy anything, but it was decently entertaining.

Then we ate dinner, headed back to the hostel, and went to sleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians, two Germans, and an extra Brazilian.

Day 3. We missed our alarm in the morning and woke up with barely enough time to get dressed and tumble downstairs for breakfast. Then we went to Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur. I spent about half an hour talking with a street musician, an old violinist who was astonishingly expressive when he played. So I asked him how he learned – he started at age 6 and studied at conservatory. That didn't surprise me, given the way he played, but it is surprising and sad that anyone who's studied at conservatory should have to be a street musician.

Montmartre was great, full of little cheap touristy shops where I got all my Christmas shopping done at once. After Montmartre, we went to the Eiffel Tower and ate lunch on the lawn beneath it. At the base of the tower are a couple hundred bear statues, decorated by each country. The US bear was pretty uncreative compared to a lot of the others:

While waiting for our turn to ascend the tower, I ate (half of) the best nutella crepe I have ever eaten. The coffee I had at the Champs Élysée was actually quality stuff, but I suspect the nutella crepe tasted like paradise half just because I was cold and tired. Then we went up, and the view was pretty nice, I guess, but since we couldn't go up to the third floor (the very top) it wasn't overwhelming.

Then we went shopping in another big famous area with really expensive stores. Again I didn't buy anything, and just barely didn't get lost.

For dinner I had a pancake topped with cucumber and yogurt mix topped with lox. It was delicious. It was also a hilarious dinner, because all of us were tired enough to think our own terrible inappropriate jokes were funny. But it's really that that I miss sometimes, being all alone in Bois de Céné: The ability to tell jokes and just laugh about them. I do sometimes succeed in telling or understanding jokes in French, but everyone knows that when you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny. Similarly, when you have to think really hard about it, it isn't as funny either. It's amazingly relieving to hang out with people with a common cultural background so you can just talk and laugh about things without difficulty. I'll never take that for granted again.

Then, since we were all exhausted from two nights of partying, we headed back to the hostel and went right to sleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians, four Germans, and an extra Brazilian. Or at least, they did. I stayed up an hour or so talking and then went to sleep.

The next morning, we missed our alarm. Again. Stumbled down to breakfast and spent our last morning walking in a daze around some famous parts of Paris. My favorite thing about that last day was a conversation I had with André. I talked with André a lot, actually: like I said, I make a habit of befriending tour guides because it's a great way to get extra information and benefits. André and I had discussed a lot of things, from politics to how much booze French people drink to his youth. On that last day, as everyone was lagging behind disinterestedly, not listening to André explain historical things about Paris, he asked me casually if we partied last night and if it was good. I hesitated, knowing that he wouldn't care, but also knowing that I tend to be way too trusting and might be innocently falling into a trap. He said “I don't care, you know. You're young, you may as well make the most of it.” So I laughed and told him yes, we partied every night. And yes, it was fun. Apparently the hostel staff had told him that everyone was coming to our room at night, so he knew perfectly well what was going on. He's just a really chill guy. That really made my day because he's a pudgy, aging man who, at heart, is still 17, high on love and life, eager to conquer the world and meet all the girls and party in every corner of Paris. And so he gave us his blessing to live it up, and even pretended for us that he was ignorant of it – except to me, because I was smart enough to make friends with the tour guide. :)

By ten we were back at the hostel, bags packed, saying our goodbyes. My train didn't leave until two, so I headed off to the metro, grateful I'd packed light and would only have to lug my backpack around Montparnasse with me instead of the giant suitcases all the other girls brought. Once at Montparnasse, I decided not to go up the tower because it costs money and I'd already seen the view from the Eiffel tower and found it underwhelming. Instead, I took a walk. I found some lovely stores and bought a pair of ballet flats for 15€. And, of course, another nutella crepe. I practically lived on those things while I was in Paris, and I regret nothing. At one point I walked through a farmers' market, which was a bubble of very real Parisian-ness in the middle of tourism-land. I love farmers' markets, especially when there's fruits and vegetables and hunks of meat that I don't even recognize. I didn't buy anything, I just enjoyed walking through it and pretending I was a real Parisienne. (If I'm careful not to have a lost, touristy expression on my face, and no one talks to me, it tends to work. I have enough confidence in big cities to look like I live there. I even got asked for directions by three different people!)

