La Toussaint is a festival translated as "All Saints Day" in France. People flock to cemeteries to adorn graves with copious amounts of flowers and sometimes candles, especially in other European countries. It's a national holiday and since this year it landed on a Tuesday, Monday was made an unofficial holiday as well. When a holiday lands on a Thursday or Tuesday, it's pointless in the minds of French people to have just one work day in between days off, so they
faire le pont and automatically make the day in between a non-mandatory work day. Usually everyone takes advantage of this in order to have an extra long weekend holiday. Leave it to the French to make excuses to get the biggest amount of days off possible. Kudos to you, France. I wish the United States would follow suit. I can see this being possible with Veteran's Day. Unfortunately my blog and whimsical ideas will never be seen by The Man, so for now I'm left to wish.
After a weekend of trying my best to fight off sickness, I managed to avoid a dinner last night where I would have most certainly been ignored the entire time. With
La Toussaint, it seems that there is an abundance of feasts associated with it. Last night there was a big meal with 13 other people in attendance, and today I was drug into a lunch with at least that many. I was under the impression that it would just be my host mother and I eating lunch, until I came downstairs.
Holy crap, not again. I was starving, so I had no other choice.
I didn't hear any cars drive up... confound it, they're sneaky.
I knew most of the people there, and even enjoyed their company. No thanks to my host mother, this meal was actually entertaining; I had a good time. Both the husbands in attendance loved to ask me questions about what Americans think of French and I begged them to tell me what they thought of when I said "The United States". We also discussed my love of music, riding horses, how many instruments I play, and what sort of animals are found on and around the farm/ranch I live on. Spiders and snakes were also conversation topics.
Hmm, someone actually asking about my life and engaging in a French conversation with me about various topics? That's a first.
Interesting observation on French meals
I always expected to be on my best behavior during French meals, after all, the French are masters of eating and drawing meals out so I was only to assume it meant long, lavish meals with proper table settings, cloth napkins, "could you pass me the wine, good sir?" sort of speech. Although I have run into those once or twice, the vast majority are meals comprised of a mixture of things I would see as high class in the States with a free for all
repas. l'Aperitif (pre-meal snack) is always served, but that's mainly where high class and savagery go their separate ways. The husbands, whom I've grown very fond of (and can
never remember their names) provided excellent entertainment in the form of raucous laughter from idiotic jokes. Hands reached across tables, people poured for themselves, my host grandmother even smacked someone's hand and scolded another for not having dessert. It was all very familial. I loved it. At one point, I asked one dad to pass me the basket of bread. Without notice, a slice of baguette went sailing the length of the table.
Cripes! I didn't know the man had an arm like a quarterback! Lucky I have lightning fast reflexes, heh.
I didn't mind the fact that the lunch took around 3 hours. I was engrossed in a french conversation about Sarkozy, Dominique StraussKahn (DSK), native animals to Europe, the fact that spiders are icky, and comparisons between French and Americans. I guess I just get along with dads more than women and preteens. Fine by me. We can all watch sports, go buy baguettes, and play squash together while the women gossip and the kids play video games.
I really should have had a host family with a father. My host mother doesn't make much of an effort to include me in anything and I think I would have thrived with a guy around the house. It's so unfortunate that I'm a female, sometimes.
