On November 12, I celebrated 6 months of living in France! R and I took a ride to nearby Nantua where there is a lake with a little beach. In the summer, we came here a few times to sunbathe by the lake which is surrounded by mountains. On that fall day, it was unusually warm, so we took a long walk, appreciated the warm weather but wondered if the nice weather wasn't a sign of global warming, and ate kebabs while watching the sun set.
I've learned so much since arriving and altogether, it's been an eye-opening experience. But as Thanksgiving and Christmas draws near, I'm getting more homesick. Thank goodness I have a trip planned for Boston in less than a month!
Until then, I'm going to be a busy girl. Last night, R and I went to another Glocals event hosted by a Dutch guy...his event? Dutch spekpannekoekenavondsmulfeestje which means Dutch bacon pancake savoring party! Say that fast 3 times :)
It was a fun time; the only requirement was to finish at least 1 giant pancake. R and I brought 2 bottles of cider (2.5% alcohol) while others brought Dutch beer, Belgian beer, and more cider. I managed 2 ginormous pancakes while R had 3 and a half. So yummy and filling - not a diet food, but if you could have smelled the bacon and the apple. And to top off the pancake? Dutch stroop, or syrup. There was also confiture, sugar, Emmentaler (Swiss cheese). But the best part was the company...a group of 6 fun Dutch plus 1 Colombian woman and me. It was a good time and I hope to see this group again soon!
Today I'm going to another mushroom outing with the mushroom club while R gets new tires for the car. Sunday we're going to Geneva's Escalade parade which celebrates the defeat of troops sent by the Duke of Savoy by the Genovoise. And Monday or Tuesday, we are going to the NL via Luxembourg and Belgium to visit R's family and ailing aunt.
Showing posts with label homesick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homesick. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A new friend and on being famous!
A few weeks ago, when I first moved here, I met a Japanese woman who lives in the same village, about ten minutes away. We've been exchanging emails and yesterday we met for the first time. As she's Japanese, I brought some homemade gyozas to share with her and her two young sons. Having moved to France 7 years ago to start a new life with her French husband, she had gone through the same adjustment period as I was going through now. She offered her perspective on expat life, acclimating to a new country, language, and customs. She said it took a while to fully adjust and there were definitely moving pains but eventually you grow less homesick and more in love with your new country. I had a great time at her house and hope to see her and the boys again soon.
On another note France's nationwide celebration to music, La Fête de la Musique, starts this weekend and lasts until the first week of August. To learn more about the Fete's activities in our town, R and I walked down to the local Tourism office. I wanted stationary and R wanted today's paper, so we stopped at La Presse, a bookstore. I didn't find any stationary, but R bought a great comic book about our town and found a picture of me in the regional paper! There I am, posing with the members of the shooting club from last Sunday—the caption under the picture reads: Members of the local shooting club. Not even close to being true, but I'm famous now.
R and I are snacking on some sausages we bought at Les Halles in Dijon—and then we'll do some shopping at the local Home Depot (the house is a work-in-progress). Following that, we'll attend a local fete tonight in town. And tomorrow, we'll head to la fête in Geneva after my driving lesson. Lots of activities for the kids—wish my nephews were here right now. I miss the little guys like crazy.
On another note France's nationwide celebration to music, La Fête de la Musique, starts this weekend and lasts until the first week of August. To learn more about the Fete's activities in our town, R and I walked down to the local Tourism office. I wanted stationary and R wanted today's paper, so we stopped at La Presse, a bookstore. I didn't find any stationary, but R bought a great comic book about our town and found a picture of me in the regional paper! There I am, posing with the members of the shooting club from last Sunday—the caption under the picture reads: Members of the local shooting club. Not even close to being true, but I'm famous now.
R and I are snacking on some sausages we bought at Les Halles in Dijon—and then we'll do some shopping at the local Home Depot (the house is a work-in-progress). Following that, we'll attend a local fete tonight in town. And tomorrow, we'll head to la fête in Geneva after my driving lesson. Lots of activities for the kids—wish my nephews were here right now. I miss the little guys like crazy.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The quest for vinegar, baking powder, and baking soda
Yesterday was my sister's birthday—happy birthday sis! It's the first of many birthdays I won't be there in person to celebrate. Missing my family and feeling a bit homesick this week. So I kept busy in my own way when in a foreign country. Though France is actually not that foreign. Within a 10 minute drive, I can shop at five major supermarkets: Carrefour, Intermarche, ED, LIDL, and Leader Price. If I'm willing to drive 20 minutes further, I can find many more shops. A few of these big chains try to be a one stop shop. Not only do they sell fresh and frozen foods, there's a fromagerie, boucherie, boulangerie inside the store. They further try to cater to the average shopper's every day needs for clothing, electronics, sports gear (even bait), dishes, pots and pans, yarn and thread. The one stop kind of shop may be good for these chains and customers but they are not great for the small independent stores.
