Bonus:: and there's more!

Randomly wrote this at some point during the weekend and forgot to put it into the last entry...



Traipsing across Europe can be fickle for the emotions.

One minute feels like isolation, unfamiliarity, and plain loneliness. Simple and pedantic communication morphs into complicated matches of charades which only sometimes end without frustration.

The next moment invigorates tired spirits and elevates your senses into symphony. Could be the local champagne. Sometimes it’s bewitching to transform the most cynical aspects of my personality into youthful optimism matched only by yoga gurus of the East.

Passing encounters with fascinating people, culinary delights, fabulous views…


Cliché alert: it’s the same, but different in France. My favorite candy: M&M’s. I’ll eat fancy versions, but I prefer the boring originals. Only exception being the dark chocolate ones, seeing as how I’m a dark chocolate whore. This brings me to a point -- apparently the French like M&M’s, but only when they contain:
a) Peanuts
b) Rice Crispy whatevers

This leaves me sad and M&M empty. Jenny in the lab (the American PhD who married Jean, the head of the lab, and now lives/works in France with her two daughters) said her parents were coming at the end of July and could bring me something American if I want it. Since they are from the Midwest, salsa requests would be inappropriate. Therefore, I’m requesting plain M&Ms.

A few things I’ve found amusing the past few weeks –
1) The French keep asking me how you say “bon appetite” in English. The French obsess about this. I could be nibbling on a baguette at my desk – they see it and spew out a “bon appetite!” as if it’s life or death for someone other than the victimized baguette. I keep explaining that we just don’t say the equivalent in the US. Americans only say “have a nice lunch” when they’re feeling abnormally friendly.

This is a hard concept to understand, yet heaven forbid we hold doors open for people. Cultures are give and take.

2) The “ethnic” American food section at the grocery store contains peanut butter, brownie box mix, maple syrup, marshmallow “fluff”, Louisiana hot sauce, and a few other random items. This is located to the left the “Mexican section” stocked with tortillas of all types and random cans of beans and maybe a “mild salsa”. On the other side of the American food lies the Asian cuisine, which has some soy sauce, noodles, and random “Asian” things.