France Part Trois: April 2012

23 April 2012

Quelle Honte

The "rentrée" of the April vacation, meaning the complaining about starting work up again, whining about students, the weather we had or didn't have over the holiday, agonizing over exactly how many days remain until the next holiday, was eclipsed by something that warrants, believe it or not, an even higher place on the rating totem pole: politics.

Sunday night was the first round of the two-part presidential elections in France that come around every five years, and the frogs came out in force: 80 percent voted. If, like most people, you don't follow French politics, because you don't live here, and so why would you, here's what happened: Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party candidate came out ahead with 28 percent of the votes. The incumbent President, fondly known as Sarko, from the party took 27 percent of the votes, the first time an sitting president has not come in first during the first round since 1958. Marine Le Pen from the extreme right took 18 percent of the votes, the highest share of the vote the Front National has ever won. The other parties: Jean-Luc Melenchon for The Communist Party won about 11 percent, Francois Bayrou for the centrist Modem Party took 9, all the other parties (yes there are still more) took minor percentages.

In 2002, a year that I swear to you will live in the French's collective consciousness for all time for this reason, after the first round of elections the citizens were left with a choice between 2 right-ist candidates: Jaques Chirac, a member of the now UMP party (same as Sarkozy), and for the extreme right, Marine's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Normally after the first round of voting the choice is narrowed down to 2 final candidates, almost always one from the right and one from the left (starting to look more familiar now, right?), except this year. And the French are still traumatized.

The fact that the extreme right with Marine Le Pen came this close to winning one of the 2 spots in the second round really got my colleagues riled up as they told me "quelle honte," "how embarassing," that so many French voted for her, nearly one in five, and they all relived their "horreur" of 2002.

Right now polls are projecting that Socialist Hollande will win second round which happens in 2 weeks, on May 6th, but what Marine will do with her voters is still up in the air. Some think she will call for them to abstain, as she cannot endorse Sarkozy after a whole campaign agaist him, nor endore Hollande who she has called one in the same as Sarko. Last night Melenchon in no certain terms called for his constituents to take down Sarko, without explicitly endorsing Mr. Hollande by name. Bayrou, as he did back in 2007 after losing in the first round, will write letters to both Hollande and Sarko and await their answers on the economy and future of the country before endorsing one or the other.

Among many promises, Hollande has declared he will lower not only his salary but all those of his cabinet members upon election, bring the retirement age back down to 60 from 62 - an incredibly unpopular augmentation Sarkozy officialized last fall, raise the minimum wage, hire more teachers, oh and tax those earning above 1 million euros a year 75 percent on what they make above that margin.

Vive la France.

Carnaval

Isma and I, moderately disguised

The procession coming down rue de Metz
towards the Pont Neuf bridge

Friday night was "Carnaval", or Mardi Gras in Toulouse. It's been 20 years since they've celebrated it here since apparently festivities got a little too out of hand back in the day. It was supposed to be two weeks ago with a parade on Wednesday, celebrations Thursday and a ball on Friday, however and given the events of the past few weeks it was pushed back again to this Friday.

There was a parade that started in the city center around 7:30pm with floats and all the Toulousains dressed up kids and adults. They walked and danced all around the city throwing paper confetti everywhere, and finished by crossing over the Pont Neuf around 10pm.

The hideous head up close

The whole point of the procession is to bring the "Monsieur Carnaval" to a place where the city then burns him. Kind of violent, no? The Monsieur can take many forms, like a scarecrow type body to a paper maché statue. This year the Monsieur Carnaval was a huge crowned head with a gaping mouth and fangs made entirely out of woven balsa wood. The idea is that you blame all the misfortunes, hardships, heartaches, etc of the year on the Monsieur in question, and then burn him. Kind of cathartic right?

The bonfire took place in the Prairie de Filtres next to the Garonne river, with hundreds of people lining both sides of the river and hanging over the bridge.

People gathered at the Prairie des Filtres for the bonfire

Take that Monsieur Carnaval

It was neat to be a part of, and nice to see the city back out on the streets celebrating something.

A bientôt.

