Thanksgiving in a Toaster Oven

Yes, that's right. The first Thanksgiving I've ever cooked took place in a middle school in the middle of France, with one toaster oven, one hot plate, three American girls, three women from Russia, Tunisia, Togo, and a French guy.

The Menu:

Green salad with a beet bought in Prague, goat cheese, pistachios and an orange vinaigrette

Crudites with home made hummus

Balsamic-Honey roasted sweet potatoes

Wild Rice stuffing with baguette bread crumbs, golden raisins, walnuts, toasted pine nuts and orange/beet dressing

Steamed garlic green beans with toasted pine nuts

Togolese hot hot hot sauce

A roasted chicken stuffed, with a thyme pepper butter rub underneath the skin

Pumpkin pie, exotic Libby can of processed pumpkin imported from the Unites States

Baguettes galore

Umpteen bottles of locally made hard cider

Yum.

I'm still in disbelief that our dinner went so well. Everything was delicious and perfectly cooked. Mady, Laura, Kendra, and I all worked wonderfully together, sharing the responsibility of creating a magnificent feast. We were joined later by our friend, Elena, who is also an English assistant and a couple who lives in La Souterraine, Melek and Benjamin.

We did our best to explain to Melek, Benjamin, and Elena the history of Thanksgiving, and what it means to us now. I also got crafty, after realizing that I didn't know how to carve a chicken, and told Benjamin that is was an American tradition for a man to carve the bird. Success!

After dinner, comatose and drunk, Kendra and I decided to put on a little concert. Her on the guitar, and us both singing "American Pie," and "Anyone Else But You," (from the Juno soundtrack). There is a video.

I am so grateful for the people in my life. How lucky am I, to find myself here with two of my closest friends from home, along with new ones, and truly enjoy each other as we are?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Piles of Treasure

"What happened was, I got the idea in my head--and I could not get it out--that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping--and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge--when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway--is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly."

-Franny from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey

Walking home in the rain, cold, jeans soaking wet up to my knees and dragging in the sidewalk puddles. The depressing stagnant grey of a November evening in the Northen Hemisphere. The days only get shorter from here.

Why, is it, then, that they seem to stretch on forever? And leave a smile on my face? Mixed with the smell of dead leaves, gasoline and dirty sidewalks is the calming, homey scent of wood-burning stoves. Everywhere.

This is the smell of my new home. I walk, enchanted by these olfactory delights and I smile. I smile because I'm able to walk, two days after spraining my ankle. (Yes, again). I smile because I feel like, after not so many years of practicing, I am learning what it means to accept what's been given. I smile because it would be a great waste of my energy to hate this weather - I can't do any thing about it, so I might as well enjoy it.

I often find myself writing out lists of all the degrees I'm going to attain, the stamps on my passport that I'll collect, the languages learned, the instruments mastered, all the while glazing over that which is right in front of me. Tangible or not, I crave to build these piles of treasure, distracting me from the experience, happy or painful, of life.

Dripping wet, I changed into my rain coat and wellies and went tromping around in the rain. No matter how old I get the ability to walk straight through puddles without getting wet will always fascinate, amaze and entertain me, to no end. Rain boots woot!

Happiness, by A. A. Milne

John had

Great Big

Waterproof

Boots on;

John had a 

Great Big

Waterproof

Hat;

John had a 

Great Big

Waterproof

Mackintosh - 

And that

(Said John)

Is

That.

(Mackintosh: noun Brit. a full-length waterproof coat. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: named after Charles Macintosh (1766-1843), the Scottish inventor who originally patented the cloth.)

My Idle Existence

Oh happy day!!

Back to work and back into rhythm.

I also received the Princess Bride in the mail, thanks Nadia.

The past couple of days have been spent figuring out how to get back on track after having been derailed by vacation. I was only just getting into the swing of things and then we had two glorious weeks off.

When I got back to Gueret, it was really bizarre. I felt like I was in the twilight zone for a few days. I didn't have any French administrative paperwork to fill out, nor did I have any days of work, but I wasn't on "vacation"

So what to do?

Twiddle thumbs, contemplate life, paint, cook, read poetry for hours, go for walks, plan lessons, clean house, listen to music...

I don't have to wait around for responsibility to eat up my time. As I don't have much, it would be a lot of waiting in vain.

Thanks to you all, I have so much support as I navigate the ins and outs of transplanting myself into a new culture. I know where my roots are.

Warhol Wisdom

So, I added a few things to my blog, as decoration. One of them was a campy "Warhol piece of the day." Today's piece expresses so concisely what I've been thinking lately:

The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.

I was enjoying, savouring, my almost junior-high excitement today. I'm going to see The Do, a folk band I love, and have been planning it since July. However, excitement has peaked recently because I lack the distraction from life which I had in abundance at home.

I actually wait in anticipation for things to happen, and so, where a concert at home would be something to do, here it is an event. I'm flipping out of my boots.

That's my thoughtsicle. Bladow.