A few weeks ago Jessi and I decided we wanted baked potatoes for dinner, so we schlepped down to Monoprix on a quest for pommes de terre (literally, apples of the ground). Only here in France there are no baked potatoes. Apparently Idaho is just a little too far to import them. Here they eat these itty bitty potatoes, like new potatoes, but normal potato color. So we bought a bag of those– the smallest bag they had, which was, like, I don’t know, 2 kilos? 4 kilos? Something like that. I don’t know what that means exactly, but the point is that it is WAY too many potatoes for two 20-year-old girls to eat. Also they are significantly harder to cook because you have to boil them, you can’t just bake them like normal potatoes. AND that one bag provided... many meals for us. In fact, it is still sitting in our little cupboard. So last night I decided I was going to do my part in our effort to rid ourselves of potatoes, and eat them for dinner. I fried up some lardons (kind of like bacon), grated some emmenthal (kind of like... well, I don’t know, it’s some kind of french cheese), and set to boiling the potatoes. (Let it be known, first, that even with my efforts last night we still have 6 kilos of potatoes on our hands. I swear those things multiply.) But I have now learned something important about myself: I do not have the patience to eat potatoes by myself. This is the second time I have tried to cook them when Jessi was not home, and both times I have ended up with a plate full of slightly crunchy potatoes. The first time I convinced myself that they were al dente, and probably I was getting more vitamins that way, but then last night as I was munching, I thought back to my 10th grade AP Bio class, and I am fairly sure that at some point I learned that raw potatoes are poison. But I can’t remember, really. Maybe that was tomato vines... Nightshade family, or something. If Jessi is home, we are great, because she doesn’t let me take the potatoes off until we are sure they are cooked. (She also doesn’t let us put the potatoes in the water until it is boiling. I prefer to put the potatoes directly on the stove, and then consider that all that time before it boils is just shortening the total amount of time they need to cook.) My conclusion was thus two-pronged:
1. I am no longer allowed to cook potatoes by myself. This seems more logical to me than learning more patience, also quicker.
2. We are no longer allowed to buy potatoes in this country. What are we supposed to do with 10 kilos of potatoes anyway? And perhaps, through our inadvertent boycott, the French will realize the necessity of either growing or importing regular-sized potatoes, sold loose so that we could buy just two if that is all we needed. Plus, they don’t have sour cream in this country, so what are we really missing out on anyway.
On another note, I’m taking a 20th century French history class this semester, which is fascinating, because our french textbooks AND our french professor come down much harder on France than on the States, in pretty much every situation. Even things that I learned as mistakes made by the US, things like the delay getting involved in WWII, Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the negotiation of cessation of hostilities [pirates, anyone?] after WWI are treated as just matter-of-fact events, justified and logical, while things like the Vichy government of the German occupation are considered treasonous. I had always learned about France in World War II as a victim of German oppression, not a society anxious to get on the "winning" side, which at the time was Germany. Interesting. The best way to learn the "good guys" of French history, though, is to thoroughly examine a Metro map– if (and only if) there is a Metro station named after any French figure can you be assured that they are a hero.
Furthermore, this week marks the one year anniversary of the student riots and protests in the suburbs of Paris, meaning everyone is on edge to see what is going to happen. By everyone, I do not mean the students at all– they are all as normal as any other day. But nearly all of my professors (including my GRAMMAR professor, good luck finding the link between grammar and student greves) have mentioned it, probably because the Parisian gendarmerie (police force) has predicted this year will bring worse ones. I don’t understand why though since it’s not like the students and suburbanites started rioting for no good reason– 2 young African boys were killed at a power plant, and everyone took offense at the treatment of immigrants (African immigrants are still today called "pied noirs"– black feet, a term originated from the Algerian immigrants back in the day when it was still a French colony and tourist destination). I don’t completely understand the concept of student protests– in France, if you graduate from lycee (rough equivalent of high school) and pass the bac (like an SAT), you can go to any university that you want, you just show up and sign up for classes. Tuition is nil, you pay for books, which are sold at normal bookstores, not campus ones, and so are much cheaper than in the states. That said, the population of France has a free college education at their fingertips, and because of the way classes work here, it is completely possible to work, even full time, while going to school. But still students go on protest. I don’t get it. What could the government (who controls the university system) POSSIBLY have to fear from a bunch of college students? That they will withdraw from the university, leaving it less crowded? Their presence at university is NOT bringing in money– it’s not like at Emory, where the administration has to at least pretend they are listening to us because we all could, in theory, take our bazillions of dollars in student loans elsewhere. But in France, what is there to protest against? The quality of the food in the dining hall? Again, not an issue if you don’t have to pay for it. But over and over again in France the students go on strike and everything grinds to a halt because of it. It’s not even like at Kent State, where the protests were concerning something else but somehow came to involve everyone because of the injustice of the response... It’s like the students just want practice for when they graduate university, get real jobs, and then have to strike a couple times a year.
All that ought to be taken with a grain of salt, because since my arrival in this country, no mode of transportation has gone on strike, and I have not seen any students even looking like they were considering causing trouble. Though I have been invited to join the communist party a couple times– once by a legit communist and the other time by a group of people at school who must be the equivalent of the young republicans at Emory– just the college version of the party or something. It’s weird to me that they have parties called Communist and Socialist, since even the insinuation of being either of those prompts immediate suspicion in the States. Forget suspicion, the first time I read about De Gaulle (who is pretty much the George Washington of France today) being a Socialist, I was shocked– how could a French person defame him like that? And then I realized that is not an accusation here, he would not have been put to trial for that, it is just a fact– like saying that... I don’t know, that Reagan was republican.
Anyway. Potatoes, Communists... it’s all related. In Russia, I hear the communist slogan is "Vodka and Potatoes for anyone who wears Furry Hats." And in Ireland, it’s "Beer and Potatoes for the Catholics," which is truly a problem for them since everyone knows they had that blight thing and ever since then, no potatoes. Voila the reason there are no Irish communists, because they failed to provide the potatoes, just the green beer. Here in France, the slogan is "Wine and Croissants for the Commies" because they, as evidenced above, do not eat potatoes.

P.S. When sitting in a McDonald's filled with small children, attempting to use wireless internet, and a male employee walks toward your table, the best MO is to quickly take a large drink of your Fanta. Then when he speaks to you, keep drinking the Fanta, roll your eyes sympathetically, shrug your shoulders a little, and keep drinking until he leaves. This will mask the fact that you have no idea what he is saying to you in French over the sound of thirty screaming children.