Linz

Only in America

So I just had my last class with one of my favorite classes. My CPGE students – they have already graduated High School and are taking intensive preparatory classes over 2 years to prepare them to enter the most competitive engineering schools in France – have been the best all year. They’re almost fluent and we’ve had really interesting debates and discussions on everything ranging from the separation of church and state, to fraternities and sororities. However, we often focused on some of the more, shall we say, controversial subjects: the right to bear arms, abortion, the expensive higher education system of the US, privatization, etc, etc. Because, come on, aren’t those the subjects that always get people talking?

So, for our last class I told them that before I left France, I would show them that there were in fact some redeemable qualities about the US of A and I promised to show them if they gave me carte blanche to shamelessly promote my home country. They agreed.

So for the past 2 weeks I went to work on a powerpoint, half in jest but based in pure truth, that showed off the land of the free. It’s hard to transmit through a powerpoint what’s so great about a barbeque, or a baseball game, and I couldn’t go too pro-capitalist, flag waving, democracy spreading, on them for fear of losing my audience (remember who I’m talking to here.) I even baked them chocolate chip cookies to soften them up. We had a blast.

Among other surprising discoveries in my research, I discovered that the US has invented practical things we use everyday, like paperclips, the escalator, email, the telephone and zippers.

We’ve also invented a few not so practical things like the Segway.

In terms of sports we are pretty unique in the valued position they hold in our public education system. We’ve invented baseball, football, volleyball, basketball, snowboarding skateboarding, and despite it’s French-sounding name, lacrosse.

We invented Superheroes, born out of the Great Depression (this might explain our save-the-world complex…), the first being Superman.

Technology-wise, whether for better or worse we’ve brought the world Windows, Google, facebook, Twitter, and wikipedia (that last one was unanimously decided as definitely for the better.) Though a bit invasive, our (popular) culture and entertainment are renowned worldwide: Disney, Pixar, Hollywood, the Academy Awards, Mark Twain, Broadway, and any television series worth watching. We also invented pass-times like Scrabble, Taboo, Uno and Monopoly.

I also took this opportunity to finally put to rest once and for all that the American Revolution did in fact take place before the French, with the concession that if it hadn’t been for their help, we may not have succeeded.

One of my favorite ideas our country has ever had are the National Parks, and I used a few clips from the 2009 series Ken Burns did for PBS on the from which this quote is from:

“I think the thing about the National Parks is that it’s an example of democracy. In other parts of the world there are certain areas that are preserved because some rich nobleman out of the goodness of his heart decided to decree it. But in the United States, you don’t have to be dependent of some rich guy being generous to you. To me that’s what national Parks mean. That’s a symbol of democracy. Democracy when it works well. At it’s best.’ – Juanita Green, Journalist

And as they had been asking me all year to tell them what American’s really thought about the French, I showed them this cute cartoon that I love. They even asked me at the end if American’s really call the French “frogs,” I didn’t have the hear to tell them that’s hw they’ve been referred to exclusively here.

A bientot.

12 April 2012

A Series of Unfortunate Events

My vacation was going a little too well it would seem...

Weekend in Montpellier, stellar hike in the Mediterranean mountains, and day trip to Moissac...

I come home to the empty house after a rainy day in Moissac to....a flooded kitchen. I'm talking an inch of water over half the kitchen, and a leak directly over the kitchen table, where, gloriously, my new Macbook Pro sat in a puddle of water.

For those of you who haven't been following the story, a brief recap:

I was robbed in November and lost my Macbook Pro with all my photos, documents, and most importantly lesson plans on it.

December, January, and February were spent trying to get a computer to me from the states, which proved to be exponentially more difficult than anticipated, and ended with the computer being sent back to the US by French customs for no discernible reason, after multiple calls lasting hours a piece (read: approximately 1,5 hours of hold time plus 10 minutes of maddeningly unhelpful dialogue with French postal employees).

FINALLY in March when my parents came to visit me they were able to bring with them the computer in question with which I reconstructed all my lesson plans and what photos I could from friends. Needless to say a timely process.

Now, a surprise flash flood in my kitchen, the on the day I leave the computer on the kitchen table, and not in my room, when no one is home. That makes 2 computers in less than a year. I should get a frequent buyer card at Apple.

