An International Thanksgiving - Sam learns how to make stuffing

You know, when you go abroad you expect to learn certain things, like (the obvious one) language, circumlocution (someone prepared for those SATs), local customs, and other issues related to living in another country. But I never would have guessed that studying abroad would be when I finally taught myself how to cook.
And it's not even that I learned how to cook French food, but that I've finally made the effort to legitimately cook for myself and not just throw something in a microwave or sauté some frozen gyoza in a frying pan. I managed to make some fairly edible grilled cheese, if I do say so myself, though I had to figure out what cheese to use for it since there's no cheddar or american here. By the way: emmenthal worked just fine, in case you were wondering.
And then I held my own Thanksgiving here - and I never thought dinner parties would ever be my thing! I found some recipes for stuffing on the internet and threw together my own version of it with my Czech friend - that's right, I managed to create my own stuffing, and cook enough of it for about 20 people (though only about 15 came, so my tiny fridge is filled with leftovers).
The hardest part of it, though, was shopping for it - I've always thought the most stressful part would be the actual cooking, and I've always enjoyed grocery shopping in the past, but it was such a pain - and so unexpectedly difficult - to figure out how much of each thing to buy, and in what form (what kind of apple, how much bread...), and I think the fact that food is so different here didn't help, since things aren't as familiar.
But everything worked out suprisingly well. I didn't ruin any of the dishes I was involved in, and most people showed up with their own drinks/plates, so there was more than enough food for everyone, and I had my first international Thanksgiving. Who would have ever considered having shrimp/peas as a dish for Thanksgiving? Or a tarte à la praline? (By the way, delicious - I had never had pralines, but I run the danger of developping a taste for them.) I now want to make the German warm wine we had after the meal a new Thanksgiving tradition chez moi in the U.S.

In case you're curious, here's "Stuffing à la Sam and Iva":
* lots of bread - I got 3 half-loaves of this bread with a normal white inside and sourdough-like crust. But I think any French bread will taste good, honestly. I sliced it a bit and warmed it up in the oven before tearing it up to make the stuffing - people recommended it on websites to get it more dry and toasty - but didn't really have enough time to make it work. But I may do it in the future for bread in general, because oven-warmed bread is even more delicious. There was too much bread in relation to the rest of the stuff I had to mix in, so don't trust any of my proportions.
* Chicken broth - the recipe I found said to moisten the bread in water, but I definitely recommend using broth instead, since it adds a lovely, warm flavor to the bread.
* Chopped onions - I only did 2 and a half. I'm not a big onion fan, but it adds flavor.
* Apples - I think I chopped 3/4, a milder kind. I love apples in my stuffing! Next time, I'd add more, just because there was so little compared with the way-too-much bread.
* Celery - though I remembered I had chopped it halfway through, so only some of the stuffing had it.
* Chicken seasoning - I had no idea where to look for it in the grocery store, so I didn't bother, but my Czech friend had some Czech seasoning in her room. It was a little spicy, but great, and since we used the same flavoring for the turkey, they went better together.
Now, I didn't have a full-fledged turkey to cook with - thank God - but breasts, so to cook the stuffing, we made these boxes out of foil. Then we put these larges box-bags (sealed) into the oven to cook for an hour or so. I opened up the boxes for the last 15 minutes-ish to get the stuffing browner. It worked out well, but sometimes the stuffing stuck to the foil and was hard to separate, so if you use foil yourself, you should probably look into avoiding that (with something like PAM or oil?), but it wasn't that bad.

Word of the Day:
la farce
You may recognize the word farce as a satirical, silly piece of theater/literature, but it's also a word for stuffing (in food - not stuffing like when I worked at Build a Bear). Olives with stuff inside are olives farcies

Carte de Séjour Medical Visite

Okay, I just wanted to write this up since the process was so confusing, and sites about it really didn't give me an idea of what it would entail, and I want to complain, too.
Since I'm here for the full school year, and I'm not a citizen of a European-Union country, I had to get a long-term visa in the U.S. before arriving, and a carte de séjour when I got here in France. The following is the story of what I had to do. Note: a great deal of this probably only applies to people studying in Toulouse, or something along those lines, so elsewhere, you might have different requirements/processes...but it's still always annoying.

