the local & the locale

our bookshelves

or "The Things We Brought to Busy Ourselves"

or "The Things That Now Seem Unnecessary"

This is the last place I expected myself to be blogging from, but here we are. In a French McDonald's, the only place we could afford to steal WiFi from on a Saturday afternoon. My nerves are fried. I don't know if it's the stress of moving to a new culture, too much whipped cream on my coffee, too much caffeine or too much time in a McDonald's. It's odd. You wouldn't expect to come into a McD's and find yourself thinking, "That latte art is fabulous," or "I want the entire box of macarons!"

So while I'm preparing lesson plans for my first week of classes, Joe is studying French verbs. We're taking a break from our apartment, where it seems like everyday someone leaves a nice note about what we've been doing wrong. (Who knew you couldn't hang your laundry out to dry from the only window in your apartment? Why have an entire recycling bin dedicated entirely to junk mail?)

I've been complaining a lot lately, but there's also been a lot of good going on. We're getting in touch with Nancy culture, sorting through our magazines of community events and trying local food.

This week, we even discovered that the Ch'ti name so popular for pubs and brasseries (pubs with beers on taps, but literally translating to "brewery") in the area is tied to the Picard language. Picardy and Nord-Pas-de-Calais are regions near us, in Northern France near Belgium.

For centuries, France was a country of patois, or region languages. Few of the languages have held on, being transformed into more-or-less comprehensible dialects of modern French. Chti or chtimi of the North is one of the most prominent, even more so thanks to Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a film following a man as he travels the the region of the Picard language.

Intrigued? Who wouldn't be? Start studying your Ch'ti vocab on Chti.org before you pop across the pond for a visit. I've yet to start learning the language, but I've been reaping the benefits of the Ch'ti pubs. Last night was our first night at a bar in Nancy & our first time out with the girls I'm working with at l'université. It was nice to start feeling connected to people again, to have a few hours to forget about the bills we've as yet been unable to pay–and for once not for financial reasons, but for electronic banking issues!

Outside of linguistic changes (a subject Joe & I will both geek out on for post after post if we weren't afraid to see our readership plummet), we've been enjoying the local food. For once, this means more than our regular baguette and pastry line-up that we've settled into at Chez Régis, the boulanger (bread-maker) closest to us. Can't wait to post about mirabelles, a celebrated fruit of the Lorraine region, and more candies with bergamots. But for now, it's time to get back to vocabulary lessons.

We've found a new kindred spirit, a friend familiar with the troubles of French bureaucracy and blogging. Meet Lauren in Lorraine, a fellow lover of baking, & her husband over at Metzing Around. The new Expat generation has got this blogging thing down.