Going to the Doctors

I’ve recently made another trip to the doctors as a result of the bad economy. I’ve been leaving Toulouse every weekend this past month to take advantage of having Fridays off. The lack of sales has forced my company to shut down to save on employee pay and energy costs. Taking advantage of three day weekends, I headed to Spain to go skiing, Paris to stroll down the Champs-Elysées, and the Côte d'Azur to go boating …. and finally my body said no more. While in Cannes I came down with a flu that has morphed into bronchitis. A body ache, sore throat, and runny nose made made me slow down.

Realizing that I was loosing my voice and coughing to the point where conversation courses were no longer desirable, I headed to the French doctors. I’ve commented before on the informality of the French doctors. Instead of sterile, bright white facilities the French doctors offices have more of a dingy, comfy homespun feel. I went in yesterday, paid 22 euros to have the doctor check me out and declare that I have bronchitis and then got a list of four medicines to take including antibiotics. He took my Carte Vital which identifies me in the “sécurité sociale” system and tells the system to reimburse me at 70 percent of the cost. The reimbursement will come directly into my bank account. He also filled out a piece of paper that declares me sick so that I can stay at home and not go to work. If you miss work in France for health reasons you need this little piece of paper. I later found out from my flat-mate that I am actually obliged to stay home for the total days that the doctor prescribed, which in my case is two. Otherwise the company will be held responsible for any health problems that might happen on the job.

My doctor hand wrote a list of medications and told me to take it to the pharmacy. I was surprised that anyone could read the scribbles, but the pharmacists managed just fine. The total price for the medications (cough syrup, Advil, an expectorant, and an antibiotic) was about 10 euros. My job does not give me the full coverage health plan called a “mutual,” so I pay 30 percent of any medical care and medications. For about 20 euros out of pocket after re-imbursements I paid for my doctors visit and medication.

I did however have to go to three pharmacies before I found the antibiotics. At one I got the typical French response – no they didn’t have the medication and no he couldn’t tell me where I might be able to find it. I had to take a deep breath and try not to get upset at the old man. Even pharmacists will not go out of their way to give you useful information! It is the customer service rule of no customer service. I imagined myself expiring on the doorstep and it being this pharmacist’s fault, and then I pulled it together and went to the next pharmacy where I found the medication.

Interestingly enough my doctor seemed pessimistic that the French system would survive. I can see why it might run the tax payers into the ground and the system has a tendancy towards over-medication. The French consume huge amounts of prescriptions and are the world leaders in anti-depressant usage. I have one acquaintance who takes so many medications that the they are doing more harm than his other issues. But despite the oversight issue, the French system makes medical help possible for someone like me on a tight budget. And merci bien for that! I wouldn't want to think about the costs in the US for similar treatement.

How Do You Talk About Race?

I just listened to an NPR Talk of the World podcast called “How Does Your Country Talk about Race?” Don Gonyea of NPR asks a worldwide audience if the election of Obama has changed the way people in other countries discuss race, and if so how.

The piece is fascinating for me because it focuses heavily on the race conversation in France and illustrates many of the differences between the U.S. and France concerning this topic. As always, I’m a huge fan of NPR and suggest the podcast.

Living here in France has helped illustrate for me the influence of culture on the way people analyze issues and think. You might hope you analyze situations independently, but move to another country and you realize how deeply your cultural upbringing dictates what you think. One of the areas where I see this in France is the resistance to acknowledging any racial or ethnic differences as a means of creating equality.

The French, in theory, want everyone to be equal, and so refuse to recognize racial differences at the political level. In France you cannot ask someone to identify their race, ethnicity or religious affiliation. Thus, there are no hard statistics in France that include any of these categories.

However, as Pap Ndiaye, a historian, professor and guests on Talk of the World points out, non-white French citizens are routinely discriminated against in France. There are no statistics to prove it, but you will find very few Algerians or Africans (or people from other non-white ethnicities) in high positions in government or business in France.

The belief in “egalité” is held to with such vigor in France that people become offended when race is brought into the conversation at all. Recently, a French student of mine who works with me to learn English became livid during a conversation that brought up cultural differences. We were reading a short article describing how Athabaskans, a North American language group of Native Americans, dislike speaking when meeting a stranger. The article said that when an Athabaskan speaker is uncertain of the relationship she should have with a stranger, she prefers not to speak until the relationship becomes more clear. Thus, “introductions” are rather silent affairs where nothing much is said.