Visa

Being from Pennsylvania, I had to go all the way to Washington D.C. - in person - to get my visa. It was confusing, and the requirements were weird (like a notarized letter from a parent saying they'd give me a certain amount per month, which seemed like an easier option than proving I had the funds), but they were spelled out on various websites, so when I got there everything went smoothly. I hadn't realized I'd needed to have printed out this one receipt from CampusFrance, and that was annoying, but all I had to do was wander to another office in the consulate and ask them to print it out, so it worked out okay. I had been stressed out, but the guy working at the consulate was really nice, and it was the end of their day, so that could have been why it was relatively empty and low-key. I left with my visa, went sightseeing with my brother to the Independence Mall, and returned home.

Carte de Séjour

Okay, there is just something about the French bureaucracy that bugs me. And that something is their need for excessive documentation. I had to go to an authorized translator to get my birth certificate translated into French (though was it really that hard to read in English? Like they couldn't have gotten the gist of "Mother," "date," "name," and so forth?), and that cost me more than I wanted - something around 25 euros, I think, though I don't remember exactly. Plus, and this may be just a Toulouse thing, we were supposed to come with a stamp valued at 55 euros. I think you can buy it at a tabac, but luckily another guy in the program didn't realize he didn't need a carte de séjour until after he had bought it - again, confusing administration policies are so French - so I just gave him money for his.

I went to the C.R.O.U.S. office and waited around - there was no one at the desk, naturally, so I hung around pretty awkwardly - and then finally gave my copies of everything they could ever want to know about me to the lady, with only one close call. You see, the French govt asked for everything I had already given the French consulate in the U.S. - except in French. I didn't have the notarized document from my Dad in French, because duh, he doesn't speak French, and it felt unnecessary to translate it. Luckily, the other guy working there knew how things worked, and when my lady asked him about it and said I had given it to the Washington consulate, he said that yeah, it was fine. Phew!
They then gave me a provisory carte de séjour, and I waited around until somebody gave me a paper saying they'd contact me about a medical visit at some later time. I asked when, and the guy said that if I didn't get it some time before my card expired, I should call them about it. Of course, my card didn't expire for another 3 months, so he was really not giving me any idea of when to expect it.

