Let's talk about... FOOD!

I love food.  That's one of those simple things about me that will never change and only ever becomes more pronounced over time.  Food is life, and life is for the making of food.  I've always loved to cook and bake, but I've never taken any formal lessons.  I'm probably doing a lot of it wrong, but I love almost nothing more than being in a kitchen.  I'll let you make the joke for yourself on that one...  Truly, though, my love for cooking has nothing to do with growing up in some kind of traditional mom-as-homemaker household.  Both my parents worked (and still work) very long hours, and the house duties were seemingly split democratically right down the line of skill.  My mom can cook, and my dad can clean, and so that's what they did.  Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of Friday nights, when they house got a top-down cleaning from Dad, and of Sunday afternoons, when Mom cooked sauce and meatballs.  Every single week was the same thing, and I took it completely for granted, but thankfully, I've adopted at least the essence of these acts.  I clean obsessively when I'm anxious or upset, and at all other times, I cook.

The most prominent collection of memories
from my childhood: pizza at Sergi's in Potsdam, NY!

Squid sauce and fried fish for dinner every single
Christmas Eve for the past 26 years.

Acting as guest chef in my brother and sister-in-law's kitchen.

I grew up in a third generation 100% Italian family, so food was the name of the game at every holiday and gathering.  My paternal Grandma made sauce and "magic meatballs" (magic because they magically put my brother and me to sleep on the 3-hour car ride home), and my maternal Nani makes the most frighteningly delicious spinach bread.  Nani is a pretty religious woman, but I'm convinced she's made a little deal with the devil over the texture of that bread because it is SINFUL.  In the tradition, my mom continues to make sauce (we don't call it gravy in my family...) for pasta, lasagna, manicotti (pronounced madigot in our house), baked ziti, Christmas Eve squid sauce, and I can't continue listing because my mouth is watering too much.  I'm not sure how it compares to some great chef's tomato sauce, but to me, my mom's sauce will always be the best.  The texture is always so smooth, never too lumpy, but never watery.  It takes on this deep, plump, vivacious ruby red after hours of simmering, and the aroma swirls around the house long into the night, even after cooking, eating, and cleaning have long finished.  My mom's sauce is that combination of raw ingredients and dash of je ne sais quoi that eludes me to this day.  I've made plenty of sauces, but they never, never come anywhere close to Mom's.  I can't figure it out.  I consider myself pretty good at cooking, but something as simple as tomato sauce is juuuuuust beyond my grasp.  I have an inkling that my mom's secret ingredient is the most powerful one of all: love.  So cliché, I know, but there is no other explanation.  I'm betting she became imbued with that power 30 years ago when my brother was introduced on the world because that's the moment she became a mom.  Hopefully one day I'll have a kid or two, so I like to think that my best sauce days are still ahead of me.  Thankfully, sauce isn't the only thing in the world to be cooked, and I think I put a pretty good spin on a lot of my mom's other dishes.

I can't remember the first time I attempted to cook something.  I don't recall asking my mom for cooking lessons, but I do remember sitting at the kitchen counter every night in middle and high school doing my homework while Mom cooked dinner.  I must have just observed and absorbed everything, and the first thing that's always stuck in my mind is garlic sautéing in olive oil.  My mom never used recipes until the internet made it easy to find and print in the days before smartphones and tablets.  Everything was made by memory and deft skill.  I don't remember anything burned or poorly made, though most dishes leaning toward the safe side culinarily.  One of my favorites was tuna noodle casserole (or tuna nuna casserole as I thought it was pronounced until well into my teens).  And spaghetti carbonara, lentil soup, chili, spaghetti and meatballs (homemade, obvi), chicken piccata, "Spanish rice" (rice, corn, salsa, beans, ground beef).  Good '90s food with an injection of Italian tradition.  Every night was a sit-down affair with all four of us.  We said grace until my brother and I rejected the religiously-tinged phrases.  Grace was replaced with a ritual of holding hands and saying "I love you" to everyone at the table.  The cloying sweetness of a functional family, quelle horreur.  All of that food tasted so good because it had been lovingly prepared by my little momma.

My own spaghetti carbonara

I started cooking for myself after college in my pathetic makeshift studio kitchen in DC.  No great success there.  I ended up making simple microwave rice and pasta dishes almost every night. The house I lived in in Virginia had a full kitchen, but by that point, I realized that the problem didn't lay with the size of the kitchen, but the amount of mouths being fed.  I had really only ever cooked just for myself, so I didn't bother to put much thought or creativity into it.  Then I moved to France and had both someone to cook for and the immense inspiration of the food capital of the world.  Now I cook every single night for Ben, and although perhaps not a voracious gourmand, he's as appreciative a recipient as any.  I feel genuinely fulfilled being able to cook for someone I love, with a license to make pretty much anything I want because I'm dating the least picky eater in the world.  That said, we've had to put a limit on all the baking as we don't make enough money to buy larger pants sizes.

Banana bread.  In the 10€ bread pan

Starbucks chocolate cinnamon bread

The most incredible apple pie...

Perfect lattice crust from scratch, thank you very much.

The perfect chocolate pudding pie
(from scratch, never from a box!)

And the perfect brownies.  I go through a lot
of recipes to find the ONE.

My one and only Martha Stewart recipe:
oatmeal raisin bars.

