In the grips of la grippe

It's the simple pleasures of France that keep us all coming back. The full bold flavors

of cheese and wine, the crusty bread baked fresh every day, the buttery flakes of a croissant

that peel away as you eat it. The French are committed to a few simple rules when it comes to everyday life; simple, fresh, delicious. 

So when one comes down with la grippe, a cold, there's nothing more sad than not being able to taste what makes France so quintessentially French, the quality and simplicity of delicious fresh food like these strawberries, which I have yet to enjoy fully. So far both cherry tomatoes and strawberries burn the rawness of my sore throat, so I'm sticking to gentler fare, tisanes tilleul-menthe (lime tree-mint tea) for the moment. 

That dappled sunlight on what I know will be delicious strawberries once I can taste again bodes well for what feels like a beautiful day dawning outside. The air is fresh, the street cleaners have already hummed twice along the tiny avenues of the apartment on Amiral Roussin, their brushes humming in rhythm as they polish the already glimmering limestone that casts this golden light in the sun. 

The students arrived yesterday at the dorms. You could spot them at a distance, worn and anxious dragging their luggage behind them after their long journey. While tired and disoriented, the thrill of being in France can be read in their expression despite the affected nonchalence of youth. One bought a "Le Monde" and began reading the newspaper while we sat on the steps, a few others joined me and the TAs as we walked to the bakery and grabbed a quick lunch of tartes (leek, cheese, spinach & chèvre) and orangina while we sat on the steps waiting for the others to arrive. One told me that while she's not keen on trying escargot, she's determined to be open and wants to try new things, have new experiences, which bodes well for their stay and for the fullness of their experience. 

I think that's certainly what is most difficult about living elsewhere.  How to remain open when so profoundly alienated, by language and by an otherness at times so unreadable that everything seems to conspire to remind one of one's difference? From the pink cardboard-like toliet paper in most French bathrooms to the incomprehensible gestures that you sense have some kind of meaning, yet which remains opaque, familiar and repeated encounters with the feeling of alienation measures the vastness of cultural difference. 

My keenest wish is that I aspire to the same openness that student mentioned yesterday. That I don't judge what on the surface appears to be a town so very quiet and quaint it's nearly stifling. If nothing else, I want to appreciate the difference, rather than long wistfully for the electric vibrance, the unconscious energy I derive from living in Over-the-Rhine. 

Time for more tisane and the magic elixir the pharmacist recommended to sooth my cough.