Wow. What a year. 10 or 12 months living in another language, another way, another world. I’d like to start with the quote of the year, from a French colleague of mine. Martine, a woman, born and raised in France, but with a British mother, said on the topic of religion being personal, (and therefore shouldn’t be discussed in schools, among other places…) “well so is sex; but we talk about that. In sex education they don’t tell you how to be in bed so…” To fully appreciate this quote, you must understand that privacy of religion (namely the wearing of visibly religious symbols, such as the Muslim headscarf) is an enormous social issue in France.
December 31, 2003
Well, here goes! A French New Years…on tonight’s drink menu is wine, champagne, beer, hard liquor…yep, sounds pretty French to me! (I should point out that the beer is Kronenbourg – from Alsace, so really only the hard liquor is out of place, and it is vastly outnumbered by the rest). All this with none other than raclette! For over 30 people! I thought there were a lot at the chalet, but this group will be even bigger…funny how cheese brings people together (oh yeah, and the end of a year).
January 1, 2004
2004. Crazy. New Years was quite a party…it all began around 7:00, when a few of us went to the building behind Cindy’s parents? grandparents? house where they used to raise escargots. No, I’m not kidding. And no, I still don’t understand how you raise snails, nor do I appreciate them. The texture is just so….blech.
Appreciate them? I’m more than a little amused by my “frenchicism” there. “Apprécier” is often used in French to mean “like” (as in to like something), versus “aimer” (to love). How I didn’t notice that slip in when I wrote this in the first place escapes me.
Anyway, the building was perfect; upstairs was a bathroom, and a sort of balcony where one of Cindy’s friends set up a whole DJ system. Downstairs was the main room with space for tables for 30, and complete cooking and cleaning materials (with industrial sized fridges and all). We got things cleaned up and ready, and with the help of the raclette “ovens”, started getting the room nicely heated (although once they were off after dinner, it cooled off again, unfortunately). First was, of course, the apéritif, which lasted at least a couple of hours. There were tonnes of food, and tonnes of left overs, and we finished dinner barely before midnight. Everyone gave everyone “bisous” (the sorta kisses on the cheek thing) as a Happy New Year…way cooler than hoping to find one cute person to steal a kiss from! Cindy’s parents came out from the house to light fire crackers, and some people went outside to join them (it was way too cold for that; I watched from the window…which was conveniently located above a radiator). Within an hour or two was probably when people started disappearing, one or two at a time…but more people were on the way. I had planned to sleep there (or so I thought) but when 7:00a.m. came, Cindy and Jérôme started trying to kick the (many) remaining people out. I decided home was the place to be, especially since I had a falling out with one of my very closest friends here right around the time Cindy and Jé wanted to go home. So it ended badly, but the rest was really really good. It took a couple of days to recover (although I didn’t have the alcohol effects that many had; I had a couple of apéritifs – introduced the good ol’ Bazooka Joe Cocktail to a few people – and that was it. But there was a LOT of alcohol there, and a lot of broken bottles at the end, from people running into the table. I would have preferred a quieter ending; that’s never been my kind of party, but hey, I was surrounding by great people, so I can’t complain. Now to get a ton of work done before classes start back on the 5th.
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