Oddly Enough . . .

I moved back to the U.S. one year ago today.

It's hard to believe that it's been a year already, but it's also hard to believe that it's been only a year. I never experienced any huge culture shock with my move, and yet I still don't feel fully settled into my life here in Minnesota.

To mark the day (and cross something off my interminable list of things I need to do to re-integrate into American society), I went and got my Minnesota driver's license today (my DC license was still valid until 2011) and also updated the address on my car registration (the title had my temporary address from Minneapolis last summer). They asked if I'd ever had a MN license before, and I told them yes, but the last one was cancelled in 1997. That was too long ago for the number to still be in their system, but they said, "Welcome back!" just the same. That was nice.

I have been welcomed back with great affection and openness by many friends here, and that has made my transition much easier and more pleasant. And while I've rediscovered many things from my homeland and my native culture which resonate in my soul, there are also many things which make me long for France. To name a few: intrusive service at restaurants and stores; bad yogurt; the difficulty and cost of finding decent bread, pastry, and food in general; . . . topics I've been meaning to post about for some time and may still get to one of these days.

One year back, and my home is still where my heart is: solidly divided between two countries.

From My Soapbox

A GAO report has found that it's more expensive to send U.S. food overseas to poor countries than it is to buy food locally. Let's file that one under "Duh!"

To those of us (and I include myself here) who like to use our charitable dollars and euros to support noble causes like feeding the hungry in developing countries, it's important to remember that sourcing does matter. Look for aid programs that try to buy local food and products whenever possible, and consider donating to programs that support local agricultural development (read why here), instead of bad U.S. ag policy.

And yes, this message was brought to you by a U.S. "expert" shipped overseas at a fairly high cost to help people. Sshhhhhh.

Dastardly Disappointment

It turns out that The Most Fun Work Thing I've Done in a Very Long Time was for naught: the requirement to include the "we-won't-give-money-to-anyone-who-supports-abortion" clause is included in the Corporation's statutes and is therefore unaffected by the Executive Order lifting the international gag rule. And I'm pretty sure that changing the statutes would take, quite literally, an act of Congress.

Will we never see the end of W's dastardliness?!

The Most Fun Work Thing I've Done in a Very Long Time

So, one of the organizations I work for is going to make a loan to a poor country far, far away. The loan agreement has been being worked on for quite a while, and until recently, the organization was required by law to include the following clause in all its loan agreements:

"[The beneficiaries] will not use funds for any purpose that would violate United States law or policy, . . . including but not limited to the following purposes:
. . . to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions, to pay for the performance of involuntary sterilizations as a method of family planning or to coerce or provide any financial incentive to any person to undergo sterilizations or to pay for any biomedical research which relates, in whole or in part, to methods of, or the performance of, abortions or involuntary sterilization as a means of family planning.

I'm currently reviewing and commenting on this document. And I got to write the following comment: "I believe President Obama has issued an executive order which allows—nay, requires!—us to remove this clause."

It's so nice to be getting my country back.

Six Months Out

So, it's 2009 now, happy new year, blah, blah, blah. The more important event that some of you may have overlooked this week was on Tuesday, December 30, 2008, the six month anniversary of my departure from France.

People these days are fond of asking if I miss living in France, and I have to fumble around to find an appropriate response, usually saying something vague like, "Oh, sure . . . but you know, I mostly feel like I'm still just getting settled in here, so I haven't had time to miss it too much yet." This is mostly prevarication, my feeble attempt to hide the dark, awful truth lurking in the depths of my soul:

I don't miss France as much as I thought I would.

Or perhaps I just don't miss France as much as I think I should.

Or perhaps missing France doesn't look and feel like what I thought it would look and feel like.

In any case, my missing of France is too far complicated and sensitive to discuss with strangers in small talk. So instead, I'll post it here on the internet.

Any good living-abroad book will tell you that cultural repatriation is often far more difficult than expatriation. With expatriation, despite its many challenges, you at least have the excitement of new discoveries, and you're surrounded by people who know that you're different and will (usually) tolerate at least some of those differences. Returning "home", you're often faced with being re-immersed in the same-old, same-old and are surrounded by people who expect you to be just like them, and just like you used to be, without really caring or wanting to hear about the ways that you've been Changed by your experiences abroad. Shortly after returning from my semester abroad in France in 1990, I remember sitting talking to a dear college friend, sobbing and telling him, "I just feel like I'll never be happy again, living in America!"

So I was fully expecting to be abjectly miserable upon moving back this time, and I'm really rather discombobulated that that hasn't happened. Yet. (A girl can keep hoping!)

My theories on why I haven't been missing France that much? Well, this is the first time I've moved to a place where I already know a lot of people, many of whom are among my oldest and dearest friends, so I've had less social downtime to sit and pine for Paris than might otherwise have been the case.

