will WE play in Peoria?

It seemed like this was the weekend to either go through with it or forget it for this year… buying a Christmas tree. We’d seen them for sale at the marche de noel in Grenoble, so we knew live trees are available. All we had to do was find them.

No problem. I’d spied some at my favorite garden/decorating store.

We headed out after breakfast to get our tree. Ok, so heading out after breakfast for us means heading out at 11:45am. At least it was better than yesterday, we were in the car headed off the mountain before noon. As we made the descent I said “uh, I hope this place doesn’t close at noon for lunch.” I still cannot get used to the fact that stores here close for two hours at lunchtime. I understand the small stores that do it. But not the big stores. Not three weeks before Christmas! We got to the store at 12:10. Twenty minutes to tree shop before lunch.

We knew we didn’t want a big tree. No way to get it home. We wandered around, chased Kaitlyn, and settled in on one group we liked. Now, if you had told me at 11:45 this morning that I was going to buy a flocked Christmas tree, I’d have laughed at you. But there I was, at 12:20, picking out a flocked tree. Hey, they’re nice. Much nicer than flocked trees I’ve seen in the US. Mind you, we still had our limits. Definitely, no red or purple flocked trees were coming home with us… no matter what Kaitlyn said she liked.

As the clock ticked toward closing, one of the employees in the tree area came over to help us. I’m sure she instantly was sorry. I waved my arm around babbling “I want… one of these.” But I said it half in French and half in English. Then I showed her how the one we liked didn’t have a price tag. I’ve done that too many times at Carrefour to make that mistake again if I can help it because if you go to the cash register with an item without a price marked on it, heaven help you. The cashier will want to talk, ask you questions. Then she’ll roll her eyes when you don’t understand and she’ll pick up the phone and call her Aunt Betty to tell her about the stupid American in her line yet again, oh and can Betty please find out how much the little kid’s doctor kit costs? The tree lady found another one she deemed similar enough to use for a price quote. Trente cinq euros. Ok. I’ll take it. She put it in a big plastic bag and told me the store was closing. That confused me. I mean, I knew the store closed at 12:30. Was she telling me the store had already closed and I’d have to actually come back for my tree? We finally figured out, no, she just wanted me to go directly to the cashier, do not pass go, do not collect more items in my cart.

In the parking lot, there were rows of shoppers all trying to stuff trees into the backs of tiny European cars. Ours fit with half the backseat folded down. Kaitlyn got in and looked at her back seat companion and said “cool.”

The tree isn’t really much taller than Kaitlyn is. We’ve never had a tree that small. But figuring out where to put it was easy, since even I could pick it up and move it around. And you don’t put it in water. The bottom is stuck into a tree stump. If your tree is crooked, well you bought it that way with no chance of correcting it with a clever swivel of the stand. As we were moving it, we noticed a small tag on the top. Bill read it and we translated it to say: do not put lights on the Christmas tree you just bought and hauled home. In a country that doesn’t seem to put much of a priority on safety (no handrails on stairs, no smoke detectors, no gfci outlets) it seemed that if they bothered to put a warning on the tree the danger level must have been exceedingly high. So we were going to heed it. Bill said the led lights they sell here would be ok, they don’t heat up. And, hey, we noticed Carrefour was open for Christmas shoppers today.

Bill made the trip to Carrefour; I stayed home with a napping Kaitlyn. He went to not one but two Carrefours. Neither had any of the lights left. So we got fresh milk but no lights.

Kaitlyn helped us decorate the tiny tree and she had no problem reaching all the way to the top. Most of our ornaments are so heavy the branches they hang from sag. I never realized how many of those Hallmark ornaments that you plug into the light strand we have until today. They stayed in the box. When I opened the box of Mom’s ornaments , I couldn’t bring myself to put most of them out. It was still way too hard. Two years ago today I was on a plane to California to have my life altered in an irreversible way I never wanted it to be and I don’t need to have reminders dangling from my tree. Not yet. I’m not ready.

Bill got out his Christmas train and it now circles the little white tree. Often with Belle or Barbie along for the ride.

It’s kinda a sad tree. Small. No lights. It is so unlike any other tree Bill and I have had that it hardly seems like it should be ours… or like Christmas. Like everything else right now, it’s new and strange and we’ve tried to make it seem right by putting our things on it but it still just isn’t. Then again, sometimes I think that Christmas will never seem right to me again.

Watching Sponge Bob Square Pants in German, we noticed they were after a coveted chocolate bar.  CHOCOLATE.  It’s a universal word!

Astra 2 28.2

I need it. Bad.