Visite Medicale

I get a letter two months later saying I have an appointment with the ANAEM in Toulouse (which is in charge of migration and such) for my required medical visit - for the next Thursday, giving me only a week. Lucky for me I don't have class on Thursday, or too bad, I guess. I was leaving the next day for the weekend, so I didn't pay much attention to the letter other than writing down when the appointment was, and where.
I finally read the letter fully the Tuesday before my visit and realize that it asks me to bring my vaccination record, hospitalization records, chest x-rays, glasses, and, if necessary, a maternity notice (congé - it's pretty French, don't worry about it). Now, why this "if necessary" was placed before the maternity thing and not before the glasses baffled me, and I pretty much spazzed about everything else.
No one had told me before coming to France, "Hey, make sure you bring vaccination and hospital records," and I couldn't get them mailed to me in time, and I don't have a fax machine with me in my French dorm room. So I freaked and sent a frazzled email to my parents asking what I should do. They emailed me a scan of my 11th grade physical I'd had done by my doctor to play tennis - you know, 3 and a half years ago - and it had a short list of vaccinations I'd had done. I've never been hospitalized, but they never asked for any of that anyway. Here's what did happen:
I go in, wait for a while, then am taken to a room where I'm told to take off all of my clothes in the chest area (AKA any shirts and bras) and put on this weird robe. The lady then makes me stand in front of the x-ray machine, though beforehand she checks that I've followed her directions (since I'm a stupid foreigner, after all), and she gives me more directions in rapid-fire French that I actually don't understand, and ends up just moving me bodily to the position she wants while continuing to blabber in French, and I understand that she'll tell me "aspirez" or "breath in" while she takes my x-ray. This doesn't happen until I misunderstand more of her directions, but it ends up okay.
Then I wait, then talk to a nurse who asks me if I smoke, whether I have insurance (sécurité sociale here), and I show her the VITTAVI information I got mailed to me after signing up for it when I registered for the IEP (Sciences-Po) Toulouse earlier in September. Then she looked at my vaccinations, and I found it funny that she knew that DPT was DTP in France, but asked me what "influenza" was (which I knew! I was so proud - "la grippe," by the way). She told me I should get a booster for DPT/DTP, and I told her the record wasn't quite up to date, and she said things I wasn't quite sure I understood about my university's doctor and getting free shots at this place at the Place de la Daurade (but I'm pretty sure I would have been confused in English, too).
Then I was ushered in to see the doctor, who asked if I smoked, took a quick look at my x-ray, said it was fine, and I was handed off to wait in another room. After some waiting, a lady came in, asked us (since there were others in the room) for our temporary cards and the letter they had sent us with a copied picture of the 55 euro stamp, and then gave us our full-fledged, laminated titre de séjour, all set for us (and a paper that says we've had a medical visit - if you reapply for the carte after a year, to renew it, you show them the paper and don't have to do the medical crap again).
WARNING!
The letter with the medical visit letter was confusing - it said to bring it with you to the medical visit, with the stamp "below" - and right there was a photocopy of the 55 euro stamp. Since I had already paid for the goshdarned thing, I figured I was fine with the letter and brought it with me. Another girl in the room had bought another stamp, and stuck it to the image on the letter. The woman working there must get this a lot, and she had the girl write a letter explaining that she had bought an extra stamp by mistake and needed to be reimbursed. Apparently this happens all the time since the letter applies to the whole region, but buying the stamp beforehand is unique to Toulouse, or something along those lines. So if you got your temporary card from Toulouse, your stamp was taken care of, but if you studied outside of Toulouse, you would have needed to get a stamp and attach it.

AGH! I hate bureaucracies, and the French bureaucracy is up there on the list, I think. But I have my titre in my hands, and it's all over since I'm only here for the year and won't have to renew. And that is quite a relief.

Word of the Day:
radiographie
X-ray

How did I become an expert on slang?

The following story really happened.

A bunch of international students are in a train in France discussing relationships. They begin teasing a Polish girl about her on-again, off-again boyfriend and someone calls them "friends with benefits." Being the only American in the bunch, they ask me to explain this phenomenon. I, with my friend who goes to school in Canada, try to explain in my broken French "friends with benefits," trying not to make Americans seem too trashy and finding it impossible. I'm already turning a little red. The Polish girl goes "Oh! F***ing friends!" To which I respond "Quoi?!?!"

I try to tell her, with the help of my pseudo-Canadian friend, that I have never heard that expression before, and that it is not a "thing," though she insists that it is, and each time she says "f***ing friends" on the crowded train I cringe and blush just a little bit more.

"Oui, f***ing friends"
"Non, c'est pas une chose. Ce n'est rien."
"Non, je suis sûre. Je l'ai entendu. F***ing friends."
"Je n'ai jamais entendu ça."
"Non, non..."
And so on, until finally our Colombian friend leans in and in a calm, pedantic voice explains "Elle veut dire 'f*** buddies.'"
Which results in a collective "OoOoOoh!" all around.
And I say "Yeah..ça."

I would never, ever be the go-to person on youth culture in America at home, and it's very strange to be put in a position to inform others on what's "cool" or "normal" in the U.S., a position for which I am not quite sure I am qualified. Let's hope none of the international students I've met here visit the U.S. and try to use the knowledge I've given to them. I can just imagine a Swedish girl in New York asking for a water ice, or a Polish girl introducing her boyfriend to some Americans as her "f*** buddy."

