Tall American Squeezes into Small Country

Whenever I step aboard the return flight to Switzerland, I feel like Alice in Wonderland falling through the hole into the land of miniature. I have an 8-hour flight to transition to what awaits on the other side of the Atlantic. I squeeze my 5’10” frame into compact seats designed for dwarfs. I eat baby-sized servings with doll-sized spoons on a mini tray.

In the Geneva airport, I tower above Europeans while lugging baggage twice as big as and three times heavier than theirs. Not all expats are hoarders, but like many of my compatriots living overseas, I bring back as much of the homeland as possible, hence my bags are laden with Tootsie Pops, cake mixes, chocolate chips and other American staples.

When the taxi pulls up in front of our twin house, my husband leans out the window to announce, “Oops, honey, I shrunk the house.”

Switzerland is a “petite” country; the price of real estate is premium. There are no sprawling ranch homes or suburban mansions here. Our yard is the size of a postage stamp. Surface wise our ground floor is no bigger than an American garage. But we are lucky we have four floors stacked like baby’s colored building blocks. It’s great! This way I don’t need a gym membership; my home is a StairMaster.

kitchen

Our kitchen is three-square meters. The refrigerator is smaller than the mini bars in most American hotels. The fridge, stove, and sink are within an arm’s length, so I can remove foodstuff, sauté veggies and wash dishes simultaneously. But I rarely do any one of the three. It is a one-butt kitchen, and I am always the first volunteer to butt out.

Europe has a different scale of measurement and I am not talking metric here. Cupboards are more like the size of American drawers. Walk in closets? Forget it. My sister’s Barbie wardrobe was bigger. Appliances are also more compact. Our microwave fits in a kitchen cupboard. The washing machine holds five articles of clothing or the equivalent of two American sweatshirts.Read more→

Confession of Social Media Phobia to Facebook Friends

I confess I am a fraud. My fancy, dancy website…didn’t touch it. Don’t understand a thing about the technological aspect of social media. Nada! As my live-in techie, aka Frenchman, develops more skill at troubleshooting problems, the less adept I become.

soul sisters

I am able to log onto facebook only because my Frenchman set an automatic entry; I can’t remember any passwords. [div]When my home page pops up and I see the little bubble space under update status with the the question, « How are you feeling, Pat ? » I honestly thought the whole world was worried about my health status.

I would write back, « Not so good today- sore throat, backache, migraine, thanks for asking,» until my daughter, complained, « Mom stop facebooking about how you feel, no one cares. I don’t care and I am a doctor! That question pops up automatically everytime.»

Ditto for the grey comment box with my mug shot – I thought it meant that I was supposed to comment on every posting on the running page.

Actually facebook terrifies me because I understand so little about it. I am not sure how it works, where it goes and who sees it. As a writer I am used to exposing my ideas, but people know stuff about me that I’d rather forget. Like my birthday.

But friends, that is not why I have never answered your request to add birthday to your calendar. The real reason I haven’t responded is because I don’t know how.

college pals

Sorry, if I haven’t accepted your offers to play games. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like you, it just means I don’t like games (unless they include a ball.) If I am honest, I’ll admit I don’t know how to play online games. So I won’t be joining the other 41 million enjoying FarmVille, Lucky Slots or Zynga Slingo.

FB’s popularity is a bit superficial like the old autograph hounds we carried in 6^th grade where you run around begging everyone to sign your stuffed dog or little book of blank pages. For what? Or the high school yearbook signing – I’ll sign yours if you sign mine.Read more→

New Year Resolutions – What I am NOT Going To Do in 2013

I am not going to get sick. No sore throat, flu, sniffles.
Not going to moan about getting older, even on my birthday.
Or groan about going to work, when fortunate to have a job.
Complain about cleaning a house that I am lucky enough to co own. (along with the bank)
Get organized. Realistically my number one resolution for past decades…ain’t gonna happen.
Make eggnog (have never made eggnog)
Write another book…The Frenchman would kill me!
I am definitely not joining a health club to keep fit since studies show health club joiners drop out within three weeks.

