c'est compliqué

It has been brought to my attention recently that I rail too much on French people. I can see how this might be contradictory, considering the fact that I live here by my own choice and I rarely, if ever, think about moving back to the US. So there must be some positive things about this place ...right? (rhetorical question, ok?!)

But for me, I liken my relationship to France to the kind you might have with siblings or even really close friends: it's ok for me to do it, but when people outside of my situation start talking smack about France, I immediately get defensive.

Me: Ugh, French people are so annoyingly impatient and pushy. Just be civilized and wait your turn, no need to breathe down my neck and sigh heavily every six seconds, we get it! You're IN A HURRY.

Someone else: I can't believe you actually live in a country of cheese eating surrender monkeys. What a joke.
Me: ....You're a horrible person and I hate you now.

Logically... Yes, I can see how this might not make sense. But I know that despite my bitching and moaning, it's a wonderful place to live with good people and in my opinion, an especially healthy attitude toward life and living well, something that I realize completely lacks in the US. Generally, people here are able to distance themselves from their work in a way that I find most Americans are incapable of due in part to our laborious and often unforgiving work ethic that we burden onto each other. While Americans like to be tucked up in bed by 10:00 pm to be fresh for work the next day, I routinely see people eating dinner or taking drinks in the city center past 11:30 on a week night because, y'know, France. While I appreciate this perspective of never working too hard, it has it's limitations. For example, the française who wakes up with a little tickle in her throat and decides to call in sick to work to spend the day "recuperating." Yes, your health is priority, but c'mon. I can't muster much patience for that.

To be honest, the little nit-picky things that I like to complain about so much aren't that bad because after all, there is no utopia. But because I value this place and I think I see it in a way that the people who are quick to call it a land of "cheese eating surrender monkeys" don't, I allow myself the privilege of whinging about it as I please.

Side-note: this is how I think I come across after this rant:

Oops.

la nuit des bonbons ?

October is a funny month to live in France. I tend to feel more nostalgic and homesick than usual. I guess it comes with the changing seasons to one of my favorite times of year. Or perhaps it's because around now I always buy my plane ticket to the states for Christmas, which fills me with a certain glee watching the countdown calendar ticker on my google chrome every day, thinking about home.

Even though the last time I celebrated Halloween to any extent was my last year of college when, at the last minute, I took some old red paint that we used several months before to paint our apartment, smeared it over an old striped shirt, tacked on a beret-like beanie and ta-da! I was a painter. Like most Halloween costumes, last-minute and completely half-assed.

if you understand Isaias' costume, you get a gold star.

It's not necessarily the fact of getting dressed up and going out and all of that jazz that I adore -- it's more the green turned to orange-yellow and that smell of crispy fall-ness that hangs around in the evening around this time of year. I enjoy it much more here in France than I ever did in Arizona or San Diego, mostly because you can actually SEE it. I think it also reminds me of my childhood in Massachusetts where we used big plastic bags of black and orange jack-o-lantern faces to fill up leaves that my parents raked into piles (after I had jumped into them, of course). I liked scooping sticky pumpkin seeds out to carve Nightmare Before Christmas faces and then watching a row of pumpkins flicker on the windowsill. Seeing the paper skeletons tacked onto our neighbor's doors wave in the wind and drawing witches and ghosts in school had a sort of comfort to it -- or maybe it has that warm glow now that it's been dug up from the depths of my memory.

freshman year, wrapped up in a sheet + leaves in my hair + gold belt = greek goddess. betcha never thought you see this picture again. 

junior year, it was disney characters. and... is that a christmas tree?

sophomore year, Grey's Anatomy was real popular. 

Despite the more obvious signs of autumn here in France, as you might imagine, Halloween in France is really not the same. I have yet to see a real pumpkin anywhere though there is the occasional window display with some orange leaves. No spiced apple cider, no pumpkin scones, no pumpkin patches or hay-rides, no glorious Target aisles covered in everything Halloween. Most people's attitudes here are kind of take-it-or-leave-it, but mostly leave it. I suppose you can't have it all. But on the bright side, 54 more days. That's good enough for me.

though it's hard to tell, I was wonderwoman this year, mask and all.

ça me *#$%!

In French, there seems to be an infinite amount of ways to express irritation and annoyance. Some are more vulgar than others--this is France--but I think it seems to be very telling about the culture. They are clearly an easily irritated people. Let me try to shoot some expressions off from the top of my head, just to give you a sense...

1. ça m'enerve 
2. ça m'embete
3. ça m'agasse
4. ça me saoule 
5. ça me gonfle
6. ça me gave
7. ça me gêne
8. ça me fait chier

Eight, that I can come up with right now. You'll notice that they are all some form of "it such-and-suchs me" like "it irritates me." As you move down the list, they become more and more colorful, like "it inflates me" or "it gets me drunk" (wtf right?) leading to my personal favorite--yes, it's so irritating that it makes me shit. Though if I stop to wonder why something that annoys you might necessarily lead to a bowel movement, I think it best not to dwell too long on the subject.

Maybe the reason that they have so many colorful ways of being annoyed is because they have so many reasons to be. If you've read any cluster of six words or more from one my blogs, you'll see that they are impatient, often rude, impossible to please and constantly arguing with each other. Dealing with each other, the amount of red tape, paperwork and taxes plus the unpredictable weather and all of that universal heath care the government is trying to force down our throats? They even want to help those making minimum wage pay their rent every month--like, c'mon! My apartment, my business! Not to mention all of the public holidays per year (nine, by my count), paid time off, two hour lunches, and mandatory maternity leave. Even the students have it rough, with a week off every two months or so. Don't even get me started on all that affordable and accessible public transportation they have everywhere--bus, metro AND tram? Living in France, I tell ya. It makes me shit.

mon copain(g)

Coucou, nerds.

So, I guess I have a man in my life. This fact, while awesome and spectacular and gooey-emotional-feeling words, seemed to have slipped my mind as something worthy of sharing. It seems boring and cliché to say that I was reluctant to present him via picasa albums and skype sessions to my life back home (i.e, all of you) because I wasn't sure how long it would last. Truthfully, I had met other French messieurs since being here, but all of them were kinda weird or losers-in-the-end and consequently fizzled out.

But this dood is pretty different -- I have to say, besides being stoked to have met someone so cool and easy-going, I'm shocked by how well we get one another. I don't necessarily mean that we literally understand each other, because trust me, the amount of dumb shit I've said in French has increased exponentially since the last time you and I discussed this subject (though my speaking and understanding is undeniably the best it's ever been). It's that, despite being from two pretty different worlds, we understand the other's way of being. My sister made an extremely enlightening point when, in asking me about him, her first question was, "so, is he down with burping?"

Yeah, I'm a gross person, whatever. In my special house of particularly loud belchers, I grew up thinking that there was nothing wrong with letting out the occasional burp with the appropriate people. And to be honest, I don't understand this hang-up -- of course there's always a time and a place, but I'll always remember the time I was eating lunch with two good (French) friends and I let out a small, appreciative burp. Their stunned, revolted reactions sum up exactly how the majority of French people handle the issue. So, the first time I finally let go and just burped in front of the copaing, his eyes lit up and he immediately high-fived me, feeling relieved that I wasn't one of "those" people.

He's a winner. Blogging suddenly feels really invasive now that I've shared something so concrete as a real living person in my life and followed up by posting a picture... Too much blogging, feeling really nerdy, stopping here.

See you around the interwebs.

xx