Pictionary 2

These signs were sent to me by my sister from Paris:

Rabbits use the subway too.

Run towards a white brick

stand with your hands on your hips!

Just Nod and Smile

My sister’s Parisian travels are really inspiring me recently. I’m hoping to get a guest post out of her soon! She recently attended her first cocktail party with one of my cousins. It reminded me of my first cocktail party in France where I managed to insult the hostess. It was my first trip to France. I thought I was doing fairly well at comprehension though constructing sentences was still a challenge. I could remember nouns but not not grammar structure. So I was relying on the old “nod and smile.” I was having a great time at the dance since I’m always down for dancing. And I was in awe of everything. So part way through the night the hostess asked me a question about the party. I had no idea what she said so to express my enthusiasm I just resorted to the old “nod and smile” thinking I was showing my pleasure with the evening. The reactions of shocked surprise clued me in that something wasn’t right…When I back-pedaled asking her to repeat someone explained she had asked if I was bored. So my recommendation? Don’t rely on that nod and smile, though maybe the huge smile on my face clued them in that I hadn’t understood…

I Dream of Nachos: in Paris

I recently did a post for my friend Lee over at Nachos NY. He and the nacho team are doing a hands on (or taste-buds on) investigation for the best nachos in NY. But they are also looking for nachos abroad and asked if I had any expertise on nachos in Paris. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote:

With nachos on the brain and (increasingly) in my dreams, Lee asked me to do a post about nachos abroad. My first reaction was that I’d never eaten them in Paris. But then I started thinking about how Paris has all of the making for perfect nachos, except for one key ingredient: the tortilla chip. I can’t even remember eating potato chips in Paris. Maybe once in a little packaged box, more like individual servings of Pringle’s. And this was only on a picnic-the only time sandwiches and chips can make an appearance…

If this whet your appetite for more: click here!

The old shake of the hand

I’ve never been good at figuring out the appropriate way to greet people. Usually I’m a reluctant hugger. After being laughed at by my friends for my inability to give good hugs, I was forced to learn on the orchestra trip to South Africa. This involved me having to repeatedly hug a bunch of my friends and actually squeezing them instead of my usual limp-noodle approach of just letting them embrace me while I tense up and wait for it to be over.

My French cousins have always been reluctant huggers, but  then they found greeting with the double cheek kiss the norm. Arguably full frontal impact is more contact than the cheek kiss, but the face time closeness still seems more intimate to me. One time a group of French exchange students made fun of American students for just nodding and saying “sup” when they passed each other. They couldn’t believe how coldly we greet each other. From my point of view it was surprising to suddenly be kissing people I’d never met before. I will admit that it did grow on me to the point that when I first returned home I felt rather distant from my friends when we didn’t kiss in greeting.

So work has given me whole new set of troubles with greetings. I’ve tried to work on the usual firm hand shake to give a good first impression. But at my work after the initial intro the fist pound is the most common, which is one I like a lot. Really it’s just the right amount of physical contact with people I’m just getting to know. I also find it amusing since I have fairly tiny hands so fist pounding a larger male hand looks comical. Basically the point of my story is the awkwardness I’ve had trying to do hand shakes. You could tell the first time one of the guys at work tried to do the hand shake thing with me where you slap hands, slide down the hand and then snap  off of each others fingers? Have I lost you? You’d recognize it if you saw it. Anyway, the whole thing is supposed to be over fairly quickly when you snap off each other’s hands, but somehow I didn’t snap off of his hand fast enough and ended up holding his hand awkwardly at the end. And even I know that is not what is supposed to happen! I thought that attempt was awkward until the next one… I tried to initiate it, thinking I was cool. But I didn’t know where to go from the start and ended up just shaking his hand like we were first being introduced. But not even a firm hand shake at that since I wasn’t trying for that when I started. The look of confusion on his face was priceless. After that it has been all first pounds. Safer-except for the ring I wear on my finger that may or may not be slicing people’s knuckles. But since my hands are tiny and the men’s fists I’ve been pounding are about 2x the size I’m banking on them not noticing my minuscule ring…The first time someone gets a bloody knuckle will be the last time I greet someone at work.

