Roxanne à la campagne

Isabelle and Steve run a full house: three sons, one hamster, two dogs, three cats, walls lined with shelves lined with picture books and Beatles anthologies, cabinets brimming with colorful antiques, and best of all, a tire-sized fruit bowl that never empties of nature's sweetest gift to womankind: oranges and clementines.

Isabelle and Steve are English (Isabelle is an English teacher at the high school). Chez eux (literally, "at their house," but - I love this - chez can also refer to personality or preferences, as in, "according to them"), tea means black tea with milk, cheddar cheese comes from Cheddar (not Vermont, as the Sharps had me believing), and David Bowie is no joking matter. Oops.

They live happily à la campagne - out in the country - a good forty minutes from Roanne. Fifteen minutes out and we're passing fields of happy cows and clucking chickens in front yards. Thirty minutes and the roads are dirt or gravel. By the time we reach their narrow lane, farm houses dot the rolling hills on all sides. Well-trimmed hedges form even squares that, viewed from a distance, transform the landscape into an oil painting. A quiet calm, accentuated by a soft soundtrack of lazy mooooooos, blankets the land.

Inisde next to the woodstove, it's cozy and ... less quiet. Joshua, age seven, circles like a whirling dervish - can I eat this? do that? go there? Let's play a card game, or read a book, or make Play-Doh spaghetti! And it's all in Little Boy British English, which triples the cuteness factor.

The house is a delightful mélange of French and English cultures. The language spoken at home is English, but at 8 o'clock it's off to school where the boys turn into little French school children, and off to work where Isabelle converses with her French colleagues. Steve, a stay-at-home dad, says bonjour to his French neighbors. When French company comes for dinner, French is spoken and no one blinks an eye. But when company leaves, the BBC or "Antiques Roadshow UK" resumes, and the wine is replaced by tea.

Bilingual children are a beautiful thing; bicultural children are the raspberry on the tart. I was hugely pleased (ah, British English) to walk into Josh's room one morning to find him reading Franklin - a picture book about a turtle named Benjamin - in French, while listening to The Police on his Fischer-Price cassette player! I reckon the beauty of this trio was lost on him, but I was happy watching him and he was happy with his book and his music. Win-win-win (one for Roxanne).

I mentioned a woodstove and citrus fruit - this combination may be my favorite part of weekends à la campagne: standing next to the stove, peeling orange after clementine after orange, putting the peels on the woodstove, and smelling the citrus fill the room. Yuh-MEE! in the words of Isabelle.

Whenever I spend a weekend chez Isabelle, we visit neighboring villages and I discover little regional treasures. This time we went to the tiny town of La Clayette, home of Les Chocolats de Bernard Dufoux - one of the top chocolatiers in France. And now prepare yourselves.

You've got your chocolate bars, your chocolate truffles, chocolate ganache, chocolate-covered marzipan, your pistachio, almond, and hazelnut chocolates, caramel chocolates, chocolates with ginger, jasmine, cardamom, lavender, thyme, rosemary, or red pepper, chocolate bars filled with rhum ... and that's about it (Bubba Gump style).

My favorites were the Barre anti-stress (praline, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, raisins, orange peel) and the Buchette aphrodisiaque (marzipan, pistachio, praline, ginger). Who needs meds or cupid when you've got chocolate, eh?

You were probably wondering what's so great about expensive chocolate stores. Unlimited, guilt-free samples is what. I bought twenty-two euros worth of chocolate, and ate about five euros worth in the store. So it's like I paid seventeen euros. Cha-ching.

After an English weekend in the French countryside, here's what I can tell you: while some things are hugely English and others are très français, chocolate, my friends, is universal.

Mona Lisa Thattaway

Last weekend, two country gals took a trip to the big city.

Bonjooouur, Pah-reeee! Hellooooo, Paris.

My former Greenfire housemate and fellow Birkenstock-wearing friend Christina was visiting France during a vacation from teaching English in Giresun, Turkey. And so it was that we spent a lovely weekend in the City of Love and Public Displays of Affection.

We walked, we sight-saw, we feasted our earbuds on gypsy jazz and jazz standards, and we found Christina her Holy Grail: a steaming bowl of authentic French Onion Soup, complete with a rude French waiter who chastised us for ordering only soup and wine. Thanks for the soup, buddy.

