Noel

Merry Christmas, or shall I say Happy Boxing Day since I've missed posting this entry before midnight. I had the fortune the last couple of days to experience a French Christmas, making this the second Christmas I've spent overseas. Though I missed home a bit during the week leading up to today, I really couldn't have asked for a better celebration or anthropological experience.

It all started last night with a Christmas feast prepared by Juju with nothing more than some afternoon inspiration and quality ingredients. The sumptuous menu included:

Foie gras on toast
Creme fraiche and smoked salmon on blintzes
Fresh oysters with a squeeze of lemon
Foie gras and quail egg custard with chives (I admit, it sounds a bit odd, but it was delicious - a Juju original!)
Shank of lamb, seasoned with garlic and chanterelle mushrooms
Latkes (L-Daddy's family is Jewish so his mom made these to represent their side)
Salad with lemon vinaigrette
Home-made, hand-rolled yule log with creme patissiere for dessert

And of course, all of this accompanied with copious servings of French wine!

A far cry from the traditional turkey dinners I'm used to in Canada, this was an exotic and satisfying treat. We finished off the evening with coffee and a present-wrapping frenzy after sending the kids to bed to save Santa the trouble of squeezing down the impossibly narrow vent of the wood stove in their living room.

This morning I, who was sleeping on the couch to give our guests (L-Daddy's parents and sister) bed space, awoke to the sound of scampering feet and excited whispers - not Santa but the kids triaging their presents in anticipation of the opening fiesta. After all the time spent wrapping presents last night, they were denuded of their paper in less than 15 minutes. It was fun to watch the kids open their gifts, but almost more fun to watch the adults open theirs. I realized that I must come from a very reserved family after observing the open critique of each item received, be it a dress shirt or a Blackberry phone. I don't think I've ever dared to complain about a gift, especially not to its giver, but Juju, the Ls and their guests held nothing back, almost like some sort of disparaging game. Though it might have been tempting to join in the squabbling fun, I was just glad to have been included in the gift exchange and kept my mouth shut.

Aside from the menu and gift acceptance (or general non-acceptance), the weather was also decidedly different than snowy Canada. Though we did have a few weeks of chilly rainy days in autumn, today was warm and bursting with sunshine making it feel more like Easter than Christmas. I took advantage of the clement climate to go for a run and burn off some of the thousands of calories consumed between last night's feast and this morning's honey-and-butter-spread baguette dipped in cafe au lait. With my new water-bottle belt (my self-selected Christmas present) and MP3 player (Juju's birthday gift to me) strapped on I must have spent about 2 hours frolicking through the fields around the house.

I got back to find the kids absorbed in their new video games, Juju absorbed in her new Blackberry and Grandma L absorbed in her new book. So I guiltlessly locked myself in my room and spent the rest of my afternoon playing with my real gifts (a stocking full of goodies sent from home), making plans with Ryo for his arrival on Saturday, reading holiday e-mails and chatting with family on Skype. After a week of feeling homesick for the family get-togethers and turkey dinners I'll have missed this year, today turned out to be a pretty merry Noel after all!

Getting the Runaround

An annoying but seemingly imperative part of moving to a new country is becoming embroiled in its bureaucracy. As a newcomer you catch bureaucrats off-guard with all the new rules and exceptions that were uniquely developed for you. Big cities like Tokyo or Paris are probably better equipped to deal with my kind, but since I've always moved to small towns, I'm starting to get used to the immigrant run-around.

I must admit that I was a little surprised at the ease with which I entered the country in the first place. Customs consisted of a line of guys in uniform smiling and saying "Bienvenue" to all the people getting off the plane. When I showed them my passport with my working-holiday visa in it, one of them said, "Oh, I guess you want a stamp!" and made a little red mark on the adjacent page. I guess with so many tourists landing at Charles de Gaulle they figure there's no point in grilling us all on what we're doing here (answer: ummm....I came to see the Eiffel Tower and eat some pâté...) and what we have in our bags (answer: nothing, it's empty so I can stock up on the latest from Louis Vuitton).

