where the good girls and boys live

I live in a beautiful city right on the ocean, and it's November and still warm. Awesome for me, lame for French kids who want snow. It's snowed once in the last eight years, and it lasted less than an hour. Whenever I tell a class that we have snow they yell out "La chance!" in unison. (Lucky!)

I've introduced myself to elementary-schoolers so many times that I have it down. I show them a photo of my family. I show them my Minnesota Twins shirt and tell them about baseball. That one always impresses them, and I see them looking at each other like "Hey, that shirt says 'Minnesota' on it; she isn't making this up." Then I show them a pair of gloves and say that where I'm from, there is a lot of snow.

Then things get crazy. Usually French children raise their fingers instead of their hands. But not when you mention snow. They're raising their arms, they're climbing on their desks to get higher. Do you ski? How do you get places? Are all the flights canceled? How do you keep your house warm? Do you wear coats? These were all real questions.

But the best one came from an adorable boy in blue glasses and a soccer jersey, who was holding his breath until I called on him. He let out a sigh of relief when I finally did, and then asked "In Minnesota, is it Christmas every day?"

Of freaking course it is. I said there was snow, didn't I?



Is there a more awesome place then America? We have Barack Obama. We have the White House, which for some reason all 8-year-old French children are obsessed with. We have Michael Jackson and Hollywood and hamburgers. But that wasn't enough. So those scientists in Minnesota, bless their hearts, they sat down and finally found out a way to make it Christmas every single day. That's probably why when the kids finally start to calm down, after I tell them I have one Christmas a year and I've never met Jay-Z or the president, I get the same question in every class:

"Why on earth did you leave and come here?"