Going Swimming

We had another experience with the French concept of hygiene on Wednesday when we decided to go swim laps at the public indoor pool. Josh called ahead of time to see what the “requirements” were. Normally in France, you can’t wear board shorts or swim trunks in a public pool because it’s “unhygienic.” You may have been wearing them all day, on the bus, around town, etc. We also had to stop at Decathlon, a great sporting goods store (where I bought my amazing yoga pants), to grab goggles and obligatory swim caps.

It was sunny and warm as we walked to the pool, about 20 minutes away from our apartment. We paid our entry fee and left the lobby by the “men’s” and “women’s” doors to go through the system of changing and showering rooms.

The French are very serious about the cleanliness of their public pools. After changing into my swimsuit, signs instructed me to take a shower before entering the pool area. Other signs reminded me that it was my responsibility to keep the water clean for everyone. I half expected a visit from Smokey the Bear’s cousin. . . Splashy the Bear? Bubbles the Fish? Anyway, after exiting the shower room, the smell of chlorine made it very clear I was about to enter the pool area—but to my surprise, there was another hallway to go down. The last ten feet of the hallway was a sunken area filled with two or three inches of circulating water, I guess to get rid of any lingering traces of footborne dirt. Just as I cleared the pond, the motion-activated showers came on. They missed me and my bag of dry towels by inches.

I waited for Josh for what seemed like ten minutes, watching the hallway beyond the foot pond for his signature tropical patterned swim trunks. The automatic showers were no respecter of persons, and several fully-dressed moms bringing their kids to swimming lessons got a drenching. I was a little relieved that other people were bewildered by the system, too.

I watched each pair of calves coming down the steps to the foot pond, but they usually turned into complete legs topped by black speedos—not Josh. But then one pair of black speedos was on a body with Josh’s recognizable gait, topped by his familiar bearded face. It took me a while to stop laughing at him. It turned out that a “boxer,” which the woman on the phone told him he could wear, is only a speedo with slightly fuller coverage, like a boxer brief. Josh’s swim trunks were right out. So, to preserve the hygiene of the pool, the people at the coat check loaned him an extra swimsuit.

The pool was beautiful. The afternoon light slid in through giant windows all around, and the huge lofted roof opens for summer. The day was nice enough that it there was a giant slit running down the center of the ceiling and we could see the blue, blue sky. Once we got in the water, I was having so much fun that I forgot to make fun of Josh in his speedo (never mind that everyone else had one on). He got his come-uppance, though, when we got out of the pool and I took off my goggles. They’d suctioned so tightly to my eye sockets that they’d given me two giant hickeys. Then, on the way out, we noticed the swim cap/goggle/swimsuit vending machine in the lobby. If Josh had known about it, he would have been spared from wearing the Aix-en-Provence community speedo. We laughed at each other the whole way home.

Staple Foods

Last night we had some people over from the “Fac” (Faculte de Theologie, where Josh studies). We made our staple “big crowd” dish, the Kraut Family Cous Cous. It’s really easy: chop up a few onions and drop them into a few tablespoons of hot olive oil in the bottom of a large pot over high heat. As they start to get fragrant, add a few chopped carrots. When something starts to burn, add a few cups of chicken broth, stir it all around, and throw in a few handfuls of pitted prunes. Flavor with couscous spice mix (paprika, ginger, cumin, garlic, coriander, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom), and when it all looks reasonably cooked, add a chopped and de-boned rotisserie chicken. Mix it around so the chicken is covered with the juice from the veggies. Serve over instant couscous. Easier than a Rachael Ray recipe.

I’m starting to get embarrassed by serving “company” such a simple dish, but we had an easy crowd last night. One of our French guests told me at the end of the meal, “You know, everyone says that Americans don’t know how to cook, but I’ll have to tell my wife it isn’t true.” If this is all it takes for a French person to have a raised opinion of American cuisine, what was he imagining that our food tasted like?!? Although, we may have hurt our cause by offering our French guests Hershey’s “The-Great-American-Chocolate-Bar” kisses to sample. One guest looked at us sympathetically and said, “You know, we have bad food in France some times, too.”

Stocking our fridge

The stink of the stench!
The stench of the stink!
The things in your fridge
Smell worse than you think!

Emptying out the two little forgotten tupperware containers in the back of the fridge moved Josh to poetry. We think their former contents were mozzarella cheese and condensed milk.

Yesterday we did a “major shop” at Carrefour, our local super grocery store. It’s big even by American standards and is basically the equivalent of a really large American grocery store plus a Walmart. We had planned to borrow a friend’s car but she ended up using it. No matter, it’s an easy bus ride. The only problem was, we ended up with two backpacks, five giant re-usable shopping bags, and a new trash can full of things like orange juice, milk, and canned stuff. We kindof forgot we were going to have to carry it. . . but we managed, and our new shopping motto is, “Carrefour? What do you need a car for?!?!” Here’s a picture of Josh with the cart, but the photo is flattering to the extremely overweight contents of our grocery bags and they don’t look as big and heavy as they were in real life. By the way, notice the French shopping cart. Slightly larger than an American cart (if I remember right) and eight times more difficult to steer. Apparently there’s some kind of rule in France that says shopping carts have to veer to the right at all times.

