Turkey!

THANKSGIVING

So there was this small occurrence of the classic American holiday Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is actually my most favorite holiday, and I was afraid I would be very homesick and sad to miss spending it with my family. Consequently, I had decided I wanted to do my best to recreate it, at least for me and my roommates. Then the guest list started slowly but surely to expand. Naturally I wanted all the American expats to share in the festivities. Boyfriends and girlfriends of roomies and expats were invited, and from there it was a short leap to close friends of all nationalities. Then we wanted to invite our neighbors who had invited us to dinner awhile ago, and guests started asking if they could bring their roommates, or significant others, or close friends, or cousins of their father-in-law's best friend's grandchildren. Everyone was very intrigued by this exclusively American event, and we wanted everyone to experience its glory. So eventually we realized we couldn't host this thing in our kitchen anymore, so we reserved a room on campus, and when 40 some odd people showed up, it proved to have been very wise.

So I had said I would do the turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce and maybe a pie or two with help from my roomies. So as I realized the scope of the guest list, I started wondering about how I was going to procure, stuff and cook a whole turkey of any decent size in my microwave oven. My French friend Justine said we could use hers (she has a real apartment, and thus a real kitchen), and helped me wander around some neighborhood butcher shops asking about ordering a whole turkey (not a very French thing to do). So we found the most adorable classical French butcher shop, complete with little old women in fur coats ordering tripe and pâté, and a butcher (named Roland Menut) in his white apron singing folksongs while chopping up dead animals with knives of an alarming size. He said he could order us a turkey anywhere from 8 to 28 pounds, and I asked Justine to measure her oven so we could get the biggest one possible.

Unfortunately, due to the reasonable French portion sizes and sensitivity to things like energy consumption, her oven was not actually any bigger than my microwave. So when I told good old Roland, he said I couldn't even cook a little turkey in my oven, and explained to me the science of roasting a bird in an oven and why mine was insufficiently large. I expressed my disappointment and asked what he recommended and he said, not to worry, HE would cook the turkey at the shop. I said that was incredibly kind, but the only trouble was that we traditionally stuff our turkey. Would he mind if I came to the shop in the morning with some stuffing? Not at all, he said, he would be happy to accommodate stuffing. As he has a gigantic restaurant sized oven, I ordered the biggest turkey available (it ended up weighing in about 23 pounds). So on the morning of Thanksgiving, after having stayed up until 1:30 cooking big batches of cranberry sauce with Nathalie, I got out of bed, taught an 8am class, and rushed home to make some stuffing. I had been drying bread for days, and our apartment was a veritable stale bread factory. I wept over some onions, poured in various amounts of all the spices I had managed to procure and whipped up some stuffing. I took a rental bike (the only way to travel) with our hugest soup cauldron full of stuffing in the front basket, and headed off to the boucherie (butcher shop). Roland accepted the stuffing with interest, as well as my extensive (and probably unnecessary, considering his profession) instructions on how to rub the spices (which I had also brought) onto the turkey. I told him I would be back (with a car this time, thank God), at 5:30pm for the cooked bird, and went back home to prepare.

Three other batches of stuffing (classic, Hallal, and vegetarian), a couple dozen corn muffins, two chocolate pecan pies, and some whole wheat bread later, Nat and I (in a friend's borrowed car) retrieved the beautiful and still piping hot turkey. I had made various American delicacies to thank Roland (who hadn't charged extra for the cooking, and who had given us his roasting pan), including cookies, muffins, a mini chocolate pecan pie and cranberry sauce. He seemed charmed, we exchanged cheek kisses, and we returned to campus, where I rapidly made some gravy and we headed to the party room, where some 40 of our closest friends were waiting.

I had asked the others to bring side dishes, wine etc, realizing that while I was happy to host a million people I could not realistically expect to feed them all myself. Thanks to Bike and Build, I know how much food it can take to feed a bunch of young adults. It turned into an extensive potluck, our friends from all corners of the globe outdid themselves following confusing American recipes for mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cornbread, green beans, salads, pies, applesauce, etc. It was the most glorious banquet in my recent memory, and the whole evening was a huge success. All the French people were legitimately impressed with American cuisine, which is no small miracle, and the bird was beautiful. I had tons of fun, everyone got some turkey (which was DELICIOUS), and we danced and drank wine and generally were thankful for good food, good friends, and good times all around. A holiday to remember. Now we are making soup (half the carcass at a time, because it is too big to fit all at once), washing many dishes, wearing sweatpants and vowing not to eat until Christmas.

(Others were in charge of photographing the actual event, so photos of turkey and festivities to follow soon, hopefully.)

As always, sorry for the long delays between posting, but I will brief you on some highlights of the last few weeks. My friends had some fun parties, including a return to childhood party at my friend Justine's glorious old French apartment, which found me trying to outsing the French lyrics to all the Disney movies. (I'm sorry, some things just are sacred, and I maintain that Robin Williams' genie performance in Aladdin is one of them.)