All of these ventures into cooking and baking have put me into a reflective state.  What is the draw of cooking for me?  Is it that I really love to eat?  Do I enjoy feeding people?  Do I like the grand variety of textures, colors, aromas, tastes, and combinations that can be produced when given a little heat, a little time?  Within this reflection, I've circled back around to the lessons I learned and absorbed from my mom.  It's all about the loooove.  Seriously.  I realized that cooking a good meal is one of the most natural ways I know to show my love.  What's better than spending my time on a recipe that requires a little skill, a lot of patience, and some beautiful cuts of meat and chops of veggies?  I lose myself in the acts of slicing and dicing and in the discovery of new tastes.  I'm developing my sixth sense for flavor combinations, admiring the tang and diversity of citrus, the incredibly utility of cornstarch, honey, coconut milk, and bouillon, the rich deliciousness of crème fraiche, the sweet candy-like texture that butter gives to sautéing vegetables (ça c'est très français).  I've discovered that making soup - chicken noodle, potato leek, butternut squash, French onion, lentil - is basically a panacea and the epitome of comfort food.  The humble garlic and onion are the fundamentals to most of the meals I prep, and chopping those cloves and bulbs has become a soothing ritual for me.  The familiar scent of garlic or onion in olive oil is a living connection to the past, to cherished childhood, that links to the present.  As I've written about so many times, living abroad makes me a little heartsick at times, and the act and sensory experience of cooking keeps me connected to the memories of love back home.

Chicken noodle, cures the common cold.

Chili!

Lentil soup.

Potato leek, very French.

Cooking takes time and attention.  It's an investment in a fundamental act of survival.  We must eat to survive, but survival doesn't require gourmet meals.  It's possible to get by on the bare minimum, either without the means to create or the creativity for the meals.  So why do we spend time selecting the juiciest and plumpest morsels in the market, slaving over a hot stove, reading and re-reading recipes, and delicately stirring, scraping, and flipping to achieve that perfect concoction?  Making delicious, interesting, healthy meals is the heart of showing someone you care enough to put in real effort on their behalf.  My food-centric childhood and ancestry are now manifesting their powers in the food capital of the world.  Living in France has unlocked this potential in me that I think would otherwise have laid dormant.  Maybe it's because I live with someone now, but I think there's really something in the water here that helps to imbue all my meals with je ne sais quoi.  C'est l'amour!

In the zone.

French onion soup.  C'est l'amour!

A tourist in my own city

Hi friends.  I've decided to veer back to the original purpose of this blog - that is, reflecting on my expat experiences and NOT publishing rant after rant surrounding my general introverted discontentedness.  I'm truly not unhappy, but when I start to write, all of my inner frustrations come out in a kind of cathartic word vomit.  Good for my psyche, maybe not so enjoyable to my readers.

I will start with one complaint, however.  This little sourness prompted my day's activity, so I feel it bears a small amount of explanation: I'm job hunting.  No revelation here, but it really sucks.  I don't think going into too many details would be productive, but over the past few weeks, I've generally felt that my very existence is of absolutely no consequence.  I can't figure out what my passion is in life, can't figure out what I'm really good at, can't figure out where I could make the most fruitful contribution.  On top of that, there's a pesky black hole on the other end of my email server, as clearly none of the dozens of inquiry emails I've sent out have reached a single recipient.  The answers I do get back have been more often than not discouraging and sometimes downright snotty.  So I'm feeling kind of down on myself right now and frustrated that I don't see any progress.  On one specific note - I'm working on a TEFL certification so that I can apply to teaching jobs.  If anyone has any advice on how to get into teaching, I would greatly appreciate it.  I know it's a domain that requires more than just a quick certification, but I want to try teaching English while I'm here for various reasons.

In any case, I've been a less-than-pleasant bedfellow the past few weeks because of the job hunt stress, and I'm also bored up to my eyeballs while on vacation.  It's also worth mentioning that my master's program doesn't have classes this semester, just independent research.  I'm so starved for structure, it's ridiculous.  I'm taking two really great French courses, so at the very least I have that.

In the depths of my first-world despair, I decided to get out of the apartment today and go enjoy Lyon like a tourist.  I loved doing this when I lived in DC, since there's no end of touristy things to do and places to see in Washington.  (I would have lived on the Mall if I could.  I certainly ran around it while marathon training enough times.)  I was really looking for an excuse to get out and remind myself why I'm grateful to be here, living in France.  It can feel like an endless cycle of hardships and frustrations.  Sometimes, not very often, I think back to the life I left in DC.  I was independent with two jobs that paid enough-ish.  I had fun friends, an athletic hobby that kept me busy and put me in contact with wonderful people.  I lived in one of the coolest cities in the world, only a mile or two from Barack.  It's always so easy to look back only see the positive in a situation I know in my heart was never ideal.  Especially at a mentally and emotionally exhausting time like this.  And I don't just mean the job hunting.  Living the bohemian expat life is not glamorous - it comes with a unique set of hurdles and nary a real guidebook.  Then again, I live in France!  Who cares what I have to deal with?  I'm literally living the (a) dream!  For all the cigarette smoke and annoying, confusing bisous, this is such a beautiful country, and I'm kind of in an ideal situation.  I get to be in grad school, speak a foreign language, absorb a whole culture, and I live relatively comfortably.  I pay pennies for my education and healthcare.  I'm not in debt, I'm not starving, and I'm enriching my life in a way that never would have been possible had I stayed in DC.

With all that in mind, I set out today to one of my favorite parts of the city, Vieux Lyon.  Vieux Lyon is the old part of the city (vieux = old), and it looks the most storybook European.  It's pretty touristy on the weekends, so I felt a Wednesday afternoon would be an ideal time for a stroll through its cobblestone streets.  My mission was to get away from the cliché, wander the back streets, and snap pictures of anything that piqued my interest.