It's also true that I still don't feel at all settled here. Moving to a new city while almost simultaneously starting a new, work-from-home, part-time job means that I still feel like I'm waiting to get back to "real" work. So far, I am working enough and billing enough hours to make ends meet, but it hasn't really sunk in that I'm not on vacation and probably need to establish more a of real routine in my life. The huge towers of book boxes remain steadfastly unpacked in my office (I've sworn an oath to unpack by Monday, which is good news for you, since when given the choice of unpacking or blogging, you can see what I choose!), and I still have no couch around which to organize my living room (in my own defense, I'll point out that after weeks of couch-shopping this summer, I ordered the stupid thing back in August (!!), but the furniture store which shall go unnamed, although it rhymes with Freight and Peril, is finally supposed to deliver it next Tuesday. That's January 6. Four and a half MONTHS after I ordered it, not that I'm counting.)

And I was profoundly grateful not to be living in France while my dad was in the hospital this fall.

So I guess there are a number of reasons for me not to miss France so much, just yet. It's also possible that my missing of France is manifesting itself in more subtle ways than flashy, abject misery. For example, it's possible that my unpacking procrastination is indicative of a deep-seated, pathological desire not to admit that I'm actually living in Minnesota, and that I'm clinging to my boxes as proof that I'm ready to return to Paris at a moment's notice. But no need to give any more fodder to my more therapy-minded readers.

However, I do miss France some. And some things in France more than others. At the head of the list of What I Miss Most in France is my friends there. While I lived in France, Thanksgiving was the one and only day each year that I knew I would be fiercely homesick for the U.S. and my family. So I was very surprised that this year on Thanksgiving (the first I'd spent with my family since 1993!), I was fiercely homesick for my group of ex-pat friends in Paris. I missed the sense of coming together with my fellow country people, with our tales of triumph in finding rare and exorbitantly expensive turkey and pumpkin, for our national feast which we would generously share with the untamed natives (who were always stunned to learned that pumpkin can be made into something other than soup!). I miss the stories of hardship and heartache as we struggle with renewing our residency permits on either side of the ocean. I miss the bizarre French-English franglais mixture we all speak without even realizing it. I miss hanging out with these people I love.

The other things I miss about France were brought sharply to mind and heart during the week before Christmas, when I was in North Africa for a work trip and had access to some of those tantalizing tidbits of France which are so readily available in its former colonies. The first night there, we had a working dinner at a colleague's house, and someone picked up bread and pastries from chez Paul. Yes, the best chain bakery in France has a franchise in North Africa, and my soul was singing with the first bite of baguette de tradition--not to be confused with the pathetic "baguette traditionale" sold at Lunds in the Cities ("traditionale"?! not a word in English, not a word in French)! The chocolate macaroons were nice, too. Later, I turned on the TV in my hotel room, and my heart was made glad again: not only were the stars of NCIS and Les Experts--Miami, New York ou autre--speaking French once again, just as God intended them to*, but the French commercials were also tugging at my heartstrings! I got misty-eyed when I saw the Christmas station-identifier ad for TF1 and was inordinately pleased to watch the holiday commercial in the Bouygues ad series "Le répertoire de Mathieu".

So maybe if I feel like I haven't been missing France, it's just a case of out of sight, out of (the forefront of my) mind. But six months out of France, it's definitely not out of my heart.


*One very disconcerting part of my return to the U.S. has been trying to get used to the American (aka "real") voices on some of my favorite shows, like NCIS and the various CSIs. I started watching these shows when I lived in France, and I've found that I have a very different perception of (and less liking for) several of the characters, because of the accents they have when they speak English. For example, several of the characters on CSI: Manhattan have a strong Brooklyn accent, which automatically (to me, at least) signals "swaggering blue-collar tough guy", an image that I did not have of that character in French. Very weird.

ShamWhoops

Readers dear,

I know that I have neglected you shamefully in the past weeks, and I'll try to better about writing in the future. Or not. This blog has no money-back guarantee!

Speaking of guaranteed products, let me give the much-demanded (by at least two readers!) update on the Shamwows!: BIG disappointment. They remind me of the cheap felt/pressed fiber dust cloths that my parents had (but never really used) when I was growing up. The Sham"wow"s are reasonably absorbent but don't really seem that much more efficient than any other kind of cloth. The instructions say that after washing, they'll have a leather-like texture, kind of like a chamois. With a leap of imagination, I sort of understand what they're talking about for the larger cloths (which are thicker), but the smaller ones just got kind of matted and pilled after the first wash.

Is it possible that American merchants are less than completely honest in their commercial advertisements?

American Again

I'm not sure if it's the water, the Diet Coke, or maybe just the air, but after four months back in the U.S. of A., my American consumerism gene has definitely been reactivated: today I bought a pack of Shamwows!

For the past few weeks, I've been bravely resisting the urge to dial the 800 number whenever the commercial for this amazing new product came on TV, but today I was in Target, and the boxes were right there, on the "Seen on TV" aisle endcap, calling out to me. I know for certain that this product was meant just for me, because:

1. The box contained not just 4 regular size Shamwows! but also, as a special bonus, 4 smaller Shamwows!, and the guy on TV said that this amazing offer was only available for people who called in the next 2 hours, because he couldn't give that kind of deal all day long. But he made it available just for me, at my local Target store.
2. As I was standing there, studying the box (I'm not making this up), a woman walked past and whispered in my ear, "Those towels are great!" I'm not sure, but I think her eyes may have glowed red when she said it. (Okay . . . that last part, I made up.)

I haven't tried the Shamwow! yet, but when I do, I just know I'll say WOW everytime!