So getting in was easy. Actually functioning after infiltrating the border? Not so easy! My first foray was to the Prefecture. Juju was convinced I needed some officiation of my passport to begin looking for a part-time job to entertain me while everyone else is at work or school. This didn't sound like a bad idea so off we went to check if I was actually living here legally or not. Their answer was that they didn't know, but it was awfully suspicious that I was traveling with 2 Canadian passports (warning to frequent travelers: Canada no longer adds pages to your passport when you run out - you have to apply for a new passport and travel around with both if you've got any visas stuck into your first one or ask for the "frequent traveler" passport which contains double the pages of a normal one). Finally after about 20 stressful minutes of debating whether my visa was valid, they admitted that I didn't actually need to be there and they couldn't help me. On a separate trip they and the driving school next door said the same thing about my driver's license, even though the Canadian Embassy clearly states that I need to get a French license to drive here.

The most recent episode in my bureaucratic saga was a trip to the post office. Mom finally sent my camera (thanks Mom!) and since I can't drive without a French license I had to ride my bike to the post office. Strangely, the package had been taken to a postal outlet in the middle of an industrial zone. I was determined to be independent and pick the package up myself so I rode over, stopping at the main post office on the way to ask for directions. They sent me up a long hill and around several corners to find this obscure postal warehouse where, of course, I was told that my package had been sent back down to the town post office the day before. The woman at the warehouse looked surprised when I smiled at the news. She must have expected me to be angry, but I actually didn't mind doing the return trip - especially since it was downhill. Burning a few extra calories and getting my goodie-filled package made the trip worthwhile, as did discovering a new part of my surroundings and having another story to tell about the trivialities of life abroad.

Attack of the European Super-Germs

Before moving to a new country, and especially moving in with a new family, you generally try to prepare yourself mentally and physically for the challenges you may face while you're there. You read guidebooks, travel advisories and cultural analyses to try and integrate smoothly when you get there.

Some of the challenges you're going to face are predictable: dietary preferences, temperamental differences, language barriers. Some are less foreseeable: changes in your own goals and desires during your stay, new facets of culture shock (which generally comes in waves, but varies so much from country to country and situation to situation that it surprises you every time). And then there are things you should have considered but didn't, not that it would have changed anything if you had. There are a lot of things that fit into this category, but the one I'm talking about here is GERMS.

Though I'm not much of a history buff, I always found it interesting that a few European explorers managed to wipe out most of the native North American population simply by sneezing on them. Nowadays we generally view Europe as a "safe" option for travel with its drinkable tap water and lack of tropical diseases. But don't let these simple standards fool you! Hiding behind them are some undeniably vicious and opportunistic vermin.

Viruses and bacteria are colonizing France as winter sets in here, humid and chilly yet not frozen. My weak North-American system is like a playground for these European monster-bugs for which Baby-L is a propagation dream-come-true. Last week, after returning from my action-packed London weekend, the germs came and dragged me into their underworld. Chilled and achy and stuffed up I became an unfeeling, non-tasting zombie. My desire to communicate with anybody (even by e-mail) gave way to a new desire to lay panting on the floor, couch or bed far away from voices or text of any kind. My two favorite pastimes of sports and eating became dim recollections of hobbies past. I could feel no hope and see no future. I was losing my soul to the common cold.

Juju and L-Daddy were pretty sympathetic. They doctored me with advice and concoctions of strangely named drugs like Aspegic, Penzanole and Acetylcistene from their over-stocked medicine cabinet. And they kindly let me hide away in my room, away from kids and housework, so that I wouldn't put any of them at risk of infection. But it still felt like a long road to recovery.

Today as I finally cough up the few remaining microbes in my system and snort and drink my (hopefully) last doses of decongestants, I feel like I've undergone some sort of transformation from swamp-monster back to human being. My energy has returned along with my sense of smell and I have a renewed desire to go outside, see people and eat things! More importantly, I can once again envision myself doing activities and maybe even having a part-time job (for which I must now energetically translate my resume into French) during my time here, rather than spending my remaining 9 months cooped up inside this house wishing I could just sleep through all this discomfort. Proud of having survived microbial hell, the real me is ready to get back into the game again.

