As American as tarte aux pommes.

Yesterday was the second Thanksgiving I've spent outside the US.  When I was a junior in college, I studied abroad in London, where I lived in a student residence with friends from Boston University and other American universities.  The week preceding Thanksgiving, my parents traveled to Europe, and I met them in Paris to pass the weekend there; they spent the rest of the week with me in London.  That week, we music students presented a recital, and then we gathered on Thursday in one of our residence's kitchens to cook a grand and very traditional meal.  It was about as American as Thanksgiving can be abroad.  The Brits think Thanksgiving is just quaint, and they quite indulged us in our celebration.

In France, yesterday was Thursday.

Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving I've spent with Ben, but as it's just another work day here, we couldn't spend the day together.  I don't have class on Thursdays, but I babysit in the afternoons.  I tried to convey the importance of the day to the French kids, but they just laughed when I tried to teach them to draw hand turkeys.  Earlier in the day, I stopped by the grocery store to hunt for pie ingredients.  I was determined to fabricate at least a small essence of the holiday... because at least in the US, I make a mean pie.  Ben was hoping for pumpkin pie, but I had a feeling the store wasn't going to stock puréed pumpkin.  I was right, no surprise.  So an apple pie it was.  I thought it would be quick and easy to pick up flour, sugar, apples, a few spices.  The French love their baked goods, so I anticipated a breezy search.

At this point, I need to stop and take a good long think about my life choices.  How have I not accepted that the default is that everything here is way more difficult than it should be?  My can-do American mentality just feels pathetic and naive lately.  But in the thankful spirit of the day, I set forth into Casino, scribbled list in hand.  The broken roller cart should have been my first clue that all would not be well.

I made my way to the baking aisle and found no puréed pumpkin.  Not to worry.  Move on to apple pie ingredients.  Flour.  White flour?  Bread flour?  Liquid flour?  Seriously.  I picked up the cheapest white flour, non liquid.  Sugar.  There was no sugar in the baking ingredients aisle.  Slight panic setting in.  How about shortening for the dough?  No?  They must not use shortening in France.  Ok, let's backtrack and get some apples.  I know the giant store has apples.  Alors, spirits restored.  Bon.  Let's take a second pass at the baking ingredients aisle for sugar, I must have just missed it.  No, still not there.  Why.  What.  WHERE.  Ok, calming down.  Need a substitute for shortening.  Applesauce could work.  There's the applesauce, next to the confiture.  Now the spices.  Cannelle is cinnamon, got that.  Nutmeg.  I have no idea what the word for nutmeg is in French.  Let's text Ben and see if he can google translate for me.  Oh, look at that, no service in the store.  FINE, we'll settle for ginger instead, even though this stupid recipe doesn't call for it.  Deep breath, it's ok, no one will really miss the nutmeg.  Ok, maybe take a quick dip down the other aisles for the sugar?  No.  No.  No.  NO.  NO.  WHERE IS THE SUGAR.  WHY IS THERE NO SUGAR IN THIS STORE.  MY THANKSGIVING IS GOING TO BE RUINED.

And there, in the midst of the baking ingredients aisle, I allowed myself a brief I'm-a-foreigner-and-everything-is-terrible meltdown.  For five seconds, I let the tears well up, and my face grew hot with anxiety and heart-wrenching homesickness.  Thanksgiving is supposed to be about spending the day in warm cozy house, surrounded by family and the scent of delicious cooking turkey and pies.  It's a day reserved for comfortably surveying all the good and wonderful in one's life.   And a day we give thanks for how greatly fortunate we are for all the love and friendship we have.  It is not a day meant to be spent fighting off judgmental French leers of cigarette-stinking Frenchmen in French stores and French public transportation.  But damned if I was going to let a depressing French grocery store ruin my beloved holiday.  So I gave myself a mental kick in the pants, and headed in search of some eggs.  And there, next to the eggs, was all the sugar.