My other favorite moment of my last day in Paris was the “A vous de jouer” piano in the Gare de Montparnasse.

There's a piano, just there for people to play on. I got back to the station with about an hour to spare just to make sure I had time to find the right train, and ended up spending at least half of that time sitting and listening to the pianists come and go. They were all much better than I am, or I might have tried to play something myself. But I just enjoyed listening. And normally I find French people much less appreciative of performance: they clap less and are a more reserved audience. But everyone clapped for the amateur pianists at Montparnasse, and as a circle of mutual music lovers, we just looked around at each other and shared contented smiles whenever there was a particularly well-done piece. I love spontaneous feelings of camaraderie – well, who doesn't?

The train home was uneventful, except for one thing: my phone stopped working. This was quite worrying, because I didn't even know if I had to take another train from Nantes to home or if my host brother was going to be around to pick me up. I didn't run out of battery, no. I made sure to charge my phone before I left. It just wouldn't receive or send calls or texts. So once I got to Nantes, I tried calling some more until I gave up on my phone, and then I went outside and walked around a little in the vain hope that I'd see my brother's car (yeah, right – Nantes is the size of San Francisco, remember). Came back inside. Tried a payphone – it ripped me off 6€ to call my host dad and then host mom, and neither of them picked up. I didn't even leave a message. Frigging pay phone. So then I leaned against the wall, trying to calm my breathing. Don't have a panic attack, Ikwe. That is not useful. Think, dammit. What WOULD be a useful thing to do? But I couldn't think of anything I could do.

Just then, I heard my name, looked up, saw my host brother and his girlfriend standing in front of me looking concerned. “Oh thank God!” I said. Not even “Oh merci Dieu,” even though I always speak French with my family. It just came out of my mouth in English, I was so surprised and relieved. My savior! So that was my little adventure with cellphone problems (can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em), and I'm slightly ashamed that my problem-solving skills had a bug and I had absolutely no idea what to do if my brother hadn't shown up right then. It turned out all I had to do to get my elderly phone to work again was turn it off and back on again, just like one often does with buggy computers. Believe me, I feel stupid for not thinking of that.

So now that I've finished all the boring talking about events stuff, I'm gonna comment on the nature of the universe just like I always do. Introspection from Paris number one:

Americans and Germans are a lot more alike than either of them are like the French. I enjoyed conversing with the Germans I met a lot, and we usually spoke in Frenglish because Germans usually have an easier time with English than with French, but after living here for several months their vocabulary has grown quite a bit more in French. Whatever works. We had a lot of the same complaints. We both think that the French are really unproductive and spend too much time at school, but with a large percentage of that time not being used. We both hate the fact that the French don't have hobbies, and their only form of entertainment is socializing. We think school is too easy, and that French people are bad at math, science, and foreign languages. We agree that the French are reserved, cliquey, and hard to make friends with. Talking with the Germans was almost like talking to Americans, except for the language. I felt like we were from the same culture. Even the things that are different we discussed with interest and were not shocked at each others' customs. For example, when talking about our futures and what we want to do with our lives, I explained how important college is to the Americans; in my French high school all they talk about is what profession you eventually want, which doesn't happen in the US. At Homestead, we primarily talk about applying to and choosing colleges. In Germany it isn't like that either – they have other choices that are important – but our system is quite understandable to them. Long story short, talking with Germans doesn't feel like talking through a wall like talking with French people does.

Question of the day: Why can you talk about Germans or a German, but not Frenchs or a French? It has to be the French or French people. It's most inconvenient.

On a somewhat related note, I really enjoyed being in a group with 26 other exchange students of all different nationalities. It was everything that I naively wished moving to a French high school would be: meeting interesting people with all different great life stories, everyone from completely different backgrounds but with recent common experiences as exchange students. We know that language doesn't have to be a barrier – we're living the language barrier. One of the students I spent the most time with was a Czech girl who didn't have very good English or French, but we got along just fine in slow, careful Frenglish. Unfortunately, not everyone you meet on the street will be that patient. And even if they are, you feel guilty or ashamed for making them wait for you, for the extra effort it takes to have a conversation with you. When everyone in the group is an exchange student, there's no guilt – we all know what it feels like to live in our second (or third) language. And then there's all the things in common we have: conversation starters could be anything from “What do you miss the most about home?” to “How do you like your host family?” to “Let's complain about French people!”