After my French student read this he could barely speak, he was so frustrated. He threw down the paper I had given him and exclaimed that the article was completely racist. He explained that for him, saying that Athabaskans speak less is racist. Clearly, my student thinks it is wrong to generalize based on ethnicity.

This summer I was trying to explain to a different student why I liked Obama over Hillary Clinton, and one of my many reasons was that he was black. My student became visibly angry and upset by what I had said. So, I explained again: yes, I think it is important that Obama is black and that I think his race changes what he can do for the country. My student vehemently argued that a candidate’s race should not change the way you think about him, that I should want a good president and should ignore everything else. I argued that, all else being equal, a good black president could do more for race relations in our country than a good white president.

Obama has been and still is extremely popular in France. This is not because he is black. I personally believe Obama is loved in France for one very simple reason: he is not Republican like the much hated, much ridiculed George W. He is adored here for that reason as well as for his charisma and the sense of honesty he emits. Although the French are hesitant to dwell on his race, Obama’s election has indeed sparked a conversation about the absence of non-whites in French politics. The thought that the U.S. – a country the French consider fundamentally racist – could elect a black president before France has caused shock waves here and a bit of introspection. There is now also more talk about “positive discrimination,” the French way of saying affirmative action which has been fairly taboo up until now. This change can be seen with the recent appointment of Yazid Sabeg, a supporter of affirmative action, as Commissioner of Diversity.

Of course, differences do exist and people in France remark racial differences and discriminate accordingly. In the NPR piece, an English instructor working in Paris talks about how his students with Algerian roots will describe themselves as “French” only to have a white French student correct them by saying, “no, you are Algerian.” The first student will then respond that he is a French citizen, that he has always lived in France, and that he is indeed French. As in this example, the adjective “French” is often reserved for people who have historically resided in France. French thus means “white” French.

Differences exist. They are not always good - it is not a good thing that Africans are discriminated against in France nor African-Americans in the United States. But if you don’t acknowledge differences you can’t acknowledge systematic abuses taking place, nor celebrate diversity.

I dislike being judged as a certain way simply because I am American. No, I don’t eat at McDonald's all the time, no, I do not think we should have gone into Iraq, no, I don’t always think about money. And yet it is helpful to talk about “American tradition,” “American culture” and “Americans.” I often make general comparisons between French and American cultures because they are fundamentally different, even if each individual is particular and unique. For example, there is a very different conversation about race going on in the two countries, and a different approach on how to discourage racial discrimination.

A Christmas Dessert - Bûche de Noël

The Bûche de Noël I made this Christmas. The white shapes sprouting from my yule log? Meringue mushrooms of course!

If I had stayed in France, I would have wanted apple pie at Christmas. As I instead flew to Sacramento, California for the holidays, I wanted to bring back a taste of a French Christmas. So, I decided to make a Bûche de Noël, a traditional French dessert that we would call a yule log cake.

Around mid-December, Bûche de Noël began to appear in the pastry-shop windows of Toulouse. "Bûche" is the French word for log. They are small, cylindrical jelly roll cakes shaped and decorated as yule logs. These otherwise simple, brown cakes become a slice of woodland wonderment with little forest figures, sprigs of holly and a heavy frosting of powder-sugar adorning them. Small dear, a lone ax and mushrooms often complete the woodsy look.

Making the cake is a bit tricky for beginners. You have to roll a sheet of baked sponge cake into a cylinder shape, let it cool, and then go back and ice the curling cake carefully, trying not to brake it. Then you cover the entire log with frosting and add your woodland details on top. When the cake is cut, there is a spiral of frosted cake reminiscent of the rings in a log.

The most difficult part of my cake-baking experience was the meringue needed for the mushrooms and frosting. The Julia Child recipe I used called for meringue mushrooms and crystallized caramel cobweb decorations, two things that are normally beyond my pastry talents. I had to throw out two trail batches of meringue gone bad before I got it right! One tasted horribly burned and the other was too stiff. I decided to ditch the sugary cobweb, although I've never had a cobwebbed cake and it sounded tempting. But Christmas Eve dinner was fast approaching I had been yule logging most of my day away, so my cake was cobweb-less.

