ode to snacks

The bad thing about vegetable chips is that they act like they're good for you but they're just as unhealthy as regular potato chips. Maybe worse? Also they look like potpourri.



Potatoes were a vegetable too once. Or a fruit. Or an animal. I don't know much about nutrition.

and you'll like the chicken.

I found this on my search for new vocab words today:

"Voilà je suis allée voir en bijouterie aujourd'hui pour me renseigner pour me faire un troisième trou au lobe de mes oreilles. La bijoutière m'a conseillée de rester à deux trous car j'avais des petits lobes, et que ça faisait plus joli sur moi. Qu'en pensez-vous ?"

Only in a country where when I told my friend I was running a half marathon she said "No you're not." and where restaurant requests are often followed by "No, that's not for you. You'll have the chicken."

that isn't one of them.

The triangle is the hottest shape this season.

It's tough to say which looks worse. Wait it's easy, this looks worse.

twenty days

I don't know how I feel about air travel.

happy April Halloween.

Today I love looking at photos of people dressed up as the Royal Tenenbaums.

















Someone else loves stamping FAIL all over them; they have a website also it looks like.

RANUNCULAS!

I had a feeling it wasn't radish.

best friends

Because I never want to forget my year in France, I take about a dozen photos of dogs on the street every day. Six-foot dogs, ferel dogs, dogs in sweaters, three-legged dogs, and this weekend, dog news - our local sidewalk artist got a new dog. And it's a dachshund!  

Dachshunds and Shih Tzus are the two breeds I'm using in my newest study to prove that cuteness and and ease of spelling are inversely related in small dog breeds. 

Enough dog math. All day Sunday the artist was lying on the sidewalk, drawing, and the dog curled up next to him the way my dog curls up next to me on the couch.


Now that it's almost done he spends most of his time running circles around it, glancing up at the crowds and then his owner going "They like it! I think they really like it!"

This just strengthens my belief that no matter who you are or what you do, a dog is going to make it better.

People who still need dogs: The old woman who dresses all in pink and sings 50's French love songs by the port. Her dog would sit a few feet away and stare at her like "My GOODNESS you sing like an angel."

Street performer who dresses like Mozart. His dog would also be dressed like Mozart.

I'm out of ideas. Most people here have dogs already.

maybe it's radish.

GOOD NEWS: now that work is over, I have time to admit to myself that I've had a fever all week, and probably bronchitis.

GOOD NEWS: as long as I don't go to the doctor, it will stay "probably bronchitis" and not turn into "Brooke, you have bronchitis." I should write a book on how to not get diagnosed with any illness ever again. It would be very short.

GOOD NEWS:: today I finally did something I've wanted to be a tradition since I moved here, and bought myself flowers at the Friday market to cheer myself up. (I didn't want cheering myself up to be a tradition, just the part about flowers.) 

I may be the only girl ever to graduate from my university without taking a flower-arranging class. This probably would have earned me a C-. All I know about these flowers is their name starts with R in French and that the orange ones were moldy. What an exciting tradition.

Hope your Friday was as good as mine.

I can think of witches good and bad

I decided to go out like a champion and make all of my students peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches on the last day. And I since I found peanut butter at a French grocery store, I thought most of them would have tried it before, and it wasn't going to be that impressive.

Wrong. I have never been so impressive in my life. "Where did you find peanuts, and what did you use to crush them?" was the most-asked question, especially by children holding a paper and pen.



And out of 400 kids, only one was allergic to peanuts. When I asked his teacher if anyone in that class had allergies and she said his name, he got defensive.

Michael:  "WHAT? NO. NO. No I'm not. I am not allergic to them."
Teacher:  "Your mom wrote on a form at the beginning of the year that you were?"
Michael:  "NO NOT TRUE. I am not allergic, absolutely positively am not allergic to them."
Teacher: "Alright, I guess if you want to eat it you can."

Me: "What?"
Teacher: "He's an adult, he makes his own decisions."
Me: "Isn't he seven?"
Teacher: "Yes."

Another teacher explained to me why, aside from that boy (may he rest in peace), no one is allergic to peanuts - peanut allergies are a European thing. It takes a minute to make sense, but most of the students are from Africa, where peanut allergies aren't as common. And every kid double-checked with me that there was no meat in the sandwiches, because not only would that not be halal, that would be disgusting.

I thought peanut butter would be an acquired taste - but the kids either so respectful or so excited to try something new, that in every class they waited until everyone had been served, then ate the tiny little things in about thirty bites, chewing very slowly and whispering "C'est trop bon..." (It's so good) like it was the finest delicacy in the world.



Anyway, my job is over now. I still have a couple more posts about teaching that I guess I'll put up later. Some might be more relevant to my year as an ex-pat (don't love that word) than one about sandwiches.
If that's possible.

and then I cooked it and ate it

A lot of times the French eggs I buy still have feathers stuck to them. And I love it.



Is that BAD?