That’s the satellite I need to get British Sky TV. Right now, we get free satellite tv. That includes the 5 French channels, which I do like having. I’m almost to the point where I can watch a cartoon and understand some of what’s being said. Although one drawback is no Saturday morning cartoons, since the kiddies are in school then. Well, most, not ours. Seemed mean to do to a three year old. (It isn’t required until they’re 5 or 6) And I do like to see what American shows they air with French language dubbed in: Ed, Friends, Dallas, TJ Hooker, Young and the Restless. I’m sure there’s more. I can do without the commercials. I do not understand the one with the woman who appears to have just returned home from running and she’s splashing water on her face saying over and over “Merci! Merci!” It’s an ad for, I think, the water company. “Thank you, water company, for providing me with the service for which I pay you each month?” Reminds me, I need to get that thank you note in the mail to the power company…

We get fewer channels in English than in French. CNN International… good for catching up on how poorly the dollar is faring against the Euro, Yen and Monopoly money. Sky TV out of Britain, keeps me up to date on the investigation into the death of the Russian spy 24/7. And BBC World, but I haven’t been able to get that to actually show up, so it’s hard to include it.

Al Jazeera is on our list of channels. I haven’t watched it to know what language it is in. I think it would be interesting. Bill thinks I’m weird for wondering.

Pretty much, the other 873 channels we get are in German. German home shopping network, Bloomberg tv in German, God tv in German, German Nickelodeon. I’ve heard tales of some ISE children actually starting to speak German just from the German cartoons. I have enough trouble understanding everything Kaitlyn says in English and she’s probably not far from tossing some French in, so I really don’t need another language to decipher.

So, I am ready to break down and pay the price for German Sky television. (yes, to stop watching German tv, I find German Sky to get British tv. Europe, so confusing!) In teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy print in the online contract it says your satellite has to be able to get Astra 2 28.2 Click ok without checking and you’re out a boatload of money with no Disney channel to prove it. Bill says we get it… but only at about 50%…. do we do it? Help! I need someone from engineering!

The Christmas season seems to have officially kicked off this weekend here in France. For weeks, each town has had lights strung up on poles… now they are actually turned on at night. And the Christmas markets have started. The big one around here is in Grenoble. It goes from now until Christmas eve.

Today, we headed out to the marche de Noel in St Martin d’Uriage.

The vendors and warm weather aside, there was something really charming about going to an event in our little town and running into person after person we know. Not all other ISE’s. (but mostly) Each stopped to say hello, offer a hand with some translating, an explanation for the tradition behind a food for sale.

What was for sale? A lot of jewelery. Lots of it. Apparently, beading has taken off in France. There were a few people with pottery. A couple of artists. Some scarves. I nearly bought Todd a beret. Some wooden toys. Cakes. Wine. Champagne. Cheese. A guy wandered around playing his accordion. (retirement possibility, Dad?)

Of course, Papa Noel was in attendance. He handed out traditional candies and oranges to the kids. To the kids who weren’t afraid of him. Kaitlyn clung to her daddy when Papa Noel came too close. She said he wasn’t her friend and she wanted nothing to do with that guy. Nothing at all. Ok. Hopefully she’ll get past her fear of Santa in time for our big Christmas trip to Colmar.

We did pick up a few things.

Kaitlyn stopped at the first toy seller she found. I told her she could pick out one thing. She looked very carefully at each thing and really took her time to decide. She finally picked her one thing: a wood snake made so it can slither.   I guess she decided that the snake she made her granddad buy her in the Phoenix airport needed a friend.

I bought chestnuts from the booth run by Kaitlyn’s school. Couldn’t figure out why they were impossible to open, cold and hard as little rocks. Nasty things, really. Waste of two euros! Then some woman started blabbing on and on to me in French. All I could say was the old trusty “je ne comprends pas.”  She sighed and switched to English. I’d walked away from the stand with the “example” chestnuts, not the ones that had been cooked. The woman at the stand had tried to chase me down to tell me, but I was too fast (first time for everything). No wonder they were so awful. She offered to walk back to the stand with me to exchange them for ones you could actually eat, but I’d just bought Kaitlyn a waffle she’d been begging for and thought if I delayed her consumption of that she’d be furious. I never did get back over to exchange those chestnuts, but at least I know they weren’t expecting me to eat what I’d gotten!

Kaitlyn was thrilled to have a waffle. We didn’t bring our waffle maker and we apparently really need to buy one. I knew she liked them but had no idea she’d miss them this much. We tried some frozen waffles last weekend. They were made in Belgium which made them genuine, if not good tasting, Belgium waffles.

One group was selling some cabbage soup, which I am told is very good. Bill didn’t want any because he isn’t big on cabbage. It smelled great, I should have just gotten some for myself. One of the people we ran into is from France… he said he was out at 7 this morning to buy his daily bread and saw them cooking the soup and just had to return for some. He says it’s a tradition to eat that soup after a long night of partying…. at 4 or 5 am after, say, New Year’s Eve, you break out the soup. Hhhhmm…. ok.