We deftly navigated the Paris Metro, taking the 1 to the 9 to the 4… and I found myself humming Jay-Z’s “H to the Izzo” in between Edith Piaf melodies. [Editor’s Note: “H to the Izzo,” released in 2001, was hip hop artist Jay-Z's first Top Ten Billboard single. The song's lyrics use izzle language (H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A) to spell out H.O.V.A., which refers to one of Jay-Z's nicknames, Jayhova, and his self-proclaimed status as the god of MC.]

That’s neither here nor there, but surely more there than here.

We spent a sunny Friday afternoon atop Montmartre, the picturesque hill that affords a panoramic view of Paris, nibbling on chocolate-pear and rhubarb macarons (egg white and almond powder pastries that look like brightly-colored mini hamburgers and fit neatly into your palm).

Saturday was a typical Parisian day, cloudy and gray, so we followed the famous Rue du Rivoli to I.M. Pei’s glass pyramids, marking the magnificent Musée du Louvre. In front of the larger pyramid, a girl in furry boots approached me with her camera, pointing to herself saying, “Photo? Moi?” with a thick Texas accent. “Sure,” I replied, “And I speak English.” She laughed. “Oh, great! Would you take a picture of us in front of this pyramid thing?”

The Louvre is one heckuva museum. Its enormity is unfathomable for someone like me with the estimation skills of a mosquito. You can walk for hours at a pace conducive to a couple comments per painting and only see a tiny fraction of the collection. Christina and I wandered through rooms filled with ancient bowls and masks looking for the reputed Turkish room, and got sidetracked by ancient perfume bottles and statues of naked gods. You’d think they were trying to out-naked each other, those Greeks.

We wandered right into the Winged Victory of Samothrace, an armless, headless statue of the winged Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Her magnificent wings recall a certain trademarked swoosh, and her right hand, found in 1950, is displayed in a glass case off to the side. The palm faces up and only the middle finger remains, the rest broken off and lost. The wrist is also bent upwards.

A little girl with her hands pressed against the display case was motioning to her mother.

Maman, regarde, Speeder mahn! Look ma, Spider Man!

Bah dis donc. What do you know, Nike’s finger and wrist were perfectly positioned for first-class web-shooting à la Speeder Mahn. Time and time again, American culture makes a dramatic entrance into deep-rooted French institutions.

Scattered throughout this particular wing of the Louvre are laminated signs depicting Her Majesty Mona Lisa, with arrows pointing you toward what is arguably the most recognizable face in art history. The signs seemed as normal as those pointing you toward the W.C., and I’d bet my Louvre ticket that more people visit Mona than les toilettes.

So we followed the signs to Mona’s wall (she gets her own wall) and took pictures of the hoards of people taking pictures. Christina noticed a painting of a seated man with his arm halfway down the front of a seated lady’s dress, hanging on a side wall. She looks less than thrilled, and he is suspiciously expressionless. We joked that they know no one is looking at their wall, anyway.

Zooming past the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame… Paris is an ideal city for doing the Tourist Thing. Big and exciting, it’s rich with history, culture, music, and endless winding, walkable streets to discover and consecrate.  

We country gals are getting different but equal experiences. Living in smaller cities, we’ve both repeatedly experienced the kindness of strangers-turned-friends – people who’ve opened their homes and introduced us to regional specialties, and quirks of language and culture that we wouldn’t discover on our own.

And I always know where to find Mona. After all, I saw the signs.

Mooncakes à la Mode

A funny thing happened on the way to my favorite salon de thé.

It actually happened inside the tea parlor, but catchy openers trump truth in my book.

I had just poured a steaming cup of honey-chestnut-flavored oolong tea (a mystical-sounding variety called Shadow of the Wind) into a small, handle-less tea cup, and was daintily lifting it to my lips, when the server approached our table carrying a small tray. On the tray were two little plastic packages.

Eh ben, qu’est ce que c’est? Oh my, what’s this? I asked the server.

Yeah! Free treats! is what I was thinking.

She pointed to the plastic packages. These are gâteaux (can mean cake or cookies) for the Chinese New Year, she told us. I noticed the shiny red and gold wrappers covered in Chinese lettering. C’est pour ça. Ok, that explains that.

The explanation continued.

Each gâteau has some paper inside, she said, and you must be VERY careful not to eat this paper. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to open the plastic wrapper, carefully extract the paper from the gâteau, and then eat the gâteau. Repeat: the paper is NOT edible.

