Thanksgiving Dinner and Beer Pong

We postponed our Thanksgiving feast a few days so we could celebrate the holiday with friends from Lawrence. We hung out most of the day last Saturday and started cooking late afternoon. We ended up making homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade cornbread, yams, lots of fresh veggies, and then we bought a roasted chicken to substitute for the turkey. The meal was really tasty and pretty picturesque (minus the fact that we used a coffee table and folding chairs). It was a pretty traditional meal, but our post-dinner festivities were unusual for Thanksgiving.

We made plans a few weeks prior to Thanksgiving with Meghan and Charles to play beer pong when they visited. This is a drinking game involving plastic cups full of beer arranged in a triangle like a rack of billard balls. Each team shoots ping pong balls across the table and when they score, their opponent drinks and discards the cup. The first team to hit all their opponents cups wins.

Since we didn't have suitable plastic cups, we used ceramic mugs and glass tumblers. We also don't have a long table; so we layed a door from our bureau on the desk and set up from there. We didn't have a lot of beer and our cups made really difficult targets, so it became a long drawn out battle of the sexes. Meghan and I won two games whether from luck or skill (probably the former), and the round went down as two of the tamest/soberest drinking games ever.

Deciphering the French Language

For Thanksgiving, Ben and I bought a cake mix to bake in our mini toaster-oven. We had all the basisc ingredients, butter, eggs, but the recipe called for something I'd never heard of. My French is pretty solid, but I still struggle with connecting words, because they never translate exactly. The cake required "4 cuilléres de soupe à lait." I happen to get "de" and "à" mixed up, because they both can mean "of," "at," and "with," among other things.

So, I was bewildered looking at the cake box, wondering what "4 spoons of soup milk" (or "milk soup") was. I decided that I should just put in regular milk and deal with the consequences. We only have tiny spoons, so I started to put in 3 for each required spoonful; assuming they meant something like tablespoons... then it hit me. The recipe called for 4 soup spoons of milk. Opps, maybe that should have been obvious?

The Right to Strike

I woke up (reluctantly) at 6:00 this morning and drove the hour to get to my 8:00 class, only to find all of the entrances to the school locked or blocked by students. Turns out the proposed cut to university education is making highschoolers as angry as it is making university students. I guess we offer a higher/career oriented degree at my school (Emile Roux), and if Sarkozy and the government succeed with their plans, schools may cut such programs. If those programs are cut, students may have to travel further and pay more for their degree.

I've been told that the French hold public services (like education) absolutely sacred, so the privitisation, or semi-privitisation, of the school/university system is an outrage. I mentioned to a teacher that a walk-out planned my senior year of highschool was squashed before it took place. We had to find another way to protest the invasion of Iraq -- or else be suspended. To that, the teacher told me that the French insist on the right to strike. She said it was as important to them as the right to bear arms was to Americans.

I don't know how much I personally value, nor do I take advantage of my right to own a gun, but there is no denying that the French often use strikes to demontrate their disagreement. I have seen one television show since I've been here. It was a cartoon I watched while babysitting about a child witch who organized a strike at her elementary school to get better facilities. I guess that shows how important strikes are and how ingrained that is in the French mentality. Right now, students and transportation workers all over the country are making their statement against privitisation, and that means I have a long weekend.

Brush with the Law

The paperwork is so complicated here; I knew that I was going to fuck something up. Well I did, and it didn't turn out too badly, aside from nearly giving me a heart attack.

There is a lot of compulsory red tape that goes along with owning a car here, including immediate updating of the license plates. I didn't read all my paperwork carefully, or I missed something because it was all in French, and put off getting new plates. I also managed to not sign and ship the form that solidified my insurance. So, my temporary insurance expired without my knowing.

Totally ignorant of my errors, we left to go to the bank the other day, when a French police officer tapped on our window. I didn't think we had done anything wrong, so I handed him all my expired papers with a stupid smile. Then he said the phrase I never thought would be spoken to me. "Ma'am, please step out of the vehicle."

After he explained that I would be fined 200 Euros for the license plate and 300 for the insurance, I started to plead ignorance. I convinced him to let us drive that afternoon to sign for the insurance and pick up new plates. While he remained firm, he told me I would be off the hook if I did what I was supposed to and then parked the car at the police station before eight. So I did, and everything is OK. God knows I couldn't have afforded to those fines!

American Idiot

My most recent lesson plan has involved Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkle, which doesn't resonate with all my students here. There are definatly some that know about American folk music, but most of them tell me it just sounds old. So, when I had a few extra minutes, I gave in to the requests and played Green Day. The first album/song I found was "American Idiot" which I thought was funny. Most of the students missed the irony, but seemed to appreciate the music anyway. The kids from that class told the other students, and today I had some kids who missed yesterday ask to make up the class and sit in today. I guess I'm doing something right.

The Mother Land

Ben and I spent a fair amout of time outside on our trip to Germany. We drove through and climbed some of the Alps, saw rain and snow in the Black Forest, camped in a gorgeous river valley, and hiked everywhere we could. Some of my favorite hikes were around old castle ruins, but we also walked around in the urban centers of Heidleburg, Mannheim, Rothenburg, Munich, and several small towns.

I'm learning the difference between baroque, rococo, renaissance, and modern castles, as well as details about Roman and Gothic archetecture thanks to my boyfriend's Art History minor. Some of the buildings we saw were recently re-done and had changed a lot since World War II bombings. It was also really interesting to visit Dachau, the first concentration camp. It was eerie to walk around the grounds, and the exhibit was expectedly sad and disturbing.

I was curious to visit the camp, and I think it would have been wrong to skip it, but it provided a huge contrast to the rest of our trip. We ended up seeing lots of typically German things (beer halls, the Alps, Christmas shops, and castles) throughout the southern regions, and marks from WWII are still everywhere.

All in all, Germany is a pretty incredible country, especially Bavaria. I think I appreciate beer more, now that I've been to the Hofbrauhaus. We also bought some good wine and saw the acres of vineyards. The general attitude of most of the places we visited was home-y and more at ease than much of France.

Both Ben and I have a lot of German blood in our families, so we had a running joke about being back in the homeland. (I think I threw one of our hosts through a loop with the French liscence plate, American passport, and my German name.) We also seemed to fit in better physically than we do in France, and much better than we did in Spain and Egypt. Fashion didn't seem to be such a high priority, and there were lots more blond heads and blue eyes. As long as I didn't open my mouth (my German accent is terrible), I fit right in.

Creepiest Halloween Ever

In stark contrast to four years of Halloween in Madison, WI, Ben and I spent the holiday in a place with a spookier history. We drove all day through Germany's "Castle Road" and hiked around old castle ruins. We made camp after sunset at a campground located about 50 yards from a 1100 year old church, complete with a graveyard. We spent the evening walking around downtown Rothenburg, a fortified city that we learned later has a long history of public executions in it's main square. To top off the night, the drive back to the tent was horribly foggy; I couldn't see 15 feet in front of the car. We tucked ourselves in for a freezing (literally) night, and hoped that the spirits wouldn't disturb us.