Des bouchées à suivre

            My only qualification for writing about wine and cheese is that I like to eat and drink, so I am not going to proselytize about the hint of oak in the Burgundy or the lingering taste of herbs in the goat cheese. One bite, one sip in one word. Reviews to come! Des bouchées à suivre...

An Accidental Solo

          I accidentally sang solo in a semi-professional choir this evening.

One of my teachers was dying for Kat, Laura, and me to go with her to her choir. I went, reminding her several times that I really can’t sing and despite ten years of piano, really can’t read music. She promised that was okay. I practiced lip-syncing in the car.

As per usual, the Bonneville singing group’s median age was 60, so we obviously fit in swimmingly. They warmed up with the chords as I shrank closer and closer to Kat, who sings beautifully, in hopes that her voice would suffice for my lip-synching. Unfortunately, I forgot to lip sync during part of one song and carried the note. Solo. The director noticed, and somehow knew it was me. He then chastised me in front of the entire choir for singing when I was supposed to have stopped, for singing too fast, and for singing off key. I suppose I even look like I can’t sing.

Then we started singing in Hebrew, which also didn’t go well for me. Volleyball starts again next week, so I will doe-rai-(see) myself out of that choir.

Thonon-les-Bains

             Today we took the train to Annemasse, which is half an hour away and one of the bigger cities closest to us. Annemasse has loads of shopping and restaurants and young people so I think we’ll come back to shop and go out and meet people who aren’t over 50. We had to go to Annemasse to get to Thonon-les-Bains, which is another half an hour away. It’s absolutely beautiful. We spent the day walking around and stopping at little cafes before we took the last train home. Normally everything in Bonneville shuts down around 8pm, but as we were walking home, we saw our friend from the mayor’s office at one of the bars. She owns it with her husband and we had wine with them and their friends (also over 50) and chatted about our days. We are quite popular with the middle aged set (aka the entire town) of Bonneville. Here are some pictures of Thonon:

 
Typical rue dans la ville. There were some chains but mostly little antiques, clothing, and chocolate shops!

 














View of the town hall. I love how all French mayor’s offices have flowerboxes!






The whole town sits on the lake – you can take a furnicular down to the shore. This is Lac Leman – Geneva is far to the left and Zurich is far to the right.














No, it was not cold enough to wear fur.

Vin-ready

             Today was Friday, or “vendredi” hence my lame rhyme, and I visited my third school, L’Ecole des Iles, which sits right along the river. It’s a charming school because it’s newly renovated and has grass and playgrounds galore, but also because the teachers are amazing. The only glitch occurred when I got locked in the school. It has hedges and gates enclosing it and I didn’t want to seem like an idiot on my first day, so I attempted to climb over the hedge, but was unfortunately wearing harem pants, which got stuck, hoping no one had seen me. Looking like a trespasser I walked back through the mud and all the way around the school, peering into windows to look for teachers and getting lost in the hedges yet again, until I found the preschool entrance. The preschool teachers had seen me attempt to hop the fence and told me to always go out the front – as if I hadn’t realized that by now. Luckily, I will not be teaching their kids. Our third roommate arrived today! Kat is from London and has my dream accent. She is lovely and has spent the summer in Ghana working at a women’s empowerment non-profit. She’s here in France and picked this region for the skiing, so now I have a coach along with my newly stolen skiis from Sarah. I just have to cross out Sarah’s name on her skiis, replace it with my self-appointed French name, which I daily alternate between Margaret and Marguerite, and I’m set. Laura, Kat, and I spent the weekend tooling around the house and the town including an accidental walk along the highway and trek uphill through mud (my fault) in search of the supermarket, where I bought only wine and a notebook. There was a sale, so it was obviously worth it, especially since now I know where the McDonalds is.

Back to school

            I visited several of my schools today and met some of the teachers. French schools look similar to American schools, but inside there are classrooms full of extraordinarily well behaved children. They already speak a minimum level of English – or maybe they’re just good fakers – and were very attentive when I barged into their classrooms. The teachers were welcoming and so excited for me to be there. They want me to focus on the oral comprehension and practice as none of them focus on grammar or even written English. They uniformly felt that an emphasis on written English diminishes the level of spoken English – writing the word “spider” on the board before the kids learn to pronounce it will engrain the word as “speeder” into their brains…thus, according to the teachers, France thinks Toby Maguire is “Speederman”. After I met my teachers and begged them all to correct my French at all times, which they happily did, Laura and I went to lunch and had our first friend citing in Bonneville. The woman from the mayor’s office who has been so helpful sat next to us… local social life is officially established. We noticed that the waitresses sat us in the corner at a table that was semi-crummy (literally) for a good ten minutes and did not seem happy to hear our whispered English, but as soon as we spoke French to them and I asked them all sorts of probably annoying and inappropriate questions about tipping, they warmed up and were super friendly. Almost everyone I’ve met here is incredibly kind, once the veneer of their seemingly natural reservedness wares off. As ungrammatically correct and oddly accented as my French is, I am certainly not afraid of using it that definitely makes a difference with les Bonnevillais. I’ve found, in the two whole days that I’ve been here, that once I start asking questions, people instantly warm up and chat with me, but they are often reserved until then. Laura told me that it’s good I’m here because I am, to paraphrase, overly outgoing and nosy, which is, franchement, true and also effective.

House of Mirrors

             I found the French version of Jersey shore and it’s so good. It’s called “Les Ch’tis a Mykonos” and I flip between it and the news so as to be well-balanced…except that I mostly keep the channel on Les Ch’tis. When not watching reality TV today, I was decorating our apartment. Our appartement is not the house of mirrors. In fact, there are no mirrors anywhere. I was left to see if my outfit looked French enough in the reflection of the windows. Actually, we have shutters, which makes me feel very French. Because we’ve no mirrors and the apartment needs to be personalized, we’ve been going to the little corner store every day, which is hilariously called “Cash”. I am already friends with the owner and he’s lent me his hammer and given me decorating advice, probably because I’ve bought half the store already. The inside of the apartment is coming together nicely, but nothing trumps the views from all the windows – the Alpes surround us! Pictures to come soon.

View from my window! 

Lectures du vin

           Bonneville’s mediatheque was just renovated – here’s a picture. I signed up for a library account today and the librarian recommended good French books for me! He gave me books by Marc Levy, Jean-Christophe Grange, Harlan Cobin, and Fred Vargas. He also suggested I try Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth in French, which is a terrific ideas because the language is rich and the vocabulary can be difficult, but I’ve read the book in English. The other novels are mysteries. Reviews to follow! Haute Savoie has a “Universite Populaire” series throughout the towns in the region. UP hosts discussions once a week in Bonneville ranging from politics to the envionment to architecture. Last night, we went back to the library for a talk on Rousseau, given by the dean of Rousseau’s home in Chamonet. He very clearly traced the origins of Rousseau’s theory, from Plato to John Locke, intertwining ancient and modern philosophers to contextualize Rousseau’s social contract. Although I probably missed loads of what he was saying, he was a compelling speaker, particularly because he aided his presentation with diagrams outlining his concepts, such as the power of the individual to accept a ruler. I noticed that the United States was frequently mentioned in his talk and in the question and answer period. He seemed to be implying, in much more specific and eloquent terms, that the US struggled and still struggles to reconcile the fact that to enjoy equality and liberty, certain rights must be relinquished to the state. While obviously that is true, it’s also true in France, but my philosophy nor my French were strong enough to defend the US then. Despite underaging the rest of the audience by about forty years, we really enjoyed the talk. Especially because it was free and there was champagne afterwards. Next week, there’s a talk about the economy and the environment that I’m looking forward to!