But, a culinary experience with Julia Child is bound to be worth it in the end. I was ultimately happy with my meringue mushrooms. They look very impressive once on the cake! And the bûche got many compliments which I should thank Julia for.

Of course, my family didn’t give up the apple pie tradition, and we ate a bit of both pie and bûche. However, I can see visions of yule logs dancing in our future Christmas Eve’s!


You can see more on how to make a “Bûche de Noël” here

The recipe I used was Julia Child's and can be found in the recipe book Christmas Memories. She makes it with an almond sponge cake and rum flavored frosting and I'm a fan.

Home. Which One?

I just got back to Toulouse after a two-week vacation in my hometown in Sacramento, California. Over vacation, I realized “home” was getting to be a tricky word.

While sipping coffee at Java City café just blocks from the Capitol in Sacramento, I mentioned to a high school friend that I was going “home” just after New Year’s. “Wait, you mean back to France?” she asked. Yes, exactly, home. After living in Toulouse, France for six months, my idea of home fluctuates constantly between France and California.

My friend also now lives far from Sacramento. She pointed out that we both use the word “home” to refer to the home where we are not. Sacramento is home for me when I am in Toulouse, and France is home when in California. For my friend, it is the same, except with New York.

Maybe this tendency to refer to the home where we are not is acknowledgment that we always feel slightly out of place these days in either home. We think we know our old hometown, but it seems unfamiliar at the same time. My friend used to go to cookie outings at this very same Java City with her mom when she was ten. But now she knows the cafés better in New York and has trouble finding her way around downtown Sacramento, where Java City is located.

Coming back to Sacramento after living in Toulouse was a bit of a shock for me because everything is the same, but seems different. The town, streets and people were familiar, but I also saw them with the French equivalent freshly imprinted in my mind. This made the familiar novel and absolutely intriguing.

The streets in Sacramento were amazingly expansive after getting used to the treacherously narrow “pathways” of streets in downtown Toulouse. They are so big in Sacramento that sometimes it felt a park had been covered with cement and road markings. I could see the sky stretch out forever above me while waiting for the light to change to green, and it was strangely awesome.

After months of thinking of coffee cups as the size of a shot glass, the immensity of the Venti at Starbucks in the US was breathtaking. We drink these tubs of coffee? This is the size of 50 French coffee cups. However, the taste of coffee with chocolate, milk and whip cream in it was a welcome one, this such a good idea, no wonder it comes in Venti!

My brother and I drove to the grocery store one night to pick up a few things. In Toulouse, most groceries close by 7 pm. But my brother and I waltzed into the one near our parents house at 9pm, and this wasn't one of the small, over priced stores that are open late in France, this was the full blown supermarket. I also didn’t have to lug my bags home as I usually do here in Toulouse, because, we had a vehicle! What a relief. When checking out I had a moment of doubt, should I help the bagger bag my groceries, or would that be rude? I decide to help bag because I’m now in the habit of it. I don’t think anyone has bagged my groceries since I’ve been in Toulouse, and absolutely no one has asked to help me out to my car. I probably should have accepted the help out in Sacramento just for the novelty of it.

Cheering at New Year’s was incredibly awkward given my new habit of looking directly in peoples’ eyes as I clink glasses. How strange that all my American friends avoided my stare! I felt very distant from them and a bit hurt until I reminded myself that looking deeply into another’s eyes while cheering in the US is more a sign of passionate love than friendly good wishes.

Returning to Toulouse felt comfortable and natural, which was also unexpected. The streets are still decorated with holiday lights and I was happy to be back to what now feels like home. Tomorrow I am going to the prefecture for the third time to get my provisional visa paperwork updated. This is a horrendous experience and probably the task I dread most in France. I will have trouble controlling my frustration over the lack of organization and the rudeness of the government workers. I will undoubtedly curse the French system and wonder why they can’t implement a more efficient one, like we have back home in the US. But for now, it is nice to be surprised by the novelty of my hometown of Sacramento, as well as the ease with which I re-enter my new one in Toulouse.

Release Party, Beaujolais Nouveau

The third Thursday of November in France is the nation-wide release party for this year's batch of French wines. Today, grapes harvested in August and September appeared for the first time transformed into wine with labels sporting the year 2008.