To set the scene, the charming, narrow streets of Vieux Lyon:

On the weekends, and in the summer, these streets are usually so packed it's almost impossible to move.  Even today, the main street was a little crowded.  As such, I kept to the most deserted passages.  I love how the old buildings lean in toward each other over the street, veiling the ground in musty antiquity.  You can smell the thousand year history mingling with that distinct scent of baking bread.  It feels ancient, as though this quartier is in suspension, completely at ease with the patina of its beautiful decay.  Everything rests in an organic color, each building appearing to have grown up from the earth abiding by the color palette of nature.  Nothing gaudy or garishly modern.  

Further in my tour, I encountered a little more color and character.

The color on this storefront was actually shocking to me.  The brilliance caught the corner of my eye as I walked by, and I had to cross the street to take in its full glory.  This picture really doesn't do justice to the deep midnight purple, glowing even in the daylight.  I want to find this paint color and paint myself an accent wall in the home of my dreams.

This is my very favorite apartment in all the city.  Every time I walk by, I admire the graceful glass front, the blush of the façade, the thoughtful arrangement of potted plants, up to the jaunty, cheerful turrets of the roof.  It looks out on the Saône river, so whatever lucky person lives here even has a nice view...

The Bad Boy Café ;)

After Vieux Lyon, I mounted the steep hill up to La Croix-Rousse, which overlooks the city.  I stumbled upon a Roman-Gallic ruin on my way that I'd had no idea existed... something that I surely could never had done in the US!

Finally, I made my way back into the city at Hôtel de Ville, where it was once again crowded.  I gave myself permission to wander over to my favorite sparkly display and gawk at a few of girl's best friends:

As I stood admiring each display, "Moon River" à la Breakfast at Tiffany's popped into my head, and I had to wistfully tear myself away, sans croissant ou robe de Givenchy, malheureusement.  I was rewarded with some premature, confused blossoming magnolia trees in front of the Palais du Commerce.

After my tour, I'm feeling refreshed from my internal stagnation.  It's always helpful to gain perspective and to proactively search out those little reasons why life really isn't so bad right here and right now.  I don't know how long I'll be living in France or what opportunities I may find to leave or stay.  The future doesn't really matter in the present, and neither will have the best chance of being rich and bountiful if all I focus on is disgruntled whining.  Life is what you make of it, and today I made a happy memory.

A love/hate relationship with technology

Lately I've been pondering the question of the need (or not), for friendships and relationships.  Living in a foreign country can sometimes feel like an incredibly isolating lifestyle, but for an introvert like me, it gives me a terrible excuse not to have to talk to people.  I know.  How do I learn a foreign language if I don't talk to anyone?  It's a tricky line I'm balancing; if having a long conversation in English is mentally tiring for me, you can imagine how I feel about the prospect of conversing in French.  It's like the mental Olympics, and there's no medal in sight.

I pinpointed my little internal itch on this joint subject by two separate, totally innocuous-seeming experiences.  Firstly, I've been podcasting obsessively for the last few weeks.  I'm a Radiolab junkie in particular, but after exhausting the episodes and "shorts," I began lurking the web for other nerdy-type voices to put in my ears while I commute to various places.  I stumbled on Note to Self, which is a techy podcast that focuses on how humans live and interact with all the technology that has besieged our daily lives.  I find the host to be hilarious, and I want to get a beer with her someday, but the content is also so interesting.  For example, the host loves going on about FOMO (fear of missing out), and how that concept has pervaded our digital presence and usage.  For most, it seems that we must all stay connected at all times to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email, and whatever other apps kids are using these days that I'm blissfully ignorant of.  And there's the ever-present question of how to put down our techy gadgets and just be with other humans in reality.  They look into why we hate voicemail, why having a conversation over text is so much more preferred than face-to-face, how the glowing screens of our devices literally keep us up at night, etc, you get the picture.  As I listen to more of these podcasts, I find myself cringing in recognition of many of these anti-social behaviors.  I hate voicemail.  I hate the stupid icon at the top of my phone that won't go away unless I listen to the damn thing.  I HATE talking on the phone.  I will go so far out of my way just to have a face-to-face conversation if texting or email isn't an option.  Ben will tell you that I live on my iPad, phone, and computer.  I'm thinking of switching gyms because the cell service at my current gym is less than desirable, and the only way I can stand the bike or elliptical for 30 minutes at a time is with Netflix or a good podcast.  I even use YouTube to practice yoga (god forbid I shell out money and go to a class and be around other people).

I could ramble on forever about how much I like to be left to my own devices (pun intended), but I'll make my point.  What are the value of friendships and relationships in a physical capacity?  How do we conduct polite, genuine interactions with people, and then transfer those interactions to a digital platform?  After a year of physical and linguistic isolation, I've sensed that my already weak interacting capabilities are really suffering.  I used to love to raise my hand in class when I was the know-it-all in middle school.  Somewhere along the way, I stopped doing that, even though for the most part, I still got all the right answers.  I'm terrified to speak up in class.  That started in high school after I was bullied, and then got worse in college when I completely lost any sense of my own identity.  At age 26, I have a much better grasp on who I am, and no one is bullying me anymore.  But I still don't want to talk in class because a.) it might make me look like a know-it-all, and no one wants to talk to that kid, or b.) I might say the wrong thing, and no one wants to talk to the stupid kid in class either.  Catch 22 of introverts in class.  I'm so used to staying mute and relying on my technology to keep me company, that raising my hand in class produces an effect similar to singing onstage for most people.  It's paralyzing, and it's not ok.

