click your heels three times...

...and say, "There's no place like home..." I don't know what it was but I was awash in homesickness today. OK, I do know what it was an accumulation of a lot of stuff. Struggling with the language, Ally getting injured, not being able to find what I needed at the grocery store and multiple people looking at me like I had three heads when I tried to speak in French.
Let's just say it wasn't a great day for me. I nearly broke down in tears at the grocery store when I spotted an overpriced bag of six Oreo cookies. I almost bought them as well. I was good, I left them on the shelf and turned my back on the small but beckoning foreign food aisle -yes, it is still strange to me that "American" food is foreign food, but it is and since I live in France it DOES make sense - and went back to perusing the aisles of incomprehensible French foodstuffs.

At our local grocery store there is an entire aisle of cheese. Cheese after cheese. Hard cheeses, soft cheeses, goat cheeses...you name it, they got it...all except for the cheese I needed, Asiago cheese. I searched high and low and when I couldn't find it I took a huge breath and prepared myself to ask the woman at the cheese counter. Surely, they would have it there. Granted, I probably didn't want to pay the exorbitant price at the fancy cheese counter, but they would have it no doubt. WRONG. The woman looked at me and repeated, "Asiago?" in her thick French accent. "Oui, c'est un fromage Italian." I replied. "Non," she responded and pointed out the Parmigian cheese. Are you kidding me? We live, like, 5 hours away from Italy maybe less and all you have is Parmigiana? That's it!! You've never heard of Asiago? Sad, but true. No doubt if it was a French cheese I couldn't get away from it. uuuurghh.

I just had to get that off my chest. I had the same experience with Prosciutto. The people at the deli counter had never heard of it. THey were baffled. I am continually mystified by this. We have these Italian goodies all the way on the other side of the f#$@ing ocean why have they never heard of these products in France? And why do they continually look at me like a three headed monster? I'm the customer and the customer is always right. Except, of course, when you are in France

isn't it magic

aaaah, magicians week at the theatre...and I get to assist all week. It's a ton of fun learning the magic tricks, but boy oh boy, I do have to say 29 kids all in one room is a handful! Even down at the beach they are a force to be reckoned with. Don't get me wrong, they are really great (at least many of them are) but there are moments I feel a bit out of my element. I don't really know the first thing about magic I'm learning the tricks the same as the kids. I can help them with their presentation of it, but sometimes it's hard to keep 8-12 year olds focused on doing and perfecting one trick for more than 15 minutes at a time. you know how kids are- they think they know how to do everything. They want to make up their own tricks and show you - which is great, but not really the point of the exercise we may be doing at that particular moment.

There are moments when I think, "this is why I don't have kids." The raving lunatics. I know, I know everyone says it's different when they are your own, and I'm sure that's true. Someone has to love these little tyrants. I witness daily parents cooing over these minuscule savages. I'd definitely be the parent of a wild thing that I would adore, coddle, and spoil. Hence I should not reproduce. Even if my kid wasn't one of those his/her friends would no doubt be. So best to just not procreate.

On a totally different note, I notice my North American repressions surfacing all over the place - ok well really only at the beach. We go to the lake for lunch and I am ALWAYS astounded at the number of half naked people there. Sometimes I want to yell, "put your withered old French titties away, can't you see there are children here!" But I'm the only one who seems to notice or be bothered by the abundance of breasts taking in the suns golden rays. then there are the old men changing into their swim trunks on the beach, granted they do wrap themselves in a towel so you can't see anything so that's not too bad. There's also the old foggies sitting around in their tidy-whiteys. Now that is something I could have lived without ever seeing. The kids, having grown up here and being kids, don't even blink an eye. In fact, today some of them whipped of their own trousers (I keep saying pants and the Brits think I mean underwear) so that they could wade in the water. I was practically speechless when I saw the first little boy splashing around up to his thighs in the water with an over-sized shirt and no pants...er trousers, that is. I did a double take - at first thinking he had rolled up his shorts quite high. Nope, he was pantsless...or trouserless. Then I spied another one trying to pull his off. I rushed over and said, "Uh-uh, keep your trousers on." Thank god it was time to go at that point. I think tomorrow we're going to have to lay a few more ground rules for lunch - like keep your CLOTHES ON!!! Seriously, if they want to strip down on a trip with their parents more power to them, but running around in your undies is not the thing to do while you are at a summer camp. I could be wrong here and I am trying to adapt to European culture, but somethings I just can't adjust to.

