Britney Spears, the California team in the Super Bowl, and Jerry Cans

Here's what's been happening around here, along with some things that didn't make it into my last update.

Meat and Potatoes
One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, Lauren and I returned to Marché des Lices. Naturally, I bought a Kouign Amann, and I also made Lauren try the super rich super yummy chocolate fondant cake (which I can never buy again as it is the only thing in the world I’ve found that is too chocolatey for me), but before long my stomach demanded real food, and the smells from the pre-made food stalls were calling. They have rotisserie chickens, and since my protein intake is about nil (excluding what I get from hummus and nutella), I decided that would not be a terrible idea. Lauren said she’d go in on a chicken with me, so we bought a rotisserie chicken as well as a serving of the delicious potatoes they roast beneath the chickens (potatoes cooked in chicken fat=delicious). We headed back to Lauren’s to feast, and it was quite yummy.

Britney and the News
I don’t have a TV here, so I keep up on news with the radio. I enjoy the retro-ness of it. I have a radio in my kitchen, so I listen during breakfast in the mornings and dinner in the evenings. You can often get some pretty hilarious music combinations on French radio—and I heard one of my strangest ones Monday morning. There I was, half asleep and preparing two cups of tea, listening to the very serious morning news, when all of a sudden I heard the strains of something that reminded me of sixth grade.

Some person at Radio Rennes who speaks a trace amount of English thought it would be funny to make that the background music to a news piece about the justice system. I was laughing hysterically at first, figuring that it was just a random selection, when suddenly it dawned on me. The serious announcer was talking about determining culpability, and in the background, you suddenly hear Britney Spears wailing, “I’m not that innocent.” Ahhhhh. Enlightenment dawns.
I’m still not sure it was the most appropriate song choice, though.

On Dictionaries
I had a traumatic experience when studying in Avignon due to carrying my French-English dictionary in plain sight. Not a mistake I will make again. However, for some reason, that mistake made me decide not to bring my French-English dictionary with me AT ALL on this trip. Clearly my brain was addled by the shoe-selection process (and just for the record, I totally miss the few pairs of shoes I left behind—I comfort myself by browsing all the shoes on the DSW website, filling up a virtual shopping cart, and then closing out of the window to keep my bank account functioning). Anyway, a multilingual game of Apples to Apples made me realize how terrible my French vocabulary is, so I start reading Harry Potter in French in an attempt to solve that problem. While I have learned several useful words (including more than one word for owl), I officially regret not bringing my dictionary, because I can only look up words on the internet or at work. For future reference, bringing a dictionary to a foreign country is a very good idea.

California, here we come
When I start classes or end up with a few free minutes at the end I try to talk with the kids about pop culture, holidays, anything, really, as long as it’s in English. Last Wednesday I was surprised that several of them had actually heard about Christina Aguilera’s issues with the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, since the Super Bowl was not on the French radar. One guy then asked me who’d won the Super Bowl. “The Packers,” I said, with a fist pump to support my adopted state (and the only football team I care about at all).
“Where are they from?”
“Wisconsin,” I said, “which is where I went to University.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, shaking his head. “I wanted the team of California to win.” I gave him a perplexed look.
“There wasn’t a team from California playing in the Super Bowl,” I said, a bit confused.
“That’s too bad,” he repeated. “I like California.”
At this point I burst out laughing. People here are oddly obsessed with California.

The day the French knew more English than the American and Australian
Once upon a time (over a month ago, but post-Christmas) I was spending time with one of my classes of secondes. This particular class had an Australian exchange student here for three months (during Australia’s summer vacation), which meant that for a short amount of time I was not the only native English speaker in the school. The class was working on vocabulary to talk about what things they would want to have on a desert island with them. One of the options? A jerry can. Oddly enough, this was one of the few words the kids did not need translated for them—the teacher moved on quickly, until he was stopped by me and the Australian. “What on earth,” I asked, “is a jerry can?” The fact that Aussie had never heard of it either made me feel even more justified. According to Wikipedia, a jerry can is a robust fuel container made out of compressed steel. However, the teacher was unwilling to simply tell me that, and he instead made me guess the origins of the word for the class. Hmph. Curse that Socratic method.
There was another similar topic in the same class wherein the students were talking about fire lighters. While the Australian and I could easily guess what they were talking about, neither of us had ever heard of anything called a fire lighter before.