Here's the thing.  I'm not looking to make bffs in my classes now.  I'm probably not going to be in Lyon or even France for that long a duration. Most of the students I meet are either also foreigners, or in life transitions themselves, thus probably not hanging around for too long in one place.  I just want to be able to strike up conversations in any language just for the sake of having a little human interaction and acquiring a friendly acquaintance.  The key is that I'm not looking for names to add to my Facebook or phone contacts.  I want friends that don't need anything from me, and I don't need anything from them outside the few hours a week I see them in class.  It would be awesome to meet a soul-mate type friend, but I fear I don't click with people very often, so I don't want to heighten my expectations too far and get disappointed regularly.  So now I'm doing something that scares me: I'm talking in class!  I'm saying hi to people and asking questions before class starts.  I'm trying to be social, locking myself out of my comfort zone for at least a few minutes.  After a few attempts at this, I realize that talking to people isn't so scary after all.  Most people are pretty nice, and it's awesome to be in a French class at one of the most prestigious universities in France with a lot of the smartest foreigners in France.  I guess I don't need to rely on my phone so often.

Part two of my relation/friend/human-ship ponderings was prompted by an episode of The Office.  I stopped watching The Office after Steve Carrell left because I thought it would suck and didn't want to waste the time.  I decided to give it another shot, and I'll give the post-Michael Scott seasons a solid B+.  In any case, today I watched a Jim and Pam moment in season 9 that seriously knocked the breath out of me.  If you were living under the same rock I inhabited, don't read further for spoilers, but it's not really all that spoiling.  Jim is working in Philadelphia on his start-up company, and Pam is stuck (by choice) in Scranton with the kids and her dead-end job.  They have a fight over the phone in this scene (it's easier to just watch than to have me describe the whole thing).  After watching this, I felt like all the uncomfortable, awful, desperately heart-breaking moments of my life in long-distance relationships had been laid bare before me.  I know this type of fight intimately, and I couldn't believe how well they captured it in TV's most revered couple.

If anyone doesn't know me that well, then I'll just say that the last 7 of that last 9 or so years of my life have been spent in long-distance relationships.  I promise I don't choose this kind of thing for myself, but the heart wants what (whom) the heart wants.  Long-distance relationships aren't for everyone, that's pretty obvious, but when you find yourself in one, agree to try it, or want it badly enough because you're so head-over-heels for that person, here are my veteran words to bear in mind.  I won't call this advice or even a caveat, just my words from experience.  Being far away from the person you love creates a deep hole in your heart that fills with all sorts of wistful, pining, resentful, proud, resilient, angry, despondent, and yes, loving feelings that simmer and crack apart daily, sometimes hourly.  Long distance creates a never-ending game of phone tag and paranoia, questioning of trust and loyalty (that may be totally undeserved), and at least for me, an interminable sense of instability.  Looking back, I don't think this has anything to do with the other person or even me, but is simply a by-product of the distance itself.  It often begged the question: do I want to be in this kind of relationship?  Which for me immediately elicited the guilty response of, "yes, of course I do!".  But it's truly a lifestyle choice that relies on (aha!) technology.

My Jim/Pam example perfectly illustrates the frustration of conducting a relationship via technology.  You have a limited moment to air your grief and your daily hardship, and you're just not getting the reception you need and want on the other end.  Resentment has built up, passive-agressive tones are taken, and you wish you could take back every decisively hurtful sentence you just said because you know that this fight will be remembered over every other good conversation you've had.  Maintaining long distance is exhausting enough, but fighting with the person you rely on for emotional support is such stupid self-sabotage.  Resentment and regret are repeated ad nauseam until someone either has to go or can't handle it in the moment anymore and hangs up.  If you fight in person, you can run after your SO if they storm out, or if they need their space, you at least know that they're in the other room or will come home at the end of the day.  Couples fight, it's part of relationships, and there are healthy ways to deal with the aftermath.  Trans-Atlantic festering (or even trans-Pennsylvania festering) only deepens that hole in your heart.  In the scene I linked, when Jim has to hang up, the mechanical goodbyes between them tug at the painful memories I've pushed to a locked closet in my heart.  The link cuts out much of Pam's reaction, but I felt such an emotional kinship with her at that moment (serious kudos to Jenna Fischer for the acting).  You just stare at your phone, or the ended gchat video, face hot and reluctant angry tears brimming, half hoping you'll receive an apologetic call, or at least the chance to call back and apologize without sounding insincere.  You want to throw that phone against a wall, push the computer out a window, rail against the injustice of the distance that you, yourself put between you and your love.  But this technology is still a lifeline, and as much as it has the capacity to hinder a relationship, it can also feel like the only thing holding it together.

Tech isn't going anywhere.  It's a part of the fabric of our society at this point, and we're all still learning to harness it for its best features.  What is the importance of it, truly, in our meaningful relationships?  Does someone not count as a friend if they aren't added to Facebook/phone contacts/Instagram/etc.?  Does everything have to be "Facebook official"?  Is a long-distance relationship really a relationship if you only see each other in the flesh two or three times a year, and the rest of the time, you're glued to your phone in the hopes of text or email?  I'd love to hear other takes on these questions, though for myself in this moment, I'm leaning towards the side of more hindrance than help when it comes to technology.  Happy friending, everyone.

From years of too-short gchat sessions to nights at the bar with our new stuffed friend.

Space.

I need some space.  

In our culture, this phrase isn't usually followed by a pleasant conversation.  In this capacity though, I'm saying these words to myself.  I couldn't tell you how much or what kind of space I need, just that I need it.  Because quite frankly, I feel lost.