I didn’t leave with my soup or with roasted chestnuts… or even with bags of Christmas gifts. But I think I picked up a wee bit of Christmas spirit and a renewed adoration for our little town and the others who call it home-for-now.

Today just wasn’t my day. It started when I made a pot of coffee… without putting any coffee in the maker. Which means I made a pot of hot water. That just doesn’t have the jolt I’m after on a Monday morning.

After dropping Kaitlyn off, it was down to the grocery store. I decided to go to Geant, I’ve had my fill of Carrefour, thank you very much. I got there, went to get a cart, and didn’t have a euro. You need a euro coin to get a cart. At Carrefour, you can use a 50 cent piece, a euro or a 2 euro coin. Not Geant. So, I put all my bags back in my trunk and left. Or I tried to leave but some construction in the parking lot had me driving in circles. Once I found my way out, I stopped at the car wash to get the grime off my car. It takes Carte Bleu (the debit card here) Not this one. Broken.

Next stop? Where else – Carrefour.

At Carrefour, two of my biggest fears converged. My fear of cheese… and my fear of the man who walks around the store with a microphone babbling on and on about the specials of the day. (see Oct 3 entry for more on Carrefour) I once told Bill he did not need to fear going near Mr Microphone, because he doesn’t actually “interview” people. I haven’t told Bill that I later heard him doing just that. I’ve since worked at steering my cart clear of him. (just steering the cart is a whole different matter – all four wheels turn in all directions – yikes!)

So there I was, innocently wandering the store in something of a lack-of-java-induced-fog. Next thing I know, I’m standing by the cheese department and Mr Microphone is offering me a sample of the cheese on sale today. You have to understand, I am terrified of the cheese here. Most of it is pungent. Most of it is strong. Some of it is runny. Lots of it is of some blue variety. Lots of it is of the goat variety. Eat the rind? Don’t eat it? Bake it? Put it on crackers? Eat it alone? We’re talking about a food that in France is its own course at a proper meal… after the main course and before dessert. Intimidating. Scary. So there I am, standing in Carrefour with Mr Microphone pushing an unknown fromage on me. If I’d had my usual two giant cups of coffee this morning, I’d have peed my pants. Instead, I calmly took a piece of cheese (it at least showed no visible signs of mold or rind) and popped it my mouth. I chewed carefully. I smiled. It was pretty good. Then, Mr Carrefour tried to talk to me. “Tres bien?!” I pretended to still be chewing. I smiled and nodded and pushed my cart away. Crisis averted. Trouble was, I liked the cheese enough to be willing to buy it. But I hadn’t heard him say which one it was. I could either go back and ask him… or take my chances with a guess. Then my window of opportunity opened… another man came over the pa, overriding Mr Microphone. I asked what the cheese was. He showed me. I picked one up, thanked him and dashed off.

I plan on serving it tonight with dinner. After the steak. In a course all its own.

I bought a cd of Christmas music, thinking it would be a great way to learn French. The songs were all ones I recognized: Jingle Bells, White Christmas. Tonight, I put it in the cd player in the car while we drove down to the pizza truck. It’s a cd of music, alright. Instrumental. Oh, well, at least it isn’t in English.

Madames, monsieurs, enfants – ok, that’s about all I really understood  anyone say at the circus. I bought tickets thinking Kaitlyn would enjoy it. I was kinda surprised because we all did.

There was a French clown who appeared throughout the evening, doing little acts. In one, he “played” bubbles as they popped (with the help of the live band). What song? Madness – One Step Beyond. Just another example of how France has better 80’s music than the 80’s night on our cruise ship! Needless to say, I quite enjoyed that.

There were plenty of balancing acts. A bald guy with gold glitter all over his head and back who balanced on a couple of handles on a spinning pedestal. A couple dressed like they’d come off a Star Trek set who balanced on each other’s heads.

Horses danced. So did an elephant. I missed the tigers, Kaitlyn had to go to the bathroom, but Bill said it was nothing too dramatic. It did seem particularly dangerous, since the cage they performed in was put up during the 15 minute intermission. Would that have really held back a charging tiger? Luckily, we didn’t have to find out.

Kaitlyn said her favorite was the bicycles. Fourteen young women from China who rode bikes and stood on each other’s shoulders, heads, arms, legs, whatever was available. They finished their act by all standing on top of one poor girl biking around and around in a circle. There were so many people on top of her I don’t know how she could even see to steer.