With all these shops around, I'm surprised how difficult it has been to find what I think are common ingredients.
Plain white vinegar. There's a whole shelf devoted to vinegar: vinaigre du vin, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, flavored vinegars with herbs de provence, shallots. But no basic white vinegar. I scoured the oil and vinegar shelves at three different grocery stores before I found it at my local Carrefour. It's called Vinaigre Cristal avec alcohol. At .35€ it seemed very cheap, but I'm hoping it turns out to be what I'm looking for. I'm making Vietnamese green mango salad today and I need the vinegar to make nuoc mam which is the fish sauce that I'll be marinating the mango in.
Baking powder and baking soda. At most supermarkets in the U.S., there's an aisle which holds all your baking needs from baking powder, baking soda, baking chocolates, chocolate chips, Dutch processed cocoa powder to dry yeast, flour, sugar, powdered sugar, and spices. At Carrefour, most of the same items can be found (I learned that through many visits and asking people) but they're spread across different aisles. The sugar is in the sugar aisle while chocolate is in the chocolate aisle. Flour and yeast are in a third aisle. I can't yet find powdered sugar or chocolate chips. And baking powder and baking soda? I've been looking for the little cans of baking powder the past week or so to no avail. Due to my lack of French, I still haven't asked the employees at the supermarket. But thanks to this blog of a fellow American baker who is now living in France, I realized I had seen baking powder in a different form at the supermarkets. Instead of a little metal can, baking powder or levure chimique/levure anglaise are in individual packets. So excited! In her blog, I also found out the French keep the baking soda in the spices aisle. So now I'm fairly confident that I can find almost everything I need. I just have to figure out what it's called, what the packaging looks like, and which aisle to find it in.
Fresh herbs used in Asian cooking such as mint, Thai basil, cilantro (which is called coriander here and in the U.K.). I've planted coriander seeds, which is a perennial so I hope to have coriander for a long time coming.
An Asian market nearby. I do that thing now where I make contact with Asians to say hello (thee are so few of us here) or to ask them about the nearest Asian market. I stopped an Asian man the other day at Migros and asked him if he knew of any good Asian markets nearby. He was only visiting so his Swiss friend told me she had heard rumors that there is one in Ferney-Voltaire, France. I'll try to find that one next though it is as far away as Geneva but maybe it has a bigger selection of food. My wish list, to start—Kasugai gummies, vermicelli, large bottles of soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice paper, packages of Mama noodles, packages of chewy squid, roast pork buns, sushi rice, sushi ingredients.
Yesterday R and I spent the greater part of the day searching for French language options for me. We visited and spoke to people at 5 different locations: l'hotel de ville, la Maison Savoie, a social services center, le lycee (high school) which has an adult education center (think BCAE, CCAE), and another center for local immigrants. All fingers pointed to GRETA, a continuing education service which used to offer French language classes, but no longer does at this time. Apparently there is another organization in town that offers classes, but the administrator at GRETA had no idea about the new organization. Today R will telephone our department's prefecture to inquire about local French classes.
After our searches turned up empty R thought we could try visiting American Liz and her husband who live in the same village as we do. Even though she's lived in France for over 30 years, she's still known as "the American Liz" just as R is known as "the Dutch R". And what about me? Will I be given the moniker "the Chinese-American K"?
American Liz is at the gym but her French husband is home gardening and is quite helpful. He says he'll put me in touch with locals interested in language exchange, my English conversation for their French. In addition he would ask his wife about the baking powder (this was before R found me the blog above). And lastly, he pointed us to the house where a Japanese woman lives.
We thanked the schoolteacher and made our way down to the house...the same house that we had passed earlier with a cute kid outside on his scooter. We introduced ourselves to the husband and the kid, asked about his wife and where she shopped for Asian foods. He went inside to get her but she was busy bathing their littlest one. The French home is sacred. So unless you are explicitly invited inside, or have a very close relationship (like we do with our neighbors P and D), you don't automatically go inside. We waited outside for a bit and then he came out and offered me a box of arborio rice from Italy. He frequently travels to Italy and picks up arborio rice which is a good substitute for sushi rice. We chatted briefly about life and work until his wife came out with a very adorable 8 month old baby. The couple and their children were incredibly nice. They moved to town about 7 years ago from Annecy where the wife M had learned to speak French. Annecy has a university and many foreign students so there's actually a good language school there. M and her husband C invited us to stop by anytime (as did American Liz's husband) and we plan to!