During the holidays, Ben and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend two weeks in the US with our families.  I got to snuggle with my baby niece and see nearly my whole family, and then we spent a few days cocooned in a lodge with much of Ben's family.  The bizarre complex of consumerism that is suburban New Jersey flattened my soul a little, but spending time with so many dear people inflated me to the skies.  The older I get, the more important family seems to me.  Spending time with the people I love and admire is that much sweeter when I see them all so rarely.  

Between Christmas and New Year, while wrapped in a blanket and ensconced in a rocking chair in front of a merrily crackling fireplace in Ben's parents' living room, I had an epiphany.  That, the coziest moment of my life, felt so perfect for one reason I'd never really considered before.  As I looked around me to try to lock into the perfection, my gaze turned to the ceiling.  Only a few feet above my head, providing me with a warm, Emily-sized shelter, was a regulation-height ceiling.  In contrast to our 1,000 foot ceilings in our apartment in France, the Holt House ceilings were at just the perfect height to give me a womb-like comfort I do not experience chez nous en France.  Everyone is always saying how amazing high ceilings are, but after my epiphany, I disagree.  There is just too much space above me.  I can't find my bearings here, and I can't get cozy.  Getting cozy is probably the number one goal of my every waking moment, so this is some tough luck.

This epiphany is most likely more than just a literal, physical thing.  I can't find my bearings in life either.  A few weeks ago, someone mentioned the phrase, "imposter syndrome" to me.  Essentially, this is the feeling you get when you don't feel like you've earned your position in whatever it is you're doing, and that you feel like everyone around you agrees that you just shouldn't be there.  Basically, you feel like a fraud.  Sadly, this speaks to me at a very deep level.  I realized a few years ago that I have a debilitating inferiority complex.  There are so many things I simply don't attempt because I'm more terrified of failure than I am of trying, working hard, and maybe succeeding.  Sure I can work hard at something, but only if I'm developing one of my inherent talents.  Moving to France, learning French, and starting a grad program have been a pretty huge slap in the face to my inferiority complex, but I continue to struggle daily with that imposter syndrome.  

I need to find myself a cozy little, low-ceilinged nook for my life.  Where is my space?  Do I find an extant space and fit myself into it?  Or do I create my own and tailor it exactly how I like?  But how exactly do I like it?  One of the most frustrating things about getting older is the growing mountain of un-answered questions.  Am I the only 26-year-old who feels this way?  Why can't I get my shit together?!  Seriously though, where is my shit?  I cannot find it, and I don't even know what it looks like.  A lot of the time, I feel like I'm playing house.  Like we all used to as kids, and I'm the mommy, and Ben's the daddy, and here's our pretend house and our pretend kids and our pretend careers.  We're just playacting at life.  I hate to feel like I'm constantly complaining about my lack of focus, but it really darkens the shadows on that whole existential crisis thing these wonderful French people invented.

For some reason, I've really latched on to this metaphor I've made for myself with the ceiling heights.  While we were still at Ben's parents' normal-ceiling-height-cozy-fireplace house, I was freakishly productive writing a paper for school.  I was able to concentrate, my ideas assembled, and I wrote that paper with a purpose I'd been lacking all semester.  Was it truly that the physical space was more amenable to an intellectual pursuit?  Was I literally just getting more vitamin D from the sunlight that streamed through the west-facing windows?  I want to recreate that atmosphere for myself here in France, but I'm so stumped by the voluminous pitch of our apartment.  My obsession with home décor makes all that much more sense now... clearly a subconscious effort to tailor this extant space, to give myself some anchoring in the seemingly interminable sea of adulthood.  

My physical, spatial confusion extends inward to that place in my soul that seeks purpose.  After the number one priority of seeking a cozy existence, my secondary goal is to help people.  I don't know how, but I want my eventual career to be in service to the greater good of humanity.  This is also difficult because I'm terribly unsocial and awkward.  I'm the introvert's introvert, and as such, too much interaction really wears on me.  So how can I find a space helping people while also preserving my persona (and inner sanity)?  For this conundrum, I sense that the answer would nullify my fraudulent sense of self.  But right now, my ceilings are just too high, and I'm drifting in a blurry openness with no semblance of resolution...

Stupid high ceilings.  But cute boyfriend.

Momma = inspiration + purpose + love

Give me a space with these two, and I'll be set.

Incomprehensible

A post has been percolating in my over-taxed brain on the theme of comprehension for a few weeks now, and I almost set out to write it last night.  I'm glad I didn't.  Much more important things need to be discussed on that very same topic.

To me, in my quotidien life, comprehension has a very basic, uncomplicated meaning.  Essentially, do I comprehend the French language?  This has been my intellectual priority for the past year, and it's especially crucial now that I attend classes, read scholarly works, and write papers all in French.  My measure as a contributing member of society is conducted in French.  Rather than a constant ascent on a scale of completely lost to easily fluent, my experience of learning and living in a foreign language has been a range of valleys and climbs, dips and flights.  I've found that one of my great inner motivations is that I'm never satisfied with my level.  After every encounter, I think of ways I could have improved, areas in which I could have employed a better tense or structure to add clarity.  The music of the French language is enchanting, and I relish the guttural r's and the almost whistled quality of the [ɥ] sound, like in je suis.  All these rules I learned in college phonetics classes I now apply to my everyday communication.  