The high wire act was most unusual. There were two performers, a man and a woman. She sang throughout their routine. They started by walking up a support wire to the tightrope. They ended by walking down that support wire – the woman on the man’s shoulders. Singing.

Bill had two favorite acts. One was two guys who’s act consisted of one guy lying on his back so he could flip and spin the other guy on his feet. The other was a bunch of people who jumped off ladders onto boards sending some fellow or girl flying in the air onto a giant pillow or someone’s shoulders.

My favorite part was just watching Kaitlyn. She sat up in her seat paying close attention. She laughed at the clown, she clapped when she liked something or when the clown pointed at our side of the arena to do so. Bill bought her a flashy thing that then he didn’t want her to wave around in the dark.

We all had the same least favorite act. The American. Some clown who came out and pretty much didn’t wow the crowd. Or at least didn’t wow us. He didn’t talk until the very end when he asked who here speaks English? I felt like yelling out “me!” since his words were the first I’d really understood all night. But I realized that would be like being the one dork wearing a UCLA sweatshirt at a Duke basketball game. (yes, I’ve done that)

The concession stands weren’t what I’d expected. Well, all I could expect was what I’m used to at home. Here, there’s beer (one kind, I think it was Heineken), soda in cans, bottled water, sandwiches on mini baguettes and crepes. Oh, and bad popcorn. That’s what we had. Not many people ate. Some brought in pizza boxes so they could have dinner. I saw one man return to his seat near us carrying three beers… one for himself, one for his wife, and one for his 10 year old son. Ok, maybe 11 year old son. Kaitlyn begged for a hot dog and I drew the short straw and was sent to fetch it during intermission. There wasn’t really a line at the stand as much as a mob. And there were no hot dogs. I bought her a tomato and mozzarella sandwich. Bill asked why I’d pick that. Next time, he can go. When he went, he bought popcorn. Much easier to do, since the word is the same in English. And he went during a balancing act, so there was no line.

All said, we had a good time. But we were all exhausted by the time the show ended. It started at 8:30. It ended at 12:30. That is one long circus.

When I found out we were moving to France, I pictured walking or biking everywhere… or at least hardly ever using my car. Yea, right. If I’m going somewhere, I’m going in my car.

Monday, I decided that we don’t live so terribly far from Kaitlyn’s school and that I can certainly walk there and home. I’d never be able to walk there in the morning, because it would mean leaving the house at about the time Kaitlyn is normally dragging her tired tiny hiney out of bed! I don’t know what came over me Monday afternoon when I figured I could walk there to pick her up in the afternoon. Hello? Common sense? Not home, thanks. It took me about a half hour to get there. It’s all downhill going. Coming home, I had to stop halfway up our street to find my breath (it was beyond simply catching it) and to have my head examined. I forgot to look at my watch when we left the school to see how long it actually took me to push our big huge stroller and Kaitlyn straight up our street. I have no idea how far that walk was. I got home just before it got dark out, so I’m guessing it took me between 45 minutes and an hour. Ok, so that’s not the greatest idea I’ve ever had.

Today, I found another, better, alternative to driving. At least to driving into downtown Grenoble. I’d asked another ISE wife if she wanted to go downtown so she could show me a hair salon she’d found out about and, of course, eat. She said sure – we could take the tram. ( http://applications.semitag.com/Lignes/PLAN_A.pdf) She’s something of a pro at it, her three kids take it every day to and from school. I’d been a little afraid to give it a try alone, since all the maps and signs are in French… let alone the potential problems getting a ticket and having it stamped properly. The ride downtown was really a breeze. Pay to leave your car in their version of a park-and-ride lot, that buys you round trip tickets for all the people in your car. Then hop on the tram (admittedly, I’d have probably hopped on going the wrong way without help) and downtown is just a few minutes away.

Once we got down there, we bought sandwiches from a shop without any tables. The sidewalk became our own personal cafe. Then she pointed out the salon plus some other cool looking stores. I’m going to have to go back when I have a little more time! We didn’t even get to wander into the antique district. This discovery could be dangerous!

My Poste pride has turned to shipping sorrow. Today, the mail lady returned to me the box of wine I’d shipped to Julie last week. It has a big orange sticker: rejected by the FDA. Great.

This is going to make sending Christmas gifts home a lot more challenging than I’d anticipated. (not that everyone should have been expecting a bottle of wine) I’m certainly not suggesting I would lie about the contents of a box so it would get to its destination… but there must be a better way of filling out the form than the way I’d done it. Hopefully, others who have shipped on Christmases Past can help me out. Otherwise, everyone will just have go get their presents when they come visit. I’ll wrap them all and keep them in a bin in the storage area for collection at a later date.

I must now be an official resident of France. I have the jingle from Carrefour stuck in my head. aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!