Nothing could have prepared me for a cold like this, but really, Foreign Affairs Canada should at least warn us about the kind of biological risk we're taking when we come here for the winter...

There's No Place Like London

One of the obvious perks of living in France, and yet another reason for which I decided to spend a year here, is your proximity to everywhere else in Europe. Being from such a vast and homogeneous continent as North America has given me a real appreciation for the accessibility and diversity of Europe and Asia. I knew this year would abound with opportunities to discover new places and visit my old travel buddies in their home countries. But one unexpected turn of events was that my childhood friend, J.B. would decide to move to London for a two month study-break.

Though I had planned to spend my first two months exclusively with Juju and the 4 Ls (for the sake of integration) I couldn't miss the chance to see my old friend. So I caught the Chunnel-going Eurostar train last Friday to London where I met Jen for a little taste of England and a lot of memories from home. As we covered some of the most important London sights, including Leicester Square for an inspiring and half-priced (thanks to TKTS) showing of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," lunch at Borough Market, a 1920s-themed fancy ball and a visit to the life-size blue whale hanging from the ceiling of the Natural History Museum, we talked about everything from the loves of our lives to the nursery school days when we first met. Since we've both been traveling a lot the last few years, it had been too long since we'd had more than a rushed couple of hours to catch up over tea in Montreal, and this was definitely our first time meeting abroad. By the time we hugged goodbye yesterday morning, I felt like I'd rediscovered a long-lost sister, and I spent most of the train ride wishing I could have stayed just a few more days.

I'm finding that as we get older and head down various paths to new places in life, it sometimes feels easier to let our connections with the past slip away. And yet the farther I go from home, the more I realize the importance of maintaining the friendships I started years ago. Even though Jen is engaged and working on her Ph.D. while I flail about avoiding commitments to the future, she's still one of the few people that knows me at my core; someone with whom I can jump straight into a discussion about an event when I was 10 years old without needing a crash course in the history of my life. Even as I get closer with Juju and the 4 Ls, my trip to London this weekend was as refreshing as if I'd gone home to Montreal yet twice as exciting for having discovered a vibrant and exciting new city.

As they say in London slang - thanks again Old Fruit for such a wonderful weekend!

I had my first job interview yesterday to try and get myself out of the house and into some extra cash during the daytime. I thought I was interviewing for a waitressing job at the Golf Course Restaurant du Chateau, but it turns out the restaurant owner really just wanted to see if I would be available to babysit his kids sometime. Riiiiiight...I guess I'll keep searching. Maybe I'll send a letter to the Chateau itself to see if they need a fabulous bilingual tour guide, or a babysitter for the little royals. I imagine they pay better than the restaurateur anyway.

On the plus side of being unemployed. Today was a rare and stunningly beautiful autumn day and I took advantage of my free time to discover another trail along the GR de Pays. This one took me through the woods, the fields, some little villages, some more woods, fields and then back to my starting point for a total of about 10 muddy kilometres in the sun-drenched Valley of the Eure. It would have been a great day to take photos as even the most mundane field of mud is imbued with beauty when the sun shines here; but alas, my camera is still being held hostage by my mom (hurry up, Mom!)

Run with the Rhythm

Almost as soon as I arrived here, Juju started pushing me to get involved in some sort of group to get me out of the house and into the community. Not that she needed a break from me, as I'm pretty good at making myself scarce when Baby L starts making a racket; but having been an au pair herself in younger years, she feared I would feel isolated from spending weekdays alone at the house while the parents and boys were at work and school.

I rebelled a bit at first, feeling shy about my strange Anglo-Quebecer French (for which I occasionally get teased) and preferring, anyway, to savor my own moments of discovery on the trails and roads that surround the house. A month and a half of solitary wandering was about as much as I could take, though, and after a week of homesickness I decided to join up with the town running group.