Farmer's Market GEX

One thing I absolutely love about living here is all the farmer's markets. Each weekend there are open air markets in GEX, Divonne-les-bannes, Thoiry, Geneva...go to almost any town and you'll find a section of the village roped off and hosting the stands of local producers. It's wonderful. We take Ally and a pocketful of Euros and we're on our way to some culinary delights. This morning we hopped in the car and went to GEX (the Thoiry and Divonne markets are on Sundays). I don't think that the GEX market is my favorite, but it's still wonderful. I took a bunch of photos with the hope that it will give a little taste of the atmosphere of these markets. The other good thing about these markets is we're forced to use French. It may not be good French and there's the possibility that we'll only say" un kilo de cerise, s'il vous plait" ( a kilo of cherries, please) yet on the other hand you could have a lovely conversation about sausages with a local vendor. you never know! Enough talk, here are the photos.







My favorite discovery today was the saucissons (the sausages). DH had Ally and I was wandering along looking at the stand full of sausages and I noticed one basket that was marked Myrtilles. The basket was full of these rather blueish looking encased sausages. Myrtilles are blueberries - I had just had to find out what this was all about. I politely asked the woman, "Mytrilles! commes la fruits?" (Blueberries! like the fruit?). Her reply was (I' m not going to do it in French because I can't really remember exactly what the French is but, heres' the gist) Yes and it's delicious. Would you like to try some? (un petit gout). My natural response was YES PLEASE! It was amazing. A little sweet a little salty and just a hint of blueberry. Amazing. whoever would have thought, blueberry sausage! The French, I guess.
I inquired as to how much they were - 4 Euros a piece, she said, but we have all these special deals and she pointed to the various signs hanging about explaining what I could get. I said I'd have to convince my husband, he had disappeared, but I'd be back. No doubt she thought I was just using that as an excuse to not buy anything. But we did, in fact, return. She let us taste as many sausages as we wanted till we settled on our choice for the mini lot: 3 sausages your choix plus 1 bottle of wine or a terrine of your choix (she also said we could choose a packet of olives if we prefered). Terrine comes in a squat glass jar and is like a pate type thing. You can spread it on bread. Of course, we went for the wine. Our choice of saucissons was: Myrtilles, fume, ail (blueberry, smokes, and garlic). Not too adventurous but we did taste the beaujoulais (wine flavored), deer... hmmmm..what else did we taste? oh, goat cheese. I can't remember what else. There was duck, bull, all sorts of crazy kinds. We'll have to try out some more another week.
Ally was so good while we tastes our sausage. The woman running the stand cut off 6 slices just for Ally. Quel gate! (how spoiled). Check out the photo of Ally staring longingly at the saucissons. All in all it was a great morning. We came away with fresh fruit, sausages, wine, and some fresh veggies. What more could we ask for?

Last Weekend

Yeah, yeah, like always I'm super behind. I don't have a real excuse, but I do feel like I was very busy this week. I only worked a day and a half but I spent my days working around the house. Yard work, laundry, cleaning, you know tedious crap that has to get done yet no one ever wants to do it.

So, here are few pictures from our weekend with our friend from Ohio. It was so wonderful to see her and to just be able to relax and enjoy playing host and hostess. You know how some people are just difficult house guests? Demanding, needy, well not her. She's fabulous. She goes with the flow, she loved Ally, and she loves France - c'etait un week-end merveilleux! (it was a marvelous weekend).

