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.