"Weekend in Paris and Dunkerque" or "The Thanksgiving Quiche" or "How much french food is too much?"

I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in Dunkerque, basically building up my paté/champagne tolerance. Apparently it's what you do in France on the weekends, but one person can only consume so much bread and paté and champagne and roast chicken and cake and chocolate and coffee in 2 days. Oh, and I didn't even mention the cheese... Today is Wednesday, hump day, middle of the week, and my stomach still does not feel the same. Quite a weekend.

Spending the holidays away from home was harder than I thought it might be. It really had me a little "off" all of Turkey Day, actually. I tried to keep up my cheery persona and wish a happy American Thanksgiving to every French and British and Irish person I know, but it's just not the same when you have to TELL someone it's a holiday, and it's more than a little depressing when someone literally looks at you and says that they have never even heard of your holiday before. It was funny, but not very festive. And the only American I know in Lille expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the whole thing that pretty much completed the bursting of my bubble-- when I saw him in the office and lit up like a Christmas tree, opening up my arms and saying "Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!"-- at which he sullenly glanced down at his watch, then back up at me, and said "Oh, is that today?". I was pretty much done at that point. Follow that up with no internet connection to call my family and an extremely uncomfortable laundry mat harassment situation (you know how that goes...) and the entire day left me frazzled, standing in the middle of my tiny apartment with no idea what to do with myself. Luckily, the day was saved in typical Claire fashion, as I sent her a frantic phone call in my desperate attempt for contact with humanity, and she promptly commanded, "Get a bottle of wine and get over here, I am going to make us a quiche." So we ate the Thanksgiving quiche, drank the bottle of Thanksgiving wine, I made the world's most expensive cellphone call back home, and all was right with the world.

So the weekend started with my beautiful Friday in Paris, celebrating a little late-Thanksgiving and doing all things Christmasy with Brooke and Brandon. For 4 years she and I have been talking about the day that we would get to see France together and this weekend it came true! It was such a lovely experience and I'm so thankful I got to see them. We didn't do much, but it was really nice being a little more leisurely and a little less touristy-- we rode the ferris wheel in the Place de la Concorde, drank mulled wine as we walked through the Christmas Market on the Champs Elysées, then went for a wonderful dinner off the Rue de Rivoli with calvados fresh from Normandy afterwards back at the hotel. A perfect day.

Dunkerque was a more lay-around-and-do-absolutely-nothing-but-try-to-digest-what-you-just-ate affair. I stayed with my best french friend Claire at her Mum's adorable little house near the sea, met lots of extended family (including a pet chicken), consumed copious amounts of the aforementioned paté/champagne not to mention a sandwich known as the "americain"-- spicy sausage in a baguette with bourgy sauce (like a mayo/ketchup combo), covered in fries which are then doused with salt and vinegar. Insane in my belly and I had to take meds afterwards just to settle it all down. BUT, after eating the entire thing I was told that I'm now a part of the family, so I do have that going for me. Top the weekend off with watching "Home Alone" dubbed in French with Claire's little nephew Louis and know that I am one perfectly happy girl.

Life in Lille

It's now been a month of living in Lille. As long as I can count my time here in days, in weeks that I can number on my fingers, it seems to lack a sense of permanence, and the heavier realization that I will stay here, be here, carve out a little corner of life and space here for myself. For the moment I still have the feeling that I'm pretending, playing make-believe-- I was always good at that game.

But if it's all pretend then my made-up life is going really well: my work is expanding as I've started another teaching job in the little town of Dunkerque, even further north than Lille, about 10 minutes from the Belgian border. I'm working at a little collège called Sacré Coeur, teaching English and music with students from about 11-14. It is definitely not my preferred demographic, but it is such a fantastic opportunity and I immediately fell in love with the teachers and the atmosphere at the school-- very warm and inviting and so enthusiastic to have an American English assistant! I have truly been overwhelmed with kindness during my short time here and I think it would do Americans an unbelievable amount of good to come here and meet these people who are so generous, so genuine, so interested. The "freedom fries" folks just might have to re-think their philosophy a bit, because I can honestly say that I have never been to another place where there was so much positive interest and excitement at getting to know an American-- it's a wonderful feeling and a great responsibility, I think, to represent the USA here, for people who have never had any interaction with someone from the States, and I am as happy and as proud as I can be (particularly with the outcome of the recent elections) to show Europe what being an American really means, just as the French are daily tearing down my own pre-conceptions and cultural captivities regarding the Old World which surrounds me here.

So I'm starting to feel very settled and very at home in Lille. I've definitely gotten into the groove of things here and I'm so glad for that. I've got that destiny/fate/cosmos-in-the-chaos sense of calm and peace about me here, with a lot of happiness and relief thrown in. Several things have made me feel this way, I think. Jumping on stage at the Guapa Bar was definitely one of them, and so was buying my guitar. Watching my friendships here open up and grow as we all become comfortable with each other and start to trust and depend on one another, getting into fun and mischief together and looking to each other for help. Being involved in other people's lives, like having students who look to me for some sort of knowledge or baby-sitting for a friend's nephew-- I'm started to feel entangled here and it's exactly what I had hoped for from the start.