Taste This

Since I complained in my last post about pictures not having taste I thought I should write a little bit about tasting other countries. The first time I had sushi was in Rome. And the first time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken was in the Beijing airport. I’ve eaten Subway now in both South Africa and in China. And I’ve had to pay for ketchup and mustard at McDonald’s in Italy. All of these food anomalies aren’t because I don’t like trying foreign foods in other counties. I actually love trying new foods (and if you think about it since I had never had sushi or KFC before I was actually really excited to try them for the first time-probably more so the sushi than the KFC…).

I think part of the reason I end up trying non “traditional” cuisine in addition to “traditional” cuisine in foreign countries is that it can be daunting trying to figure out a foreign menu. One of my favorite meals in China was in Beijing where we went to a restaurant that did not have a menu in English. It was a little after lunch time so there were only one or maybe two other groups eating there. We looked around for another place to eat, but the food on the other patrons’ plates at that restaurant looked too delicious to resist. So the helpful staff allowed us to order by pointing to other peoples’ plates and bringing out some things based on our previous choices. This was my first taste of Chinese food (the night before had been some sort of pizza buffet with the grossest tasting soft serve ice cream I have ever had) and I loved it.

But finding a place that is willing to put up with foreigners trying to decipher the menu is not always easy. My roommate and my first night in Rome ended with both of us in tears after trying to order a pizza. We were deposited at our host family’s house around 5 or 6pm after traveling all day and we hadn’t learned yet that Italians tend to eat around 9 or 10pm. So we were unaware that our host lady was going to offer us a nice dinner around 9:30pm. So we decided to go out on our own. The professors managing our trip had given us our weekly allowance but they had only given us bills in 20 euro increments. When our pizza was rung up it only cost about 3 euros each and some odd change. When we tried to give our 20 euro bill the woman refused it (We later realized that Italians expect exact or close to exact change when making purchases). We didn’t know any Italian yet so we did not quite understand the problem nor did we have any bills smaller than a 20. The woman kept shouting stuff at us in Italian and we kept trying to hand her our bill until she finally took it and gave us back non-exact change (though i think the error was in our favor) and told us to leave.

It also can be hard to know what kind of food you are actually getting. When I was in both Italy and Brazil the idea of being a vegetarian was not very well understood. In Italy my vegetarian friends in my tour group were served chicken soup with chicken cubes floating in it instead of pasta with meat sauce. In Brazil meat seemed to be implied even when not listed on the menu. One time I ordered what was advertised as a 4 cheese calzone which when it arrived had ham chunks in it. And another time I ordered what I thought looked like a fruit pastry only to bite in and realize it was filled with red sauce and meatballs-not the breakfast I was expecting.

Sometimes it’s interesting to try food you think you recognize in another country. For example my cousin and I are obsessed with the Lipton Peach Ice Tea found in every other country I’ve been to besides the US. I don’t know what makes it taste so good, but it is different than any I’ve tried here (but don’t drink it before a long car ride or you will for sure need to make a stop). Also Nestle makes different treats in other countries too.

I think part of the reason I’ve been drawn to these unusual food choices is homesickness and a need for comfort food, either on my part or on the part of my travel companions. In Italy my study abroad group went for sushi because we were searching for something other than pasta or pizza for dinner. We also went to the Hard Rock Cafe for a taste of home. (I preferred the sushi much more than hanging around with a bunch of drunk American tourists…) My professor’s daughter in Italy confessed to me that after spending the summer in Italy she and her family go to Burger King’s immediately after going home just because they haven’t had it in so long. In China my friend Lee wanted to try different restaurants when we were visiting Beijing because where he had been living in Wuhan did not have the same international restaurant scene available. And as for the fast food, well some of that is just based on convenience and recognition. I know I would be disappointed if I went abroad and the food didn’t taste any different than it does here, but on the other hand I really wish I could find some of those treats here!

I have tried some interesting local food too:

-duck heart in China (but not duck head because the people who were living in China didn’t even recommend it),

-squid a few times, gelati almost daily and I made a quest to try every type of coffee I could find in Italy,

-deer probably killed that weekend in France, unidentified seafood on the coast, and I’ve been known to stand drooling in the cheese aisle in a French grocery store,

-meat that torchlight made impossible to identify on safari and cake and custard for every dessert in South Africa

-and unidentified meat on a stick while in Brazil

Delicious dumpling

The famous cake and custard dessert in South Africa

Chinese Mexican dinner-much better than the watery margarita