Bright and early this morning, after shuttling Big L to his dentist appointment, Juju dropped me off at the runners' meeting point and I fell in with the group of 40+ year-olds for an hour-long run. Once I realized my initial worries that people wouldn't like me, 1) because I'm not French or 2) because I'm younger than they are, were unfounded, I found the group atmosphere refreshing and encouraging. The entertaining banter, positive attitude and friendly competition to win occasional "sprint rallies" reminded me of what I'd been missing in all my solo adventures.

I was already reveling in the pleasure of being a team member when I noticed one more thing that you can't reproduce when you're running on your own: rhythm. After 10 kilometres of muddy trail running, we finally found ourselves on a paved road, jogging our way back to the starting point. I was in the lead group and we had all ceased being chatty after the last exhausting sprint. Our thoughts turned inward, we were silent except for the steady inhale-exhale of our breath. I was thinking about how hungry I'd become and what I would like to eat when I got home, when suddenly I heard it - thump, thump, thump, thump, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Steady and in sync, our group had fallen into step and into breath and we were making a meditative music with the rhythm of our running.

I was only tuned into the rhythm for a few minutes before my thoughts turned back to snacking and getting myself up the last endless hill; but the moment gave me such a feeling of Runner's High that I made a mental note to blog about it this evening. At that moment I also felt a connection with my fellow runners. Despite our different backgrounds and ages and interests, for a few minutes we were all doing the exact same motion at the exact same time - we were practically one, or at least, for the non-spiritual, we were all making one sound. Who knows if we'll be able to recreate the rhythm the next time we run, or if it will be with the same people. One thing I do know, is that I'm hooked on this group and will be making a weekly activity of running with the "oldies."

I'm Poor but I'm Free

Juju and L-Daddy work hard at their jobs. As a result they take annual vacations, have got a nice house, loads of cars and an in ground pool to play in during the summer. Part of my job is to keep the house organized, especially to clean up the mess the kids make in the few hours they spend here between coming home from school and going to bed.

Most people would look at all this stuff and aspire to own something like it someday. But while I've definitely benefited from the nice things that surround me here, I've been questioning lately whether all the sacrifices we make for this kind of ownership are worth it. Despite the general Western motto of "work hard, play harder," a lot of people seem to work hard, then work harder.

As a traveler I've met plenty of people on "playcations" (extended breaks from work and life in general). They're a pretty happy, optimistic subset of people who've dropped out of the rat-race to be this and own that. Of course, you don't have to be a traveler to have that attitude, but I've met a lot of non-travelers who are trapped in unsatisfactory jobs or life situations but can't see any way out.

They hate their job but can't leave it. Want change but won't move. I guess you can't blame them for being afraid of the unknown - on my side, I'm afraid of falling into the daily grind they can't escape from.

I haven't saved a lot of money in my last few years of travel around the world. I can't afford to buy a house or stay in fancy hotels, buy expensive souvenirs from the places I visit or eat in fancy restaurants. But what I've sacrificed in material gain, at least I can say I've made up for in perspective. For the wealthiest countries I've visited contain some of the least happy and most stressed out people; and the poorest countries have shown me just the opposite. Of course, I'm not talking about abject poverty - that's just no fun, no matter where you live - but I think there might be happiness to be gained from doing without all this comfortable "stuff" we covet so much.

Mid-Life Retirement

I'm finding it really hard to find an appropriate beginning to my blog, since I'm a bit new in the daily blogosphere. I've written my share of Travel Blogs but those always revolve around stories and this one is just about my daily life in rural France.

Maybe that's a good starting point for this...What exactly am I doing in rural France?

Now, there are two kinds of answers I can give you. The practical one is that I'm taking a year-long sabbatical with some family friends who are graciously letting me live with them in exchange for a little help keeping the house and kids in order while the parents work their busy jobs. Hence this blog being called "Zee (The with a little French accent) Au Pair (French for nanny)."

On a transcendental level I'm rationalizing this year as a retreat from concerns of everyday city life; a kind of early (and temporary) retirement without a pension plan or the onset of arthritis. Instead of waiting until I'm old, I'm taking this year to indulge in leisure activities and reflection all while experiencing life in a new country. Ugh, that last sentence makes me sound like some sort of holistic fruitcake; basically, I'm just indulging my urge to do nothing, while making it look like something.