"Tu te sens ça, Julian? Ça c'est l'arôme de Thanksgiving."

"Do you smell that, Julian?  That's the smell of Thanksgiving," I stated as I proudly stirred the cranberries (okay, cranberries plus un mélange de fruits rouges - a mix of red fruits).

This is my second Thanksgiving in France, but my first attempt at co-cooking the meal (with Elyse)...and both of our first attempts at cooking the meal in general.  We decided to have our Thanksgiving meal the Saturday before at Elyse and Lisa's house for a group of ten.  There were many lessons to be learned, as well as many French mots du jour.

Lesson One:  Finding the ingredients
une dinde - a turkey
I started my search early, questioning as many French people as possible at the beginning of November.  I explained the situation to Lise and Christophe when I visited them; they explained that turkeys are common here for Christmas (as well as huitres and foie gras), so "tu dois pouvoir la trouver" - "you should be able to find one".  I asked around among the teachers au collège too; they said the same.  I then made the tour around la Roche-sur-Yon: to every supermarket and every single volailleur (poultry vendor) in town.  It seems you can only get a whole turkey starting in the month of December.

la sauce aux canneberges - cranberry sauce
They don't have cranberries, either.  Not until Christmas.  And definitely not before Christmas markets.  A very helpful man at an épicerie pointed me in the direction of a small shop called the Quatre Saisons, where he heard that they sold dried cranberries.  He was right; I added them to my mix of frozen fruits...and it worked: the first Thanksgiving miracle.

la tarte aux citrouilles - pumpkin pie
This really doesn't exist at all in France.  When studying in Cannes, this was the one piece of the meal that was not up to par; they didn't completely understand the pumpkin purée.  But I insisted.  I spent three hours in the grocery store studying the various options; finally, I settled on cooking a frozen pumpkin cube mix as a base for the filling.  Elyse, Lisa, Laura, Kate, and I labored over the creation for several hours the night before, even making our own pie crust.  It turned out spectacularly: the second Thanksgiving miracle.

les patates douces - sweet potatoes
I also insisted on sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.  The strange thing is that you can't find plain white mini marshmallows: they're all jumbo marshmallow mixes of white and pink.  While it tasted the same, it looked a little like the Easter bunny showed up and threw up on the top of the dish.  But, bonus points for finding sweet potatoes from the USA.

Lesson Two:  Shopping
Here's just a handful of vocabulary that we gleaned from our initial visit to the grocery store:

le sucre - sugar
la cassonade - brown sugar
le bouillon de dinde - turkey stock
les guimauves - marshmallows
sans gluten - gluten free
le chantilly - whipped cream
la farce au pain de maïs - cornbread stuffing

So you can probably imagine at this point how our initial shopping trip felt.  Having no idea what many of our ingredients should look like in the U.S., we truly had no idea what they should look like in France.

Lesson Three:  Cooking 
Somehow - and I'm not sure how - we did really well.  We started bit by bit, making the cranberries and substituting the substitutes for the stuffing and pumpkin pie.  Our only real glitch was the stuffing: we tried to make cornbread stuffing, but there was a problem with the ingredient maïzena - which is the translation we found for both "corn flour" and "corn starch" - and we discovered that it is actually corn starch.  So we ended up creating some substance that resembled a middle school science project (neither liquid nor solid), which Lisa miraculously turned into pudding.  Wild rice is also not a thing here, so our stuffing was a mishmash of white rice and whatever happened to be in the kitchen at the moment, but it turned out decently.

You can make fun of us for les poulets (chickens; for all you West Wingnuts, we had three named Eric, Troy, and Gail - the chickens C. J. couldn't pardon because they're French and not turkeys), but that's about it; we managed rice stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, salad, bread, pudding, and pumpkin pie, all gluten-free.  Best of all, we gave American food a good name and proved that we eat more than hamburgers and buffalo wings.

Partager au lieu d'acheter: Les vacances, Part II

partager - to share
au lieu de - instead of
acheter - to buy

In France, and in Europe in general, a movement is starting:  Sharing instead of buying.  With the help of several websites, people can post what they have to share and others can choose what they'd like - for example, cars (for ride sharing) with BlaBlaCar or apartments for short stays with Airbnb.com.  Through Airbnb, the four of us found a lovely apartment au centre-ville de Caen.

