top 10 things

Hello! I know it's been a while, sorry about that...

So to start off the new year, how about a top 10 list?
Top 10 Things French People Like

1. soft things
I have this idea that French people like to eat soft things. Bloody steak? So that they don't have to chew it as if it were a semelle (shoe sole). Green beans cooked to within an inch of their life? So that you don't have to chew them and thus you can avoid the squeaky crunchy aspect of green beans. Personally I love my beans to be squeaky! The same systematic overcooking goes for all vegetables, really, which must be served fondant (mushy).

2. set meal times
There are times you eat and times you don't eat. God forbid you want to eat lunch outside of the hours of 12pm - 2pm or supper before 8pm. Most restaurants just close up shop at 2pm and they don't care if you might bring in a little extra business. What restaurant owners don't understand, especially in a tourist town like Vézelay, is that holiday-makers are not on French meal times and that people from different countries eat at different times. Not only that, I am convinced that there are French people who would gladly eat outside the set hours. Gasp! If you stay open, they will come.

I personally see a huge window of opportunity in Vézelay for a cool little café/salon de thé that is open all day and serves up soup, quiche, salad, cakes, tarts, coffee and tea. Any investors out there? There are a million tourists who come through here every year, most of whom are unable to buy a little something to eat but would gladly do so given the chance.

3. paperwork
You've heard me go on about it before and nothing has really changed. It's always a paperwork issue, usually in triplicate, along with a proof of address, to be sent by registered mail.

I recently had to close down the farmhouse's no-contract internet service. I first had to bring the modem back to the shop - I only had to wait approximately one hour to be served! - and then I was handed a receipt which stated that the modem had been returned. I thought the guy would be able to cancel our service then and there (we can turn our phone # on and off online, after all!) but no, I had to write a cancellation letter and send it along with a photocopy of the receipt by registered mail to the headquarters. Then I got another internet bill. I had to call to see why they were still charging me, and after about 30 minutes on the phone with three different people they finally had it figured out. Luckily I had my registered letter receipt to be able to tell them when my letter had arrived at their headquarters!

Oh, and by the way, I'm still waiting for my diploma and degree equivalencies to come through. I sent them off in December 2010!

4. râler
Râler means to complain. You may have noticed that I have taken up this national state of being when I rant on about something (paperwork, for example!) but I do really try to not complain about stuff. The thing is, French people LOVE to complain - it's one of the things they do best. Even when there is nothing to complain about, they will find a reason to complain, even if it's just for the sake of complaining. It's dangerous, toxic and an unfortunate national illness (or sport, depending on your point of view).

5. things that are closed/enclosed
One of the first things you notice when you come to France is the number of shutters on the windows and that virtually all houses have some sort of enclosure, be it chain-link fences, concrete walls, dry stone walls or hedges. Must keep people out! Closing the shutters every night is a ritual and many people swear that they cannot sleep if the shutters are open. In the early evening closed shutters keeps prying eyes away from people's living and dining rooms, unlike in Holland, say, where everything is open all the time. Even inside the house, people like to live with all the doors closed all the time. This personally drives me nuts because it makes for a dark house - the light can't go from one room to another or the hallways - and the rooms end up being stuffy. And the WC can't air out!

6. long TV shows
If you don't have a TV this is not a problem, but if you should get sucked into a show, be prepared to go to bed late. First of all, things are on a different time schedule. The 6pm Evening News equivalent is on at 8pm here, so prime time shows don't usually start until about 9pm (or some weird time like 8:52pm - nothing starts on the hour here, except the News). Then the show goes on for three hours! We like watching shows like Top Chef and if we watch it live, we're not done until midnight. We have started to watch more things on demand so that we can control the time we go to bed. For American TV series, they like to have back-to-back episodes, meaning that if you want to follow the storyline, you need to stay up and watch them all - usually four in a row - and they're not available on demand. I suppose the simple solution is to not watch TV, which is something we are trying to do, but in the cold dark months of winter when there is nothing to do in the middle of nowhere, it is rather tempting.

7. long work days
The French have one of the shortest work weeks of anybody - just 35 hours! And yet, I feel like I'm at work for much longer than I ever was when I worked in Canada.  Why is that? Well, lunch, for starters. I'm officially allowed 2 hours for lunch, although I usually only take one hour or even less. That doesn't change the perceived number of hours that I am expected to be at work. We don't note down our hours at work (which bugs me) and all I know is that if I leave before 6pm it's looked down on. Same thing if I arrive after 9am. A lot of people who start at around 8:30 or 9am stay at work until about 7pm and don't usually get home until after 8pm. Don't forget that school kids also have long days, usually from 8:30 - 5pm. Little kids, even! Then they go to after school care until after 7pm when their parents pick them up. Gotta get them trained for the long work days ahead!