Maybe it was because she was speaking quickly, or because I was distracted by the red-orange-tinted lights, or because I couldn’t conceive of a pastry that required such a thorough explanation, but her words didn’t resonate with any gâteau experience in my memory. I shrugged and accepted the plastic package that apparently contained a potentially toxic paper-filled cake, straight from China.

I inspected the specimen before me. The wrapper said biscuit de porte-bonheur, which at the time I thought meant “cookie that brings happiness.” How cute. (I later learned that a porte-bonheur is a lucky charm.) On the back, the ingredients were listed in French and English: wheat flour, egg white, sugar, water, colza (rapeseed) oil, palm oil, butter, flavoring (what does it mean?), and no preservatives. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary.

I think I was expecting to find either a gelatinous blob or a copiously gooey pastry – something requiring nimble fingers, an alert mind, and great patience, to extract the paper inside. I braced myself for the ticking cookie-bomb.

Ladies and gentlemen, I opened the wrapper and found … a fortune cookie.

Nothing more, nothing less – exactly what you’d find in the sack with your Chinese take-out, or on a silver platter with the check at a Chinese restaurant.

I threw my head back and let out a resounding HA!

Arianna, the Italian, was looking quizically back and forth between me and the cookie. Haven’t you had one of these before? I asked her. No, she replied. I explained that in the U.S., fortune cookies are a dime a dozen and don’t come with instructions. The paper fortune is an indispensible yet unmistakably inedible part of the fortune cookie experience.

She smiled but didn’t seem half as amused as I was.

I broke the cookie in two and extracted my paper fortune. Tell me my destiny, le cookie!

En humour, mieux vaut jamais que trop tard. In humor, better never than late.

It’s better not to tell a joke at all than to deliver a badly-timed punch line? Disappointing. This was no fortune, nor did it bring me happiness. But then do they ever?

Back at the ranch, I did some quick research into the fortune cookie’s origins. Its exact provenance is not known, but modern-day fortune cookies started appearing in California in the early 1900’s. As for the inspiration, there are a number of charming legends (I love legends) such as how, in the fourteenth century, the Chinese threw off their Mongol oppressors by hiding messages in rice mooncakes, which the Mongols did not like. And how during the American railway boom of the 1850’s, Chinese railway workers came up with a substitute for the mooncakes they couldn’t buy in the US: homemade biscuits with good luck messages inside.

But long story short, there is ample evidence that it was actually Japanese immigrants in California who invented today’s crescent-shaped fortune cookies, Chinese immigrants who marketed them in their restaurants, and Americans (in its broadest definition) who tasted them, loved them, and would be utterly lost without them.

Our humble crescent cookie got me thinking about identity (it’s all I ever do these days). First, I associate fortune cookies with Chinese food, but they’re actually a Japanese-American creation. Second, I was surprised to learn that the French give dissertation-length explanations (sorry, the cookies make me exaggerate) prior to fortune cookie consumption. Third, conversations with my friends and resident French Culture and Identity Experts (FCIE) – Myriam, Vincent, Anais, and Benjamin – have alerted me to the fact that American multi-culturalism is something I take for granted. Immigrants have trouble integrating – melting, if you will – into French society because France is an old man compared to the infant United States; French identity is less flexible, less fluid, less flou (blurry, fuzzy). In the U.S., a fortune cookie is an essential Chinese-Japanese-American treat. In France, it comes stamped with an OTHER label.

I’m not saying we’re all holding hands and singing Kumbaya in the Promised Land, U.S.A. Amy Chua had Americans up in arms over her depiction of Chinese child rearing traditions and her rejection of what she sees as American parents’ unnecessary coddling and self-esteem boosting. To me, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and its rocky reception suggest cultural tension and US and THEM labeling on both sides. And terrorist racial profiling - ! And it's not as though we're welcoming our southern neighbors with open arms. But on the whole, it's easier to melt into the American pot.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, as the saying goes. (Or the French equivalent: Ce n’est pas à un vieux singe qu’on apprend à faire des grimaces. You don't teach an old mokney to frown...because he already knows how). Just as I'd like to think you can teach an old dog new tricks, I’d like to say that France is sloooowly turning that frown upside down concerning immigrant integration. But my wise French friends seem to think otherwise.

Maybe a fortune cookie is what the old monkey needs! Just make sure he doesn’t eat the paper.