Finding all the ingredients was only half the battle in the War of the Apple Pie.  There are no pie tins in France, only tart pans.  They also don't measure things in cups and ounces over here, sillies.  So armed with my heavy new ceramic tart pan and my bizarrely marked metric measuring cup, I ventured forth into the final battle.  I would yet win this war.  When I finally put the beast in my ill-tempered oven (set to approximately, maybe around 425°F ish), I had an astounding moment of clarity: I'm getting really, really good at muddling through.  In fact, en fait, in the past three months, I have become the master of muddling through.  The instructions are never clear enough in a foreign language, but it just won't do to hide away all day with the curtains drawn.  The point is to attempt.  Living abroad is essentially a study in making a fool of oneself.  You will make an apple pie not with the ingredients you desire, but with the ingredients that are available.

I've spent a good portion of my life subconsciously refusing to try new things due to a crippling fear of failure.  I super don't like being either wrong or bad at something.  So I just won't try it if it doesn't seem like it would suit me.  In the context of living abroad, my true wants and desires are clarifying with an intensity I've never known otherwise.  Literally everything is about 50% more difficult here just for the language barrier alone.  So if I want it, then I must really want it.  There's no point in expending energy doing something I'm not keen on when nearly everything takes double the energy it would normally in my home country.  And those things I am keen on?  Well, I muddle pretty damn well at this point.  Take that, French-Apple-Pie-in-a-Tart-Pan.

PIE.

Talk to me.

Everyone does it.  You can't live without it.  It's second nature.  You feel like you might die if you can't do it.  Breathing, right?  Admittedly.  But more pertinently: communicating.

Living in America, I never gave much thought to the act of communication.  I learned to speak English as any normal young kid.  I never learned the rules of grammar all that well in primary school (sorry Mom and my teacher aunts), but nonetheless I figured out how to express myself coherently, even at times, elegantly.  English is my maternal language, my mother tongue.  I believe it's no accident that it's named as such.  Who is a mother other than someone who makes you feel safe, comforted, strong, confident?  Just as kids and teens take their moms for granted, we take our mother tongue for granted when living in our home country.  English is a bear of a language to learn (rules are for the WEAK), but I just happened to be born in a household where it was spoken.

There are moments, days, weeks here that I wish I could go back in time 25 years and telepathically urge my parents to move a few hours north so I could have grown up in a Francophone region.  What I wouldn't give to be able to speak French fluently.  In every interaction, I'm painfully aware that I struggle with what is otherwise second nature.  When I attempt to speak French, I feel anything but safe, comforted, strong, or confident.

Communication goes beyond the simplicity of ordering bread in a boulangerie or asking "ça va?" to a friend.  Communicating isn't small talk.  "Tu as passé un bon weekend?"  "Oui, je suis restée chez moi, j'ai fait du bla bla bla avec bla bla bla.  Qu'est-ce que tu vas faire ce weekend?"  Good for you, you can make small talk.  No, communication is expressing one's opinions, explaining abstract thoughts, describing an emotional state, inquiring about unknown or confusing matters.  When none of this is possible, or at least feels mostly impossible, the doors of the world are closed.  The people on the street are by default all judgmental and condescending.  Every time I walk out my door, I put on my armor and fear that someone will start talking at me.  Give me time to prepare, and I can express myself fairly well in French.  But that isn't practical!  If only every single life situation came with a five minute preparation period.  As such, I'm in a constant state of agitation.

With lack of communicative skill comes a real inferiority complex.  I don't want to rip on the French in general, but because French is the only foreign language I've attempted to really speak to natives, I only have this experience to go on.  Very few times, when I speak in French, I receive encouraging nods, smiles, little suggestions or corrections.  In these situations, I feel at ease, and the foreign language begins to flow smoother.  More often than not, however, I get the deer-in-the-headlights reaction.  See also: the squinty eyes, the impatient sighing, the looking around for an exit, or the blatant judgement/walk away.  Note to tout le monde: the latter reactions are NOT GOOD.  The person speaking the foreign language is already terrified of judgment for being in a different country/culture.  No one wants to actively be identified as a foreigner.  We're all just trying to fit in and not be negatively noticed.  Add to that unease the judgement of a native while communicating and we've landed squarely on the recipe for rejection.