Caen from the Château Ducal

Caen was a completely new city for me, and it was definitely my favorite of the trip.  It was a bit smaller than Rennes: a little quieter and very liveable.  Though it was almost completely destroyed during the world wars, there are several sites from before the wars that are completely intact.  You can walk down a street of modern buildings and randomly stumble upon a medieval tower that happened to live through the war.

We first went to the Château Ducal, an old castle built around the year 1060 which now houses le Musée de Normandie and le Musée des Beaux-Arts.  We found that much of the ancient history of Normandie is almost the same as the history of Bretagne that we learned about in Rennes, but it was interesting all the same.  Le Musée des Beaux-Arts made me begin to change the way I think about art museums; sometimes, it feels like each art museum is the same here if you try to study and memorize each painting too hard.  For me, it's better to walk through at a quicker pace to get a sense of the ambiance of the museum; in the end, I returned to a small collection of impressionist-style paintings or the region that I thought were unique and beautiful.

Me, Laura, Lisa, and Elyse at the Abbaye aux Hommes

Another morning, we toured the Abbaye aux Hommes, an abbey that functioned in many ways throughout the years.  In addition to the medieval history, we enjoyed seeing the small "graffiti" that past students wrote on the walls of some of the rooms; in some respects, students are exactly the same from generation to generation.  It was also interesting to learn how the church and state waffled over the abbey; it's now a government meeting place.  If you look at an aerial photo of Caen taken just after D-Day, you'll be amazed to see the Abbey aux Hommes and Abbey aux Dames that remained intact in the middle of the rest of the city - a mess of completely-destroyed buildings.

Minnesota plaque in Caen

That afternoon, we hiked about forty minutes to see the WWII memorial and gardens to the north of Caen.  Though we didn't have time for a full museum visit, we walked through the peaceful American and Canadian gardens behind the museum; I found Minnesota!  There's also a lovely, spacious park nearby with flowers, trails, animals, and a panoramic view of Caen.

Our other project, I think most important for Elyse and I, was to see les plages du débarquement -

les plages du débarquement - D-Day Beaches

- so we took a day to travel to Bayeux, a small town, but the first to be liberated after the D-Day invasion of WWII.  We were hoping to go from Bayeux to the Omaha Beach, but because of les vacances, the bus hours were different and it was better for us to go to Arromanches, a small beach town between near Canadian and British beaches.  Arromanches itself was beautiful, quiet, and relaxing.  We only had a couple of hours there; we had a picnic near the water and explored a bit.  When we returned to Bayeux, we visited the journalist memorial, the cemetery, and the Musée du Débarquement, which we thought was extremely well done.

Cemetery in Bayeux

It's also a little strange and foreign to see American-style memorials and gardens here in France, with space, perfectly-mowed lawns, and that particular air of American reverence.

View from the Arc de Triomphe

After four days in Caen, it was time to say goodbye to Lisa; Laura, Elyse, and I continued on to Paris where we were joined by Henry, the Canadian, who was in Paris for the first time.  It was fun to show him around...and to see his face when he realized exactly how large the Louvre is (no, you cannot see it all in an hour).  I did get to take advantage of my shiny new "Pass Éducation" that lets me into all national monuments for free - that means I can explore the Louvre at my leisure this year, as well as climb the Arc de Triomphe as many times as my heart desires.

In addition to exploring several new neighborhoods, I also stood in line for almost three hours at the Grand Palais to see the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition on a recommendation from Lise and Christophe.  Niki de Saint Phalle is a French artist who grew up in New York; through her art, you can see the many life phases that she experienced.  Her feminist art was particularly progressive during the second half of the twentieth century; she's probably most famous for her Nanas sculptures.  The exhibition was tied together with videos from the '60s in which Niki de Saint Phalle explained her art - she really nailed it.  You could tell that the interviewers were trying to ridicule her and expected her to fall flat on her face...but she always had a solid and witty response.  And today, her sculptures decorate the fountain in the modern and lively Place Pompidou in Paris.

Land of the Pommes: Les vacances, Part I

Two and a half weeks of work merited two weeks of vacation.  France is divided into four school "zones" - A, B, C, and D - in order to stagger their vacations.  As the Académie de Nantes is in Zone A, we got to kick off les vacances de Toussaint (All Saints' Day break)!  Very early in the morning on our first Monday off, I headed north by train with Laura, Elyse, and Lisa.

