Blog Post Drought is Over...

For the record, I have thought about posting every night now for the past two weeks but have simply been too exhausted at the end of the day to even think about turning on my computer!  It is finally Friday night, the little one and L are fast asleep, and I am finally able to spend a few quiet moments digesting the past few weeks and, of course, sharing with you!  So, in no particular order, here are some thoughts/updates from the last two weeks.

1. STUFF!  So, so, so much stuff.  Why did we move some of this crap across the ocean?  In all fairness, since the movers did the packing, I will say that some of this stuff was moved accidentally, but really?  Here is a sampling of the ridiculous crap that we have unpacked in the last week:

-  one box of Peeps, 2/3 eaten
-  an entire beer stein full of U.S. pennies
-  3 toddler pottys. last time I checked, we only had one toddler. and one toilet.
-  a key to my office at OSU (whoops)
-  a plastic bag full of rocks

However, there were also items that we were really, really excited to find.  You will notice a trend here:
-  a jar of homemade pickles!
-  2 cans of refried beans
-  2 cans of black beans
-  1 jar of peanut butter
-  1 bag of steel-cut oats
-  1 jar of Pad Thai sauce

These might seem ridiculous, but these are super hard to find here.  Peanut butter is ridiculously expensive and rare.  Canned back beans and refried beans don't seem to exist, and neither do steel-cut oats.  We have already finished the oats and only have one can of beans left.  At least now we know what to stock up on when we are in North America.


2.  Observations on motor control and motor learning:  it took me 3 weeks to get used to an AZERTY keyboard.  Now when I am at home, I have to change my QWERTY keyboard to AZERTY in order to type properly.  What is amazing to me about this is that I have been using the QWERTY keyboard for years, and I could type without looking at either the keys or even the screen.  Now, even if I try really hard and focus on looking at the keys in QWERTY, I still make mistakes.  This definitely goes to show that when it comes to motor learning, we are not "hard-wired" for anything; rather, our brain circuitry is flexible and can easily learn new information while suppressing the old. 


3.  Bike-commuting to work is awesome.  My commute to work is 10km.  The middle 6 km are all uphill.  By the time I get to work I am huffing and puffing and my legs are jello.  But even over the past week, the commute has become easier.  I am so excited to get back into cycling shape.  And the bright side is that on the way home at night, almost the entire ride is downhill.  SO much better than the other way around!  However, biking here is definitely an adventure sport.  In France, there is a traffic rule where people on your right have the right of way.  Sounds logical, but what it means in practice is that you can be cruising along a street, with no stop sign, and the jackass who pulls up to the intersection coming from your right can turn left directly in front of you.  Technically, he has the right of way and you are supposed to be reactive enough to slam on your brakes to avoid T-boning his car... or, if you are on a bike, to avoid being thrown over the hood of his car.  This morning, after another driver turned left just in front of me, I yelled so loudly that he stopped his car, rolled down his window, and proceeded to debate me about how he had the right of way.  What was so typically French about the whole exchange is that as we were blocking traffic and yelling at each other about who should have stopped, we were still "vousvoyer"-ing each other (sorry, anglophones, there is no good translation here - basically in French, there are two ways to refer to "you" - a polite way, vous, or an informal way, tu).  


4.  Immigration Update: yesterday we had the great privilege of spending the afternoon at the OFII (Office Française de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration), where we were supposed to have our visas converted into cartes de séjour.  I say "supposed to" because I was able to get mine, but L was told to come back after the baby was born because the process involves a chest xray, which she did not want to be exposed to during pregnancy.  What is ridiculous is that the immigration consultant that we are working with even emailed them ahead of time to see if L could still complete the rest of the visit, and got an email back saying it would be no problem.  Again, as with other government offices in France, the answer you get is totally dependent on who you deal with, even within the same agency.  As for me, I got shuttled through various appointments including a chest xray (where you stand around in a very large room wearing nothing but your underpants while the tech sets up the machine - no paper gowns here!), a "welcome to France" movie, a personal interview to assess my French capabilities, and a doctors visit.  I was "assigned" to two full days of training on "life in France" that I must attend in order to be able to renew my carte de séjour in November.


5.  Being a lesbian in France means you get to have excellently awkward conversations with others.  We cannot marry here (our Canadian marriage is not valid) and lesbians cannot adopt kids, and in general it seems like gays stay pretty closeted unless they are in certain parts of Paris.  Since we are so matter-of-fact about our relationship, we get to surprise unsuspecting people with our lesbian-ness.  In a café, with Leah and Finn, after chatting with the owner for 10 minutes or so about how we moved here in part so that the kids could grow up bilingual, and that L was pregnant with our second son, the café owner asked us if we were sisters.  Um, no.  Sisters don't usually have kids together.  Yesterday during my doctor's appointment, after L's name came up, the doctor said to me incredulously "wait... you are with a woman?  that is not very common in France."  During one of my interviews for my job, my interviewer laughed and corrected me when I referred to L as my wife and said "the word is husband".  Needless to say all of these conversations ended up with awkward pauses when I informed them that indeed, L is my wife.  Good times!


6.  Hilariously inappropriate grocery store music: often in the supermarket, English language music is playing, and they keep the volume turned up pretty loud.  Last weekend as I was shopping, a folksy chicks-with-guitars type song came on.  The chorus included the words "I want to talk you about my girl... 'cause I loooove my girl" and I chuckled because I thought to myself, "no one here realises this is a love song about two chicks. Tee hee!"  The second and third verses get progressively more, ahem, descriptive about their relationship, until the lyrics were so dirty that I was cracking up out loud in the extension cord aisle.  People are obliviously shopping for cereal while two chicks merrily sing in English about f*cking.  And no, there is no bleeping of naughty words here.  For those interested, the song is called "My Girl" by June et Lula.  If you click on the link below you can hear the song in its entirety... it gets funnier and funnier with every verse.  Especially if you imagine yourself hearing it over the store loudspeaker while shopping for extension cords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA6DJRfsVbs

Ok... that's it for now.  No more two week droughts for blog posting. More soon!

- E