Because brunette chicken is not acceptable. And don’t even get me started on redheaded coffee.
When walking around Rennes one day, I received a flyer for a restaurant entitled BCC. What, you may ask, does BCC stand for? Blond Chicken Coffee. Fittingly, the first page of the flyer depicted lots of chicken and fries combo meals, and the second page showed various coffees. I did not know there was a difference between blond chicken and standard chicken, much less blond coffee and standard coffee, so the name of the restaurant confused me a bit. The best part of the flyer, though, was the logo. It was clearly ripped off of the Starbucks logo, only instead of a mermaid in the middle, there’s a random blonde woman looking over her shoulder, trying to seduce you so that you will come buy her chicken and coffee. Maybe only blondes are allowed in the restaurant?
Sometimes it’s best if the French just stick to speaking French.

Et voilà! The next update will discuss my soon to be had adventures in Avignon...and there will be pictures. I swear.

Of Baguettes and Bises

It’s been a while since we had a nice little cultural lesson, and since my week mostly consisted of work, I’ve decided to spare you the rundown on that in lieu of some cultural tidbits.

Our first subject of anthropological investigation is the baguette de tradition française. Slightly shorter and a tad bit stouter than the standard baguette (it also tends to run about 35 centimes more than your standard baguette), this variation of the baguette has a law dictating what can be put in it and what name it can be sold under. I’m not kidding. It can only be sold using the terms baguette, tradition, and français. Those can be in any combination, but if it uses those terms, it can contain nothing more than flour, yeast, salt, and water. On the side of the bag it comes in, it cites said law and informs you exactly where the flour comes from.

And it is delicious. This is the most important part. Don’t get me wrong, a standard 60 centime baguette over here is way better than any baguette you’ll get in the States (for the closest approximations in the Chicagoland area, see Devon Market on Devon and Granville or the French Nuns on the West Side who go from church to church selling baked deliciousness). But a baguette tradition…YUM. I could easily go through one on my own in a day, eating a some with salad, dipping a little in soup with dinner, having a bit with some goat cheese, and then having some with Nutella for dessert (not that I ever buy Nutella—nope, not me, I am far too health conscious for such things, right, Mom?).

Now, on to the bises, or kisses. Most people are well aware of the cheek kisses (one on each cheek) associated with the French. As I learned very quickly in Avignon, these greetings are not as straight forward as they seem—in Provence, you have to do three kisses (no matter how many, you ALWAYS start by bringing your right cheek to the other person’s right cheek—God help you if you start on the wrong side), and supposedly it’s four in areas of Northern France. Here in Bretagne, it’s only two, but I’ve also picked up many of the other similar social niceties.

First of all, les bises are not limited to adults, though they do depend on gender. Women will faire les bises when they meet other men or other women, but men only share them with women. When men meet other men, they shake hands and occasionally pat each other on the back. All of my lycée students do the exact thing that adults do, and I’m quite a fan. First of all, there is something adorable about boys who still look like they’re about twelve and who haven’t quite reached five feet tall when they shake hands to greet each other. So cute. Second, this is all SO much more refined than the way American teenagers greet each other. I was lucky if any guys I knew in high school grunted and slightly lifted their chin in my direction to indicate that they’d seen me. And even when I saw my close friends, we’d just smile and maybe wave if they were across the hall. Les bises are a very classy way to open and close interactions with people, and we need to find a way to introduce them in American high schools, stat.

Age does come into consideration for children. When children greet or say goodbye to an adult, they don’t do the full routine. Instead, they just give the adult one kiss on the cheek. Every time the grandchildren come over, they come find me and give me a kiss on the cheek. Again, highly adorable.

The only downside to all of this is that if I try to start using les bises when I’m back in the US I’m going to seem pretentious. Guess I’ll just have to stay here.

Before I end this, I’ll give you the entertaining student quotes of the past few weeks. First of all, one student informed me that, for Christmas, he’d given his sister red lips. My brain immediately started picturing a pair of red lips wrapped up with a bow on top until he gave me the French translation: rouge à levres. Lipstick. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. That makes much more sense. We also had some fun geographical conversations—one student told me he wanted to live in the US when he was older. When I asked where in the US, he responded, “Canada.” “Canada’s not in the US,” I said, a bit perplexed. “Really?” He asked, quite taken aback. Today I had another student inform me that Chicago was in Michigan, which was news to me (I gently suggested that maybe he meant close to Lake Michigan, but he was pretty convinced it was in the state of Michigan). Geography classes clearly aren’t what they used to be.

I hope all is well wherever you are and that you’re making it through the winter without getting too cold. I’d tell you about the weather we’ve been having, but then all you people in the Midwest might try to kill me, so we’ll leave that little detail out. Bon courage!