Our first six days were spent in the region of Bretagne, just northwest of the Pays de la Loire.  We used Rennes, the capital city, as a home base; we were content staying in its only youth hostel with our own room and access to a nice-sized kitchen.

Rennes itself reminds me of Beauty and the Beast, which we often resurrected in song while walking through the streets.  There's an old town with endless crêperies and cafés and unique buildings with dark wood beams on the outside.  My favorite part was la Place des Lices, the home of France's second-largest market every Saturday morning.  Our favorite market finds were pink tomato-flavored cheese and green pesto-flavored cheese, which would be epic melted over pasta.  We also found a variety of live seafood and of course the regional specialty galettes saucisses (savory sausage crêpes) that you can pick up and eat on the street.  Bretagne is known for its savory galettes and also for its apples and apple products; one of my favorite treats in Rennes was an apple crêpe flambée with cider at the Crêperie St. Anne.

Hence my French Mot du Jour:
une pomme - an apple

Near the river, you can find modern stores and restaurants.  We visited le Musée des Beaux-Arts for a variety of visual art; it had a good variety of art and most of the modern pieces were not too weird for me (I only saw one blank white panel that was trying to call itself "art").  Not far from la gare is a modern media center called Les Champs Libres which includes le Musée de Bretagne, a museum and space for traveling exhibitions, a planetarium, and a science center.  We saw the permanent expositions at the museum on the history of Bretagne, which explained events in the region from the ice age up through the World Wars - it was very well put-together.  Lisa and I returned later to see a free artist exhibition, "Fragile Territories" by German artist Robert Henke.  We sat on the floor of a giant dark room and watched a giant screen that looped...well...this:

http://youtu.be/k7G8mhH7iRo

Strange, but after awhile, very hypnotic and relaxing.

Me, Laura, Lisa, and Elyse à Mont-Saint-Michel

We used Rennes also to access some nearby smaller towns.  Our first day excursion, by bus, was to Mont-Saint-Michel, the now-very-touristy ancient abbey, military stronghold, and prison.  It was my second visit, but it's an impressive sight and I got to see the new, almost-finished pedestrian and motor access roads.  The weather on the coast was windy, but sunny and beautiful for pictures.

The next day, we headed by train to St. Malo, an old walled city also on the coast.  It has a beautiful view of the sea; the color of the water was a unique sea-foam green.  We spent the morning roaming the ramparts and hunting down all the statues indicated on our tourist map.

We stumbled upon a gem of a crêperie for lunch.  Tucked away on a small street, we somehow got the last unreserved table (by about five minutes - several people came in just after us and were turned away).  The propriétaire (owner) visited with us for a long time and explained their extensive menu of galettes and crêpes in detail.  Experiences like this are one huge reason I love France: numerous owners of small restaurants and shops are so proud of their art, services, cuisine, and products...and they are not in it for the money.  My galette was by far the best I've ever tasted:  Camembert with lettuce and a very light scoop of apple sorbet on top.

We also took the opportunity to try kouign amann in the afternoon, a famous gâteau breton (cake of Bretagne).  One of the teachers au lycée had told me that, even though it's basically just butter and sugar, "Il faut le goûter" ("You have to try it")...and it was delicious, especially with friends to split it with!

In the afternoon, Elyse and Lisa and I went to the history museum located in un château.  I gleaned quite a bit of interesting fishing vocabulary for mon petit cahier of new words, as St. Malo has lots of fishing history.  At the end of the visit, we climbed the tower for an aerial view of the town and sea.

And on our way back to la gare, Laura and I began a new tradition: carousels.

The following day, I went on an excursion by myself to the town of Dinan.  Dinan was probably my preferred place of the three; the buildings had a unique medieval style full of greenery...and even in the rain, it was charming.  There were many ramparts surrounding the town to try to find and explore, each with stunning panoramic views of the town.  I visited a small château that had been converted into a museum of art and ancient military history; you can still see the ancient kitchen and well, moat, and tomb.  I also enjoyed the very small Musée de la Harpe - a one-room museum filled with harps from around the world.  Since I was the only one there, I spoke for a long time with the woman working the desk about music, and she let me try a couple of the instruments.

 

Panoramic view of Dinan

After our six days in Bretagne, the four of us hopped on another train headed three hours east to continue the adventure!