Stuck Between Two Worlds

Going Back:
After a wonderful holiday, it was hard to return to Europe. Especially since I didn't see the sun for the first week after I was back. I knew that it would be 7 months without family or friends from back home, which is something I still find daunting. I fear what everyone else does: missing something. What if I come back home and I'm lost? If I'm behind on my own culture? If everything changes? Even scarier, I fear what will happen when I go back is that I'll be trapped between two cultures. I won't be able to live without maple syrup or French pastries. You can try to recreate the French experience in Canada, but it won't be the same, just as homemade poutine in France isn't the same as the late-night snack back home between friends after a night of drinking. What if I have to choose to live in one place, and I always feel like I'm missing something? Now I've made a life in both places, and I'm straddling both cultures. Will it be difficult to let France go when I go back home? I mean, I can't really see myself staying in this town. Maybe another part (like Nice) would suit me better, I'm not sure. But if I lived here permanently, I would be alone. There wouldn't be a network of other assistants around my age doing the same things and running into the same problems, and I wouldn't have sweet housing like I do now. And besides, will I even return the same person I was when I left? What if everything that I thought I wanted changes?

A baguette sandwich with truffle juice, peach ice tea, and a praline-filled eclair in Rouen

Well, as much anxiety as there is with moving to a foreign country, it makes it easier when you remember that you are living your dream in Europe. I even started tutoring and remembered how much I like tutoring in English. I'm starting up a pen pal exchange between my school here in Yvetot and my old high school French teacher's class back home. I'm going to a birthday party this weekend with people from all sorts of countries. I'm headed to the Netherlands next weekend, and then Spain during the holidays next month. I'm going on a class trip to Ireland in April with some pretty interesting guys and I think we'll have a good time. I get to show my mom, sister and best friend around Europe. I was blown away by my class of guys when they went off-topic to ask me (even making an effort to speak in English) what was in sushi. Later, they asked me if I played Call of Duty ("Coll-uv-Dootie"), and wanted to tell me that one of them made videos about video games online and even had a tax form for the profits he was making (it may not seem big, but it is huge with these kids. The teacher looked at me and said "how did you do it?!" when I told her). Hell, I just bought the cutest mug and spoon rest with French cows on it today for 6 Euros because it's les soldes, where things go on actual sale for a whole month everywhere in the country. I walked past the gardens today at City Hall, and some flowers were coming up, and they had just planted others (bit of a dumb move, since most were dead from the cold weather this week, but still, our ground is frozen solid in Canada and we would never even think of doing that in January). I went to a bakery in Yvetot today to get my favourite pain au chocolat aux amandes (think chocolate-filled croissant with marzipan inside too and icing sugar and almond slices on top).

Yeah, life here is pretty good. Guess I'll just enjoy every second of it and see what comes my way.

Round #2 in France

The Champs-Elysées

 I wish I could say that my laptop is fixed, but it is STILL being repaired by Best Buy, who has now apparently sent it to Sony to fix the damage done when Best Buy sent it from the store to the repair depot. They tried charging me $300 to fix "physical damage that isn't covered under the warranty"! What a pain.

And when it rains, it pours. I was noticing that it took me a billion shots of the Manneken-Pis in Brussels to get one in focus...and it was a stationary subject in daylight on a cloudy day. Lidia and I were also having trouble getting the camera to adjust to the lighting at the Christmas market when we took photos of each other in front of the market. So I asked my camera-genius friend Maegan to clean the lens, since I noticed some dust and hoped like Hell that was the problem. Fortunately, I wasn't crazy, and she also found a problem. Unfortunately, she said it would be costly to fix. I took it to a repair shop, and it cost a lot to fix it (they said there was cake in the lens (that'll teach me for taking pictures of food!), and a problem inside. To open up the camera and fix that would cost $140, but if that wasn't the problem, it would cost $320 to replace half the camera, and I might as well buy a new one. Oh, and he said the damage might be caused by me dropping it. I said I hadn't dropped it and he pointed to the scrape on one of the corners (oops - can't fight that evidence), and I said "oh, well that was over a year ago!" and he said that sometimes it take years for a drop to have an effect. DAMMIT. Luckily, I got the camera back on the day I was leaving for France, thinking it was all better. But it wasn't.