The other thing that was great about Paris was the independence. We had André to take care of us, but he wasn't exactly the strictest of chaperones. I wandered around the city by myself (and never even got lost, except if you count not being able to find my youth hostel as lost), found my own food, took the metro by myself, decided who to hang out with and what to do and had no one to tell me to put on a second jacket or I'd catch a cold. The combination of the independence and being in a big city and being with a few other anglophones meant it felt almost like home. And at the same time, it was felt good to come home afterward for a shower with actual hot water, more than a few hours of sleep per night, and seeing my host family, of whom I am quite fond. Being away teaches you to appreciate home. (Even if it's not home home, in Sunnyvale.)

There you have it. My Parisian adventure. If you want more pictures, they are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4991943683214.195896.1438307065&type=1&l=b7e0731321

 The first week of vacation I wanted to be back at school because I had nothing to do, but after Paris, the last thing I wanted was to go back. Oh well. Just five and a half more weeks until my next vacation, for Christmas. The good thing is that I switched English classes (and will continue to switch every two months, to share the American with each group). My new teacher's English is not better than the old one's, but she is a better teacher and I have a lot more friends in my new class.

A quick note of clarification on my last post about capitalism and socialism, since a lot of people have talked to me about it:

I didn't really mean to say that capitalism is “better” than socialism. I think it's a really good thing that we have both kinds of societies in the world. Capitalism is better for some people, namely those who are intelligent, ambitious, and lucky. The successful are more successful in a capitalist country, and this creates an attitude of competitivity and innovation that is very good for the US economy and for technology. But those who aren't at the top would probably be happier in a socialist society. And for me personally, the competition and ambition of the Silicon Valley motivated me and helped me flourish, so I'd prefer to live in a capitalist state. But I don't really think one is intrinsically better than the other, just that capitalism fosters extremes (the very successful and innovative AND the very poor who can't pay their medical bills) whereas socialism creates more of an equilibrium, where everyone gets about the same benefits and thus innovation is less pronounced.

Your complimentary French songs of the day I owe to Tanguy (merci Tanguy!).

Brigitte: Battez-Vous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgwRLVzOZQ&feature=youtu.be

Emilie Simon: Fleur de Saison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs00rfVJFKI&feature=youtu.be

Vanessa Paradis: L'Incendie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C72piaGmahs&feature=youtu.be

Nature in my country

For those of you who don't know, I also blog on CIEE's website. CIEE is my exchange program and I am a “blogger intern” which looks nice on college apps and stuff. I'm not going to link to it because the user-interface is terrible and I can't figure out how to make my posts look nice. But sometimes they give us homework, like “best experience so far” or, currently, “nature in your country.” I didn't like the last prompt so I didn't duplicate it here on my Wanderlust blog, but I liked this one better so I'm putting it here:

Rain, Mémé, and the Marais

 

Not such a bad topic for a blog post, in my opinion. Because not only is the nature a little different here, but it's a million times more important than it was at home.

The weather is similar-ish to NorCal weather. Ish. It's significantly colder and wetter, as I've been noticing recently. I even had to go shopping for warm clothes. Because we live next to the sea, it's a little cooler in summer thanks to the sea wind (compared to Sunnyvale, CA), and in winter it gets really cold but almost never snows, for the same reason. It can get down to -5º C (23º F) for a good week in the middle of winter, they tell me.

So far all I've been experiencing is the rainy season. In autumn it rains for about two months straight, before settling into a colder and drier winter. This is the biggest difference between lush, green Vendée and brown, desertish California. I love it. Here they hate the rain, because they grew up with it. But I love it because first of all, I come from a place where rain is pretty special, where everyone gets excited when it rains and posts statuses on facebook “OMG guysss look outside!!!” And secondly, I just plain like the rain. On the rare occasions when we get a full week of rain in Sunnyvale, I'm one of the few kids still posting happy statuses about the rain instead “OMG guysss when will it stop being all cold and wet?!?!”