One Week Today

Today I have been in France for one week. It's hard to believe as I sit here in the kitchen, eating pasta and watching the grey drizzle fall against the window, that I came rolling into town only 7 days ago. At this time last week I was sitting on a train heading out of Paris and wondering if it was entirely out of the question to ask that they stop the train and take me home, please? Now, even as the things around me continue to be fresh and new, with exciting and unexpected adventures constantly presenting themselves, a sense of normalcy is beginning already to penetrate my cultural barriers. I find myself getting impatient with those poor fools who don't seem capable of working the ticket machine at the Metro (les imbéciles!), or automatically adopting a dead-eyed stare as I walk along the sidewalks of this gorgeous city with the rest of its zombie-faced inhabitants.

The funny thing is that these are truly fantastic and fun, warm and welcoming people. It just seems that they've adapted this technique for maintaining their privacy, even in public, by staying so deeply inside themselves and their own internal world that no one can get in, nothing can detain or de-rail them. I always seem to spend my first few days back in Europe using every bit of will power I can muster just to keep at bay the enormous joy that floods my soul as my eyes feast on the beauty around me. Finally it just bubbles up and over into my sparkling eyes and grinning face, which immediately seek out the gaze of those elegant strangers around me as if to ask, "Awesome, right? Is just walking down this street the single greatest thing that ever happened to anyone else around here? Anybody? Anybody?" Hahaha. It's an urge that takes some effort to quell inside of me.

It already feels like I've established the little circle of people who will be my base of friendship during my time here-- the fun french girl who speaks english with a british accent and seems to manage the perfect balance between going out to 4 hour dinners and still following her incredibly rigorous Maîtrise studies. The British guy who loves music, plays guitar, puts serious thought and concern into his efforts at teaching english to indifferent french uni students, and marvels at the daily mutations of his short blond hair as he tries to convince it to become dreadlocks. The Irish girl who, the first time we met, ordered a glass of red wine, lit a cigarrette, looked into my eyes and said, "I'm just back from holiday in Madrid and I don't think I love Miguel anymore." These people fascinate and excite me and I'm so glad to know them. They are also quite intimidating with their linguistic abilities and European ways, but I just love it and want nothing more than to be around them and to let a little bit of them rub off on me.

The French uni is absolutely astonishing to me-- I can see no rhyme or reason to any of it. Maybe it will all start to make sense to me at some point, but I seriously and sincerely doubt it. We teach english classes, REQUIRED english courses, with absolutely no guidlines, no protocol, no required content, and no supervision. It is entirely at our discretion as to what we cover and how we conduct our classes. Also, you cannot mandate attendance within the French university system, so more than half the students of most classes will never actually make an appearance in class. Fascinating. Of course the lack of structure leaves us teachers entirely to our own devices, meaning we have a level of creative control this is kind of exciting and liberating, in a sense, but I can already see how this could quickly degenerate into a meaningless activity, and how the inspiration and motivation to teach will be hard to find under circumstances like these. But as I said before, this is only week one of my little foray into the french uni system-- I'm sure there will be plenty of time to complain later.

First Night

It's dark outside now as I lay in my tiny French bed in my tiny yellow room at the top of 6 flights of creaky stairs, looking at the dark shadow of the roof of the building across the street through tall, white molded windows. It is picturesque beyond description, though I'm sure I will have much much more to say when I finally get some rest after my crazy jaunt across the pond. I'm laying here exhausted and satisfied with the way things seem to have turned out-- Ray Lamontagne sings to me in the background and I'm just imagining all the fun that I will have here and how this cozy little room will become my home. I close my eyes and it feels good.

Taking Off!

Watch my back and light my way
My traveling star, my traveling star
Watch over all of those born st. christophers day
Old road dog, young runaway
They hunger for home but they cannot stay
They wait by the door
They stand and they stare
Theyre already out of there
Theyre already out of there

Nevermind the wind
Nevermind the rain
Nevermind the road leading home again
Never asking why
Never knowing when
Every now and then
There he goes again

Tie me up and hold me down
Oh, my traveling star
Bury my feet down in the ground
Oh, old road dog
Claim my name from the lost and found
And let me believe this is where I belong
Shame on me for sure
For one more highway song

My traveling star
My traveling star
**************************************

I turn the little grey knob above me to the left and feel the rush of air. I like the cool air blowing against my face during take-off-- it makes me feel more a part of the experience, and less like throwing up. I am leaving Tennessee and I don't know when I'm coming back. It's a beautiful place and I will miss it dearly, but I have to admit that it doesn't look much like the home I know from way up here.

The sadness of leaving hasn't really worked itself up in me yet, probably because I will be in the States all day and have every intention of calling every friend or loved one or acquaintance who I want to tell goodbye, or who's number I can remember. Also, it's hard to feel sad when I'm heading off to live an absolute dream, to do something I could hardly have imagined I would ever have the chance to do. And going it alone I know will be lonely for a person like me, but even that is kept in perspective by the fact that the world is now so small, we are all so intricately and intimately connected through the the technology of modern life that I never really have to worry about feeling more than a phone call or a mouse-click away.

But I need to bear in mind that the first stop of my little adventure is a great big 6-hour layover in the cold and sludge of Detroit, where I will have ample time to work myself into hysterics over this crazy thing I'm doing. I still wish someone was in on all this with me-- I wish there was a way that my sister could have come along, or my perfect Partner-in-Crime who's usually ready and willing for any kind of madness we can get into, but now was not the time. All signs from the beginning have pointed towards my going this alone, stripping me of the comfort-level and confidence-level that comes from traveling together. And I don't like it, but I know it's true, though I don't know just how much fun it will be to do it all on my own. But I am looking forward to finding out!