All of this seems somehow so far away in the face of last night's attacks in Paris. As with any violent attack in the West, my mind struggled to synthesize the place with the act. Paris is so close. France is my adopted country. The French are my neighbors, classmates, friends. With so much gun violence in the US lately, I've been happy to be residing in a country where the average citizen doesn't keep a gun "just for safety." The Charlie Hebdo attacks in January shattered the illusion that France is a peaceful paradise, and since then I've been coming to some alarming conclusions. Usually this blog is about my own personal experience living as an expatriate, and as such, is usually benign in content. I don't wish to be inflammatory, but I feel that my antipathy towards the rampant political correctness in the US (and even a little in France) is now urging me to write how I truly feel about certain things.

When people ask me what it's like to live abroad, there are always a few details I leave out.  One of those main details is my growing sense of mistrust of foreigners.  I feel very small admitting this, but we don't live in the cocoon of America where the immigrants are generally peaceful and hardworking.  I overgeneralize mostly out of ignorance as my American experience comes from a privileged East Coast upbringing.  In any case, because we live in the third largest city in France, we see many people of Middle Eastern and African descent who have not been Westernized.  This, in and of itself, is fine.  I'm not one to question the personal choices of those who may dress a little differently than me or speak a different language, but otherwise are peaceful, law-abiding humans.  However, as a foreigner myself, I also feel a bit defensive admitting my feelings.  The political right is not friendly to immigrants because of the violence they sometimes bring into French society.  This could directly affect me.  I asked the French government to allow me to live and study in France, and they have put their trust in me, as a foreigner, to respect the laws and culture of France.  I realize that as an American, it's much easier for me to be granted a visa (which, thankfully, I was), and this distinction would classify me as an expatriate rather than an immigrant.  A foreigner, however, I remain.

France has been the target of violence for a reason.  Another detail I often leave out of my personal recount of living abroad is my deep approval for la laïcité, which is the legal separation of church and state.  From this stems the ban of religious iconography in public spaces (like schools, courts, etc.), sometimes known as the "burka ban."  In the US, religion is a protected banner of personal definition, especially in the political media farce.  This absolutely confounds me.  The development of democratic society in both the US and France are closely linked, and neither is founded upon religion.  As an atheist, this fact gives me great comfort.  If I were to be judged in a court of law in either country, it would not be some popular fictional work that would determine my fate, but a carefully cultivated set of laws that I've agreed to follow as an American citizen and French visa-holder.  I have not agreed to abide by the laws of any religion, and that is my crucial right.  This fact is the dividing point on which much of the recent violence is based.

I often read flaming missives on the subject of Islamaphobia being racist.  This is simply illogical.  Islam is not a race, it is a religion.  In a civilized society, all religions, political views, philosophies, works of literature, art, music should be subject to criticism at any time.  This is also a protected right under both American and French law.  If you can choose to be something, I can choose to criticize it.  What I cannot criticize is the color of your skin or your gender.  Unfortunately, different races and genders are already at a great boiling point of division in our global society.  Why do we insist on adding labels that continue to deepen that divide?  Why do we so actively seek to bolster our own incomprehension of our fellow humans?  This is why I think la laïcité is so incredibly important.  In a public school, for example, those chosen labels are stripped away, and nothing is left to divide other than those attributes we can't change.  It's easy for me to comprehend that someone has a different skin color than I, and I see the value of that human being as being no more, no less than my own.  It's not easy for me to comprehend why a person would choose to adhere to any religion that has a history or contemporary practice of violence, intolerance, and oppression.

I don't feel small admitting my incomprehension of religion.  I think organized religion is dangerous, exploitative, immoral, and overall harmful to progressing in a civilized society.  What I don't like to admit is that every time I see someone in typical Middle Eastern attire, or hear Arabic being spoken, I feel a moment of fear.  Intellectually, I understand that a terrible, violent sect of a religion does not represent all adherents.  I know people of all religions who are good, peaceful, and fully respectful of others.  But I also know that many religious texts espouse violence, and that's where my comprehension halts.  When I see a woman in some variation of hijab, I fail to comprehend how she can celebrate a religion that oppresses her very rights as a human.  I felt the very same discomfort when I came to my own conclusions of atheism after being raised Catholic.  How could I respect myself as a woman if I practiced this religion that sought dogmatic clemency from the perceived feminine sin of my very conception?  I would also note that the 9/11 attacks occurred when I was at the incredibly impressionable age of 11, and it was that event that sealed my then rudimentary and simplistic decision that there is no higher being.

Until I lived in France, I would have immediately come to the conclusion that the striking apparel choices of someone are none of my business.  With the recent violence in France, however, I find it increasingly difficult to divorce religious stereotype from my personal views of average people on the street.  If it's politically correct not to criticize religion then I don't care to be PC.  Religion is man-made and thus subject to criticism.  However, I do not have the right to express my criticism violently.  I don't agree with or comprehend certain religious practices, but I most certainly comprehend the intrinsic value of human life.  

Now more than ever, I believe we should take to criticizing violent religious zealots and religion itself.  We should strive to create a society that is open to different interpretations of humanity and culture; a society that celebrates difference as the vehicle to comprehending various experiences of the human condition.  I don't need to believe in the same god - or any god - to appreciate the beauty of falling in love, listening to an exquisite piece of music, sharing a delicious meal with friends, listening to the stories of those from other cultures.  My personal beliefs are not a threat to what anyone else believes so long as we all agree to a degree of criticism and a degree of respect amongst ourselves.  I would almost argue that the French are more religious than Americans (countless Catholic holidays shutter French schools and businesses throughout the year), but discretion is far more important to the French than flaunting their beliefs.  