Nice legs, Kermy baby

The news hopped in over Sunday lunch. “Tonight we’ll eat cuisses de grenouille.”

Two words, my friends: Ribbit. Ribbit.

I was seated across the table from Annie and Yvon, the early-afternoon sun doing pirouettes on my shoulders and two glasses of rosé dancing the tango in my stomach. Lunch had been a lamb’s lettuce salad with mustard-vinaigrette dressing, some white fish in a light butter sauce, soft goat cheese on crunchy baguette, and des oeufs à la neige, or eggs in the snow – meringe swimming in vanilla custard and caramel.  

It was while we sipped our petits cafés that the chef herself calmly informed me, “Tonight we’ll eat frog legs.”

I knew I liked the idea of eating frog legs in France. But did I actually want to eat frog legs? It didn’t much matter at that point, because I was staying for dinner, and dinner was frog legs. I chuckled at how stereotypically French it was, and therefore how decidedly eeeexcellent.

I didn’t notice them at first, soaking in a bowl of milky water off to the side of the counter. Twenty or so, just havin’ a soak. I thought instantly of a scene in the animated French movie The Triplets of Belleville in which a set of triplet-musicians scarf down bowls of frog soup, slimy green legs spilling out of the pot, falling off their spoons, and dangling out of their mouths. It is truly revolting. 

The bowl of legs in Annie’s kitchen was not revolting, per se, but I did squeal quietly upon pulling one out of the water by its little webbed foot. Annie looked over and smiled. Ca va, t’as pas trop peur? Not scared, are ya?

The funny thing about frog legs is that they look like miniature chicken legs, about one inch wide and two inches long when you stretch the legs out. When you buy them (as opposed to, say, catching them in your backyard), the legs are folded like pretzels and look like crossed arms. I pictured the frog mid-sentence: “No thanks, I’ll just hold on to them, I’d really rather not –”

Sorry, Kermit. France likes your legs. France wants your legs.

The first thing to know is that frog leg meat has very little taste, so the dish is all about the persillade –  a sauce composed of parsley, garlic, and butter, in which the legs are cooked.

I watched Annie scoop three generous lumps of butter into the pan. Note: This is the part of French cooking where you look away and whistle, pretending the butter just adds color, or better yet that it’s a figment of your imagination.

As the imaginary butter was heating, she rolled the little leggies in flour so that they would turn golden brown when cooked. Then she carefully placed each mini pretzel-leg package into the pan, and let them sizzle away for a good fifteen minutes before sprinkling on the dried parsley and finally throwing in a heaping handful of garlic cloves. Needless to say, I didn’t pick up any chicks, nor was I assaulted by vampires later that night.

We ate them with our fingers, clasping the little feet with a thumb and forefinger. I should say we nibbled, really – it was a delicate affair that required a tall stack of napkins. In the end, frog legs taste like parsley, garlic, and butter, with a texture somewhere between chicken and shrimp. I ate two.

The whole time the leggies were kicking – er, cooking, – Yvon was glued to the TV set, watching a bad American movie (dubbed) called “The Stepfather,” about a kid whose new stepdad turns out be an assassin. I didn’t join him (the legs were my peep show for the evening), so maybe I’m not a fair judge. But I’m going to judge based on what I overheard: this movie was not worth its weight in dubbing fees.

And thanks to Mrs. Singer’s sophomore year English class, all I could see were two fancy-pants SAT words in flashing neon lights: IRONIC JUXTAPOSITION! Because I can’t think of many things more culturally contradictory, more ironically juxtaposed, than consuming frog legs in your kitchen and exported American rubbish in your living room.

I commented on it to Annie and she just laughed. Effectivement, ils sont bêtes, les films qu’il regarde. Yep, the [American] movies he watches are beastly (literally)/silly/stupid. American movies are not all beastly, but somehow all the beastly ones get eaten up in France.

What strikes me is that the rules and regulations of French cooking are left cold at the kitchen door; the quality controls don’t seem to apply to movies and TV shows that people watch – the stuff people feed their brains! From my spot at the table, I see fierce national and gastronomic pride in one room, and an unquenchable fascination with American culture in the next.

I'll hang here in the kitchen.

These are a Few of Their Favorite Things, Part II

Way back in October, I made some observations about things the French love. Three months later, a wee bit savvier and god knows how many pounds of cheese given the grand tour of my digestive system, it’s time for an encore.  

