Food

When I told people I was going to France, most of them responded with some form of “Oh, France! I'm jealous; the food is delicious” or “Hehe, you'll come back 10 pounds heavier.” The second response is funny because while French food is famous for being heavy, French women are famous for being svelte. Most people explain this by saying that they eat much smaller portions. THEY LIE. Not only do they have not one course for dinner like most American families, they have the entrée (which does not mean main course like it does for us, it means firsts, since it's too substantial to be called appetizer) and then the main course, and then cheese, and then dessert. Not only is the entrée as big as what I would call enough, and the main course even bigger, but they're all heavy, cheesy, fatty substances. With lots of red meat. I have no idea how French people are not fat like the stereotypical American (yes, they have confirmed for me that that is the stereotype). No idea at all.

For me, I haven't been eating very much at all. In the states I usually tell people that I'm not picky at all and that I'll eat anything. But here I feel bad because the only food I don't like (shellfish) is a big local specialty, and the one thing my stomach doesn't handle well in too much abundance is grease, which is in every dish. In the states my greasy food problem only appears if I'm stuck with a McDonald's cheeseburger, which only happens once a year when I take the bus to camp. Nate, our CIEE organizer guy, was talking about how for him, in Spain, the trigger for his homesickness/culture shock was the low water pressure in the shower that just pissed him off. For me it'll be the food.

Another thing that amused me: today my host brother took me to his last day of work before he starts school. His work is oystering! We went out in his boss's boat and the first thing they did when we got out to the oyster fields was open the cooler and eat lunch. Now, I realized several hours later that this was because you have to take the boat out when the tide is high and you can't get out of the boat to work until the tide is low, but it still strikes me as being incredibly French. No rush to do anything – take your time and eat! All this, right after I'd eaten a big breakfast because Maman insisted that I be well-fed before venturing out on the sea.

Despite the lunch of ham sandwiches with a disgusting amount of butter inside, oystering was fun. I actually did nothing – I hung out and caught itty-bitty crabs while the men oystered. Here is how oystering works:
There are big mesh pockets full of oysters on long metal planks that are in the water at high tide and out of water at high tide. When the tide is going out, they bring in their boat and wait for the water to descend to waist-high. Then, the oysters that aren't ready yet (I don't know what the difference is) get their pouches turned over to kill the seaweed that grows on them, and beaten with a stick to pound the oysters out of the holes so they don't crawl through the mesh. The oyster bags that are ready get thrown on the boat. Each bag weighs at least 10 pounds, and there are hundreds of them to go through before the tides come back in. It's quite dirty work. Like I said, I just sloshed around in my borrowed rainboots, catching little crabs and brainstorming ideas for COLLEGE ESSAYS (insert ominous music here). But it was really cool, and I'm always glad to get out and moving, since it appears my host family exercises less than I do. (I was going to make that a generic comment about French people, but when I think about, I exercise far more than most Americans, so I think this one is my abnormality, not theirs.)

Tonight we had fish and vegetable stew with quinoa for dinner, which was amazing. I don't want to give the French a bad name – most of the food is delicious. It just has an unfortunate tendency to make me sick. But tonight's dinner was not too heavy at all, and we even * gasp! * skipped the entrée, so for the first time since I arrived I ate as much as I good and felt great afterward. Yay for veggies!

Here is your complimentary French (actually Canadian) song for the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzltFPS5Fy8