Not being able to express myself breeds the worst of rejection.  This is the kind of really personal rejection that cuts deeply and lasts all night.  My opinions and expressions represent who I am as a person.  I'm just a vanilla, human-shaped cutout if I can never open my mouth and give some definition to my existence.  Maybe actions speak louder than words, but that stupid cliché only gets you so far.  You can't register for classes or defend a master's thesis on action alone.  Unless you both know sign language, you can't become friends with a new person with only actions.  This kind of rejection isn't necessarily spawned from other people either.  Responding to an email or perusing an article becomes a labor of translation.  Reading is no longer a pleasurable enjoyment, but a test of vocabulary and a furtive dig for verb conjugations.  There is no such thing as a quickly dashed note in a foreign tongue.  Each word and phrase is considered with the utmost care, and one just hopes the recipient feels generous with his standard of comprehension.  

I yearn for a time when I'll be able to express myself in French in complete phrases and thoughtful opinions.  At the moment, I have this monumental weight of self-consciousness that drags me back to feeling like a shy 13-year-old.  Yet, I have an enormous appreciation for those who communicate every day in a foreign language.  It makes me want to shake the American education system and demand foreign language classes be taught from kindergarten.  Beginning a foreign language in 8th grade, as I did, is inexcusable in a world as interconnected as it is now.

Until fluency, I'm stuck giving myself little pep talks before going out into public.  I suck up my pride and venture forth with simple sentences and myriad hand gestures.  I smile and try my hardest.  I must comfort myself with the thought that those who judge have never been in a foreign situation themselves.  Maybe they have no appreciation for how difficult it is for Americans to make that guttural r sound, or the half whisper, half spit noise one has to make when saying oui, je suis, bonne nuit...  ([ɥ] for the IPA junkies out there).  Mostly, I enjoy how beautiful the French language is and try to be patient with myself while I'm still learning.  One day, I will be able to communicate; when that day comes, I'm going to smash down all those closed doors with my powerful language.  Until then, je vous souhaite une bonne nuit.

Une vraie lyonnaise

Routine.  A word that drudges up feelings of monotony and boredom.  Never a change of pace.  When we have a routine, we're told to get out of the rut, shake things up, do something that scares us at least once a day.  Routine is a bad word to people my age.  This is the time in our lives that we're supposed to do exciting things like quit our jobs and move to France!

So what happens when you've done exactly that, but you find yourself once again in a routine?  This is what happens: you get down on your knees and thank the universe that you're lucky enough to feel safe and secure within this giant risk you've just taken.

Even something as exciting and exotic as moving to a foreign country can become ordinary over time.  But don't fret!  This just means you've been successful in setting up your life.  Anything that's new and different is exciting until it's no longer new and different.  This is the trap we fall in.  This is why routine is a bad word, and this is why humans seek out ever-increasing highs to pull us from the flat plane of the usual.

Good friends are always a good diversion.

As is chocolat chaud!

Routine is an integral component of life.  Without the constant of routine, how does anything else ever feel special?  Without routine, how do we appreciate the splendor of diversion?  If we stared up at the Sistine Chapel every single day, we would get bored of craning our necks to look at the same painted ceiling minute after dreadful minute.  Since most of us don't, in fact, spend every moment in the Sistine Chapel, we can truly appreciate a diversion from the plain white ceilings in our lives.

It's not the Sistine Chapel, but Notre Dame de Fourvière
is sure pretty to look at.

We also tend to forget the beauty within routine.  I wake up, I get ready, I go to class, I come home, I make dinner, I go to bed.  Variations on a theme every day, but it's mostly within the same opus.  It's possible for me to view my life as such, to get dragged down by the tedium of living, the routine of my days, but why?  How do I manage to maintain vivacity within sameness?  I appreciate the security within my routine so that the thrill of diverging fulfills me.  Secondly, I make peace with my routine. I don't allow routine to be a bad word because I've been waiting for four years for precisely this routine.

Waited four years to do things like paint the kitchen table and chairs
with boyfriend.

