Oh, hey, France!

The First Two Weeks in a Foreign Land

By now I have taken my first French lesson, eaten delicious sorbet, and gone to a penis showcase, among other things. There is certainly no lack of surprises in this country. I’ve now had the chance to traipse along Le Garonne through the heart of Toulouse and I have no doubt that I should be here. Of course, it has been, at times, lonely but nothing that exceeds a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. It is most often, and quickly, replaced by a feeling of friendly confusion.

My trip began with a 24-hour+ travel day. By the time I arrived in Dublin (after having driven to Orlando, and flown to Philadelphia) I hadn’t slept in about two nights. Two because the night before I left Jacksonville I could hardly be expected to have slept. That night was an orgy of feelings that realized afterwards they probably shouldn’t have gone romping around together. So from Dublin I flew to Paris and from Paris to Toulouse. It was a motherfucker of a journey accompanied by a lovely bout of airsickness. But then there was Muriel (my host mom) and all was well.

Muriel has one of the best laughs I’ve ever heard. It’s a sing-song melody and makes me happy. She’s up there in the strata of moms that everyone can’t help but love.

She and Philippe, her husband, are attempting to show me the ropes.  We live about 40 minutes outside of Toulouse in a little village called Castelnau d’Estretefonds. Its main landmarks are a cathedral and a castle (hence the name). The castle is now an old folks home and the cathedral just got revamped. It takes about 40 minutes to get into Toulouse by car and along the way there are fields and fields of sunflowers. Guess where they produce sunflower oil. Yep, you got it. It took me about the full two weeks I’ve been here to realize that was why they are in such abundance. Silly me, I thought they just REALLY liked sunflowers. In addition to that phenomenon, we actually go to specific stores for specific goods whenever possible. I.E. We go to a butcher for our meat, a farm for our pesticide-free veggies, a baker for our bread (which we pick up daily, without fail), and, oh, we go into the back yard for our fruit. Two days ago I found myself at the top of a fig tree filling up baskets of the things. There is also a pecan tree, or walnut tree, in the back yard. I’m not sure which because no one knows the English translation for the nut.  This will be rectified when I go to collect the goods this afternoon (by the crate no less).

Speaking of food, good god! Every meal is mouth-watering. One meal of note was when I took a trip into the deep country my first weekend. Philippe, the kids, and I hopped into the car Saturday morning on our way to see an air show in his village of origin. We drove through some beautiful rolling roads surrounded by picturesque scenery. The roads were dotted with black-eyed sheep, men in carriages being pulled by mules, and French children running around in clothes I thought existed only in movies. Philippe’s cousin lives in a house near the field where the air show was to take place and that was where we “took our meal.” To start things off, we had a couple bottles of fine French red wine served with cantaloupe and salty, salty ham. This was followed by canard, otherwise know as duck, in some sort of savory mixture of which I could cull out the flavors of raisins and dark spices. Alongside this dish, we had mousaka, which is a traditional Greek dish, but, damn, this French woman knew how to do it, too. This main course was followed by the cheese-and-more-bread course. It was some potent goat cheese in three different forms: really strong, really fucking strong, and atomic. It was like I was being hazed. Did I mention it’s rude not to finish one’s plate? The atomic cheese was a wheel of goat cheese wrapped in a maple leaf that had been soaking in some sort of grain alcohol for weeks on end, pushing into the territory of months. It was almost black. After I ate it, everyone started laughing and said since I had actually tried it I was officially allowed to stay in France for a while. Ha. Ha.

I’m going to sign off now for fear of boring anyone that was kind enough to read this. There will be much more to come and so much I’ve yet to tell you. Au revoir, mes amis!