We’re back in Paris after a week in the mountains, ready to tackle the New Year. During our week long vacation in the Pyrenees, Dorah might have broken her tailbone, we both had some sort of food intoxication and I thought I tore a ligament somewhere… so all and all it was a typical vacation for us (no pain, no game).
I thought I’d start a tradition and blog my New Year’s resolutions for longevity’s sake, in hopes that some day, a bored extraterrestrial might stumble upon me in the lost archives of the great “Web 2.0.” 2009 has been a pretty eventful year for Dorah and I. Career-wise, Dorah got a promotion and I started working for a promising French geolocation start-up called Tellmewhere (you can find me here).
Other big adventures: if all works out with our bank, we should be moving to a different apartment in Montreuil around March. If I could compare Montreuil to anything in the States, it might be like Brooklyn compared to Manhattan. Our present apartment in Paris has its advantages and its disadvantages although currently the disadvantages are starting to outweigh the advantages, coupled by our mutual desire for change (and ownership). Dorah has been here a long time and parting, evidently, will be sweet sorrow. Since moving will be such a big event, hopefully I’ll have the time for the following resolutions:
- Keep putting money in the bank (and not in cheeseburgers (cow slaughter) and beer (grain slaughter)!)
- Less Clutter + Impeccable Organization + a Feng Shuied new apartment
- More physical activity: enroll in a Yoga class
- Help company succeed internationally (think out of the box). If Bic pens could cross the Atlantic, so can we….
- Attend design conferences
- Do design projects outside of work (practice makes perfect)
- Subscribe to a design publication
- Watch more videos on Lynda.com: perfect technical skills (do I know my programs inside and out?)
- Make it back to the United States at least once (it has been over two years…whoops!)
- Write more (by hand, by blog, by email, by whatever, just write)
- Read more: a book a month
- On my Wish List: get an iPhone, tweet a photo everyday (@fussandfeathers)
- Scrap this Wordpress blog, create a lighter / easier to update Tumblr blog…. then post from that iPhone that I’ll presumably have.
- Give Dorah more gifts
- If 2010 is a really good year, I’ll have a more powerful laptop that I can work off of
- Play more with Clarky (our cat, apparently the Swedes concluded that cats need at least 2 hours of social activity every day)
- Try to cook something other than pasta
- Expand your French vocabulary, read the French newspaper, work on your shoddy American accent…
Time to sign off now that looking at this list is beginning to stress me out. We’re off to a good start…
What I miss in the USA…
So I’ve been living in France for a while now… a good five years or so and this is the longest interval that I have not hopped back to the United States. My sophomore year of college (age 20-21), my parents moved to the middle of Northern Florida which is the social / political equivalent of Alabama. In France, French people so often ask me what State I’m from as if they’ll have a better understanding of who I am.
At first I’d say, “My parents live in Florida” and then I’d hear “Oh yes, MIAMI,” I’d reply, “No, they don’t live near the ocean: imagine a place where people are obsessed with football (no, not soccer) and Jesus.” So now I just say “Michigan” now which is where I spent ten years growing up “along the Canadian border,” I say, “Very cold, yes, yes,” and “Yes, yes, Detroit. Yes, it’s a shame, very sad.” Somehow I feel this paints a more credible picture of my “essence” than the Miami Sound Machine or Disneyworld.
Due to my frustration with the State of Florida and its schizophrenic cultural identity, Michigan is now my American home away from home when in all reality, it’s a place that I’ll never return to, perhaps only in crossing. And absence makes the heart grow fonder, from my little corner in Paris, I’ve cultivated an odd “Michigan pride” that never occurred to me when I lived there, the way some day thinking about Paris will make me weep whereas today the experience is summed up by a crowded metro (on the subject: does anyone else find themselves looking at their old homes on Google Maps with a certain melancholic longing wondering who now lives in that pixelated blob that you once called “home”?).
One evening in a state of insomnia, I starting hashing out a list of all the things I miss in the USA and I realized that it was mostly food related which probably says a great deal about my sense of patriotism.
So here is my American food list (along with a few other additions) that make me homesick:
WHAT I MISS:
Drinks:
-Ginger Ale / Root Beer. You can stumble upon a good Ginger Ale every now and then in France, but never Root Beer. And I’m not talking about A&W. I’m talking about the hard, earthy, edgy, “artisan” Root beer that you’ll come across every now and then. The French love their wine and aside from that, their other beverages are fairly “soft” in flavor. But damn, do I love Ginger Ale (again, not Canada Dry).
-Smoothies everywhere. Smoothies are everywhere in the States. Jamba Juice, Smoothie King, ODWALLA. I miss my soy smoothies, my spirunlina smoothies… Smoothies are cropping up on store shelves in France but they remain very expensive and far from the norm. Breakfast is just ten times better with a smoothie.
-Chocolate milk. Stonyfield Farms makes an organic chocolate milk TO DIE FOR. I am salivating just thinking about it. A lot of dairy farms in the United States make chocolate milk and here, it doesn’t seem to be the norm. You can find some Yoohoo quality stuff for kids, but nothing an “adult” would drink.
-Milkshakes. In the same category as Chocolate milk. Along with the smoothie, milkshakes, your blended drink, is not a French tradition.
-Beer enthusiasts / Microbreweries. In the States, contrary to popular belief about the predominance of Miller and Budweiser, guys love to collect beers. Microbreweries are a creative counter culture and well, they make life a little more interesting.
-Coffee enthusiasts / Coffee shops. And I’m not talking about Starbucks.
Food:
-Barbecue pulled pork. Ah, the 1000’s of different barbecue sauces and the utter sense of debauchery of eating a 3 course meal in a barbecue restaurant (CORNBREAD also inexistant in France).
-(Tex-)Mexican food. The tex-mex joints run by REAL mexicans. Cheap tequillas / horchatas (also in drink category), California avocados, and why not add the chain Chipotle.
-Organic restaurants / Organic grocery stores. Just that effort to fight the widespread belief about what the world thinks about American food and farming. Perhaps half the American population is passionate about organic food…this fever has slowly made its way to France. WHOLE FOODS. Enough said.
-Vegetarian restaurants / Vegetarian options. If you’re a vegetarian in France, good luck.
Not Food:
-Quality stuff on TV (not 3 years later, dubbed in French). Purely for entertainment’s sake.
-Yoga classes, everywhere.
WHAT I DO NOT MISS:
-the FDA. On the subject of food, The Food Drug Administration. When I cannot find a good cheese in the USA because of raw milk restrictions, why is EVERYTHING laced with corn syrup?! (an inexpensive artificial sweetener made from the excess of American corn production whose molecules are more difficult to digest than pure sugar, THUS CAUSING OBESITY)
-”Liberals and Conservatives” and their completely polarizing moral, social, environmental convictions and it’s getting very ugly. “Liberal” does not have the same meaning in France.
-The blur between Church and State.
-The dependence on the automobile. Yes, it’s everywhere but in the States there are many towns where there are no pedestrians, anywhere.
-Numerous “commercial breaks” on TV.
-The obsession with health and fitness. All the marketing devoted to “dieting…” French women are mostly thin… and they don’t belong to a gym! Gyms are not widely accessible here. Sometimes I miss it, other times I don’t.
I’m sure there are more things I could add to both lists… Are you an American expat? (probably not) Do you read this blog? (probably not) What do you miss?