With all these shops around, I'm surprised how difficult it has been to find what I think are common ingredients.
Plain white vinegar. There's a whole shelf devoted to vinegar: vinaigre du vin, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, flavored vinegars with herbs de provence, shallots. But no basic white vinegar. I scoured the oil and vinegar shelves at three different grocery stores before I found it at my local Carrefour. It's called Vinaigre Cristal avec alcohol. At .35€ it seemed very cheap, but I'm hoping it turns out to be what I'm looking for. I'm making Vietnamese green mango salad today and I need the vinegar to make nuoc mam which is the fish sauce that I'll be marinating the mango in.
Baking powder and baking soda. At most supermarkets in the U.S., there's an aisle which holds all your baking needs from baking powder, baking soda, baking chocolates, chocolate chips, Dutch processed cocoa powder to dry yeast, flour, sugar, powdered sugar, and spices. At Carrefour, most of the same items can be found (I learned that through many visits and asking people) but they're spread across different aisles. The sugar is in the sugar aisle while chocolate is in the chocolate aisle. Flour and yeast are in a third aisle. I can't yet find powdered sugar or chocolate chips. And baking powder and baking soda? I've been looking for the little cans of baking powder the past week or so to no avail. Due to my lack of French, I still haven't asked the employees at the supermarket. But thanks to this blog of a fellow American baker who is now living in France, I realized I had seen baking powder in a different form at the supermarkets. Instead of a little metal can, baking powder or levure chimique/levure anglaise are in individual packets. So excited! In her blog, I also found out the French keep the baking soda in the spices aisle. So now I'm fairly confident that I can find almost everything I need. I just have to figure out what it's called, what the packaging looks like, and which aisle to find it in.
Fresh herbs used in Asian cooking such as mint, Thai basil, cilantro (which is called coriander here and in the U.K.). I've planted coriander seeds, which is a perennial so I hope to have coriander for a long time coming.
An Asian market nearby. I do that thing now where I make contact with Asians to say hello (thee are so few of us here) or to ask them about the nearest Asian market. I stopped an Asian man the other day at Migros and asked him if he knew of any good Asian markets nearby. He was only visiting so his Swiss friend told me she had heard rumors that there is one in Ferney-Voltaire, France. I'll try to find that one next though it is as far away as Geneva but maybe it has a bigger selection of food. My wish list, to start—Kasugai gummies, vermicelli, large bottles of soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice paper, packages of Mama noodles, packages of chewy squid, roast pork buns, sushi rice, sushi ingredients.
Yesterday R and I spent the greater part of the day searching for French language options for me. We visited and spoke to people at 5 different locations: l'hotel de ville, la Maison Savoie, a social services center, le lycee (high school) which has an adult education center (think BCAE, CCAE), and another center for local immigrants. All fingers pointed to GRETA, a continuing education service which used to offer French language classes, but no longer does at this time. Apparently there is another organization in town that offers classes, but the administrator at GRETA had no idea about the new organization. Today R will telephone our department's prefecture to inquire about local French classes.
After our searches turned up empty R thought we could try visiting American Liz and her husband who live in the same village as we do. Even though she's lived in France for over 30 years, she's still known as "the American Liz" just as R is known as "the Dutch R". And what about me? Will I be given the moniker "the Chinese-American K"?
American Liz is at the gym but her French husband is home gardening and is quite helpful. He says he'll put me in touch with locals interested in language exchange, my English conversation for their French. In addition he would ask his wife about the baking powder (this was before R found me the blog above). And lastly, he pointed us to the house where a Japanese woman lives.
We thanked the schoolteacher and made our way down to the house...the same house that we had passed earlier with a cute kid outside on his scooter. We introduced ourselves to the husband and the kid, asked about his wife and where she shopped for Asian foods. He went inside to get her but she was busy bathing their littlest one. The French home is sacred. So unless you are explicitly invited inside, or have a very close relationship (like we do with our neighbors P and D), you don't automatically go inside. We waited outside for a bit and then he came out and offered me a box of arborio rice from Italy. He frequently travels to Italy and picks up arborio rice which is a good substitute for sushi rice. We chatted briefly about life and work until his wife came out with a very adorable 8 month old baby. The couple and their children were incredibly nice. They moved to town about 7 years ago from Annecy where the wife M had learned to speak French. Annecy has a university and many foreign students so there's actually a good language school there. M and her husband C invited us to stop by anytime (as did American Liz's husband) and we plan to!
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