When In France…

Today for breakfast, I made French Toast! In France! How fun is THAT?! Okay, it's a bit of cliche, but I'm not Julia Child and given my lack of vocabulary, shopping was enough of a challenge. I have to say, I'm beginning to realize how many assumptions I've had of the French are falling by the wayside. You hear about stereotypes and I think we've done the French up pretty big in the U.S. with their snooty attitudes, fear of anything foreign and non-French and I could go on. But I won't. You see, I haven't discovered any of those stereotypes here. Everyone has been patient as I mangle their language, offering me advice on what to see, where to eat, and how to make a phone call home. I've been entranced with French TV in the evenings when it's too dark to go out and do anything and its amazing the number of American shows that are on the television here. I got to watch some guilty pleasures (Wipeout, The Simpsons, and Psych) and watching people is even more fun. Lots of tourists but watching families is fun. Parents calling kids out on behaviors, kids rolling their eyes, brothers and sisters poking at each other, grandparents spoiling the kids with ice cream before dinner. Pretty much like us - and I imagine just like people everywhere.

I get irritated with my students when they put a book down because it doesn't look interesting, or it's old, or their friends don't read THAT kind of book. Yet I was guilty of the same thing, judging a book by its cover when I never bothered to really read it. I can honestly say that Les Eyzies, France, is a book I would highly recommend - terrific setting, amazing cast of characters and a plot that goes back for millennia. You'll have to read it yourself!