The similar-ish weather means that the flora is pretty similar. I recognize almost all of the plants that grow here, with the exception of a few staple Vendéen foods like mogette beans:

The fauna, however, is quite different. The first week I was here I went for a run, trying to figure out the tangle of back-country roads behind my house. I saw what looked like a giant rat, or a beaver with a rat-tail, dive into a pond and swim away as I approached it. I had never seen anything like it. They are a common pest here, and their digging habits destroy buildings and farmland. I have since seen several more, but only in the form of roadkill. They are called Rogondin, and wikipedia informs me that it is coypu, river rat, or nupia in English, though I have never heard any of these terms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu

Other than that, the fauna is just different because there's so much more of it. I'm not used to seeing cows and goats and sheep and poultry just wandering all over. I guess it's kind of like that in the Central Valley, but certainly not in urban Silicon Valley. The only animals we have are squirrels, raccoons, and (usually domesticated) cats and dogs. There are also plenty of cats and dogs here, but in a more utilitarian fashion. My cat, Nuts, who likes to sleep exactly in the middle of my bed,

eats mice and bugs and other pesky things. Unlike my pampered Californian kitty, Shadow,

Nuts knows how to fend for himself. Similarly, dogs are usually kept outside, a custom I wholeheartedly agree with. (I hate dogs.)

Now that we've presented Vendéen nature a little bit, I'd like to talk about how it's important. Living in a department that is so rural, a very large portion of the population works in agriculture or ostréiculture. I don't know if there's a word for ostréiculture in English, but the etymology is clear: ostréi- → oyster, -culture → culturing (of), aka farming. Oyster farming. My host uncle is an ostréiculteur, my host brother works with him sometimes on the weekends, and my entire host family sometimes works selling oysters at the market. My first week in France, my host uncle, brother, and brother's best friend took me out oystering with them. (http://envikwedevoyager.blogspot.fr/2012/09/food.html) It's an incredibly important part of the economy here.

My host mom's normal job is as a gardener. She takes care of the flowers for our little village of Bois de Céné. She loves to work with her hands, and is proud of her work. She understands quite well that she already has much less education than her kids, and that her kids will never do the same kind of work that she does. This doesn't bother her at all – she just likes her work and feels very much a part of this land and of this community. She is a true maraîchère, born to the marais of Bouin (marais means marsh or swamp, but somehow all the English words have negative, ugly connotations and the French one doesn't, so I'm gonna keep using “marais”). Her parents were maraîchers, swamp farmers, and she grew up selling oysters and bringing the cows in and out to pasture. She knows everyone in Bouin and everyone in Bois de Céné. Like a true Vendéen, she has never moved more than 10 km away from her father's farm in the marais. The marais is a part of her and she is a part of it, and I can't imagine them ever being separated.

Now I have to describe Mémé a little bit. Mémé is a nickname for great-grandmother, just like how I say “Gramma” and not “Grandmother.” She is my host mom's mother's mother, and she is now a glorious 98 years old.

The first time I met Mémé was also during the first week I was here. We try to go visit her pretty often so she doesn't feel lonely and doesn't forget who her family is. We walked into the “maison de vie” – old folks' home – and there she was, not in her room, but perched on a chair next to the kitchen, chopping onions. More specifically, she was trimming onions – it was a box of old onions that were starting to rot, and she couldn't bear the thought that the kitchen would throw them away, so she was cutting out the rotten parts. I was already enraptured. This was so reminiscent of my Grandma Carol, my mom's mom who had Great Depression habits up until the day she died even when she no longer needed them. So we said hello, and I was introduced (in a very loud, clear voice that repeated all the information twice so she would understand it) as the young American. Mémé was pleased as punch. “It's not every day I get a visitor,” she said, “and especially not an American! What an adventure.”

The second time we met was yesterday. November 1^st, the day of the dead, is one of the most important holidays in France. Never mind Halloween, which, I might remind you, is a contraction of All Hallow's Eve. It's All Hallows Day that's important in a Catholic culture, even if very few people are still religious. We had a big family dinner with all my host mom's sisters and their kids, the parents, and Mémé. Lunch is the most important meal in France, not dinner. So imagine Thanksgiving, but at lunchtime and with French foods instead of American foods.

