Aren't I Going to Get a Reputation for Being Soft on Turkeys?

My students are more or less familiar with Thanksgiving, as apparently their primary school teachers talk about it with them. They don’t quite understand the concept of cranberry sauce or stuffing, but turkey makes sense to them, as does apple pie (I have decided that, in order to keep their brains from exploding, now is not the time to explain the difference between a French tarte aux pommes and an American apple pie).

The older generation, however, hasn’t the slightest idea of what Thanksgiving is. I tried to explain it to my host parents at dinner on Sunday (they still very kindly invite me to eat with them about once a week), and much confusion resulted.

Katherine: It’s a holiday where you honor the history of the country.

Host Parents: Like Armistice Day! (French Veterans’ Day)

Katherine: Um, no, it’s to honor the first British people who came over for religious freedom and they had a hard time but the Indians helped them plant and hunt and it celebrates that they’ll have enough food for the winter. (I am pretty sure this is roughly what my sentences sound like in French—more or less coherent, but rather rambling, with spotty grammar, and without all of the social and historical commentary I'd add in English)

Host Parents:…What’s it called again?

Katherine: Thanksgiving.

Host Parents: Huh?

Katherine (in a French accent this time): Thanksgiving.

Host Dad: Oh, it’s the feast of St. Kevin!

Katherine: No, Thanksgiving.

Host Parents give blank stares.

So, despite the fact that I won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving and actually will be working on Thanksgiving, I feel the need to be somewhat cheesy and list the things for which I am thankful on this most unusual Thanksgiving:

1) The lovely people who put Love Actually up on YouTube. It’s absolutely my favorite holiday movie and I sat down and watched it yesterday to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season.

2) To have somewhere to live. And not just in the roof over my head type of way, but I saw a lot of people really have to struggle to find housing in France, and I had somewhere waiting when I arrived.

3) Being back in France. I was really unhappy about having to leave the first time, because I felt like there was so much left to do. Last year, while I was waiting to figure out what the heck I would be doing with my life, I was terrified that I’d end up stuck in one place for the rest of my life. Instead I’m off in France, where even the street harassment is entertaining—some guy on the metro hollered at me last weekend and told me I was charming.

4) My fantastic French family, in particular, Denise. This is a woman who brings me soup almost every night, won’t let my buy my own potatoes because she says she has plenty, lets me use her washing machine and helps me figure out how to operate it, is terrified that I’m going to starve to death, taught me how to make semoule, which is some rice and milk and sugar thing that is freaking delicious, runs for medicaments the minute I mention I have a cold, and tells me she loves having me around because she’s never had a daughter before. My first day in France she took me to my school and to the grocery store and showed me how to find them, and two days later she drove me into Rennes to go with me while I got my transportation card. I love this woman.

5) The fact that I am almost done with my godforsaken novel. The writing process has been much harder this year than it was last year, and I’m absolutely sick of the novel. That said, I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I’m going to finish it if it kills me. And it might.

6) Going to see Trophée Eric Bompard this weekend!

On a non-Thanksgiving train of thought: I am losing my English. I knew this was going to happen, and I’m sure it will come back, but now when I speak in English I talk about going to the supermarket or seeing a film at the cinema. This is not necessarily incorrect English, but it’s definitely not my dialect, where we go to the grocery store and see movies at movie theaters. Grade school is now primary school, and at this rate I’m going to start talking about how things are in America instead of how things are in the US.

And now I leave you with my favorite Thanksgiving poem from preschool.

“Gobble, gobble,” said the turkey, “soon it will be Thanksgiving Day.”

“Will you eat me? How you treat me! I think I’ll run away.”