C'est Nice

It’s a good thing blogs aren’t children; otherwise I’d have been arrested for neglect long ago. Whatever. You know you like it.

So, before I say anything else, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. It’s around noon here, which means it’s 6 AM on the east coast, 3 AM on the west. All across the USA people are suffering at airports and bus stations during the busiest travel day of the year, and hundreds of thousands of people are waking up far earlier than they would like to start cooking the damn Turkey. Mmmm... damned Turkey...

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! Thanksgiving, or as my French students like to say, “Sanksgeeveeng.”

“No, it’s THanksgIvIng.”

“Sanksgeeveeng.”

“THanks...”

“THanks...”

“...gIvIng”

“...gIvIng”

“Thanksgiving.”

“Sanksgeeveeng.”

Ah, well. Aside from the palm tree that I can see from my window, Nice has even embraced the Thanksgiving... spirit? That’s not right... let’s say the general Thanksgiving mise en scene, yeah? Of course, all I mean by that is that the temperature has (somewhat sneakily, if you ask me) dropped down to highs of 12° C (52° F), which is fine, but lows of 3°C (37° F!). Not cool, especially since I’d (overly optimistically, I’ll admit) opted to leave my winter coat at home (don’t worry, mom, I’ve got plenty of layers). This week saw the first time I was able to see my breath, and while that’s cool for, like, the first ten minutes, it gets old fast.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my Thanksgiving plans are meeting at the train station at 5:30 to catch a 5:45 train to Monaco, of all places, where there is an American restaurant/bar which has a fairly pricey prix fixe (28€ à volonté, or as we say in American, “All You Can Cram Down Your Gullet”), but does purport to have the trimmings: Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce (cranberry has not been easy to translate via explanations, yesterday I spent five minutes trying to get my class to figure out what they were; we went through fraise, framboise, myrtille, mûr, groseille, cassis, raisin, and cerise... strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, currant, blackcurrant, grape and cherry), and a selection of pies, including pumpkin and apple (outside of that, I don’t really care what other pies I can select). I’ve never been to this place before, aptly named “Stars’n’Bars,” but hopefully it’ll be all right. Honestly, it sounds kind of like a TGI Friday’s type place, but I’m banking that it will feel homely and have that kind of ex-Pat sense of unity, and not that “the dog ate the turkey, so we had to come to Denny’s for Thanksgiving dinner” sentiment.

This, of course, is where I start complaining about my situation, so, before you all start taking the piss out of me... uh, er, I mean, giving me shit (those Britishisms just sneak right in there, don’t they?) let me say, that, yes, this Thanksgiving will go down in the record books as, at the very least, one of the most classy-sounding of all time. Although the original plans to cook Thanksgiving dinner fell through (mostly due to lack of oven, although lack of enterprise didn’t help either), our trip this evening will accomplish one of the other all-important Thanksgiving traditions of traveling some distance to the meal. Granted, there’s no delayed flights or changes in Chicago/Detroit/Denver, but still, it gives me that warm, squishy feeling in my heart.

That being said, I’d much, much, MUCH prefer to be en route via LIRR to Shelter Island, NY, where the fam is getting together for what sounds like a Thanksgiving so gosh-darn traditional that Folger’s is thinking of making a commercial. I believe the Beckerman and Shaida contingents of the Palmore side of the family are making it happen, and as anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of having eaten while my uncle Chris is cooking, there’s sure to be one hum-dinger of a feast. Listen, guys, if you want to FedEx me some leftovers, I’d probably risk the food-poisoning, so don’t let that deter you.

In my classes this week I’ve been doing kind of a half-assed lesson on Thanksgiving. I’m in a little bit of a bind: I’ve found some Thanksgiving activities online that are perfectly geared for the skill-level of students I have, the only problem is that they all are 100% bullshit about Pilgrims and Indians and brotherhood and all of that crap that I’d be hard-pressed to sell to a seven-year-old, let alone French teenagers. Also, whereas with most American holidays they have a slim idea of what it’s all about, they are totally clueless about Thanksgiving. Well, no, they know we all eat turkeys, but after that, they are totally lost. Anyway, my lesson has included a twenty minute crash-course in Thanksgiving, which is difficult, because I realize that I can’t totally remember the story all that well myself. I know, bad American, but hey, it’s been a long time since I was in Miss Roe’s class in 2nd grade (I didn’t get too much Thanksgiving propaganda after that, having moved to San Francisco, where my teacher was much more readily apt to challenge the Man, especially the white man who killed all the people who were here before we got on some damn boat).

So, this is how I’ve been telling it: Once upon a time there was a Church of England. It was obligatoire to be a part of it, and to not be a part of it was interdit. There were several groups of people who did not want to be a part of the CoE, and so they were told they could leave England for the New World, and then they wouldn’t be persécuté so gosh darn much (I left out the whole detour to the Pays-Bas for simplicity’s sake). So, they land in Plymouth and find out they have no idea how to survive. They meet some Native Americans, who help them survive the first winter, and to celebrate, the following harvest (moisson) they had a big feast to celebrate, which had a big old turkey as it’s centerpiece.

I let that soak in for a few seconds before I break out the awful truth: That’s what the story is supposed to be, anyway. We don’t know exactly how it happened, but more or less, the colonists took advantage of the Indians, gave them some diseases they had no immunity to, and pretty much wiped them out. The whole pretext for the holiday is pretty much a lie. I end with saying that it’s become a pretty important family-oriented holiday in the states, and because it’s more or less secular, it has a reputation of being more traditionally American than any other holiday (I spare them my theories on how Halloween is actually the most American holiday, and I guess I’ll spare you guys, too).

We end by watching clips of the episode of The West Wing where C.J. has two turkeys in her office and has to choose one to receive a presidential pardon and the other gets killed any eaten (“I chose Eric [the turkey] because Troy doesn’t like to be touched, which we’re certainly not going to execute him for.”) By the way, has anyone noticed how unbelievably weird turkeys are? Besides that gobble thing they have hanging down from there necks, what’s with that flap of skin they have over their beak that goes up and down? And, I’m sorry, but “gobble” is not a normal noise.

All right, I guess that’s all for today. I hope everyone has a warm and pleasant Thanksgiving, and know, that, as much as you wish you were in Monaco tonight, I wish I was with you, aux États-Unis, in a post-food stupor, the foremost concern in my mind being how on earth I’m going to stand up.

Gobble, gobble.