C’est parti. Here we go. The French love:

1)    Coffee breaks. The school day goes from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (for the students, not for me), and at 10 a.m. it’s time for a ten-minute pause and a gobelet of coffee. (It’s not what you think, if you’re thinking what I was thinking. A gobelet is a little plastic cup that pops out of the coffee machine, not the decorated medieval goblet I was picturing.) During the morning pause, my favorite group of handymen comes into the teachers’ lounge for some coffee talk. They see me and smile, saying jovially, Bonjour! Comment vas-tu, la petite américaine? We stand by the windows with our gobelets, shooting the breeze like seasoned coffee drinkers, watching the students run around like maniacs. We chat about the weather and they ask me about life in Le Mee-soo-ree. They lament the fact that young people aren't learning to cook, because this means the demise of French culture.

2)   Kissing. No no, not that kind. The other kind: la bise – the Kiiiiiss. Upon saying hello and goodbye, the French faire la bise by exchanging kisses on alternating cheeks, touching cheek-to-cheek, not lips-to-cheek – an important detail to avoid sending mixed signals. You also have to be careful not to swipe lips as you go for the other side. La bise is done by old friends and complete strangers alike – two people introduced by a mutual friend often faire la bise, particularly young people. Consequently, I’ve been in shockingly close contact with more French garcons (dudes) than my mother would probably care to know. For them, c’est normale, c’est la politesse. The amusing part comes when a person joins or leaves a large group and is expected to make the rounds, often taking four or five minutes to cheek-air-kiss each person goodbye. A word of advice: build some time into your departure if you’re on a tight schedule. Or say you’re sick.

3)   Singing in English. Just picture it: International Karaoke Night. The players: American, Bolivian, English, German, Italians, Taiwanese, and a handful of French representing the Motherland. After snacking on quiche and Italian-made pizza, I stood up and popped in the karaoke DVD. Alright, who’s going first? I asked. No one moved a muscle. I clicked through the songs, choices were slim! and landed on “Like A Virgin.” How’s this? I asked, and got a collective nod of approval. Turns out they knew EVERY word. Same thing happened with Alicia Keyes and the Beatles. Edith Piaf and Claude Francois (wrote "Comme d'habitude,” the original version of Sinatra’s "My Way”) were also hits, but what was the loudest-sung song of the night? Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” France (and the world, dare I say) is inundated and infatuated with English music. What does it mean? Analysis forthcoming. 

4)  Pronouncing foreign words with heavy French accents. You can’t get the full effect here, but I can offer you a few to try on for size: Mar-tahn Lu-ter Keeng (the man). Le bon fee-leeng (to have a good feeling about something). Look-y Strike (cigarettes). Le pla-neeng (a schedule). Sahn Louie (gateway to the west). Wait – that's French that we make a mess of. And then there’s renday-voo, day-zha voo, bon appa-teet…and zee leest gohz on.

5) Vacation. Everyone loves vacation, but the French LOVE vacation. They have quite a lot of it and talk about it nearly as much. The calendar revolves around les vacances scolaires (granted, I'm working in a high school). But I do think there's something behind this Spanish proverb: "It is best to be born in Italy, to live in France, and to die in Spain." I can't speak to an Italian birth or a Spanish death, but I can say that life in France is slower than the on-the-go lifestyle many Americans lead. Slower doesn't mean better, but it does mean more coffee breaks.    

Well would you look at that, time for a goblet o' Joe. I'd kiss you all goodbye but I have somewhere to be tomorrow.

Tomaydo, Tomahto

A snowy month has passed since the Festival of Lights and now it's a whopping 50 degrees outside. This won't last, they tell me. "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes." They say it over here, too.

My Hanukkah socks are worn-in and the Christmas lights are gone. Thus begins the home stretch to May flowers and bike rides. 

I learned a great French idiom for “home stretch” the other day: Champs Elysées. After a run (un footing, as say zee French), a man in my running club exclaimed, “Bah, dis donc! ["Well, I do declare!"] I really pushed it out there on the Champs Elysées!" Wanting to be part of the conversation, I asked when had he run on the Champs-Elysées? A marathon, maybe, or a triathalon? 

Nothing like it. He meant the last half mile of our footing. I laughed loudly and heartily to show I had accepted my mistake in good spirits. Then I quickly stored it away in my brain's Department of Idiomatic Expressions.  

