Diner a la campangne

Last night I was invited by one of the professors at my school to have dinner at his house.  He is a history teacher, but he has an advanced-level class on English-language European history, and he wanted to have the opportunity to practice his English with me.  His wife is also English-speaking (she works with British foreign exchange students as part of her job), so it was a bi-lingual evening. 

If the language of the night was not predominantly French, however, the setting certainly was.  M. Meunier and his wife live about 20 minutes outside of town, absolutely in the middle of the countryside on an actual farm, surrounded by bucolic fields of corn (wheat, to Americans), and vineyards.  It was like a travel brochure for the region.  I desperately wished that I had had my camera with me, although it probably would not have been quite the thing for me to be taking pictures of my hosts.  The farm belonged to Mme Meunier's parents, and her brother now runs it, while they live in the farmhouse.  The building itself is from the 19th century (coming from a state where most buildings are 100 years old at most, it is constantly amazing to me how common it is to live in a more-than centenarian home in Europe).  When we arrived, Mme. Meunier and their little girl were out in the farmyard, looking for the cat, who had disappeared that morning--it turned out she had accidentally become locked in an armoire, from which she was rescued shortly after my arrival.  The little girl, who is two and a half, was absolutely darling.  She was in love with the cat, and when she invited me to join her in coloring before dinner, she insisted that I draw "un chat."  It reminded me of Le Petit Prince: "dessine-moi un mouton."  I could communicate pretty well with her, although with my shaky comprehension and her shaky pronunciation, trying to understand her was a bit like trying to understand French spoken over a New York subway operator intercom--fuzzy, and prone to fading in and out.

Diner itself was for the most part delicious, although I am still having minor culture shock moments over bizarre French meat options.  Take for example, a snack that we had as an appetizer, whose name unfortunately escapes me--it was a pre-packaged bit of fish, make from the leavings and unused bits of a fish carcas reconstituted into to breakfast-sausage sized cylinder, which you then dip in mayonnaise and eat.  I kid you not.  I don't think this is to everybody's taste, even in France.  M. Meunier admitted that it was not his, so I did not feel so bad about being unable to manage more than a few bites of mine.  The rest of the meal was lovely, though--simple but high quality ingredients, just like they always say about French cooking.  I think that this time abroad is going to usher in a whole new era in my understanding of cheese, although that may be a topic for another posting in and of itself.

Out on strike

The last two days have been very exciting for a lot of people in France, and more-than-usually quiet for me.  The cause?  A national strike over the age of retirement, which the Sarkozy government wants to raise from 60 to 62.  This has inspired industrial, service, and professional unions to a series of strikes, which have been going on sporadically since before my arrival.  Yesterday, even the students in my school walked out in protest.  It is sort-of inspiring to see high school students responding with action to questions of social justice, when cynicism and apathy are so rampant among teenagers everywhere I lived growing up (no offense, Obama generation).  It would probably be more inspiring if I imagined that most of the students were more excited to protect the pensions of their elders than they are to cut school, go into town, and get a kebab....but perhaps it is better not to ask those questions.

I am not sure of my own perspective on the strike issue.  I certainly do not know enough about the problem to debate any French person on the subject, but it is odd--of all my friends and relations over 60, the majority are not even about to retire, and if they did, the pensions their jobs provide would not be able to support them in comfort.  Many of them have not worked at one job long enough to earn a significant pension.  I guess it seems, from my millennial-generation perspective, that the workplace culture of staying 40 years with the same company and then living off the pension accrued during that time is giving way to one which is more fluid and one in which people live longer and stay active later in life.  Of course, that is a young person's idea, and an American's.  Here, I see older middle-aged white guys driving the steam shovels that are fixing the road down in the village (something I have never seen in the States), and I understand that after a career of work in heavy industry, 60 is about time to retire and live in state-sponsored comfort.  So I don't know what to think.  Fortunately, the Sarkozy government is not calling on me to mediate.

One thing I do know, is that the strike has thrown a monkey wrench in my activities for the last couple days.  I have had almost nothing to do for two days,  and because of train travel being suspended, I can't take advantage of the freedom to go to the neighboring town and visit friends (Cosne does not have much of a happening scene.)  Classes were more or less canceled yesterday, which I had anticipated, but then the strike continued on today, in an impromptu and inconvenient manner (which I suppose was the goal).  I was working in the teacher's lounge on my lesson plans this morning, when the students from the high school's professional campus staged a rally in front of the main building.  It was like the storming of the Bastille, minus the starving peasants, violence, and destruction.