Every day, I better understand how the French think and conduct themselves.  My comprehension grows as I continue to learn the language and interact with the people.  I've been feeling more and more comfortable with my daily comprehension, but last night's attacks in Paris have reminded me that comprehension is a broad concept and perhaps not totally achievable.  If only we could take away divisive religious labels, maybe our intra-species comprehension would be that much more attainable.  The heartbroken idealist in me wishes for world peace, whatever that may mean, or at the very least never having the fear of being gunned down for what I believe.

The here and now.

Year two in France is well under way.  The novelty is gone, replaced by the chilly quotidien of fall, and France is no longer foreign to me.  We were in the US for a few days for Ben's brother's wedding, and I actually felt more at home when we got back to France.  Long ago when I visited Ben for the first time when he lived near Aix, everything about France looked bizarre, exotic, wrong, weird.  Now the small, turtle-like cars, the road signs that are just slightly off, the sing-song lilt of the language, even the diesel and cigarette stink are comforting to me.  I feel like these are my people now, and they've accepted me.  I go to class and understand all the French, I've started reading books in French for my thesis, I can speak in paragraphs without stopping to give thought to vocabulary and structure.  The intense anxiety from this same time last year has melted almost entirely away.  I don't feel like a visitor anymore.

Now that I'm fully ensconced in life here, there's something I need to address.  I got these questions a lot over the summer and earlier this week when in the US.  Living abroad is not vacation.  When you live abroad, it's just regular life - in a foreign language.  When I lived in DC, London, New York, and Boston, I went around to see the touristy sites pretty much only when people were visiting me... and it's no different here.  And more to the point, I'm a starving grad student, so shopping in chic French stores is a far-off dream, especially when we rarely turn on the heater because we're so worried about the gas bill.  My first instinct is to get really annoyed at this inquiry of shopping since going shopping is like fresh air in my lungs, but I've realized I need to get past it.  In fact, there are a lot of indelicate questions I get asked (and many that other people get asked, and I'm sure I've asked a few myself), so let's settle on this topic for a moment, because my subconscious needs some lecturing.

Recently, I've gotten so caught up in the green jaws of envy and desire that I've completely lost sight of what's right in front of me.  It's the easiest thing in the world to look at what someone else has and covet it for yourself.  How many times do we roll our eyes and mutter, "The grass is greener..." and grudgingly turn back to what we think is our sucky life?  Maybe the lawn over there is manicured and all the same lovely green color, but how do we know it's not fake turf?  What if the people who live in that house with the perfect lawn are miserable?  And money can't buy happiness either, if we want another awful cliché.  How do we be content and thankful for our own lot in life when everyone's faux joie de vivre is forced down our throat at every social media outlet?  Sometimes I want to throw my computer out the window I'm so sick of Facebook and Instagram and all the fake platitudes and over-filtered photos.  I'm just as guilty as the next gal of doing all this, but I'm having one of those days (ahem, weeks... ahem, years) when it's all just too much.

This sounds awfully bitchy, and I promise I don't mean it that way.  There are lots of people I'm genuinely happy for.  But after all the online exultations, being happy for someone in real life, face-to-face feels so much more real to me.  For the moment though, I need to be a little selfish.  I've stopped being happy for myself.  I think this is a problem of the human condition.  We get what we want, we're happy for a split second, but then it's on to wanting, needing the next thing.  For years, I wanted NOT to be in a long-distance relationship; for years, I wanted to be with Ben in the same country (much less the same city or household); for so long I've wanted to be able to speak French, and I yearned to get into grad school and further my education.  Suddenly, I have all of these things, but I'm like a spoiled kid after opening all her Christmas presents: WANT MORE *tantrum*  Honestly, it's exhausting, and it paints a pretty ugly self portrait.  I don't like myself this way.

So maybe life here isn't vacation, but it's not so bad either.  21-year-old me would have swooned at my life right now.  Dealing with these feelings has been especially difficult for me with all the back-and-forth to the US within the past few months, but it's probably because I feel so torn with a foot in each continent.  I would give up almost anything to be able to see my niece every single day.  I dream of being her cool auntie and having a close relationship with her one day, but that feels just so much farther away while I'm living in France.  And I feel like I can't really complain to anyone because the immediate reply is, "But how can you want x, y, z... YOU LIVE IN FRANCE!"  Sure there's good wine and bread here, but my family isn't here, my maternal language isn't here, and that little homesickness eats its way into my daily life with a sharp little edge.  Then it feels bizarre to be homesick for a place that brought me all sorts of topsy-turvy, uncomfortable emotions this summer and last week.  I don't know what I'm supposed to feel no matter where I am.  It's confusing and a little harder to deal with than I anticipated.

I should probably take another step back and realize these are all the good kinds of problems to be having.  Things could always be worse, but I think it's still important to check in with one's mental health.  After all the excitement of this summer and early fall, I feel a little deflated. "What now?" keeps rolling around in the back of my mind.  No more vacation, no more special events planned, so now it's just life.  Some of my daily struggles from living in the US are gone, some have remained (I still can't get up at a reasonable morning hour, and I HATE washing the dishes), and some are new.  There will always be a little something that is annoying or irksome, something that we try to improve about ourselves or our daily lives.  There isn't always something to look forward to in the near future.  Sometimes we just need to find it within ourselves to appreciate the dreams we have achieved rather than side-eyeing the accomplishments of others, or coveting material items we can't afford.  There is joy in the calm of the here and now, and that can't be bought.  But that is something that can be easily achieved.

