A Stereotypical Post

My impressions of various nationalities that I've encountered while studying abroad here in Toulouse. AKA my most offensive post yet.

The 3 most represented nationalities:

Chinese

There are a surprising number of Chinese students studying here in Toulouse, though it's hard for me to make too many generalizations since they're always together, speaking Chinese (hey, there's 1 down!). To sum up the general impression given off, I'll give you an illustration of the difference between the Chinese and the European (/occidental) students:
All of the "Erasmus" (blanket name for int'l) students have one lecture class together each semester. For the first...few months... of the lecture, you would walk in to the course and see the first 3 rows or so of the Chinese students, all with their electronic translators at hand, and then a few rows back the European students started, all trying to be as far back in the room as possible. If you walked in to said course while it was in progress, you would see the Chinese students silently taking notes, and the Europeans talking amongst themselves, checking out facebook, drinking coffee, and so on.

Italians
My French class here is half Italian, actually, which is pretty fantastic since they all have wonderful, Italian-sounding names (Alessandro, Lorenzo, Roberta, Davide, Giorgia...). The general stereotype for the Italians, which has held true way too often, is that they will be late. To everything. The trend lately has been to give a time half an hour earlier to the Italians so they will be less late (though we've found that 1 hour to 2 hours is a reasonable estimation of when they will arrive, depending on the person and the event).
They also really like their coffee. And think the pizza here is disgusting (though I'll have to agree with them on that one).

Germans
Stuck together like the Italians at the beginning, though most dispersed eventually. They've got a reputation for drinking - which they have done, and quite often with beer, yes - but I was surprised to find them out-drunken (not a word, but I'm too lazy to figure out a more appropriate one) by quite a few other nationalities who were much less represented, yet still made amazing showings in the drinking department.
Such nationalities include the Czechs (seriously, it was like their mothers' milk), and the Polish (who had an affinity for vodka, big surprise there), and even the few Colombians represented. Still, it was when I was with the Germans that it was decided to sit around drinking on the steps of a church in Montpellier, so it's not like they've lost the game here.


Any nationalities you'd like addressed? Do the Spanish really like their siestas? Do the French drink to get drunk? Swedes - blonde? The answer to these questions is yes, actually (though you could have put an effort into making the last one a complete sentence - I mean, come on), but if you have any others, feel free to leave a comment, and I'd be quite happy to respond.

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

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