Tartiflette Stand at the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysées

So when I went to make a calendar from my photos this year like I did last year, I realized how I didn't have 12 photos that I loved and needed to look at for a month each. And I did try my camera again in Rouen last weekend, but it was going about it all wrong. Long story short, I am trying to get my Mom to buy a camera I want and ship it to me before I go to the Netherlands next weekend. :s

Without both a proper laptop and a camera, it has been tough for blogging, but here goes!

Let's start with Paris!
I met up with a friend of a friend from Canada and we checked out the Christmas markets on the Champs Élysées and at La Défense (even found a Beavertails stand!). It was sunny, but FREEZING. The tartiflette sure helped. So did going inside a mall to warm up and buy mitts!

Nougat chalet at the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysées

(Unintentionally caught) soldiers with guns at the Christmas market

The Obelisque at the end of the Champs-Elysées

Christmas market at La Défense

Me at the Christmas market at La Défense

Christmas market at La Défense

Eiffel Tower

Next: Strasbourg!


Accidentally stumbled upon the Christmas markets!



Paris was on Wednesday, and I knew I should have used the day to recover from Brussels and catch up on sleep. Basically, I was overdoing it and I was well-aware. But when else would I get the chance to see Paris at Christmas? So I went. But I paid for it. Thursday, I woke up SUPER sick, and it took everything inside me (and an Advil) to go to the Christmas lunch and pretend to be okay for an hour. Then I got a ride with a teacher to Rouen to buy a "solitaire" (an adorable teapot for one) for a Christmas gift, and this was my 3rd time at the store to pick it up (the other times I went, it had closed 4 minutes ago, or was closed on a Monday before Christmas when everything else was open). I went to go and pay for it and realized that I hadn't put my money and everything back in my purse from my trip to Brussels. I was stuck in Rouen without a way to pay for the gift or for the train back to Yvetot. I tried calling Lidia, who didn't answer. Suddenly, it hit me: I could go to the bank and ask if I could take out money without a card ("You don't have a passport for ID?" shocking...a resident who forgot their wallet doesn't have their passport on them at all times). Eventually, it all worked out, and I had just enough money to buy everything I needed to and get home. I just had to wait two hours while freezing cold (train station doesn't bother with heating) and popping Fisherman's Friends and Advils until it was no longer the peak period and the train prices went down.

The cathedral in Strasbourg and the Christmas market in front of it

Christmas market in front of the cathedral

I am so incredibly sick at this point. I put on lip gloss to appear slightly less dead

The Christmas market where the majority of the food vendors were

Flammkueche (don't ask me how to pronounce that) with goat's cheese

At the chocolate museum in Strasbourg

Still incredibly sick in Strasbourg

The streets all decorated

The market chalets

The sun came out for a brief moment! You can see that all of the rain has caused the canal to overflow

Strasbourg

The streets were filled with Christmas decorations



Petit France market in Strasbourg



So Friday morning at 6:00 am, I wake up to catch my train to Strasbourg, and I am beyond sick. I looked up what would happen if I cancelled my ticket, and I would lose part of my money, and I would have to call a number at 34 centimes/minute or go to the station. I figured that if I was walking to the station anyway, I might as well get on that train, and power through it.

I couchsurfed by myself for the first time, and my host was a really nice Swiss German girl (who also spoke French) who wasn't a germophobe like myself, and even had extra packages of Kleenex for me. I stopped at every Christmas market stand selling bredele (spiced bread goodies), and tried it, even though I could barely taste all weekend, and tried the foie gras samples everyday, but found them tasteless or awful (near the end when my nose cleared up slightly). The first evening while I explored the markets, I had to stop at McDonald's for a tea and painkiller since my Advil had run out and I definitely had a temperature. I even had to stop at the tourist office to take a seat for a bit. When the Advil kicked in, I charged forward, had a nice Strasbourgeois dinner with my hostess, and we went to bed early (in separate beds).



