A Much Needed Update

Seeing as this is only my second post in a month (and two years ago I posted nearly every week), I suppose I owe some sort of an explanation. It may sound like a bit of a canned excuse, but I really have been so busy! I could write pages on the adventures I’ve had since starting my life here in Paris, but I’ll do my best to limit this post to a few brief anecdotes.

            The second weekend here in Paris, I visited Versailles with everyone from the BU group. It was a GORGEOUS day, and we enjoyed touring the beautiful estate and its surrounding areas. My favorite part of the visit (as it was two years ago when I visited for the first time) was taking “le petit train” (a convenient but extremely rickety contraption on wheels) to Marie Antoinette’s village that she lived in during her time as queen. It’s an adorably quaint area with lots of green space and several cottages that look as though Cinderella might have lived there.

            The following weekends were very busy as well. BU offers several cultural activities to do on the weekends throughout our stay. We are required to do at least two of them. The first one I did was a visit to the Musée du Vin (Wine Museum) of Paris. There, we spent several hours sitting around a table and sampling wines from different areas of France. Of the selection we tried, my favorite was a red wine called Le Benjamin de Beauregard Pomerol.

            This past weekend, for my second cultural activity, I took a cooking class! My grammar professor taught it at the kitchen in the Fondation des Etats-Unis, where some of the students are housed. We spent a really fun day crowded in the little kitchen making chocolate macarons (my dad’s personal favorite), chocolate mousse, apple tarts, and a salad that’s literal translation is “hot goat cheese salad.” It’s a salad with balsamic and mustard vinaigrette, walnuts, and pan-seared goat cheese. I highly recommend it! It was delicious, as were all the deserts we made.

            The day after cooking, some friends and I got up at an hour earlier than I care to admit, hopped on a train, and went to Troyes in Champagne for a day trip. Upon arriving, we rented bikes and rode down an absolutely beautiful countryside bike path. We stopped at a lake called Lac d’Orient where we sat on the beach, had a picnic lunch, and enjoyed the sunshine. It was so nice to get away from the city for a day and be surrounded by the trees and the water.

After, we were able to walk around the town for a brief amount of time before catching the train back to Paris. Troyes actually reminded me a lot of Dijon! I’m excited to head to Dijon in several weeks to visit my program director and my host mom. In the meantime, I’m keeping very busy with schoolwork, presentations, and cooking for myself (this is actually proving to be much bigger of a task than I originally expected). I am going the Loire Valley this weekend with some friends to visit chateaux, so I will update again soon!

Encore une fois

Didn't think I'd be saying it so soon, but I am back in France! This semester, I am studying with Boston University's Paris Internship Program. Yesterday we started classes at the VERY nice BU academic center in Paris. It is a very short walk from the Eiffel Tower, and I've been enjoying buying a sandwich or salad at a boulangerie and eating it in front of la Tour Eiffel at lunchtime. This semester, I am taking a French language course, a French literature course (which, conveniently, will count towards my English major at Colby), and a course called "Paris Aujourd'hui" that studies Parisian culture through theater, films, and music. These courses are all taken the first seven weeks of the program, and then the second seven weeks, I will be doing an internship in health and human services, likely at a hospital or clinic in Paris (details to come). As all of this encompasses my love of French, literature, and medicine, I'm pleased to have found the program.

I arrived in Paris on early Sunday morning, taking a bus from CDG airport to my new neighborhood, the Arc de Triomphe. As nothing is open on Sundays in France, the streets were completely barren. As we turned the corner into the city and the Arc de Triomphe became visible, I was taken aback by the sight of it standing so tall and fortified at the center of the city with the sun rising behind it. It was a beautiful sight.

I then walked a short distance to my host apartment. I am living with another girl in my program in addition to the woman hosting us. Most nights a week, we cook our own dinner, which is proving interesting! Luckily, we discovered an outdoor market near our apartment, and one of the vendors sells pre-made meals, which we have already taken advantage of. There is also a Monoprix around the corner (think of a higher-end French version of Wal-Mart), which will prove useful. It's been so fun to see all the typical stores I used to go to in Dijon! Paul, a chain bakery I visited frequently two years ago for lunch, has not one, but two stores just a couple blocks from my apartment. (I've already expressed to some Dijon friends back home how content this has made me.)

Since arriving, I've taken a boat tour of the Seine with the other students in the program, found a beautiful hidden park, climbed the Arc de Triomphe, and successfully remembered how to use the metro. Living in Paris is definitely much different from living in Dijon, and I still have a fair amount of settling in and adjusting to do. But as always, I'm constantly discovering, so I'll update again soon!