I'm not saying she's a gold-digger...

I'll be the first to admit it, I listen to pretty wimpy music. My favorite artists are all under a hundred pounds, have sweet beards, like medieval history, and would probably be caught dancing with a beaver before running a half marathon. And since I'm doing the second one, it's becoming kind of unsupportable (can't remember English equivalent of this word) to listen to while I'm running.

It's the most embarrassing thing ever but I LOVE running to rap music. And pop music.

Let's take a short break to think about how awesome a music video with dancing beavers would be. I can't stop thinking about that idea now.

And we're back. My iPod has been filling up with some unusual stuff lately. It's half the nerdy things one would expect me to listen to, and half Eminem, Lil Jon, and Lady Gaga. Which brings me to my question.

Usually I'm too "in the zone" or something to stop and notice just how terrible these lyrics are. But I caught this one at a stoplight:

It's not that I don't like you, I'm just at a party. And I am sick and tired of my phone ringing.

Are there listeners out there that say to themselves "That's what I've always wanted to say, I could just never find the words."?



And my next question for these listeners, can you give me some more music recommendations?

does such a sport exist?

Nothing drives home how bad my French is like 400 children who speak way better than I do. It's not always their grammar or pronunciation, but it's the way they always know what word to use, and when, and I'm so jealous of them for it.

I was running in the neighborhood where my kids live the other day, and I saw almost a dozen of them. So the next day I was expecting to have several come up and say "I saw you running yesterday!" Instead ten kids stopped me in the hall and announce "I saw you doing sport yesterday!"

"Doing sport?" Why is your language so strange and how do you keep track of it all?

My only consolation is that maybe none of them were positive I was running. They decided to keep their options open with the verb "doing sport." Maybe I was playing a city-wide game of soccer, where one goal is the sea and the other is Aix-en-Provence. Maybe I had just gotten a text that the ball was over by the Castellane metro stop, and was racing six blocks to make it there before the other team's forward. Maybe.

for the last time, it's a wheel.

Everyone's favorite four-year-olds, a week later.

Me: Do you remember the song we sang last week, about the bus?
Class: Yes! Yes I do! Yes! Hello my name is Léo! Yes! My cat threw up and there were chunks in it! Yes!
Me: Ok... do you remember what a bus has?
Class: CASSETTE TAPES!

I just remembered

This is my new favorite outfit AND the reason I have this blog instead of a fashion blog.

Also, the hair on the sides of my face doesn't grow longer than a couple inches and is not interested in gravity. My mom says there's nothing worse than having a kid with hair like that. I can think of something worse and it's spelled b-e-i-n-g  t-h-a-t  k-i-d. But now I'm an adult.

Also, while doing crafts this afternoon a girl licked some paste and told me "it tastes like the sea!"

Also, every day I get a hundred requests for kisses, which I change to "How about an American high five instead! Yes!" because I'm not interested in a lawsuit or a virus sampling. Today while I was sitting down, a six-year-old boy sprinted over, grabbed both of my ears, and tried to kiss me on the mouth. I used my lightning-fast reflexes to jump away, and then yelled "How about a high five!" with way more enthusiasm than usual. "You're so beautiful." he answered.

Also, after sing-along in kindergarten, I started to roll up the rug before leaving, but a five-year-old (named Wally) stopped me. "Leave the rug out," he explained, "it's Philosophy Workshop Hour."

Also, my second-favorite class is throwing me a going-away party next week. They're each going to bring in a favorite dessert or beverage to share and we'll have a "light tasting." They're seven years old.

Please don't leave me France.

attention parents:

If you have a beautiful six-old boy with beautiful shoulder-length hair, I am going to accidentally call him a girl. He will not like it. I'm sorry.

Fortunately, he has a very short memory.

Unfortunately, so do I.

in the city, in the city

This woman's apartment is the same size as mine.



I love my apartment. It's too small for some things, like breeding great danes or owning more than six shirts. But it's not too small for making paper-maché sculptures, looking at great danes online, eating mini Babybel cheese, and dancing, when I dance like this:

HAPPY FRIDAY DANCE PARTY #3 from blaine hogan on Vimeo.

let's up that to a double-dog dare.

My friend Ashley often says things are "ragin'." That party was ragin', that dog is ragin', this tomato bisque is ragin'. Those are by no means direct quotes, just examples to illustrate that the word is an adjective. Because I swear I had never heard of it.

"Is that an Irish thing, or just an Ashley thing?" I'll ask people. (Ashley's Irish.) I'm fascinated by this word that's been avoiding me my whole life.

"It's an everyone thing, Brooke. Everyone says it."

"Then I dare you to. Say it randomly in the next five minutes and make it seem natural."

They never do. But I'm always excited about a new word, so I've decided to adopt it. And by adopt it I mean, use it whenever I would normally use the word outrageous. Last week I would have said "My apartment is so messy, it's outrageous."

Today it's ragin'. I like this word already.