Ruminations on January

After such a nice vacation, this month has been a little hard for me. I would say that it definitely involved the least of amount of travelling around and the most staying put--mainly because said vacation was a little pricey.

As a result I feel like I finally took some time to breathe and get a better feel for the rhythm of life in Mayenne. The main thing being that it's extremely calm. This can be a good thing. I like the fact that sit in my room and not do much and that I don't feel rushed about much. I like the fact that my family's idea of an outing is to walk to the center of town and look around and that this almost always happens on a Tuesday. There are familiar and comforting routines that you don't notice if you aren't around to observe them.

I think I have been thinking about this more, because, for three weeks of this month, my host brother Simon came home from Martinique to visit and see all his friends and family. It was his first time back since he left in October (I am kind of his replacement in the house) and it was weird seeing him as a mirror to my own experience; to see him coming home to a place that is my place away from home.  It made me realize that the what is comforting and homey is very hard to define.

I'm going to be honest, there are lots of things that I don't like about Mayenne. There are lots of things that I miss about Tucson (I'm sure some of you find this surprising). I'm also sure that someone new to Tucson would fail to notice these things.  Primary among these things is the heat (ok, I'm pretty sure they'd notice that...). I do not like being cold. It makes me grumpy. I also miss Mexican food, ultimate, wild spaces, the Buffet, Che's and Mt. Lemmon. I miss the smell of creosote after the rain and I miss the dusky green of the desert. Oh yeah, and I also miss all you lovely folk.

So it was interesting to see someone come to here, and see all the things, the little strange things, that Simon was missing about Mayenne, and that I was sure that I had failed to notice.

Whenever I go home, the first thing I want my mom (or dad) to cook me is Rosemary Chicken. I guess you could say it's one of my comfort foods, and my parents cook it like nobody else. Simon's comfort food was Tartifilette, which speaks to France's love of all things cheesy and porky (Tartifillete is potatoes, bacon and cheese all cooked together in an oven).

Because I live in the same house, he often invited me out with his friends, so I also got to see some of the places he liked to go to. The two main locations were a poor imitation of an Irish pub called the Ray Vaughan (didn't even have Guiness) and McDonald's. The interesting thing about the Ray Vaughan was that despite it lack of Irishness, it was clearly a bar that attracted all different age groups and all different crowds. I ran into my high school students, and the same night a group of older men waited grumpily for us novices to finish our round of pool at the table. When we were done, the took out their own cue that they had brought with them and started a match. In generally, I've found that in this town there is a lot more generational mixing and that people are a lot more ok with it.

The other place that Simon (and French people in general) really enjoyed going to was MacDonald's (or MacDo, as they call it). As someone who has actively avoided MacDonald's and all other fast food chains for most of my adult life, I have had a hard time understanding this desire. However, one evening, in the name of trying to hang out with some French people, I allowed myself into being coerced to go MacDo. And here is my verdict: is it better than American MacDonald's? Yes (but let's be honest, this isn't saying much. It's like affirming that gum you buy in the store is in fact better than chewed up gum you find on the sidewalk), I had a hamburger which I enjoyed. the fries, no so much. Is it worth the obsession? No. And I won't, for the life of me understand why French people go here when they could be eating Tartifilette.

Other than these two locations, Simon spent most of his time seeing friends. This is understandable; what I miss most in Tucson is the people. This all culminated in a party that we threw at my host family's house. It was ostensibly because I had been rooting for a margarita party for a while now, but in the end it was really just a party for Simon and his friends, though, the margaritas were a big hit. The funny thing about it was, once again, how multigenerational the whole thing was. There was Nathy and Pascal (the parents), all the kids, and Mimi (the grandmother), and yet every drank and had fun together and the whole thing turned into this big, multigenerational dance party. It was a good time.

I guess the whole point of this story is that watching Simon come home and have a great time has made miss my home.

On the bright side, I'm going to be helping teaching ultimate soon, and a break is coming up. Woohoo!