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.