The biggest joy of late is that I have met an English woman up the road, Denise, who has been in France with her English husband and children for the last two years. Even though I have met a few times with the ex-pat group for activities, it is really nice to have someone close by to just have a relaxed, fluid conversation with in English. Sometimes I just get literally burned out with French that I simply cannot bear to hear another word - I have hit this wall of "picking it up as I go along" to needing proper lessons to advance. Right now my French is decent ( e.g. understandable) but grammatically and structurally terrible. I would say French babies have more to offer than my strings of random nouns, pronouns and unconjugated verbs. Every now and then, though, usually while I am watching a show in English with French subtitles, I catch some new and exciting word that I will then use in every conversation for the next several days.
On Tuesday nights we have been going to this informal "exercise" class that is held at the local activity center. I kid you not, it is the most surprising combination of useless and dangerous calisthentics have ever encountered since third grade "indoors because it's raining" gym class. Windmills, bicycles, cherry picking, full sit ups, deep knee bends, you name it. Jack La Lane would be proud. And if you don't do it just right - e.g. accidentally counting out eight beats rather than nine- you are pointed out and corrected. I had to leave early at the last "class" - mind you, by class I mean five minutes of flailing about interspersed with 10 minutes of neighborhood gossip - and as I was leaving they were on their stomachs, backs bent upward, holding their ankles like they were being hog-tied. I said to Denise, "It looks like Guantanamo Bay in here. All they need is me posing next to one of them with a cigarette hanging out my mouth making a 'thumbs up'". It's just hilarious but it's a good way to get to know the women (and day-to-day goings on) in the neighborhood. When I missed a class a couple of weeks ago, the topic of discussion was me and Patrice, our 'spottings' around town and how (apparently) the women think he is the town hottie.
Almost two months into my daily domestic routine (of course coupled with my business life in Portland), I have an honest and newfound respect for how hard my mother worked to keep our house and lives in order. It is REALLY a lot of work, cooking from scratch every day, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc for a household of two to four, depending on the week. Since we have a clothes dryer (something Patrice bought just before I was here in December and something that is not a usual part of a French household), I have been treated to weekly performances of "The Dryer is Shrinking My Clothes - A Pantomime in Two Acts", brought to you by the producers of, "The Camera is Stealing My Soul". Patrice is absolutely convinced that the dryer is shrinking everything, even though on two instances the clothes had been line-dried and he was trying on the socks of his 10-year-old son. The look on his face following *that* information was priceless and these summer stock productions have now thankfully ceased.
I have still not, however, mastered the art of shopping for the proper amounts of bread and cheese and once or twice a week we run out of one or the other. Unlike the typical American diet (at least in my experience) where if you run out of an item, you can just wait and get it the next time you shop, not having these items available at meal time is about one step more serious than if I were to shave the children's heads and send them to school in tutus. It is just "unacceptable" and unfortunately, there are still emergency cheese runs to Patrice's parent's house, which leave me feeling like a quasi-failure as a French wife.
My family is still very open to my American way of cooking which includes a little bit of everything (and I now have Patrice hooked on a Turkish restaurant down the raod), and that is great for now. I am, however, trying to start assimilating some more French dishes into our diet, although so many things seem unappetizing to me. Today the children are on vacation, so Kevin, the oldest, made lunch with some meat his grandmother bought today at the chartucerie. Just a simple steak with some mashed potatoes on top. I took a couple of bites, thinking it a little chewy, veiny and loose in texture and thought it just might not be a good cut of meat. Then, mid-way, Kevin says, Oh, I forgot to tell you, this is horse. Yeah. Needless to say, I did not take one more bite and the meat is now rinsed of it's mashed potatoes and sitting in a baggie in the fridge for Patrice. But, you know, baby steps, Bob, baby steps.
So, finally, the biggest event going on right now (in a not so good way), is that I did not follow the proper visa procedures before I left the States, thinking I could take care of my residency permit once I arrived in France but misunderstanding that I was required to have a long-stay visa BEFORE I can apply for residency and that is something that I can only do at the San Francisco French consulate (the office in Portland handles everything BUT visas). My 90-day visa expires in just over five weeks so I was planning a trip back to Portland to take care of it but now and getting conflicting information as to how quickly our marriage can be validated by the French government (the proof of marriage is required for the green card). That is something that will also be done at the office in San Francisco, but we are hearing anything from a couple of weeks (which would be fine, before my visit) to two to three months! Which means I may be forced to leave France for an extended amount of time while awaiting the preparation of the livret de familie, which is a booklet that all French people have containing the records of births, marriages, divorces and (eventually) the death. As you can imagine, not only is this a large, unexpected cost, it is an amazingly stressful situation because we cannot seem to get a straight, consistent answer out of anyone and there is nothing that can be done here in Paris (or even at the French consulate in London).
We are now watching the Ségolène Royal/Nicolas Sarkozy debates on t.v. - the final election is on Sunday. Things are very Romanian trial-and-execution style here... no lollygagging around. The results of the primary where the two candidates are selected are instantaneous the night of the election and the final election is only two weeks after the primary. Oh, and NO annoying television campaign ads to deal with. Just the occasional Hitler mustache drawn on the face of an equal-wallspace-to-all-candidat
Here is a link to some recent photos - I still can't believe I live in the center of this fairy-tale part of France - these châteaux are literally minutes from our home. It is still amazing to me to drive around a corner and - boom - there is a 500-year-old castle right in front of me.
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