It's an Epiphany!

As if all the holiday eating weren't enough, there's another food-related holiday celebrated the first week in January in France: Epiphany. Originally there is some religious significance, but the laïc frogs dropped that and kept the best part: the cake. Starting just after new years all over France the pâtissieries start cooking up these special galettes that have a tiny trinket baked inside. The tradition goes that the youngest person at the table hides underneath and calls out who gets what piece as someone doles out the cake above. Whoever finds the fève is the king, or roi, and wears the paper crown. There's 2 kinds of galettes in France and some invisible demarcation of who celebrates with which one- there's a briochey kind with large grains of sugar or dried fruits baked on top, and a flaky kind with a layer of almond paste in the middle. In the Southwest however, we don't discriminate, and celebrate with both. So all this month I've been having these cakes with friends, colleagues, etc.

Saturday I went skiing in the Pyrenees with my high school. Some of the more motivated gym teachers organize a few weekend field trips over the winter where they rent a coach bus and take a bunch of kids to one of the stations around here. We got wind in the English department that it was only 20 euros to be a chaperone so we showed up in force: Aurélie whom I went to the Alps with over Christmas, Sandrine, and myself, plus the 6 gym teachers.

I must say, it was a bit awkward seeing my kids outside of school, let alone at 6 in the morning wearing snowpants. I mean, interactions outside the classroom in the hallways are at best passable, so this was pretty weird. I can never tell if they think I'm cool, or not. Sometimes they cry out "hello!" from across the hall, and sometimes act like they've never seen me before in their lives. Who knows. Luckily "chaperone" was a loose term and we really didn't see them once they got off the bus and got skis strapped on them.

Still, the day was a bit long. I need to really lower my expectations after a week in the Alps of incredible skiing. First off, I got myself going at 5:30 on a Saturday to be at the school ontime for the departure, which was late. Then, we took over 2 hours to get there. THEN renting equipment for 20 kids from a store that was the size of my bedroom, no exaggeration, with only one 60-something year old guy working, worked about as well as it sounds. Plus the equipment was from 1989. And he gave me skis about half a foot too short.

There was unfortunately no real snow as its been so warm here, so we were skiing on manmade snow and icy slopes, surrounded by brown scenery - not at all mode Alps. Just when I was getting good and cranky, we stop for lunch.

The professors picnicked apart from the kids, and it had been suggested to bring a little something to share with everyone, pot luck style. We settle down and someone brings out a bottle of white for a little coup de blanc to start with the duck fritons, paté, and assorted dried sausages. Then someone pulls out a homemade quiche, a savory cake, charcuterie, 4 kinds of cheese, and a few bottles of red. Then its cakes, another bakery galette de rois, coffee, chocolate, clementines, and homemade pear liquer to warm us up for the slopes.

I'm telling you, with the French, you don't joke around with meals. All in all it was a good day, not the intense skiing I'd hoped for, but a sunny day with new colleagues and a very traditional French "picnic."

A plus!
Linz

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The good: I don't know if you remember, but last year I had lost my wallet out in Toulouse one night, and after hours at the police station filing a report, I heard nothing back. Then a few months later I saw on my blog that someone had left a comment on the post I had written about the whole affair telling me that they had found my wallet and brought it to the police station. I went to check, not really believing it since I hadn't heard anything from the police, and lo and behold, a almost 4 months later and only weeks before my departure, I was reunited with my wallet. OK, so cut to this year. Yesterday I ran into town during some time between classes to check out the nation-wide semi-annual sales going on right now (I've been holding myself back for weeks), I go into a store, try something on and leave. An hour later I decide to go back to the store to buy it. I wait in line and pay. As I'm putting the bag and my wallet back into my backpack someone standing in line behind me says "Lindsay?" I stand up and look at the woman speaking to me racking my brain for who this person could be. "It's me who found your wallet last year, how are you?" The woman's Australian living in Toulouse with her boyfriend and she recognized my wallet. (Well, and me apparently we talked breifly that night at the bar and when I left, she saw it had fallen out of my bag on the floor #notoneofmyfinermoments). We exchanged info and are getting drinks sometime. How crazy?


The bad: I'm STILL waiting for a used computer that my parents sent me from the US a month ago. My parents have been calling UPS stateside and I've been calling the post office here incessantly. Two weeks I called the Post and they told me that three weeks wasn't unusual to wait and to call back next week. So I do this past Friday and when I re-read them the package number they tell me that I'm calling the wrong agency, and its actually a different one (i.e. I was calling UPS when I should've been calling FedEx). Talk about information that would've been useful when I called and gave the same number weeks ago. So I go on this new agency's website and search the package number. My package shows up and I see that it has been stuck at cusoms in Paris since December 28th, and that since that date they have allegedly been trying to reach the sender or receiver for "additional information." So I call the number on the site to find out what the heck is going on up there, and of course am greeted by an automated service. In my very best French I specify that I am the recipient of an international package. And I wait, and wait...and wait.