Bonjour a tous!

This is the official start of the travel blog I will be writing during my year (make that seven months) in France. I am staying in the town (really, village, but people get testy if you call it that) of Cosne-Cours-Sur-Loire. Like this Hawaiian fish, the name is more majestic than the reality.

However, majesty is not a quality that should be associated with the French, at least not since certain noteworthy heads of state lost theirs....but let's not bring the civil war--excusez-moi, Revolution--into it! Suffice it to say that there are many positive adjectives I can associate with my new locale, the most appropriate of which is mignon: cute (see above).

That is the view from the kitchen window of my little apartment. I am staying at the school where I teach, at an amazingly cut rate, with the only side effects being 1) that it is deathly quiet on weekends and 2) that I carry around the awareness that my life-work situation closely resembles a Victorian governesses' without the prospect of a Mr. Rochester in the future, or even a Rawdon Crawley. But c'est la vie!

It is actually quite amazing how much of what I have seen so far of France looks like France is supposed to look. I realize that sentence it quite redundant, but it's true that when you grow up hearing about a place in books, movies, tales, and myth, you pretty much expect that the reality is not actually going to be that way. True, I have yet to see anybody wearing a red beret, bicycling with a baguette in their wicker bicycle basket, or curling their mustaches, but the country houses are whitewashed with high-peaked roofs, the farmland is green and rolling, and people do both bicycle and buy baguettes (just not at the same time). I sometimes forget that, as a girl from California, I am used to a landscape that is much bigger and rougher, and an architecture that is much younger-looking than things tend to be in Europe.

...Speaking of California, just because things seem excessively French here, does not mean that I am not also having to navigate the unexpected episodes of globalization: This afternoon, over a petit cafe I was sharing with some of the teachers, the principle of the middle school, a man of years and dignity, asked me if, in American English, the word "girl" was spelled with an "i" or a "u." It seems he had been watching this video. (West Coast represent!!)

I think I have written as much English as I should allow myself for the day, but I will try to update this regularly (I hope not famous last words), with anecdotes of my experiences of small town life and touristic adventures.

Scheduling

Due to a number of reasons (this story is ending up being longer than I expected; writing is slow work; I don't want to compose directly into my posts; etc.) I realize that the pace of my postings has slowed, especially compared with the rate at which I put up my first story, back in May. In an effort to set a more rational--and realistic--pace for myself, I have decided that, from now on, new episodes of "Gold Country" will come out on Mondays--so put me in your google calenders, everybody! This means they will be slightly longer, and it may also allow me to put some other, non-story chatter up here as well, so keep an eye out. I realize that today is actually Tuesday, which gives the lie to my proposed schedule, even as I start it, but in my defense I am sick as the proverbial dog, and everything is a little slow and rusty right now. I will have episode nine up next Monday, so be sure to check it out...

Disappearances

Due to the fact that I am currently submitting "Breakup with the Vampire" to Tor.com com, in hopes that they will consider crossing my palm with silver for it, I have taken it offline (apparently this blog counts as publishing, and many places that accept stories will only take unpublished ones). I hope that this will not be the end of it...

Explanation

I feel that I should contextualize my previous post a little bit. After I finished my thesis in April, I fell off the deep end intellectually. Senioritis hit me really hard. While it obviously wasn't a terminal case (since I did end up with my diploma in the end), the slide into non-mentally challenging activities was a steep and speedy one. Shedding any pretense of intellectual discernment, I yielded to a current fad: Vampires. While reading Twilight camped out in the Borders at Columbus Circle (because I was too embarrassed that I was that girl to actually stand in line and pay for it), I realized that, although I was enjoying the overripe romanticism of it all in a particularly sinful way, I had some major issues with the plot. Breakup With the Vampire is my answer to that frustration. I am trying to keep it more generally vampiristic, and not just a parody of Stephanie Meyers, although my need to "research" the genre may just be the way I rationalize watching huge marathons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vortex I fell into as soon as I got tired of Twilight. We'll see how that turns out...

Behind the Times

I realized yesterday that I am clearly not as au courant as I should be. I was babysitting Basha, as seven-year-old and Disney channel aficionado, and we were talking about Halloween. In response to my query, she said that she had been Shar Pei.

"Oh, so you had lots of wrinkles?" I inquired innocently.

Basha favored me with a long gaze of astonishment before demanding in disbelief, "Do you think I have wrinkles?"

Turns out when she said Shar Pei, she meant Sharpey, the mean girl from the High School musical movies. Clearly, a major difference.