Word of the Day:
dégueulasse
(colloquial, slightly vulgar term that I've been hearing everywhere) repugnant, filthy/disgusting, unjust

Things that are Different in France: Part Pens and Kebab

Things that are different in France (than in the United States)
Part One

Pens

Okay, it's possible that this is European, or one of those "everywhere else" things like the metric system and soccer, but I have seen a heck of a lot of fountain pens here. It's not that everyone has them, but...I can't think of anytime I've seen a normal college student using a fancy-schmancy pen like that in class. That's right, they use them for taking notes; if I had one - which I don't think I would, since it doesn't quite seem practical enough to be worth the effort, though what do I know? - I'd probably take it out for special occasions like my non-existant calligraphy work and never leave home with it. Go figure.

Kebab

I'm pretty sure this is European (not just in France), but there are kebab stands everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of getting a hot meat sandwich for cheap at 2 in the morning, though the quality of kebab varies widely. It's just still weird. When I think about it for a while - which happens more than it should for a relatively sane person - I guess that it takes the place of our open-til-3 pizza joints (though I think they have those here, too). I miss getting some good American pizza, not any of this somewhere-between-an-Italy-and-a-California-style pizza crap. Seriously, goat cheese on pizza is a travesty. But I digress. What I have trouble understanding is how they can have 3 kebab places right next to each other, or across the street. There can be 5 in a 50 meter radius (that was me trying to be more European). How do they all stay in business? How do you decide between them? How are there that many people of Turkish or whatever origin to open up that many kebab places? At least in the U.S., pizza isn't really ethnic anymore, and we have our fair share of Italians anyway. But the whole Turkish kebab thing seems too ethnically specific for me to write it off as the answer to pizza joints.

But hey, I'm just an ignorant American.

Selections from the “Speed Rabbit Pizza” menu

(Actual French pizza chain)
(Note: Only ingredients have been translated. The names of the pizzas/salads have been copied exactly as they appeared in the menu I found in my dorm mailbox. “Speed Rabbit Pizza” is also their exact name; I have not translated it. I have a feeling it’s an intelligent allusion to the famous “Lapin Agile,” but the strange English takes away from that. I mean really, “Speed Rabbit”? Only Japanese cartoons can get away with that kind of mixed-up adjective.)

Crazy Bun’s

Pizza soufflée: tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, ham, egg yolk, mushrooms, chopped bacon

(I like to think that the apostrophe was deliberate – and that “Crazy Bun” was the creator’s prison name. Or maybe he was a member of a gang, but he saw the light and decided to try an honest job, and he opened up his own pizza joint. And this is his signature pizza. But something tells me that there is a porno with this exact title, apostrophe and all)

Kebab Street

Sour cream, mustard, thin strips of veal and poultry, mozzarella-cheddar, onions, minced steak, pepper

(It’s 2 blocks down from Sesame Street – you know, in the Eastern-European ghetto part of town)

Indiana

Tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, curry sauce, slices of chicken, potatoes

(Somehow I’d like to think that Speed Rabbit Pizza made a deliberate, intelligent play on words with “India” and “Indiana” here, but on the other hand, I’ve seen the rest of their menu)

Spicy lovers

Tomato sauce, salsa, mozzarella-cheddar, spicy beef, spicy sausage, round slices of fresh tomatoes

(A pizza for people who like their romantic relationships “piquant”)

Chicken pepper

Tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, slices of chicken, spicy sausage, pepper

(I decided that “chicken pepper” is a new type of pepper found in South America, named for its surprisingly mild taste)

Cooper Mountain

Tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, cheese a raclette (a Swiss style of melted cheese served with boiled potatoes), potatoes, ham

(Where the hell is Cooper Mountain? And why do they eat special Swiss cheese there?)