Jacob's: our daily baguette

It’s time to talk about the bakery across the street. NOT the place that sells tonipan; Jacob’s. Jacobs is a bakery/sandwich shop chain all over the city. Their food is moderately (maybe even fairly) priced, despite the super-chic, black white and chandelier-ed decor. Jacob’s baguettes would make you “smack yo momma.” Usually a french baguette is a “crustation” (haha, crustacean, get it?) with a hard crust shell and a soft, cottony interior. I’m actually not a huge fan. Jacob’s baguettes, on the other hand, are wider, softer on the outside, and doughy on the inside. And we often have to wait for them to come out of the oven.

But the most notable thing about baguettes is not what they say about French cuisine; it’s what they say about French hygiene. Here we are in the country where pasteurization was invented, where milk is so carefully pasteurized that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated before opening. We’re also in a place where people famously take full advantage of a good health care system and get treated as much as possible. For more information on the French health mentality, check out this funny article by a BBC correspondent: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7779126.stm

So what role do baguettes play in the national quest for bonne santé? None, unless it is only to expose people to germs that will help them later (see this article for more info on helper-germs: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27brod.html?scp=2&sq=dirt&st=cse). Do French people bring home their bread in hermetically sealed bags the way Americans do? No. When you buy a baguette, its midsection is wrapped in a piece of paper the size of a napkin, and that’s where you hang on to it as you walk home through streets filled with smokers, dogs, cars, and other pollutants that are probably tainting your bread as you pass.

My guess is that bread, being a wholesome, traditional food, one of rustic peasants and simple farmers, is somehow immune to the dangers of modern life. Like germs, for instance. I remind myself of this when I go into Jacob’s for my daily baguette and count the health code violations I witness. Okay, I have no idea what French health codes are, and, despite having worked in a restaurant, I’m not sure I even know much about American health codes. But I did work in a lab, so I know about sterile procedure (plus I was raised by a germ-a-phobe. . . and just may be one myself). So let me tell you what I regularly see in Jacob’s:

1. The girls working there take your money and pick up your bread with the same hands.
2. Today the girl re-adjusted her pants (who knows where those pants have been!?!?) before picking up my bread.
3. The girl with the ponytail licks her fingers to better grab a bread-wrapping-paper before then using the same fingers to pick up my baguette. This was clearly the worst and I even mentioned it to her. Which did not make her want to be my friend and now I’m embarrased when I go in and she’s working there.

So why do we keep going back? Let me refer you to my first paragraph. And even though I hem and haw over their lack of asepsis, I secretly just enjoy complaining about it. And anyway, I’ve got an immune system.


(P.S. I got the picture from a restaurant guide website for Aix.)

Josh is Stricken

Not long ago I arrived at the Lycée Saint Charles slightly after 8:30, late for my first class, drenched from an untimely rainstorm, and wondering how to relate yet another traffic jam to my ever-patient, but increasingly exasperated colleagues. The first signs of trouble were walking the opposite way down the sidewalk as I approached the last turn.

Students. Smug students. And a few yards later, glistening under delicate Marseille raindrops, dumpsters were strewn against the high stone wall of the school like toy trucks abandoned for a more interesting game. The police car I saw across the street as I looked up—a clear strike three—drew a hoarse, "Oh no" out of me as I rounded the turn. And there they were. The mob of students, milling about with complete nonchalance in front of the school's gate, which could barely be made out under the welter of twisted fencing, municipal trash cans, and broken mirrors. I can get you the ringleader's info if you need to know how to build a barricade for your particular place of work or study.

Luckily that day the police had managed to forge a path through the barricade so that those students willing to endure the ridicule of their peers could squeeze in and get to class. Most, though, were "at the bottoms of their beds", as one teacher put it. My bed, 30 kilometers away and now stone cold, was no longer an option, of course. Which was just as well, since I ended up with several classes of two or three students, and we had a fine time together.

The strikes have continued, with limited effect, since then. The most recent was this week's when something altogether innovative was tried: after the police foiled their plans to block people out of the high school, some students regrouped around 10 a.m. on Monday and barricaded everyone inside. The vice-principal seemed, rightfully, fit to be tied by all of this, and asked me if such a thing ever happened in the U.S. "No", I said, "We'd never even think to strike...we wouldn't know what to ask for."

I am reminded of the closest I ever came to striking in high school. It was during a mandatory assembly for National Honors Society senior year, when we were all told that we'd be held through the first period, and therefore miss the campaign speeches for class president being televised throughout the school. About twenty of us decided to just stand up and leave on the count of three. After three seconds, twenty of us were up, and, after about four seconds, half of us were back down—myself included—melted by the steely voice of Mrs. McNicolas, threatening all kinds of torment. In retrospect, I should have seen that she was full of hot air, and that I was a woos—and that it's probably best that I wasn't elected, too. Most of all, I can see that I had nothing on the kids at St. Charles. They don't even sit down for the police.