Twenty minutes later a woman answers. I re-read her the package number. Why do they even bother with the machine? Is it just to give the caller the illusion of being busy, annunciating single word answers like an idiot in a spelling bee alone in your kitchen only to be put on hold and asked the same information by a human?  She responds "Ohhh you need international shipping. This is the national division." At this point, I'm done being the nice foreigner who appologises for her accent or her need for things to be repeated at least twice. Thanks to all the merde of late, my angry French has progressed from fumbling, suject-omitting, and unconjugated to relatively well articulated French that communicates I'm pissed off, even if my accent makes you laugh.

I explain that I've already waited for 20 minutes and clearly stated to the putain de machine that I was looking for international. She assures me she will connect me toute de suite, madame. Right away. I wait. And wait. What a waste of time. And how scary that this many people are calling about international packages on a Friday morning? I do the dishes. I knit a mitten. I go to the bathroom. Thank God for hands free. Isn't it funny the things people will get into while on hold to "stay busy"? And don't they always pick up just when you start praying they won't? Maybe it's an American thing, like I will not let my productivity be derailed by something as banal as being put on hold. Maybe the French accept this bureaucracy as part of life, sit back and have a coffee or smoke a cigarette. Just chill.They probably do. I bet they do. Heck, maybe that's what the person who was supposed to be answering phones was doing too. Unfortunatley, I didn't have either, so was up to my elbows in dishwater when someone picked up forty minutes later. 

She explains that I need to send an email to customs including the contents of the package, and also promising to pay a 20 percent tax on non EU imports should they choose to impose it upon (eventual) delivery. Then they will release it. It was this  exact tax I was trying to avoid by having a used computer sent, and not a new one. Merde. I've sent the email and still haven't any news. I'm quite sick of being the one to waste my time and pick up the pieces after somethign that wasn' my fault, but, c'est la vie. 

The ugly: OK, there really isn't any ugly, I just liked the title. Unless you count the ugly appartment building being built next to my house. Plus the frog's are ga-ga about Clint, so it's fitting.

A bientôt!
Linz

Let it Snow

Woowee a lot to catch up on!

I had a great Christmas here in Toulouse and managed to set an eating record among the frogs: 3 Christmases in less than 2 days (and I only had my sights set on a personal best...imagine if 'd really gone for it??). We celebrated the reveillon , or Christmas Eve, with Gisèle's boyfriend's family at his daughter's new home. We had all kinds of traditional seafood appetizers: scallops, oysters, shrimp, plus the requesite foie gras served on little toasts with a sweet champagne jam, and her spin on foie gras macarons. And that was just the appetizers. I can't go on because my stomache is starting to hurt, but that gives you just an idea of what a feat 3 meals in 2 days was. 

Afer all that chow I hauled myself over to the Alps for a week of skiing. I went to Les Arcs in Bourg St Maurice with a colleague who works for a French non-profit that organizes all kinds of sporty vacations all over the country. The morning of I had one of those uh...what am I doing moments as I was going essentially alone (she would be working the whole time) and would be meeting all kinds of people and speaking in French the whole time. I mean, I know I can be incredibly funny and witty in English, but what if these new frogs didn't get my humor?? Then got on the train and was on my way.

In the end I had an absolutely fabulous time. Part of the vacation package was intensive ski lessons from 9am to 5pm. I was in a higher level of skiers and essentially in a group with all men in their mid-30s. Talk about testosterone fest. But really, they were a great group of guys, very nice and quick to make fun of themselves so there was no shame in all the falls we took. They quickly began the trend of teaching me a new French expression every day ( some guy on my train on the way there had jokingly said I had the vocabulary of a French grandmother and since then I was on a mission to up my cool status with more up-to-date expressions). We even did half a day in English since allegedly all ski instructors are required to speak English too and most of the other guys used it for work...it was a good laugh.

Our ski instructor was such a veteran, literally the oldest there, something of a legend (on the slopes as well as at the bar). You know, the one who has been there since the place opened in the 80s, the kind of guy who skis in sunglasses and nothing else even when its dumping snow, who is always retelling a story of the « old days » when they would stop off for a 4-hour Savoiard lunch and finish so sloshed it was a feat to get back down the mountain. He had a penchant for off-trails which I learned right off the bat as I found myself at the top a a 40° slope (I'm talking reach back and touch the moutain behind you on the way down) surrounded by boulders on both sides for our warm up. Our conversations usually went like this:
« OK to today we'll start off nice and easy, just take a blue trail down to warm up....then maybe some off trail a little later this afternoon. »
100 meters later: « Ok well maybe we'll do some off trail this morning since the snows so good; »
100 meters later: « Oh, well, come on, how about some off trail? »
50 meters later we dip off into the woods.

But really it was wonderful as it was stuff I would never have done myself and I feel I progressed a ton in a week of lessons. Three days in we were dumped with 60cm of snow and skiing of trail took on a whole new meaning as I found myself in powder over my knees! At that point the most strenuous part of the skiing was pulling myself up out of the snow after each fall which sometimes required supplemental assistance.

Now I'm back in Toulouse and I must say leaving the mountains and going back to work was rough. Everyone came into the staff room with alarm clock horror stories (snoozing 3 times, missing it completely, and waking up in a confused stupor or under the assumption there was a national emergency to name a few). Here are some photos from the skiing...

A bientôt!