Montana

Tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, reblochon (a creamy Swiss cheese), potatoes, onions, chopped bacon

(I’m waiting for someone to explain why Montanans like a fancy-schmancy Swiss cheese on their pizzas with potatoes, onions, and bacon. Seriously, why do all of these American pizzas have potatoes on them?)

Farmer

Tomato sauce, mozzarella-cheddar, sour cream, mushrooms, onions, reblochon, chopped bacon

(Not farmer-style, farmer’s, farm pizza…just simply “farmer”)

(Also:)

Salade Cap Code

Lettuce, tomatoes, smoked salmon, black olives

(That is not a typo on my part. Part of me wonders if it was a typo on their part)

Salade Boston

Lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, chopped bacon

(Because I can’t tell you how many salads I’ve had in Boston with bacon and potatoes)

Salade Denver

Lettuce, tomatoes, goat cheese, blue cheese

(If any of you know someone from Denver, could you please ask them if they like goat cheese and/or blue cheese? And in their salads? Thanks)

Word of the Day:

lardons

chopped bacon

Not Quite the Beginning - the story of the 3 little pigs

Here I am, sitting in my first-ever hostel in Nice, France (which is, indeed, very nice), decided where to start. Since I've been traveling for almost a month, it doesn't quite feel like a start at this point - though I suppose it is for you, dear reader (aka some of my friends with time to kill).


Quick background then: My name is Sam, I'm an American university student, and I'll be studying abroad in Toulouse for a school year. I made my way to France August 1st with my family, they ditched me on the 12th, and now I'm making the rounds of France on my own until school starts in September.

Now that's out of the way.


So let me tell you the story of my first night staying in my first hostel, because it's possibly the scariest/funniest thing to happen to me yet.
I was a bit nervous going into this whole hostel thing. Before now, I've been staying in places where I have my own room, and my own bathroom, and even a TV if I'm lucky, though rarely lucky enough for a good English-language station.
Maybe, I thought, they won't fill up the room. Maybe there will be super nice people I can go traveling with. Maybe they'll all be super creepy kleptos who steal my things. The reality is, I fear, well....you'll see.
When I get there, the only person in the room is a nice German girl who speaks perfect English, so I get to choose a nice top bunk right by the window, and I have a nice talk with my new sort-of friend.
Then the Brits arrive. Now, after a few days, I know 2 of their names, though I have no idea which one is which, so let's just name them the 3 little pigs. They are not literally pigs - they are actually just the incarnations of some of my worst hostel nightmares.
They seemed cute at first, but then midnight arrives, and the first bloke, the one with a house of bricks, stumbles in drunk and locks himself in the bathroom. Locks himself as in, he can't get out of the bathroom. This creates quite a ruckus, as you might imagine. Then he drops into bed and is asleep instantly. Not too bad, though the debacle did wake me up, and I was planning on waking early the next morning, so I was a little ticked. But hey, not so bad, I thought. If that's the worst this place is throwing at me I'll be fine.
Wrong.
The pig with a house of sticks comes in. I sleep through this, but then, in my dream, I'm all of a sudden attacked by an angry grizzly bear. I drift back awake to find that the sound was actually from the limey in the next bed over, who was snoring like a chainsaw that drank its weight in whiskey. The sound was insistent, loud, and impossible to sleep through. Oh great, I thought, a snorer. Fantastic. I'll get through this.
Wrong.
In comes the pig with his house of bricks. But he doesn't come back alone. You see, I was back in dreamland again, and in my dream, the world started shaking. But the world was, in fact, actually shaking. I wake up, and the bunk bed is shaking pretty violently. I scramble to find reasons for this sudden earthquake: he's having trouble getting into bed, there's a bug in his pants he's trying to shake out, the poor guy's having a nightmare. Nope.
Ringo was actually, on his first night in a 5-bed hostel room, playing bottom-bunk bingo with some Australian "lass," right on the bed below me. You see, I know this because she was still there the next morning. Pretty much class all the way, don't you think? And seriously, the room wasn't that big - his "mates" were no more than 5 feet away from him the whole time - and he was on a bottom bunk.
I've heard stories of people in dorms at Tufts bringing home a friend while their roommate's trying to sleep in the next bed over, and it always struck me as being only a few feet away from a menage a trois, and pretty stupid. But hey, maybe you didn't have many options, and you've been living with the guy/gal for some time now, I don't know. But this guy's in a tiny little 5 bed room, on the bottom of a bunk bed. And I'm wondering afterward how well he actually knows his travel buddies, and whether the better he knows them, the creepier it is, or the other way around.
The moral of the story is: Yuck.
But the story ends happily enough, since I talked to the three little pigs the next day, and they turned out to be alright guys, and they managed to go out and drink last night without waking me up on their return, so I'll forgive them. Plus I got to travel with other people for the first time in a while, instead of going solo, when I tagged along with them to Eze and Monaco, so it turned out okay in the end.
But seriously. The bottom bunk in a 5-bed room. Class all the way, those Brits.
But now for the good news: This is the view of Nice from my room in the aforementioned hostel.