The protest, I suppose I should say, is against a series of new measures being handed down from Paris that will drastically change the face of French secondary education—eliminating certain degrees (for which some students are now on track, and could potentially be forced to abandon), cutting back hours of class time, adding new responsibilities for teachers, etc. The strikes have succeeded in getting the bill pushed back a year, but given how much school has been missed, I wouldn't be surprised if many students will just plain fail this year, anyway, and be forced to repeat it. Things are looking no prettier at the university here in Aix—now the administration has decided to withhold students' grades!

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Intrigue in the Impasse.

While Josh and I are grateful to the previous tenant of our apartment for relieving the wall of the giant portrait of Marylin Monroe, apparently someone else isn’t so thrilled with him. Last night the French police stopped by to see if he still resided on the premises.

You would think that language-learning in a foreign country is full of opportunities to talk to “native speakers,” but it can be unusual to have conversations about things outside the daily routine: asking for a baguette, buying a bus ticket, yelling at noisy neighbors (who have now moved out, only to be replaced by a renovation crew, who, I swear, is trying to drill through our wall).

So, I was excited to talk to the police, and even more so because I had information to share. The Marilyn thief had been back! (Maybe.) Back in December I was on the phone with my mom when he buzzed our apartment. I ignored the buzz because I was busy talking. He heard me through the open window (yes, in December) and shouted until I stuck my head out. He looked a bit like a young movie villain, tall, with a sneery face, a chic leather jacket, and, if I remember correctly, a cigarette in each hand. (How can that possibly have been true? But that’s my mental picture of him.) He wanted to know if Raymond Gallou had lived here. Oui, I replied. We transferred the electric bill out of his name. “Well, I’m him and I’m here for my mail.” Okay, I buzzed him in to check the community mailbox in the hall downstairs. A minute later he was knocking at my door, but, being alone, suspicious, and on the phone, I ignored him again.

Was it the Marilyn thief? If so, why did he ask if this was his own old apartment? Wouldn’t he know? I related this to the police, finally getting to use vocabulary from the “describing people” unit we’d had in French class. “Il avait l’aire mechant,” I told them, “He looked shady.” Their response: if he comes back, don’t open the door. Not even to thank him for taking the Marilyn painting.

National Pastimes

Today Josh and I went down to Marseille for my official medical visit for permission to stay long-term in the country. They checked my height, weight, and whether or not I had tuberculosis. Pretty routine. I had lost 2 kilos since my last doctors appointment, and when I jubilantly informed the nurse, her response was, “Vive la France!” Long live France, indeed.

The office receptionist was not as friendly, and I was surprised when she didn’t give me any forms to fill out when I arrived. Filling out paperwork is, apparently, the French national pastime. I have already filled out more papers in three months than I would fill out in five to ten years in the US, including college applications. I can only imagine that the receptionist failing to thrust a clipboard into my face was some kind of lack of gentility and warmth on her part. She also mumbled; perfect for someone whose only job is to interact with foreigners.

She wasn’t the only disgruntled French person today; the entire country went on a “pause café” (coffee break) as government offices went on strike to protest against the economy. I think it was something more specific, but perhaps not. I wouldn’t put it past anyone here to protest a concept; after all, headlines declared that the big snow storm a few weeks ago was “un scandale!” Incidentally, I finally got around to asking someone why there is a national fascination with Marylin Monroe, and the answer was, “le scandale.” I think because the French word has such big, floaty vowels, it’s much more fun to say, and therefore more often employed, than the American translation. “Scandal” just doesn’t sound as glamorous as “scahn-DAAAHL.”

Anyway, today the streets of Marseille were packed with protesters wielding signs, and even firecrackers, and Josh and I had to walk an hour both ways to get from the bus station to the doctor’s office. At several points we had to cross right through the “parade route.” I expected to have some trouble—after all, people were shouting and waving around things that were on fire—but we were able to walk right through the procession without anyone noticing us. I didn’t even need to use my really fabulous plan B, which was to take a marker and write some sort of strike-related slogan on the giant envelope I was carrying with my chest x-ray (proof of clean lungs), and then pretend to be part of the strike as we snuck through to the other side. But “les greves” here in the south are not at all scary, and we were safer crossing the strike route than we are crossing a regular street at a crosswalk. If you want to see what it looked like, here's the BBC article with some good video footage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7857435.stm

After my doctors visit, I took advantage of being in the big city to continue my obsessive hunt for a good pair of boots. Every shoe I picked up fell into one of two categories: it had a sole made out of some material closely resembling linoleum, or it was an American brand. I now have a solid theory about why the French so often indulge in their other national pastime: complaining. I used to rag on Americans for always wearing sneakers, but now my USA nostalgia is beginning to extend to footwear. Viva la Aerosoles!