8. small coffees
Sometimes I'd like more than two sips of coffee. Enough said.

9. fiscal stamps
How do you pay for a parking fine, a speeding ticket, a new passport or a residency card? With fiscal stamps of course! You need to find a tabac that sells them and present them to the authority in question. Our closest tabac place that sells them is 15 km away, so it means 30 km roundtrip to pick these puppies up. I once asked why we couldn't just pay by cheque or bank card  - seems reasonable and simple to me - and the answer was "no, this is France." Fair enough.

10. the impossible
The preferred default answer to any request is "non, c'est impossible!" to which I have learned how to argue until the person sees that it is, in fact, possible. Yes, it's possible! I can hardly blame them. Things are so complicated here that it's just easier to say something is impossible rather than stir up the "complicated" pot. But sometimes that pot has to be stirred, no matter how uncomfortable and frustrating it is.

Alright, now that I've gotten that off my chest, perhaps I'll follow up with some personal news in a future post? 'Til then!

exploring

When Jean-Marc and I are at home on the weekend, we usually try to get out for a hike on one of the many paths around our house. Sometimes we head out to another village by car and then explore the area using our hiking maps (cartes IGN). That way we get to discover all the local villages and keep track of the good hikes! I always take my phone with me so that I can take photos when the moment hits me (it's our only camera at the moment). Here are a few photos from this winter's hikes and village explorations.

A vintage house address in Semur en Auxois

A patchwork field

 A cafe wall in Saulieu

 I'm not sure what this is, but it was on a house wall in Nuars

 An abandoned boot

 Manhole cover

 An abandoned shop's door

 Graphic design graffiti

 Electricity cap in Semur en Auxois

 Old stone wall with succulents 

 An old ad on the side of a house in Vézelay

 An autumnal hike near Clamecy

 Do not enter

Thistles in Asquins, with the hill of Vézelay in the background

meanwhile, back at the farmhouse...

Wowzers! It's been a very long time since my last post and I don't even know where the time has gone. Oh wait. I DO know where the time has gone! There was a choir tour at the beginning of April, followed by a number of days in a few installments of work at the farmhouse, interspersed with work-work, a conference in Paris and an operation at the hospital!

First off, the operation was nothing serious, so no need to worry.

The majority of the last two months has been spent on or at the farmhouse. I didn't have any official holidays to take, but between the bank holidays and my time off in lieu of overtime, I was able to squeak in three visits to the farmhouse to get it in shape for the season. Jean-Marc was able to stay longer than me and was there for two extended trips. Why all this time and work? I was hoping you would ask.

the terrace

Caitlin and I had put together a terrace back in 2004, with a mortared stone frame and gravel in the middle. It was the best low-cost option we could come up with at the time, but after a year, the weeds started growing in the gravel and it became a headache for us to maintain. Every year when we arrived, we would easily spend a few days just cleaning up the terrace, never mind keeping it clean throughout the summer! So this was THE year of the terrace.

Jean-Marc started by taking out all the gravel. Having been a part of the team that put the gravel there in the first place, I know that this was no small feat. I did help, but I was also busy with other projects as you will see later.

He then started leveling the ground to get it ready for the stones that we bought. In the meantime, there was a situation happening in the corner that needed attention. By the stairs we had some out of control mint overtaking the terrace and it needed to be contained, so Jean-Marc built a dry stone retaining wall (well, from the outside it looks like it's dry, but he mortared the back of it to give it strength). The mint was taken out and replanted later.

Of course the plan was to lay a stone terrace, so we had to find stones. I looked on the internet on a French version of craigslist (le bon coin) and low and behold, a guy just 7 kms away was selling some lauze. It was originally on someone's roof and then he has used it on his terrace and driveway, but it was too slippery for his daughter's wheelchair, so he dug it up and it was still good enough to use again. So we loaded 18 square metres of the stuff into his tractor, loaded the stone from the tractor into our borrowed truck, and then unloaded it into a pile where it sat waiting to be used. The stones were fairly big and heavy, so our arms and hands got a good workout! We ended up hiring a local stone mason for two days to help us get started and then Jean-Marc finished laying the stone (without doing the joints). It looked like this.

As luck would have it, just as we were ready to start doing the joints, there was the year's biggest storm in our area, with winds of up to 160 km/hour, meaning that the spaces between the stone were filled with dirt, leaves, seeds, flowers and gravel and not at all ready to be filled with mortar! We had to wait a few days and then use brushes and a vacuum cleaner to clean out the spaces. Once it was clean again, we were able to start mortaring the joints. We worked on this together and it was hard work kneeling on the stone. Our hands and knees were aching!