For four years, I hated weekend couples.  I hated how they held hands and walked lazily down M St. in Georgetown, contentedly shopping for luxury food goods at Dean and DeLuca.  I hated how they wore matching running or cycling gear with matching Starbucks cups and matching secret smiles.  I especially hated how couples would moon over each other while paying for purchases when I was at the register at City Sports.  I hated how alone I felt, that I couldn't share my smile with the person who makes me smile the most.  

Look at those obnoxious weekend smiles

For three of the past four years, I didn't feel as though my routine were my choice.  I did what I thought I was supposed to do after graduating from college.  Get a job, pay rent, be independent.  I suppose I especially appreciated the divergences from this routine, but it was essentially lacking.  But now, finally, I can be one of those obnoxious weekend couples and share my secret smile in person.  This is the routine I've been longing for, and I hold it closely to my heart, reveling in the sacred tedium and extraordinary comfort.

When we lack the things we love most dearly, it only serves as a reminder of just how much we truly love those things when we once again have them.  I already wrote about my changing personal definition of home; I think appreciation for routine could be filed in a sub-folder of the "Home" tab.  I can also add this to my post about stupid clichés, namely: absence makes the heart grow fonder.  I suppose at the core, this could be true, but it's another over-simplified one-liner that could never possibly take into account the complex spectrum of human emotion.  Four years of being fed that one-liner really start to take a toll on the spirit.

Now that I have my long-sought routine, I feel free to fully enjoy the act of living in Lyon.  The past few weeks have been filled with getting to know my new city and nesting in my new home.  Lyon is superbly underrated.  Before I moved here, many people assumed I would be moving to Paris when I said I was moving to France.  Paris is great and everything (touristy...), but Lyon is just so français.  The food, the architecture, the attitude.  The city is sprawling, but it's also quite intimate.  It's easy to walk from neighborhood to neighborhood; the public transportation is surprisingly abundant and
functional.

Place Bellecour 

Le Saône 

Vieux Lyon

During our breaks between classes, Emily and I have started wandering around the city.  11am on a Monday morning is a prime time to walk through the touristy section of Vieux Lyon.  It's deserted.  But that doesn't mean the traditional bouchons aren't in the midst of cooking for the midday meal.  The aroma of cooking is heavenly.  One time, we literally followed our noses up a steep outdoor staircase that lead us to the basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière.  This cathedral sits at the top of a hill overlooking the entire city; on a clear day, you can see the Alps in the distance.

Twilight atop the hill

Lyon

We're learning how to enjoy a good conversation at a café on a rainy day.  The Lyonnais gods laugh at our plans, and divert us to random brass bands playing near Place Bellecour.  We had a store in mind in Vieux Lyon, but of course we had to stop and enjoy the man playing the didgeridoo.  We climbed to the top of the hill to see Notre Dame de Fourvière, but took a trek down a grassy side-path to see all the abandoned candelabras.

French selfies.

We want to steal one for a Christmas "tree"

This was the second didgeridoo I saw that day. 

Brass band, sans clothes

We're drawn to the beauty and richness of this city, a city that now feels like home.  Walking across a bridge over the Rhȏne at night, with the sparkling spectacle of lights shimmering all around.  Ancient cathedrals dot the old quarter, and the regal, old Haussmann buildings stand like statuesque testaments to a grander age.  From atop the hill at Notre Dame de Fourvière, a sea of red tiled roofs blends indistinctly with the crepuscular atmosphere.  A cotton candy twilight washes through the city, until a twinkling canvas reflects back from the river.  Lyon is beautiful.

Le Saône

Notre Dame de Fourvière

I love my routine here.  I'm still so new to this city, this country, this language, but the security of my routine gives me such hope that I'm becoming une vraie lyonnaise.  The little excursions we take on our breaks, the life with long-missed love, the satisfying crunch of a fresh baguette, the ubiquitous and aesthetically-pleasing Haussmann buildings, the scent of bouchons doing what they do best, the music of la langue française all give more meaning to the quotidien of days.

And of course, nothing is better than make crêpes with friends on a chilly November night.

At the end of a truly delightful day.