Mémé is getting quite deaf and a little forgetful and follows the conversations around her somewhat less successfully than I do. She's so old that she often can't control her motions, but she always has a smile on her face. So she'll be bobbing away, up and down, her head turning this way and that, but I often looked up to find her staring right back at me, a benevolent misty expression on her face as if she was thinking, Ah, the wonders of youth! So nice that she is having an adventure, coming to France. Young curiosity, young love, high spirits... those were the days... Lost happily somewhere between the present and her own youth. About the third time I looked up and made eye-contact with her, she smiled even wider, leaned over to her granddaughter my host mom, and said “Look how cute she is! She has dimples when she smiles.” The conversation that had been turning around us stopped, considerate as always for Mémé. They laughed and agreed politely with her. Yes, I am cute when I smile, and aren't dimples nice. I winced. I've always argued with my mom about whether or not I have dimples. I guess I lose this one. The conversation wandered back to whatever the adults were talking about, and Mémé and I continued looking at each other and smiling, each incapable of communication for different reasons, but equally pleased with ourselves for being around such wonderful company. I don't have any Mémés, although I have a dim memory of my mother's mother's mother from when I was really small – I want to say around 4 or 5, but I don't really know how old I was. But anyway, I felt an instant affection for little old Mémé as soon as I met her, and wouldn't hesitate to say that she's my Mémé. I need a family here, and this one is working out quite well. I'm sure Mémé doesn't mind the addition of another great-grandchild.

I swear, all of this was actually relevant to today's prompt. I'm getting to the point, just give me a few hundred more words. (Man, I wish I could say that in college app essays...) You can see Mémé's life written all over her face. Her nose was broken once and healed crooked. She's bent and wrinkled, well and truly battered by life, but far healthier than any other 98 year old I've ever met. (I've never met any other 98 year olds, but she's healthier than you could reasonably expect a 98 year old to be.) I feel like I can read the tale of her life on her face. The marais, the young adventures she must've had, meeting her husband, the marais, the affair her kids suspect her of having to produce a third, non-blue-eyed child with very different coloring, the marais, raising her kids, the marais.

Here you aren't a true Vendéen unless your family has lived here since the beginning of time. I'm a true Californian because I was born there, but by Vendée standards, I wouldn't be. My host family are true Vendéens and true maraîchers. Mémé lived and worked in the marais just as Mamy and Papy did, just as Maman did. And here the cycle is broken because my host sibs are going to move up from the primary sector to the tertiary, but at least they'll still probably live in the Vendée.

The point I was trying to get to is that nature has a huge influence on the everyday lives of these people. Looking around the dinner table yesterday, I saw the sun-darkened faces of the husbands, my uncle's scarred ostréiculteur hands, my host mother's dark callouses, Mémé's well-lived-in face. It's written all over their bodies, every summer under the sun, every rainy season that ground the mud of the marais into their skin, every long, cold winter, and every spring planting. A world so foreign to me, because my parents and my parents' parents worked inside. My grandfather's father was a vegetable seller in New York, and that's as “real work” as we get, not counting the military. So I love the rain, and that's part of what makes it obvious that I'm not a maraîchère. I've never had to harvest oysters in the rain, never had to bring the cows in in the rain, never had to stay out in the rain all day to make sure the flowers aren't damaged by the coming storms. True, I've done French camp, and we canoe in the rain, cook dinner in the rain, empty our tents out with bowls after the storm broke all our zippers

and sometimes don't even have dry clothes to change into. But that's only four weeks a year. It's not a lifetime of the marais.

I'm so in love with the countryside here. I'm in love with the fact that my family's everyday life is so tied to the weather and the marais, even if it's much less important than it was a generation ago. I'm in love with the fact that there's goats in the yard across the street from us, and that we have a pond in our backyard with ducks and chickens, and that we eat the ducks and chickens. I love the fact that people so tied to the earth are so much more practical, so much more real than indoor, germaphobic Silicon Valley-ers. When you buy a baguette, they just hand you a baguette. No bag, no paper wrapping to assure you it hasn't been touched by unclean hands. Just a frigging baguette. And if by accident you dropped the baguette on the floor, I'm certain they would pick it up, brush it off, and put it back on the table to eat.

Tl;dr: That was a really long post to explain two things: 1) The nature is really pretty here, and I like living in a rural place instead of the sprawling suburbs of San Francisco, and 2) Nature is a lot more important to everyday life here, and I think it's cool.