Thanksgiving en France

When I asked my students what they thought Thanksgiving was, most replied that it was a fête for Christmas and we ate turkey... Well, they got it half right at least! I spent the majority of my lessons over the last two weeks discussing the history and traditions of Thanksgiving and teaching any relevant vocabulary or phrases... and the more I talked about it, the more I realized how sad I really was not to be home for it. 

Luckily, I wasn't alone in feeling this way so a bunch of my friends got together for a Francegiving chez Maria's! This was surprisingly hard to pull off, for a few reasons...
1. Food-- most of what we are accustomed to eating for Thanksgiving is not readily available. Turkey? Not until closer to Christmas, so 3 rotisserie chickens took its place. Pumpkin/Cranberry in any form? Nada, so we did without. Pies? Nope,so we got an apple tart and some cookies.
2. Cooking-- not only had none of us ever done Thanksgiving on our own... none of us had an oven at our disposal!
3. Timing-- well, it's not a holiday here, so we had to work the Thursday of, so we switched our Francegiving feast to Friday.


Maria, Jessica, and I began preparing for our 8pm dinner around 5pm... with wine, crackers, and lots of snacking, of course. Because we had bought rotisserie chickens, we didn't really have much to prepare for in advance, so we socialized and decorated the apartment instead!

Everyone else arrived around 8pm with their own dishes in hand ready to head to the microwave to reheat everything before eating! I somehow ended up with chicken cutting duty... with a knife and a spoon because all the other utensils were taken. But eventually, the microwave stopped beeping, I had managed to tear apart the chickens, and we set our table and got ready to eat! I was pretty impressed that we managed to pull off such a feast... chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, glazed carrots, mac and cheese bites, salad, bread, apple tart, and lots of wine! And at the end? Plenty of leftovers of course.

The country is a 5 minute walk.

I ended up spending the rest of the weekend in Saint Etienne to really get a break from suburbia and enjoy a couple nights out with my friends and visiting the local Christmas market. Taking time for myself continues to be one of the smartest things I can do. Whether it's a weekend downtown with friends, or traveling alone to a new town for a day, I have found I definitely need to remove myself from au pair-land at least every few weeks to stop myself from feeling so isolated. I mean, my little suburb is cute, but it is on the edge of what would be considered the country, so there's not a lot going on out here and getting places is a challenge.

I think this has played into my homesickness and, I have to say, I am incredibly surprised that I am truly aching to get home, even if it's just for a bit. After discussing it with my family, I booked a roundtrip ticket from Paris to Chicago for the holidays. It feels irrational and even ungrateful, but I feel like I have to do it. Most of my friends either have family coming in from the U.S. or live close enough (England, Germany, Spain) to go home with no real issues. Initially, I was trying to make the most of being able to take two weeks to travel on my own wherever I wanted in Europe... but I quickly realized I'd end up feeling pretty lonely, especially over holidays.

I never considered myself a softy for the holidays, but maybe it comes around to that age old saying, you don't know what you have until it's gone, because I have never been more excited to get home. I think I just need a time out from France-- the daily stress of living and working in a different country has taken its toll, and in a different way than what I experienced in Montpellier.  I have never been homesick before, so I am really hoping this trip home will relieve it long enough for me to feel like I can enjoy the rest of my 170 days in France to the best of my ability!

For all my friends and family in Chicago who are interested, I'll be getting in on December 21st and leaving January 2nd, so please get in touch! And so begins my countdown to Chicago... 18 days!