Last weekend, I went on a "sortie vélo" (bike trip), organized by the guy who runs the association sportive here. He told me it would be chill, and that there were a lot of people coming even on the super heavy slow rental bikes. Since this was to be my first real bike trip after breaking my wrist, I was somewhat reassured. nevertheless, I got all dolled up in my spandex, and headed out with my French bike (named Louis Philippe). So I get to the meeting point, a little late at 9:40am, but after a night of partying, what can you do. So it's me, Christian, the head of the sports assoc, and one other thirty-something guy, who both are all decked out in their real winter spandex stuff. So we wait a bit, but no one else shows up, and so we head out to meet two other French guys, teachers at the school who are meeting us at a park. I was a little nervous, biking only with spry Frenchmen and not having biked in a long time, but my energy legs carried me through, and I even wished the pace was a little faster. (I also wished it were less freezing, as my leg warmers are not full length. My legs were very pink afterwards). It was a lovely, short ride(2.5 hours, child's play) , and we went up the river and through some nice parks. True to my nature, I got a flat as we went over a few kilometers of gravel, but I had the stuff to fix it and I like to think the Frenchmen were impressed.

Afterwards I rushed to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where my friend Luiza was speaking in a conference on the art of Robert Morris. She was amazing, naturally, and the museum was really cool and full of crazy and controversial art which is always fun when experienced in a group of friends and after a couple plastic cups of wine which we enjoyed at the end of conference party.

Other than that, life was good, classes are going very well, I feel like I am much more at ease at the front of the classroom, and genuinely love teaching. Post to follow about Thanksgiving!

Salut tout le monde, sorry for the delay in posting.
Italy was glorious, Erin, Michele (Erin's mom) and I had a wonderful time exploring the very pedestrian city, soaking up the architecture, the art, the warmer weather, the food, and trying desperately not to butcher the melodious language of Dante.
You can see some photos of a delicious pizza, the river, which is surrounded by beautiful buildings, including the Duomo with Brunelleschi's famous dome. We climbed up the inside, and it was truly amazing to think this was built without the use of scaffolding. You can also see the old city walls, and the tower of Pisa (it really does lean!).
We took a bus tour the last full day in the city, which took us to San Gimignano, a beautiful little town full of medieval towers, Siena (sadly wrong time of year for the huge famous horse race), a wine estate in the Chianti region, and finally Pisa. All of it was spectacular, and made me promise to return. Next time I think I will go with Nathalie, whose family is Italian, and speaks the language like a native...

Since then, I have been chilling in and around Lyon, catching up on lesson planning and grading the first test I gave (many very good grades and some very bad ones...hmmm), and entertaining some friends from my Grenoble days who came to visit from Belgium. There's always a lot going on here, and it has been a very fun couple of weeks. I found the organic market on Saturday, which is a hike (up a big hill!) to get to, but definitely worth it. Tonight we are going to a friend's apartment for a Disney themed party, and I am excited to hear all the songs I remember from childhood, this time sung in French. à bientôt,
Charlotte
ps. Just finalized my vacation plans, and will be home from dec 21 to january 11, so let me know what your plans are, and I hope to see all of you!

Obamanation

So there we were, in front of the tiny tv in our common room: American, French, Canadian, English, Tunisian, Romanian, Czech, Italian, spellbound. Many of us had stayed up all night, watching the CNN broadcast from midnight on, we Americans trying desperately to explain the electoral college, the popular vote issues, red states and blue states and swing states. Laughing at the "holograms" and the tv personalities, praying for Obama, barely daring to hope as the map slowly turned bluer and the magic number approached 270.

At 5am, when they officially called Obama the president elect, we exploded. We screamed and hugged and laughed and jumped up and down and chased our coffee with champagne, and let out a huge collective sigh of relief. I had been so nervous for so long that I could barely believe it was real even when it was announced. We calmed down enough to listen to the speech by McCain, and waited through the same two commercials repeated interminably, until finally, Barack Obama, the president elect, addressed the nation. There was, for the first time all night, universal silence (and perhaps a few tears), as we all listened, giving no commentary until the final applause.

I am so happy I really can't write it. It has been bittersweet for me to be abroad for this election, which I have followed (if from afar) more closely than I have ever followed any one previously. On the one hand, watching the festivities on tv made me a little sad not to be there firsthand. On the other, all I had to do was look around to see half a dozen countries represented, the expressions on their faces making it perfectly clear they understood the importance and shared the joy of this moment. After all, hadn't they all stayed up all night on a Tuesday to watch it unfold? It is amazing the extent to which the entire world is watching us. The election has been hugely covered in all the French (and British, and Italian) newspapers I have been reading lately, and the entire world was in support of Obama. They could hardly believe someone like Sarah Palin was seriously being considered, and we are all very relieved to have dodged that bullet. I am exceedingly proud that, by electing Obama, the US has finally done something right in the eyes of our international neighbors. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful new chapter in our history, both for Americans at home and for people all over the world. So I leave you to go about my normal Wednesday tutoring business by saying, Good morning, America.