I clean up the mess, call Gisele to let her know about the leak, then have dinner with friends to try and boost my spirits. The next morning her partner Gilou comes by to check in on me and the leak, which, of course, by this point has stopped. We have a coffee and try to laugh about it, he tells me I should take a blow dryer to the computer as a last shot, then leaves. I set myself up with my hair dryer and the computer, and 2 mintues in all the power in the house goes out. I of course think it's the dryer but turns out there were general outages that day. What are the odds?

I decided to go out for the day for fear that the roof would cave in on me next.

Pretty unbelievable. That's all I have to say.

Linz

Pâques

Montpellier

For Easter weekend, and also the first weekend of my April vacation I went to Montpellier and Roquefort.

After my world wind February vacation where I went to Morocco and Hungry I wanted to stay in France as I'll be leaving so soon.

Square in Montpellier

My friend Sarah and I spent Friday to Sunday in Montpellier. Montpellier is a town further east towards the Côte d'Azur on the Mediterranean coast that I've wanted to visit for a while now. It was absolutely adorable. Nothing like Toulouse, all whitewashed stone and tons of hidden squares with clusters of trees and cafés.

On the way home on Sunday I stopped off in Roquefort to stay the night with a colleague and do a hike in the surrounding Corbières mountains.

The hike Easter Monday in Roquefort was absolutely unbelieveable. It was a 6 hour hike with stunning views of the Mediterranean Sea and snowcapped mountains all at the same time. The breeze smelled of rosemary and we saw wild irises, tuplips, and asparagus along the way. At the top we had a panoramic view of the coast where we could see Spain and Sète, a town about an hour and a half further east.

Monday I did a day trip to Moissac with Sarah and her parents (I work with her mom) to visit the Abbey of St. Pierre, built (partially) in the 600s, a famous site on the Pilgrimage trail of Santiago de Compostela.

Aqueduct from the 18th century

Trail we took

View of the Mediterranean

Trail with olive trees and old shepard's shelters

Wild irises

02 April 2012

Pâté and Boudin

Last weekend I went to the farm for a very special occasion: Dominique and Cyril had butchered Peggy, their sow of 7 years, and were converting her into pate and boudin, or blood sausage.

They needed a hand, so I met Domi at the market in Muret on Saturday with Marissa and we stayed until Monday. They also had a very cool American couple of WWOOFers, Alana and Paul, staying with them that month, plus a French couple who came to help all day Sunday.

Friday night we went into Aurinac, the nearby town, because there was a short documentary that one of their friends had made that was being screened in the town's tiny theater. The documentary followed a week in the life of a typical farm family of the region, showing their daily customs in the hopes of immortalizing a way of life that is slowly disappearing. The film opened with 6 local men slaughtering a pig that they then boiled it and fiercely scrubbed off the fur.

After seeing that I had begun to question my capacities of what was in store for me the following morning. Thankfully, Dominique and Cyril had sent Peggy to a slaughterhouse for no other reason than they had, inevitably, become too attached over 7 years to do it themselves.

So Sunday morning we picked up the already halved and decapitated Peggy and went to work butchering the meat which lasted the entire morning and part of the afternoon, even with 6 people working at all times.

We separated the parts for the two dishes. Fat, flesh, and liver for the pate and essentially all the rest for the blood sausage: ears, tail, more fat and flesh, lungs, etc.

We used a meat grinder to make the pate to which we also added chicken livers and hearts, then made three batches of almost 20 lbs each which we seasoned with salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, ginger, rosemary, and thyme, placed in jars, and sterilized and sealed in a 2 hour bath.

For the boudin, we cooked all the aforementioned parts for about 2 hours in a giant pot with leeks, carrots and onions. We then separated the cooked fat from the meat, and put the cooked parts through the meat grinder. This too we seasoned with salt and pepper, and most importantly, several heaping ladles of blood. This too we placed in jars and sealed.

It was an all day affair that started at 8am and didn't end until well into the night. We stopped for a lovely lunch outside, there were 8 of us in total.

The photos are courtesy of Alana and Paul, who also have a blog of their just begun year of WWOOFing in France: playbigball.tumblr.com