I’m starting 2011 with a powerful tool on my belt: Le Grand Livre des Expressions (The Big Book of Expressions). This little Tree of Knowledge contains the origins of a couple hundred French expressions, along with their proper usages. My plan is to speak only in idioms by the end of April.

What exactly is the difference between an expression and and an idiom? was the question your humble narrator posed. To save you a few clicks, an idiom is an expression with a figurative meaning.  In other words, it needs a native speaker's translation and explanation.

French is rampant with wonderful idiomatic expressions. One of my favorites is avoir un coeur d’artichaut – to have the heart of an artichoke, meaning to fall in love easily. The idea is that there are lots of leaves surrounding your heart and you give each one to a different person. Who doesn't like artichoke hearts? They're delicious. Motion to start saying it in English; all in favor say “artichoke.”

Language is sneaky, the way it swirls around without minding country borders or cultural boundaries. The winter vacation had my mind swirling.

I’d been thinking in French since the beginning of October and then BAM, just as Santa C. was making his last-minute deliveries, my family arrived on a plane in Amsterdam. We spent a weekend speaking English with a Dutch family (polyglots, the lot of them), traveled through Germany with Dad and Nathan speaking German and us ladies using English (without going hungry), then came back to France and spoke “American” (to-may-do) with an English family (to-mah-to).

One night we had dinner with Annie and Yves (remember them?), who don’t speak a word of English. Yet with my translation, Dad’s probing questions, and Yves happily shouting philosophe (philosopher)! at Nathan and infirmière (nurse)! at Thea, the conversation never dulled.

Upon returning to Roanne, Thea and Nathan came to my classes to get a taste of the exchanges I have with the students. One of them asked, What do you think of Obama? Nathan answered (call him for details) and then asked what the students thought of Sarkozy. One response: “Ee yeez a small sheet.” (read it out loud)

Little shit, small shit. Tomato, tomahto.

A few days after the Emmons Clan’s departure, I received another American visitor, Mr. Sandler of St. Louis fame. We spent a weekend in Lyon with Myriam (French), Vincent (French), Benjamin (French), Wu-Gui (Taiwanese), and Monsieur le Miew (Felis catus) and played a rousing game of Salad Bowl, a brilliant mélange of Taboo and Charades. We played in English – our lowest common denominator language, since Mr. Sandler’s Spanish only took him so far in French. He later commented, and I nodded my agreement, that it felt odd to have the upper hand in a foreign country. (Although, the others speak English and mime like pros. For a taste of our linguistic salad, try miming “ruthless crab.”)

Isn’t feeling lost and helpless part of traveling in a foreign country? I remember the first sentence we learned in Madame Berk’s French class: Au secours, je suis perdu(e)! Help, I’m lost! But the scary/comforting/sad/wonderful truth is – cue the movie music –  you’re not lost if you speak English. 

After our family’s winter travels and hosting non-French speakers in France, it has become that much clearer to me that English is everywhere. China may be on the verge of world domination, but English has become the Esperanto of the 21st century.

Fact (according to two Australians on a German train): It’s completely feasible to travel around Europe, and much of the world, speaking only English. Sure, our language has its roots in French, German, Latin, and Dutch (one word: apartheid). But who today speaks French, German, or Dutch, outside a few European countries, French islands, and former French colonies? A handful of eager-beaver high school and university students, that's who. And the French tourists in New York.

Qu’est-ce que ca veut dire?? What does it mean??

Well, for starters,

1) English speakers will probably not lose our reputation for being nul with foreign languages

2) the French, who share this reputation, should really reconsider dubbing all English films and TV shows 

3) English is taking over the world!!

4) I am an obedient cog in the Wheel of Anglophone World Takeover. And I'm ok with that.

As with all gourmet food for thought, I'm still chewing on this language question. For now I'll

1) continue preparing my lessons about Obama 

2) accept that the Dutch are linguistic geniuses thanks to natural selection – their survival depends upon it

3) continue registering French idioms until I can string them together into sophisticated paragraphs

4) start saying tomahto.

My artichoke heart beats with anticipation.

Happy Hanukkah to Ross & Monica

Hanukkah came and went discreetly in the land of stale baguettes. Last week it was Thanksgiving and then BAM! – the Hanukkah bells were ringing. (Can someone see about getting Hanukkah bells?) Now it’s the last night of our Festival of Lights, and I have no menorah or chocolate coins to show for it. What I do have is a kitchen that reeks of oil and a new pair of socks (Night #1, bought ‘em for myself).