Bisous.

Reflections on Departure Day

            Tonight, after four months of living away from home, I will be leaving Dijon, France for a final destination of Andover, Massachusetts. I have said my goodbyes to my host family who has been so inexplicably wonderful to me since day one, and am preparing myself to bid farewell to this beautiful city, its people, its culture, and its ways of life that I’ve become so accustomed to.

            It is just beginning to hit me that despite how ecstatic I am to be going back home to be reunited with my family and friends for Christmas, there is another small part of me that wishes I could stay a bit longer.  Dijon has very much become a second home to me, and I know that once I leave, I will never again have an experience quite like the experiences I’ve had here. Not only have I made some truly incredible friends here, seen extraordinary sights, and been able to live the life of someone from another country, but I feel as though I have grown immensely as a person, as well. I have come to see the world in a very different way, and the conclusion that I’ve come to is that the world really isn’t that big at all.  Before September, France felt to me as though it might as well have been a separate world itself. Now, it is incredible to me that just the other night I sat at a table and ate a meal and enjoyed the company of a mixture of French, American, Japanese, Canadian, and Syrian people who had somehow managed to find themselves in the same place as me, who didn’t segregate themselves out by their prospective cultures, but were able to communicate in an intelligent, humoristic fashion with one another.

I will not lie, in the beginning, the idea of living in a country where I don’t speak the native language fluently freaked me out a little bit. Now, it is amazing for me to think that I can give directions to a French person who is looking to find the train station, that I can respond to a child who asks me how long I’ve been skating for, that I can understand an overheard conversation on an evening bus between two middle-aged women complaining about kids these days, or that I can be speaking English with American friends and suddenly switch to French and not have there be anything strange about that at all. This experience has not only given me so much more confidence in my abilities, but has in general, encouraged me to be more open and willing to try things that I wouldn’t have otherwise been extraordinarily comfortable taking on.

I am certain that I will never forget this semester spent abroad or the friends I’ve made here, and that I will come back to visit Dijon again someday. In the meantime, I can’t wait to get back to America, see my friends and my family and my hometown, and eat lots and lots of pancakes!!!

Christmas in Dijon!

            When we arrived back to Dijon late Sunday night, we were all delighted to see that the city had finally been illuminated for Christmas! Now every night, we get to enjoy the spectacular blue and white lights sparkling above our heads as we walk through the streets.

            At the center of town, there is also a little market, much like the ones we saw in Strasbourg, right next to a miniature ice skating rink and cross-country ski path that have been set up for the children of Dijon to enjoy throughout the holiday season. It’s always so fun to walk home from school in the late afternoon and see kids and their parents enjoying their time there.

Trip to the Strasbourg Christmas Market

            As everyone in the Colby group is getting very excited for Christmas and is thinking more and more about gift-buying for family and friends as the end of our time here draws nearer, seven friends and I thought it would be a great idea to take a weekend trip to the world-famous Strasbourg Christmas market this past weekend. This beautiful, small, old French city, has a good deal of Germanic influence due to its close proximity to Germany and is known as “the capital of Christmas” for its fun and extensive Christmas market and seemingly endless and elaborate decorations that adorn the whole city.

            We arrived Saturday around noon and immediately outside the train station was a market to explore! As we quickly discovered, we could walk in any direction we wanted to and run into another market. Each little market consists of several huts where one can purchase anything from handmade Christmas ornaments and assortments of freshly baked cookies to Santa hats and souvenirs from Alsace. There was a great variety of items to see.

            We also got to try some traditional foods from Strasbourg! Their Christmas market specialties are hot wine and hot orange juice with some added spices, bretzels (yes, that’s “bretzels” with a b, the French word for “pretzel”), which are big soft pretzels that come in three forms: salted, with grated cheese, or in donut form (basically just a donut shaped like a pretzel), and spaetzle, a German pasta. However, these weren’t the only unique food creations we saw there!

            The lights and decorations all over the city were incredible, too! Every corner we turned, it seemed as though we saw a new configuration of Christmas lights. The local shops and bakeries also went all-out decorating for the holiday:

            It was a great weekend of shopping, food, and getting excited for the holiday celebrations to come. In only a week, I will be preparing my suitcases for the journey back to the U.S.. I can’t wait to get back home, though it will be sad for me to leave behind all the wonderful people and places I’ve grown to love in France.

