Thanksgiving...What up, France?

I totally missed American gluttony this Thanksgiving.

Where was the enormous mound of stuffing and canned cranberry sauce I’d been dreaming of?! Where was my opportunity to get fat? (My opportunity to get fat was actually at the wonderful meal Borealis held on Friday…Don’t weep for me because, oh my god, it was so, so freaking good.)

As for true Thanksgiving tradition...French people are way too into their figures. They don’t really understand the tradition of overeating to the point where releasing your belt is the only way to achieve relief. I had probably the worst class ever on Thanksgiving (bad words, throwing things, and three kids sent to the office…holy shit), and to cheer myself up, I went by the abode of another assistant. It turns out ‘Caitlin’ had a date to commandeer the kitchen of a French girl she’d met a work, and she invited me to come along and help her prepare the meal. It was turkey breast, rather than a whole turkey, and it was stuffing in a box rather than the real kind made with delicious, delicious cornbread…but I’ll take turkey breasts and Stouffers over nothing. (I got to eat some real badass turkey the next night, so no worries.)There were two French couples there, and it was pretty hilarious to watch them eat their tiny portions, and then bemoan the heaviness of the food. I mean, they ate barely a plateful and then couldn’t even down a full sliver of pie. A sliver, my friends, a sliver. ‘Oh, I will have to skip breakfast tomorrow. There’s no way I can eat tomorrow morning after this.’ I felt shamed into not satisfying my inner fat kid.

Otherwise it was nice. They were friendly, if not the most interesting people I’ve met. The boyfriend of the hostess was super keen on learning English, so we spent a good portion of dinner passing tongue twisters back and forth. Caitlin threw him with ‘How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?’ I also taught him ‘Party Foul!’ and he decided he could only say ‘sweet potatoes’ as a pickup line in John Wayne’s accent.

I’d made the sweet potatoes for the kids at school, as well as two pumpkin pies (thank you E-beth! I used your wonderful gift to make one of them!), but they all hated them. Okay, okay, TWO kids liked them. I took the generous remains to the teachers’ lounge. They ended up devouring the pies and eating about half the sweet potatoes, which made me feel a lot better about putting in the extra hours making them at school that morning, and forcing don Julio to drive to two separate grocery stores to find ingredients the night before.

I haven’t spoken about the other assistants much, I know. I’m finding I’m spending more and more time with Don Julio (which is dangerous, in that relying on one person way) and when I’m not spending time with him, I want to spend it with other French people (usually I go hang out with Lili and the tolerant folks on her handball team). I have so much trouble parcelling out enough time for even these two social obligations that I haven’t even tapped into another French connection; a kid my age who is willing to introduce me and the other assistants to the social scene in my town. The problem is that hanging out with him means cutting my delightful time with Don Julio or my already minimal time with Lili. I haven’t contacted him because of these kinds of scheduling issues. He’s well acquainted with two of Don Julio’s colleagues, so I feel that I can’t just tell him that I haven’t bothered to call him because I’m busy dating someone out of fear that he’ll eventually figure out who it is. (This place is like SJC. It could happen very easily) I’ve texted him for next Friday, so depending on how miffed he is by my snubbing his welcoming overtures, I may or may not hang out with him.

This would be better than hanging out with the other English speakers, nice as they are. It’s mean, but there it is. It’s frustrating to move from English to French constantly, and I’ll never master the language if I’m constantly being drawn back to English. I’m arranging to have coffee with one of the Canadian assistants, who speaks French pretty much fluently. I’ll call her Arcadia. Her accent is almost perfect on bad days, perfect on most other days. She’s a very sporty, straightforward type, which makes her pretty easy to be around. She also speaks four languages, which totally gives me an inferiority complex. Her friend ‘Stacy’ is the epitome of girly-girl. She loves to shop, she wears excellently executed makeup, and always looks fabulous, even in sweatshirts. She’s breezy in her speech, with an amicable style of interaction, but she’s got that gossip streak of which I’m oh so suspicious. In short, she’s the kind of girl I just don’t get. I can get along with her, but on a fundamental level, her understanding of the world confuses me. The last assistant is from Kansas, and is the one who invited me to Thanksgiving: Caitlin has an off the wall sense of humour (she finds mine equally strange) but about half the time we succeed at making each other laugh. The other half we’re just awkward, or she manages to impress me with her musical taste. She’s searching for ways to stay in France, but the tried and true ‘marry a Frenchman’ method is proving problematic, so she’s looking for possible graduate programs instead.

Besides that, there’s a nasty woman with bad teeth who prowls the corridors of my lycée, seeking to berate me about the wretched state of our kitchen. I literally run away whenever I hear the awful clicking of her heels. She doesn’t even say ‘Bonjour’ – she just starts bitching me out. I told Arcadia that I’m convinced this woman has decided I’m the culprit for everything wrong in the kitchen. Arcadia gave me a nonplussed look. ‘Doesn’t she realize you’re pretty much never here?’ Guess not.

Also, there are no Hershey’s kisses in France. Wha…? I did receive some Skippy from Don Julio’s friends, because they’re kind that way, but I miss my salty Adams stuff. Silly French people, all not liking peanut butter.

AND they don’t make holiday cookies OR paper snowflakes. I am sad for French children…except the ones in my classes, because we are doing that shit up. Hand Turkeys…check…Christmas spirit…on its way!

HO HO HO YO.