Some minor instances of culture shock

To close out a year of near-wall-to-wall France, here are some important lessons I've gleaned as a student of life here:

-a university degree with honors is marked "assez bien," which means "good enough"

-one browses the ornaments and local honey of a small-town Christmas market to the classic holiday melodies "Wake Me Up Before You Go-go," "Take On Me," and "Maneater"

-proposing the addition of mustard to a ham sandwich elicits disbelieving laughter 

-mimes are not automatically considered ridiculous

-flossing is not a thing

I saw a beautifully produced play about a plucky lad turned WWI pilot, who returns wounded and depressed but is joyously embraced and inspired to remake his life by his fiancé, mimed.

When they say they're going camping, they mean they rent a tiny cabin next to seventy other tiny cabins, next to a restaurant.

Termination/Germination

My student life ended somehow more anxious and less dramatic than anticipated.  Only five of us were there the last day, each person drifting away quietly as they finished writing about a famous French ecologist.  There was no little lunch party with dishes from our home countries; a few of us drank vending machine coffee in the hallway, and that was that.

After two rounds of exams it's a pleasure to wheel-barrow around a ton of horse poop, paint dozens of wooden slats for the foyer, and devote entire afternoons to making ravioli and cake and carnitas.  After so much mental concentration and the sure but slow linguistic results of studying, I'm happy to shift to more tangible tasks -- like bricking the grill and cleaning the fryer and heaving bags of trash!  And more interestingly, skiing and snowshoeing.  In just a few weeks, I'll be back in Coldfoot, sharing with Jean-François the wonders of the northern lights, a million acres of snowy moose-filled forest, and 24/7-free-all-you-can-eat bacon.

I had looked forward to titling this "Arctic Working Honeymoon," but then my residency card finally came through and we weren't in a rush to get married by January.  Maybe "Boreal Betrothal Bake-cation"?  What's in a name: the Trucker's Cafe by any other word would smell as diesel-y.

There are several horse farms nearby.  We met a nice guy who brought over truckloads of manure for the garden.

prosciutto and caramelized onion on the left, spinach and lemon ricotta on the right, with kalamata-tomato and mushroom-walnut-cream sauces

We combined visiting a friend over the weekend with the Lascaux cave museum.  I tried to tell JF how much more mystical it is in the film with Werner Herzog's narration.