A Food Montage

            As my parents never neglect to tell me that every time I talk about France I bring up the incredible foods I’ve had here, and that tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I thought I would devote a post here to some cool food experiences I’ve had in Dijon, starting with this past weekend! Coincidentally, our resident director has a close American friend who lives in Dijon. He also happens to be a world-famous chef and has restaurants all over the US. So when this gentleman showed up to our Halloween gathering last month and offered us a private cooking class taught by him at half-price, I couldn’t resist signing myself up.

            Last weekend, five other girls and I met this man early Saturday morning. We had coffee at a café, discussed our cooking plans for the day, and then headed off to the local market. I had never been to the market before, despite it being right next to my house, and after seeing it for the first time, I regret not going sooner! The market is held in a big 19^th century building, built during the industrial revolution. Three days a week, local farmers, bakers, butchers, fishers, and cheese-makers fill up this enormous building with their fresh and delicious produce that they sell from their own pre-reserved booths. As we walked along the aisles and aisles of vegetables and fruits and meats and cheeses and breads and jams, we were able to sample many products of the chef’s friends who would delightedly give us something to eat as we passed by. I don’t ever remember tasting fresher foods before! Nearly everything being sold has been picked/prepared just the day before, which definitely pays off.

            After buying our ingredients, we took a short walk to a nearby home in downtown Dijon where we spent a very pleasant afternoon learning cooking techniques from our director’s friend, followed by a great meal. We had a puff pastry with sautéed vegetables to start, rabbit in a mustard cream sauce (this may come as a shock to those who have never traveled to France before, as it is not a common food to make in America. Rabbit, however, is very popular in France. The taste of it is good, but personally, I don’t love the idea of it. The recipe, however, works equally as well with chicken!), a cheese course of some of the fresh cheese and bread from the market, followed by an almond-pear tart. It was a great meal that wasn’t too difficult to make, so if any of you are interested in making some real French cuisine in the US, feel free to email me and I will send you the recipes! (Not sure about copyright issues, so I’d rather not post it here.)

            Other food-related notes I have taken throughout my stay here in France are as follows:

·      Crepes are even more delicious when vanilla extract is added to them

·      Lime yogurt is delicious! I have yogurt for dessert almost every night with my host mom, and she sometimes buys lime-flavored yogurt that is very very good. It tastes a lot like key-lime pie!

·      Ham and cheese crepes are a very simple and delicious lunch.

·      Quiche Lorraine is very good!

·      My host mom once cooked cut-up chicken breast in semi-spicy salsa for dinner and served it over white rice. It was great and very flavorful. Don’t hesitate to cook your meat in sauces! The food in Burgundy sets itself apart from all other foods because they always cook their meats in sauces rather than just by themselves and then adding the sauce later on.

·      One classic Burgundy meal that I have had with my host family consisted of pork served with boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage. It sounds a little different, but it’s very good all together!

·      One salad that I order for lunch a lot, called la salade Fermier, consists of lettuce, shredded carrots, shredded cheese, walnuts, slices of green apples, grilled chicken, and raisins.

·      It is entirely possible to make a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving (out of a whole pumpkin) to share amongst friends, even when you’re living on the opposite side of the ocean:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Excursion to Lyon

            Last Friday, the group boarded an early-morning bus for Lyon, the “food capital of France”  (based on my experience, I find this to be a bit of an overstatement, but I will get to that later). Our resident director as well as our history professor accompanied us on the excursion.

            Our first stop was the most beautifully decorated and exquisite church I have ever seen in my life. This church, both inside and out, appeared to be decorated in such detail and color that it appeared as though every square inch of the old building yielded something extraordinary to look at. It was absolutely astonishing to think of the amount of time and attention to detail it must have taken to create!

            Additionally, from the back of the church (which rests up on a hill overlooking the city) there was a vast panoramic view of the entirety of Lyon.

We were able to stop at an ancient amphitheater, too!

            Now to address the food. Lyon, hundreds of years ago, was home to poor silk-weavers who didn’t make a lot of money and thus weren’t able to purchase luxurious foods. To supplement, they made the effort to use as much of the animal as possible when cooking, and with simple ingredients. For lunch, we went to a tiny restaurant to sample some of this “classic” cuisine. Some of the foods we saw (that only some were brave enough to try): blood sausage (the Lyonnais are big on sausages), veal feet, veal head, and brain, to name a few. Certainly not the best meal I’ve had in France, but a memorable one!

            After lunch, we walked around the city to explore the downtown area (visually very much like Paris, but calmer), and our history professor bought us two of the most enormous cotton candies I have ever seen in my life to split amongst the 21 of us.

            When we returned to Dijon that night, it was incredible for us to remark that this trip to Lyon was our last group excursion. I can hardly believe that I only have about 3 weeks left in this amazing city.