Word of the Day:
Dormir
To sleep

Rome: Pros and Cons

(Written on the last day of my first trip to Rome, August 21st, 2008)

Con: In mid-August, it is ridiculously hot - sultry even - with little opportunity for shade.
Pro: Water is really accessible, with fountains everywhere, and it's cool and tasty at that.

Con: I felt dirty, pretty much the whole time I was there.
Pro: The dust was mostly from all the really cool old crap.

Con: Speaking of old crap, you could trip over all the ruins all over the place.
Pro: Well, you could trip over the ruins, there are so many, all over the place.

Con: Cobblestone roads. They seem quaint and cool when you first see them, but they can do hell on your feet and luggage, especially when they're sloppy, like in Rome. And car rides are not comfortable.
Pro: The cobblestone fits with the old buildings, fountains, and statues everywhere that really create this antique atmosphere.

Con: Caesar salad. I had some in a restaurant, and it was positively yucky. The dressing was this thick crap, all cheesy or something...yuck.
Pro: Gelatto. Oh-my-God delicious. And I had the best strawberry (fragola) gelatto on the Spanish Steps.

Con: Eating alone: I couldn't share any huge portions.
Pro: Pizza margherita. Mwah! (Said kissing my fingers, Mamma-Mia-Italian-cliche style)

Con: The limited metro and confusing buses.
Pro: The bus I was on was super nice, with a TV and everything. Plus, you can watch Rome fly by.

Con: Not knowing Italian.
Pro: Most people spoke English, and pretty well.

Con: The Vatican Museum is just too much. And you have to walk through the entire thing to get to the Sistine Chapel.
Pro: A combo this time: seeing nuns in all types of nun-garb all over the place....and spiffy Swiss guards!

Con: My feet are killing me.
Pro: The Fanta here is more like Orangina than orange soda.

Con: Seriously, I think my feet are permanently swollen, with blisters in weird places.
Pro: That's not totally Rome's fault, my feet took a beating in France, too.

Con: I've been cut off from news; even when I see it, I don't really understand it.
Pro: I find it funny that the Herald is the international English paper. Like, okay then.

Con: In a weird turn, my shins even feel weak.
Pro: Again Sam, not all Rome's fault, mostly just yours.

Con: Italian waiters are not very attentive.
Pro: They deliver to your table delicious pasta.

Con: The Italian/European keyboard - nothing is where it's supposed to be, and it took me forever to figure out how to get an @ sign.
Pro: I haven't had to use an internet cafe yet.

Con: My feet...
Pro: Oh, shut up about your feet already.


Word of the day:
Uscita
It's on all the exit signs in Rome, but also the term for the boarding gates at the airport.

Ciao Roma!