The Beaujolais nouveau celebration is one of mediocrity. Does anyone actually love the Beaujolais nouveau? No. Do people love celebrating with wine? Yes, always. So, on this day one week before Thanksgiving, French are out in restaurants and cafés tasting this year's vintage. Does it taste like raspberry? Banana? Does it matter? Like Christmas, birthdays and Valentine’s, the expectation created by the event might overshadow any enjoyment of the wine itself.

Beaujolais is a light, fruity red wine with little tannin. It comes from the region north of Lyon in central France. Part of the charm of this wine is that it can be drunk immediately and is easy to drink. It is not expensive and is better and more fruity the younger it is. Which is why it is ready right now, just after being bottled, to be quaffed by the thirsty.

My own opinion? Pas mal this year. Raspberry? Banana? Maybe some smoky traces? Does it even matter? You can use it as an excuse to get together with friends, be joyful, complain about the bad wine or just hang out and mark the passage of yet another year.

Dessert in Disguise

This is not a hamburger. . .



. . . this is the dessert my Grandfather ordered while in Toulouse. How very Franco-American of him. The French love presentation, Americans love hamburgers. This dish could help ease cultural misunderstandings between the two countries.

The "coca-cola" is iced coke in a very very miniature glass, the fries are cookies garnished with raspberry "ketchup's" sauce, the "bun" is a macaroon cookie, the "cheese" caramel and the "burger" chocolate. The concoction falls squarely between sounding yummy and awful, no?

Obama Wins Election

Living in France without fellow American expats in my social circle, I had a very different kind of election night.

I was awoken just after 5 AM today with news of the election in the US. Friends, who were nine hours behind me in California, called full of excitement to say that YES!, Obama had passed the 270 votes needed, and, Don’t worry, you can now be proud to be an American abroad! These words proved true almost immediately and it didn’t even take Bush being shoved off the playing field to happen.

Obama’s acceptance speech fed into the deep-rooted values and expectations that define how we as Americans understand ourselves. His climb to the presidency seems to affirm the American dream that we so strongly cling to, that we as individuals, communities and a nation have the power to become something better through hope, energy, and hard work.

Watching Obama speak live in Chicago, I was struck by the power of these values to create change in a positive direction. Far away from the frenzy and awe in Chicago, I burst into tears of relief and joy that we as a country had chosen a black president. I cried because we had chosen someone who includes gays, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and the disabled in his acceptance speech. And I sobbed because we had chosen someone who highlights the need for compassion for others and service. From far away, the dream of moving in a forward direction towards a brighter future seemed kinetic, alive and possible.

I also shed a few tears because I was suddenly aware that I identified so strongly with the unyielding hope that is sewn into our cultural personality, and I felt a part of that hopeful American community. My optimism for Obama and the US put me in strong contrast to the general French perspective. In France, to be optimistic is to be ignorantly blind to the catastrophe that will ultimately arrive. Ask your average French person if he thought Obama would be elected prior to the elections and you would have heard a resounding no, the US is fundamentally racist. Talk to the same person now that Obama has been elected and he will be doubtful that Obama can orchestrate much change before he is assassinated by a gun-wielding backwoodsman.

Hope might not have been a good campaign slogan in France. And yet the words "hope" and "change" have been all over the French media for months thanks to the extensive coverage of the elections. The breadth of this coverage has been astounding by American standards; it is very much everywhere, everyday and puts our coverage of any other country's elections to shame. However, many French have had their fill of such ubiquitous coverage and are relieved to get Obama in office and off the airwaves and news pages.

Despite their lack of hope for the American electorate’s ability to elect Obama, the French do see him as a positive change and are generally Obamamaniacs. Around 85% of the French wanted Obama to win the election! And yet there are some very strong differences between the left here and Obama’s version, and many French might not realize how Obama might not be everything a French leftist party would be. Two differences are Obama’s support of the death penalty, and the French self-proclaimed socialism, a nomenclature Obama avoids.

The question of Obama’s race plays an even larger role in France than in the US. I find France a deeply racist country, but the French think of American racism as more widespread and far-reaching than their version. Thus, the French feel Obama’s election marks a shocking turn away from traditional American racism and is significant mainly for this reason. Obama’s race is part of his appeal for many in the US, while a reason not to vote for him for others. His race actually energized many people, both black and white, to vote for him, a fact that is lost on French cynicism. In the US the fact that he is part Kenyan and black helps him encapsulate the American dream of progressing towards a more ideal version of ourselves. It is just a shame, and ironic, that it took Bush to push us towards Obama.