From what I’ve witnessed in Lyon and Roanne, menorahs in French windows are few and far between, and plastic blue and white Stars of David in windows even fewer and farther. Two cars were spotted in Lyon with florescent menorahs on top, but that was exceptionnel, according to the menorah-car spotter. (In French, “exceptional” always means “rare and unusual,” not “unusually excellent.” Although menorah cars are nothing short of excellent.)

Hanukkah is not widely recognized or celebrated here. There aren’t loads of French Jews, and the gentiles don’t know loads about non-Christian, non “pure-French” cultures. Please excuse this sweeping generalization, but it was expressed by a number of French gentiles and I’m pairing their words with my observations.

For my students, I combined a Hanukkah lesson with some preposition work. Try this on for an ego-booster:

Hanukkah means “rededication” __ Hebrew and celebrates one ___ the greatest miracles ___ Jewish history. Only one small jar ___ oil was found in the Temple, normally enough __ last one day. But miraculously, the lamp stayed lit ___ eight days.

Most of the kids had never heard the word Hanukkah (rather, “ah-nu-kah”), much less did they know anything about it. A handful had a vague idea about lighting candles and getting presents. The Festival of Lights part was familiar, though, because in France, December 8^th begins the Catholic Festival of Lights, a religious celebration turned massive light installation honoring Saint Mary, who was Jewish (sorry, had to say it).

Other parts of the Hanukkah story were familiar for different reasons. Upon reading this sentence,

A small group ___ Jews, called the Maccabees, rebelled.

one girl exclaimed, “Oh! Ross talked about the Maccabees!”

For anyone without a TV or an issue of People Magazine (surely you’re better off without the magazine), she meant Ross Geller, a character on the show “Friends.” Ross and Monica, brother and sister, are the show’s token New York Jews. They bring a pretty authentic Jewish flavor to the show, whose production team is comprised largely of Jews. Holiday customs and Jewish guilt included!

I laughed and asked did she remember what Ross said about the Maccabees? No, just that he was wearing a strange costume (an armadillo suit, in fact) when he recounted the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days and the Maccabees’ triumphant recovery and rededication of the Temple (she only remembered the costume part). But for once, the exportation of American popular culture had helped my cause – name recognition goes a long way in the high school world! The others were impressed with Maccabee-Friends girl.

Back at the ranch, my German roommate knew a bit about Hanukkah and was delighted to learn that Jews eat latkes (potato pancakes, or potato fritters) – turns out they’re a popular German treat. Even better, the Germans also eat them with applesauce!

And so it happened that we hosted une soirée allemande-juive – a German-Jewish dinner featuring potato pancakes/latkes/Reibekuchen. We were an international group, as per uzh:  two English boys, and the gals, Italian, German, French, Taiwanese, and American.

I turned the lights off and set the scene with some klezmer tunes (traditional Eastern European Jewish music), telling them the story of Hanukah and how we light candles each night to remember the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days, affording sufficient light to rebuild the Temple. I told them how we play dreidel…which is about as interesting as actually playing dreidel. 1) Spin the four-sided top. 2) See which letter lands on top. 3) Put some chocolates in the pile, take some out, or do nothing, depending on the letter. 4) Repeat.

Don’t get me wrong, one round of dreidel is great. But to quote Howard Jacobson in his Nov. 30 New York Times op-ed article, “Hanukkah, Rekindled,”

How many years did I feign excitement when this nothing of a toy was produced? The dreidel would appear and the whole family would fall into some horrible imitation of shtetl simplicity, spinning the dreidel and pretending to care which character was uppermost when it landed. Who did we think we were — the Polish equivalent of the Flintstones?

All the same, I was kicking myself for not tossing a few into my suitcase.

I concluded with a favorite Jewish saying: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.

The others didn’t know if it was ok to laugh at this, and I assured them it was. It’s what Jews do, after all, and what we always talk about doing – we recount our tragic stories, then we laugh, then we eat. Take Ross in that ridiculous armadillo suit, telling the Maccabees’ tale: he’s nothing if not a tragically comic – or comically tragic? – friend.

The latkes were a success, every bit as oil-laden as the Maccabees intended them to be. I think my German Jewish Oma (grandmother) would have been happy to see us there, plates and forks covered in oil, enjoying them together.

And today the kitchen still smells like… the great miracle that happened there.