Throwback to Nantes

Exactly two years ago I wasn’t that far, at least geographically, from where I am now: I was visiting Paris with my family. It was during my semester in Nantes, and my family had come to France for a week over Thanksgiving. We took a long weekend in Paris (including a Thanksgiving dinner at Le Saint-Martin), and spent the rest of the weekend visiting monuments, museums, and eating as much French food as we could.

It’s funny what’s changed, and what hasn’t, during my second round of living in France. I still spend time with friends, but rather than Americans I have a group of international friends in Saint-Quentin. I still see teachers all the time, except rather than taking their classes, I’m working with them to help teach. I’m not a student any more, though I am quite possibly learning more in Saint-Quentin than I did in Nantes.

Regardless of the similarities and differences, I am grateful for my time in Nantes, as I’m grateful for the opportunity to live in France again. Since I would never have been a teaching assistant were it not for my semester in Nantes, here are some of my favorite photos from two years ago as a sort of tribute to my remarkable first time living in France.

~ With the fam in Nantes~

~ Parents at the Louvre ~

~ Jardin des Plantes in Nantes ~

~ IES trip to Mont-Saint-Michel ~

~ Bri, Scott, Lisa, and Annie in Saint-Malo ~

~ With Annie and Rachelle in Rome ~

~ The beautiful gardens of Chateau Villandry ~

And my favorite picture from the whole semester:

~ Our celebratory night out right before going home ~

Thanksgiving in France

This is the first year that I haven’t been with my family for Thanksgiving. It’s weird and a bit melancholy to be so far away on this holiday, which is my mom’s favorite. I’m lucky, though, for having my fellow teaching assistants here. We planned an international Thanksgiving celebration on Wednesday night and ended up having a wonderful evening. Here are the numbers:

5: nationalities represented (3 Americans, 3 Germans, 2 Brits, 1 Mexican, and 1 Italian)

2: Mexican games played (basically Mexican bingo and Mexican dreidel, and they were awesome)

5: bottles of wine, cider, and juice consumed

0: traditional Thanksgiving foods eaten (instead, we had lasagna, croissants, chips, fries, salad, broccoli, carrots, spaghetti with pesto, cookies, and chocolate mousse)

10: sincere and heartwarming recitations of thanks. This was the best part of the evening: going around and saying what we’re thankful for. While every family has a different tradition for this part of the holiday, it seemed important to include it with our international group. We also all gave thanks in French, which was certainly a new experience for everyone!

~ Paper turkey from home, which we used as a table decoration ~

~ Assistants at our Thanksgiving table ~

Baking Adventures

Earlier this week, I decided to honor my family’s tradition of making Chanukah sugar cookies, plus some Thanksgiving cookies for the assistants’ Thanksgiving dinner. It seemed like a straightforward plan: sugar cookies, pretty basic, not a problem.

Until I realized I had a tiny French kitchen and very limited baking supplies to work with. I ended up using a pot as one of my mixing bowls, was almost defeated by the cups to grams conversion, and ultimately had little piles of cooling cookies covering all available surfaces.

Luckily, with the help of some Monoprix sprinkles and chocolate icing, the cookies turned out fine and were added to our Thanksgiving feast. It was pretty fun, actually, to weigh the flour and sugar and mix everything by hand – but I think I’ll wait a little while before baking anything again.

~ Scale for measuring; mixing butter and sugar by hand in a pot ~

~ Happy Chanukah! ~

~ Thanksgiving cookie and European Union cookie ~

~ The finished product ~