Escargot products for sale! :s



Petit France



The next day, we checked out a super lame and hard-to-reach chocolate museum, and I tried to do the river cruise, but it was almost all booked for the day and they told me to come back the next day for tickets. The next day, the water levels had risen with the rain, and all trips were cancelled. So I enjoyed the markets, tried white mulled wine (I thought it was ok, despite my lack of taste), and met two other German girls also lodging with my hostess for the night. On Sunday, I went out with a friend of my hostess, who showed me to a wonderful little place with tartine and tea, and we tried escargot quiche. It was okay until I got a chunk of snail and I quit! Then we checked out Petit France, the foie gras market one last time (I wanted to see if her functional taste buds could tell me which one was best), and then I went running to the train station. Though I was late, I stopped for one last crepe with Nutella, picked up my luggage in the lockers, and hopped on the train.



Trying escargot quiche...



When I got onto my train car, I realized that I had actually bought a first-class ticket. What a pleasant surprise! The seat reclined, and there was a TV screen to tell us how fast we were going (made it up to 330 km/h). Almost the perfect end to the day...Until my train from Paris to Yvetot stopped abruptly as we were leaving the station with the announcement: "We remind everyone that the doors are not to be opened unless we are at a platform. Thank you". Then we journeyed to out first stop (oops, took the 9:00 pm one which is the milk run train), and there was a second announcement: "The train in front of us hit a deer. We'll be staying here for a bit." Finally we got word that they were planning a detour, and I made it home only a half hour later than normal. All in all, it took me about the same amount of time (if not longer) to go from Paris to Yvetot than it did to go from

Strasbourg to Paris. If you look at a map, you realize how crazy that is!

Flying Home:


A fellow Canadian assistant had mentioned that her friend was also flying to Canada on the 20th, so I got in touch with her, and we decided to meet at the train station, have dinner, and then head out to the airport for an almost sleepless night. We were supposed to form a group with Lidia and her friend also doing the same, but Lidia was at a different terminal. Our bus driver to the airport from Paris recommended that we stay in my terminal, so we did, and there were no creepy homeless people, and it was quiet. :) Eventually, we each got an hour and a half of uncomfortable upright sleep, where it was cold enough that I had to put my mitts on. In the early morning, we said our goodbyes as she took the shuttle to her terminal.



Another scene in Petit France



After getting through security and everything, I waited for our flight to board. It seemed that Air Transat was missing an employee. I think that someone was late, but our flight was behind because the door to the luggage or passengers was frozen shut from the flight in from Montreal earlier that morning. At this point, I was beyond dead, and I had no energy budgeted for being squished in the bus with the doors closed whilst looking at the plane with sad eyes and a heavy backpack weighing me down (yes, the airport is archaic and you get on your bus at the boarding gate and it brings you to your plane). It turned out that the flight wasn't as long as the ticket said, so we landed even a few minutes before the time on the ticket anyway.



The towers in Petit France



Finally, I reunited with Mom and Amanda, and all was well and good. It was a beautiful 0 degrees in Ottawa, and there was a storm beginning a few hours later, so my timing was perfect. Thank goodness I'd left a day earlier than originally planned. The next day, we broke a record and received 35 cm of snow in a day. And it went down to -16 to -20-ish for the rest of the time I was there, and the snow didn't stop. At least there was sun, though! I really missed the sun when I was in Yvetot.  The cold front had followed me from Europe, and meanwhile in France, they sprang miraculously from 0 degrees to +12 over the Christmas holidays. My second last day in Canada, it was -20 and with windchill it felt like -30. I went back to 9 degrees in France and I felt so hot in the Paris train station that I couldn't believe it. There is no heating there and the place is practically outdoors. As soon as I got to France, the temperature dropped again, oddly enough. Haha.