While all this was going on, I was also working on...

the table

With a new terrace we needed a new table! Actually, the one we had put together in 2004 was falling apart, so it was a real necessity. A few weeks before heading to the farmhouse, we had gone for a hike near our house and we came across a nice homemade table that seemed easy enough to put together. We returned, measuring tape in hand, and I took all the dimensions as well as a number of photos to figure out how it was all put together. When we arrived at the farmhouse, I asked my neighbour, William, what kind of wood to use for the table and he said "Douglas Fir" (or doo-glass in French!)- something that he had a whole stack of and was willing to let me use. He helped cut the planks to the right length for the table top and then I planed them so they would be the same thickness.

table top

table legs

I put it all together and then put the legs on once the terrace was done. And voilà!

ta da!

A new table and terrace - not bad, but there was more...

the shutters

We had a couple of pairs of shutters that were falling apart and all the rest were looking rather shabby. Even though they had been painted in 2005, the sun, wind and rain made them look like it had been thirty years since the last paint job. So I MADE two pairs of shutters (I was planning on getting them made but then got talked into making them by William). I also painted all the shutters, new and old.

one pair that I made

I made the upper left pair and painted all the rest

looking down the path

When we bought the house, the shutters were this colour with the white zeds, and although it's big pain to paint in two colours, we have found it to be a good way to identify the house for our renters, considering that there are no street names and numbers in our village. The paint really made the shutters 'pop' and made the ones that are not exactly falling apart - but not far off - seem in better shape. When I finished the shutters, I had some extra planks of wood left over, and then I looked at this area of our garden.

the flower box

The flower box that we had planted a couple of years ago was completely rotten and falling apart, so I put together a new one with the shutter leftovers, stained it and put some extra plants in it. Now it looks like this.

Ok, so it's still on top of a septic tank and there are pipes and whatnot around it, but I think with time, and a few more pots and planters, it will become a poetic spot!

These were all the major jobs that we did, but we also planted a lot of new plants (including a clematis and a honeysuckle), cleaned up the garden, cleaned up the house, made and repaired window screens to keep the flies out, attended to plumbing emergencies, upgraded our electricity so that we can make tea and toast at the same time (crazy, I know!) and put our electricity counter on a peak/low hours deal, so that we can have cheaper electricity at night for things like the hot water heater.

I don't have any fabulous "after" pictures because the weather was awful and I ended up leaving before Jean-Marc, so I never saw the final-final results myself. Hopefully I'll get to take some more photos this summer.

All in all, it was a tiring and exhausting few weeks. Most of our work days were 12 - 14 hours long and very physical. We barely had enough time to cook proper meals for ourselves and we even resorted to eating tinned food but were lucky enough to have William bring us extra hot meals from time to time. There were many moments when the stress of getting everything done on time was overwhelming and there were other moments when I thought it was never going to come together. The weather wasn't very cooperative, but we managed (!) and we are extremely pleased and proud of the results. Hopefully we will get a chance to go the the farmhouse this summer when it's not rented out, so that we can take advantage of our new terrace and table. I'd love to be able to go there, relax and do nothing (although I know that there is window putty, wood oil and plaster waiting for me with my name on it).

Both of us tackled the unknown and we have come away with a thrilling sense of accomplishment as a result of figuring out how to do something and seeing the results. Of course, it helps when there is a neighbour who knows how to do everything and can give advice when needed!

the path to the garden cabin that Jean-Marc made from locally found (i.e. free!) stones

if you don't know me by now

How long have I been speaking French? At least 23 years, with another 10 years of French at school before that. How is it that I never learned these words? I know that there are 25000 words that are shared between English and French, with the exact same meaning and usually almost the same spelling, and yet...

You try to figure these out!
1. économe
2. police (from an earlier post)
3. enceinte (not the pregnant kind)
4. pleine
5. interrupteur
6. mail
7. émail
8. puériculture

Some of you may know these words already, but here are their meanings.

1. économe

An economist, perhaps? Nope, it's a vegetable peeler!

2. police

The people who stop the bad guys? Nope, it's a font/typeface (I had mentioned this in an earlier post, so you might have remembered!).

3. enceinte

Pregnant? Well, yes, as an adjective, but as a noun it means speaker (as in, what you plug your stereo into).

4. pleine

Feminine version of full? Well, yes to that as well, but it can also mean pregnant (mostly used for animals and considered a vulgar term). "Faire le plein" is a fill-up at a gas station.

5. interrupteur

That annoying person who interrupts you all the time? Nope, it's a light switch. You know, you interrupt the electricity with it (or is it the light you interrupt?).

6. mail (or mél)

The obvious postal variety? Nope, it's an email.

7. émail

Well, it can't mean email (although it's starting to - spelled without the accent). It means enamel. This whole email business kind of thew the French for a loop because the word 'email' was everywhere, but it meant something different in French, and so they tried courriel, mél, mail and are coming around to email.