Fin d'été

It's been a busy summer.  Jetting to and fro, lots of planes, trains, cars, boats, and endless miles on foot.  It was a season I didn't give myself much time to anticipate with my anxious end-of-spring activities.  I don't think I had enough time to prepare myself for the fullness, the headiness of going home one way and coming back home again in the opposite direction.  Two places to call home.  My heart still feels a bit torn.

I meant to write when we got back from the US at the beginning of August.  I'm glad I ended up postponing that post because I was an emotional wreck when we returned to France.  I hadn't seen my parents in nearly a year, and it was my first opportunity to meet my beautiful, perfect little newborn niece.  When we finally got back to our apartment after two weeks in the US, I couldn't even think the word, "Mom" without bawling.  A little distance from that fragile state has been necessary, though perhaps not long enough as there are little droplets again threatening at my eyes...

I wish I had taken the time to prepare myself for this summer.  This was the first time in my life I've been in this situation.  There were times I needed to go on autopilot in order to deal with the burgeoning feeling in my heart, but I had no emotional muscle memory to fall back on.  It was raw and new and sometimes really uncomfortable.  Seeing my parents, brother and sister-in-law, and niece was all too brief.  If I could, I would install myself in the sunny nursery Sal and Courtney built for Penelope.  Either that or back in no-longer-my old room at my parents' house.  These people who are a home in my heart, it hurts to leave them.  I return over and over again to the theme of home in this blog, mostly because mine has been so radically upended within the past year, but writing this out helps me to deal with the inner turmoil generated by sharing my heart over two continents.  It's simply a reality of our interconnected world that we move farther and farther away from those we love.  New opportunities and adventures beckoned, and I blindly, naively answered that call a year ago.  I knew I would deal with some measure of homesickness for family, culture, and language, but I never gave thought to la rentrée américaine.  Ahead of me one year ago was an undefined, terrifying block of months, and I couldn't spare the energy to think about going back to where I came from.

Sweet niece Nuggs 

Summit selfie atop Mt. Mansfield, Stowe, VT

Wildflower heaven on Mt. Mansfield

Besides wrenching my heart in two after leaving my family, I found it very difficult to deal with some well-meaning but rather insensitive questions about my private life in Lyon.  I understand that people are curious or just want to make conversation, but there are certain questions you don't ask an unemployed (broke) girl in her nearly late twenties.  By August 3, I felt wholly overwhelmed, unable to cope, and the seams of my heart were in a tattered shape.  Truly, I hadn't had a moment to stabilize since before my conservatory rejection.  Up and down and up and down with little rest since May.

In any case, I've now had some time to process my feelings from our vacation in the US.  We spent a delightful ten days with Ben's parents in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon.  Though we walked several miles a day, it was a much calmer time than in the US.  I got to entertain in my own home, which I love, but we also had some parental TLC right here in France.  We then spent five days in Italy, where Ben had a conference in Padova.  We made a first stop in Venice, which is insanely overcrowded with tourists at this time of year.  Padova is much smaller and quieter, a charming and ancient university city.  If the botanical garden had been free, I would have spent all our four days parked on a bench amidst the verge.  We returned from Italy today, which was a bit of a relief after five days of feeling terribly embarrassed that we don't speak a word of Italian.  Whenever someone would speak to me in Italian, I would start to answer in French because that's my knee-jerk reaction when someone talks at me in a foreign language.  Despite the language barrier, the food and wine and blueberry liqueur inspired me to try some new things in the kitchen, namely pistachio pesto and creamed eggplant.  Mmmm...

The basilica of Saint Anthony as seen from the botanical gardens
in Padova, Italy

Gondola selfies in Venice.

Petit déjeuner français

Sunrise in Aix 

Venezia

As this summer comes to a close, and as I prepare to begin my first year of grad school, I need to take une petite pause and reflect on the last few weeks and months.  I have a solid year of expatriatism behind me.  I speak French well enough now to be accepted into a master's program at a French university.  I know my way easily around the city of Lyon, I got to know and adore some twin girls through babysitting.  I somehow managed to move in with my previously completely long-distance boyfriend.  We even put together an apartment's worth of Ikea furniture together with minimal swearing.  Not to mention the stress of finding that apartment, moving our entire lot of earthly possessions, and then bagging it all up again to deal with bed bugs.  We've made these walls into a home.  One more home to add to my ever-lengthening list.

The best pizza in the world, in Padova

Botanical garden, Padova

Sometimes I wonder at myself thinking that there is an end date to feeling so torn.  For eight years, since I began college in Boston, I've been torn from some portion of those whom I love.  During all that time, I've subconsciously imagined that that tear would be healed someday in a near or far ambiguous future.  But this isn't the kind of rip that gets repaired.  Once torn open, it can never be stitched back together quite the same.  Instead, different patches are sewn in to cover the rift.  Some seams are delicate and lovingly placed, while some leave a trail of anguish and hurt.  Each patch represents a time, a place, a person, a love, a sadness, an uncertainty, an adventure.  On and on this goes until we recognize the quilt sprouting from that initial tear.  It's at this moment that I've just clearly seen this quilt in my own heart.  Maybe now I'll stop looking for a perfectly repaired rip and start fully appreciating all the beautiful and somber colors I've sewn in without even realizing.

All the pretty flowers in the botanical garden.

At the close of August, with the hot wind blowing in our open windows, I feel like a pungent overripe fruit pulling heavily on its branch; waiting and wanting to be plucked, but also hoping for the strength to hang on for just a few more days.  My heart is brimming with delicious memory and quiet sadness at the end of this season, but it's also safely encased in a protective shell of gratitude and love.