According to experts most resolutions fail within the month. They recommend that for the greatest chance of success make only one resolution and stick to it. Which brings me back to my number one goal, stay healthy, cause if you are in good health you can handle all the rest of the crap life throws at you.

During my break, I flew to Chicago and shopped til I dropped my first day back. On day 2, I woke up with a sore throat that morphed into a sinus infection. But I was not going to let illness interfere with my holiday, so we headed north to the cabin in Wisconsin. Ten days later, my brain still felt like marshmallow, my teeth ached, my nose burned, and my lungs constricted. No way could I get back on a plane for a nine-hour flight with my head full of muck, so I went to Urgent Care.

I was not alone.Read more→

French Wedding Is All About the Food

family with the groom

A French wedding is less about the pomp and ceremony and more about the food, especially in Normandy, the northeastern region of France that offers land and seas finest fare.

A cold, grey weekend in December, we attended my nephew Ben and Lea’s wedding at the mayor’s office in Le Havre, an industrial city dominated by oil refineries and shipping docks. Bombed and destroyed during WWII, it was rebuilt in a Stalinistic style of cement cubes. The civil ceremony held at the Hotel de Ville was a bit carnivalesque especially since a display of Christmas toys and giant ferries wheel added color to the somber architect of town hall. At the imposing entryway, a petite, meticulously coiffed blond woman, mother of the bride, greeted us with air kisses and ushered us up the red carpeted stairs where people waited around like at a bus stop. At precisely 14:25, another wedding party exited one door of a main hall and we entered.

My handsome nephew, Ben, dressed in a tux, stood at the front and guests filled the seating area. Then the wedding march played for 25 seconds, while bride’s stepfather walked her to the altar. Lea wore a white ivory wedding dress with a bodice and long trail. I marveled that the balconette stayed in place throughout the festivity, though obviously she was more well endowed than I.

newweds with their cake

The mayor’s assistant conducted the ceremony in a friendly, fast food style service. After citing constitutional acts, she announced that Ben and Lea were joining in matrimony for the republic. During the ring exchange, she invited the proud, « paparrazzi » parents behind the pulpit to snap photos. Then she announced that they would repeat their vows on the top of the Ferris wheel, which at first I thought was a joke. The witnesses, a young blonde women in a black dress with an oval opening revealing a tattooed spine and a slender punk haired young man in black suit, stepped forward to sign the official papers. In less than 10 minutes, we were whisked out of the room and the next wedding party wave entered.Read more→

Written Acts of Kindness

On Thanksgiving Day, I dragged through the work feeling sad, wondering why bother to connect kids and cultures in my job as an international schoolteacher and ex pat blogger. I suffered from writer’s angst about my upcoming memoir publication. I missed my homeland, friends, and family, including both Big Kids now living in the States. Like the November weather outside my window, a dense fog settled in my soul. Then I received an unexpected gift – the Written Acts of Kindness Award – from a friend I have never met personally.

Kathy and I took Dan Blank’s Build Your Author Platform Course in 2011. Now we follow each other all over cyberspace! Kathy is a grandma on the go, retired family nurse practitioner, cancer survivor and inspiring writer, whose strong faith and sense of purpose comes through admirably on her blog site, Memoir Writer’s Journey. She is working on a memoir about the power of hope through her faith in God.Read more→

The Great Thanksgiving Hunt Abroad

Ever since I moved to Europe thirty years ago, I have been hunting for Thanksgiving a l’américaine. My first year abroad I invited French teammates and they ate the food in courses, one dish at a time. The next year in Germany, the team turnout was so great, there was standing room only; we never sat down to dine. Another year French relatives replaced the turkey with chicken. Tom Turkey seemed gluttonous even for the hearty-eating French.

Thanksgiving in Normandy, 1984

When I was living in Dijon, I invited a Franco American family for what turned into another Thanksgiving fiasco starting with the great turkey hunt. Local merchants explained that whole turkeys are obsolete until the official slaughtering date on December 8^th. I finally found a black market butcher, who ordered me a clandestine turkey, smuggled from abroad. I was stuffing the bird when the family that I had invited called to cancel as their child had the flu. We postponed Thanksgiving until Tuesday night since French children have no school Wednesdays.Read more→