le jour de St. Patrick

Salut!

This is going to be a St. Patrick’s themed post.  Although, admittedly, I’m not quite sure why since I’m in France and not Ireland and since the day has already passed.  But regardless, here we go!

Wear Green:

Or, in the case of Issoudun, wear no green.  I suppose that growing up in a country of immigrants has made me forget that not everyone gets nearly as excited as Ireland for St. Paddy’s day.  So, sporting green undies (TMI?), sports bra, shirt, and jacket, I went downstairs to find everyone wearing grey and black.  To my recollection, I don’t remember anyone wearing an obvious display of green all day.  Perhaps in the larger cities the day is still celebrated in green fashion, but not in my part of the country.  So I went back upstairs, changed my clothes to black jeans and a grey sweatshirt so as to fit in.

Pinching:

If they’re not purposefully wearing green, do you think anyone goes around pinching others around here?  Nope.  Although this has an upside that I didn’t get pinched once on the 17^th.

Drinking:

This, the French are very good at.  Experienced, one might say.  Although I had no plans to celebrate the drinking aspect of St. Patrick’s Day, this weekend was heavy on the alcohol.  But it was a marathon, not a sprint, so to speak.  I’m including this because there is a certain drinking culture here that involves much more than wine...the stereotype of the French drinking only wine needs to be broken right here, right now.

Satuday evening started when Laura had 3 friends over for dinner- Demetri, Julien, and Georges.  We started with a casual “aperitif” (or cocktail)- rum + orange juice.  After one or two of those, we switched to some Bordeaux red wine (that Demetri brought with him from Bordeaux) while we ate the main course, cheese and dessert.  Following this, we had a “petit bonheur” which is like a coffee-ish flavored alcohol that you sip out of a tiny shot glass of sorts.  Needless to say, it’s strong, but it “cleanses the palate.”  Next, we switched to champagne since it was a special evening with friends.  So that was the alcohol associated with the meal.

At this point it’s midnight, and so Laura and I took the boys down to the “loco” which is the bar across from the train station to “boire un coup”…which technically means to have a drink, but this phrase doesn’t really translate in its context to English since we had been having drinks all night.  So once there, we had “shooters” (aka shots, obviously).  Apparently the caramel flavored vodka is a very popular flavor in France and it is the “go-to” liquor around here.  It is surprisingly tasty!  We stayed there for about 2 hours, but don’t worry, we didn’t drink that whole time.  Drinking at night in France is much like drinking a coffee in a café…if you order one drink then you can stay at the table for however long you want. 

So that was St. Patrick’s Day, but the drinking continued the next day as well.  Just 5 short hours after going having gone to sleep, we were at the Aeroclub for their annual meetings to induct new people, vote on bylaws, see the budget, etc.  I went along to listen to the French and to see the members that I know since the people at the Aeroclub have become a network of acquaintances.  Well, in celebration of a successful meeting, we picnicked at the club and of course there was wine and champagne galore.  Seriously, at least 20 bottles for about 40 people.

And finally, in the late afternoon on the way back from the Aeroclub, Pascal and I stopped by Jean-Philippe and Fabienne's house.  Pascal needed to discuss some paperwork associated with the club, and then after doing that we had a social cocktail before heading back to Issoudun.  At this point, I had switched to "coca light" (diet coke) since I had hit my quota for alcohol in one weekend, but the other three partook in a casual Ricard drink.  

So like I said, the drinking was a marathon, not a sprint.  Generally speaking, the culture in France expects people to drink slowly, and as a result getting drunk doesn’t really happen regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed.  I make a point of mentioning this because I don’t want anyone to misinterpret the point of the post- I’m not recounting a wild weekend, but rather a good example of how the French drink, when they drink, and what they drink.

All in all, a very successful, social weekend.