8. puériculture
Is it the official word for fish farming? Nope, it's childcare. Seriously? Seriously! Seems kind of scientific and technical to me.

There are numerous examples of words that take a little getting used to in French, especially when coming at the language from English. I would say that I'm fluent, but there are still words that completely stump me. I have noticed that when I'm tired my ability to speak French coherently diminishes, which I find extremely frustrating. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to express myself 100% and not have to struggle with getting my thoughts across. Some things really are lost in translation. The worst thing? My English is getting rusty!

winter vineyard

There is a small vineyard below the building where I work. For the most part I never see people in it, but the other morning I saw a group of workers pruning the grapevines and burning the branches. You can see the figures of the workers hidden in the fog.

And then later that afternoon as I was leaving, there was a lovely light hitting the vineyard. Same place, different time of day.

As an aside, this is the kind of work that Jean-Marc has been doing for the last couple of months. He's been clearing the pruned branches from the vines, after someone else has done the pruning, and once the branches are freed he breaks them and puts them on the ground in bundles, where they are ground up for mulch.  It's hard work because the vines are attached to the guide wires and other branches, so it means a lot of muscle is needed to separate everything (while not damaging the vine!). I think Jean-Marc is appreciating wine and the work that goes into it in a whole new way!

The bonus is that he sometimes gets paid in wine.

truffles for sale

I saw this in our local café the other day. Truffles for sale for only 25€/100 gr. That's 250€/kilo! Jean-Marc has a month's work in the vineyards and he's seen people looking for truffles nearby his work. Maybe he'll get lucky one of these days and strike gold!

language musings

I have been speaking French for the last twenty years and have been living every day in French for three years, and yet I am surprised by the French language all the time. Sometimes I get muddled in the specificity of terms because in English there is one word and in French there are numerous words for the same thing, depending on its shape or material. Take the word 'box' for example. In English, we just put a modifier in front of the word and we're good to go: shoe box, cardboard box, gift box, metal box, wooden box or just a box on a page. In French, there is a different word to learn for each one of these items. Let's take them one at a time.

shoe box: une boîte à chaussures 
carboard box: un carton
gift box: un coffret cadeau
metal box: une boîte métallique
wooden box: une caisse en bois
box on a page: une case


I remember looking up box in the dictionary twenty years ago and I thought that the translation was boîte, but when I started using it to refer to a cardboard box that I had, I was corrected, making me aware of the complexity of it all!

Then there was the time that I was with my in-laws and I mentioned putting some fruit in a big bowl on the table. I just said un grand bol, thinking that they would get the picture. Their eyes became very wide and I could tell that they had no idea what I was talking about. "You know, a BIG bowl," I said, miming the shape of a big serving bowl. "Oh, you mean a saladier!" they exclaimed, finally getting it. Yes, but in this case there would not be a salad in it and actually I was talking about a bowl that would never have salad in it, but never mind, it's called a saladier whether you are using it to mix dough, display ornaments or whatever. A grand bol would be a bowl you would use for cereal, soup or maybe a large latte.

Not unrelated to the bowl incident is what to call the somewhat shallow bowls that we have. For Jean-Marc they are assiettes creuses (hollowed plates, or soup plates to be fair) whereas for me they are shallow bowls. Plate or bowl? There's no rim and the sides go up, so it's a bowl for me, but for Jean-Marc it's not what he drinks coffee out of, therefore it's a plate.

I can also recall a time when I mentioned the toilet. Now, I had always just assumed that the actual, physical fixture was called une toilette because we do ask where the toilettes are, after all. Jean-Marc did not understand what I meant; whatever I wanted to do with (or put in) the toilet just seemed impossible to him. I said "you know, the white thing you sit on in the toilettes" and that's when he informed me that this thing wasn't called a toilet. What? I've been getting this wrong for over twenty years? At the time, he couldn't even come up with the right word (it's une cuvette, in case you are wondering).

And then there's anything to do with education. I was on the phone with a training centre about a course I was interested in taking. I referred to it as a cours and the guy on the other end of the line was very quick to explain that it wasn't a course (that's only for diploma-granting institutions) but a formation or training session. I should have known this because back when I was an English teacher, I was a formatrice and not a professeur. I can see the difference between teacher and professor in English, but in French there is a whole sublist of possibilities, depending on where the teaching is happening. In elementary school, you can have a maître, maîtresse, institutrice or instituteur. In secondary and higher education you have a professeur and outside of that, there is also enseingant(e) and educateur/educatrice, as well as formateur/formatrice. The same thing goes for students, who are élèves (elementary and secondary), étudiants (post-secondary), stagiaires (continuing education or training), collégiens (junior high) or lycéens (senior high). Every time I have to talk about teachers and students I get all worried that I'll get it wrong!

Oh, and do you know the word for font or typeface? Police! Seriously, it's police.