We kicked off Saturday by collecting her at the train station, stashing her bag in our car and finding a parking garage on the left bank...or was that the right bank? I can never remember - the side with the Old City. We took in the key tourist attractions - namely the Jet d'eau, Jardin Anglaise, and well...that's about it. We wandered through the old part of the city and stopped to sample some cheeses at the open air farm market. We came away with a load of the most delicious cheese and some dried meats (they seemed to be Italian products, but who knows really!). I think our growing hunger was feeding our spending habit because we then
picked up a sack of cherries that we devoured as we strolled through the streets.

To be completely truthful with you DH and I are the worst tour guides of Geneva. We get lost every time we're there. We couldn't find our way through old town with a compass. It's pitiful but true. And we have a tendency to argue about where we are and which direction we should go. Usually we're both wrong! Last weekend we gave up trying to look like we knew where we were and what we were doing and just walked till there was something we wanted to stop and see. It worked fairly well. We found this random arch and staircase. I don't think you can read the name, but it is Passage des degres de poules, literally something like 'passage of the degrees of chickens' - who knows what that's supposed to mean. Or maybe I'm translating it completely wrong. Wouldn't that be great if someone left a comment saying, "you idiot it says, passage of the bearded ladies."? That would be great.

We had nice lunch in the old town - where we were seranaded (sort of) by wandering street musicians . We got their backs, but I can't complain. Hey, we weren't going to pay them and I'm sure they can spot the tippers a mile away. We, obviously, look like the cheapskates we are. hee, hee, hee. At least DH and I do. After filling up on Fondue, Tartiflette, and Taboulis we wandered some more till we found a great little restaurant on the tiny island in the middle of the mouth of the Rhone. We sat out on the terrace overlooking the water and relaxed and chatted over a nice cafe. aaah, heaven. The sun shining, a shady terrace overlooking the water, a cool breeze blowing (luckily it was nice out we had thought it was going to when we left our house that morning), good conversation, and a hot cup of strong coffee. What more could you ask for? Once we had our fill of Geneva we beat a hasty retreat to our place to avoid the masses that would be descending for the Lake Parade later that night. I haven't been but I heard it's a crazy techno rave with floats. Maybe we'll go next year... or maybe we're just old fogees in young bodies.
That evening we cracked some wine -starting off the evening with some bubbly, sparkling wine from Bourgogne. We gave the honor of popping the cork to our guest...or forced her to, whichever way you look at it. Then we had a feast fit for kings - sparkling Cremant and Chocolate cake. You can't get much better than that for dinner at chez Mosslins!

Oh it was so good, my tummy was so full of yummy goodness I didn't think I could get up. But we all managed to take the dog for a walk then crack open a bottle of Cote du Rhone. Yep, it was a good weekend. And if the promise of wine-filled weekends and delicious chocolate cake from the local patisserie doesn't entice you to come visit us I don't know what will!

yummmmm, just look at that luscious cake.....

allez GoZo!!!!

We have been busy little beavers over here in Europe the past week or so. Last Thursday July 10) my darling hubbster had his football final (soccer for all you Americans). He played on two different outdoor teams this spring and I hadn't been to one single match...I figured I'd better make it to the finals! Luckily, it was a lovely day - I told him to count me out if it was raining. I know, I'm a terrible wife but who wants to stand outside getting soaked for a company league match? not I, said the fly. so here are few pictures from that game. Sadly, I ran out of batteries so I didn't get the celebratory photos during the handing out of the trophy or the smokers of the team puffing while lounging immediately after the match.

Not to disparage his team, they are quite good, but I was so surprised that they won. The other team made up mostly of French was filled with teenagers. Not that the teenagers were better skilled, but they sure were more heat and fatigue resistant. GOZO, my hubby's team was showing their age by the middle of the first half. It was hot out and the hubby, at 31 years, is one of the youngest members of the team! I find that a bit far fetched, but that's what the guys around me told me. I tried to get some cool pictures and little video but most of them are crap.
Every time something really great was happening I was either fumbling to turn on my camera or it didn't snap the picture fast enough. Here's a great close up of hubby's butt as he whizzes past me on the sidelines. I thought I was going to get some fabulous action shots close-up but the camera just didn't take the pictures till too late. Bummer.
I even missed the only goal GOZO made, scored by the hubby and it was a beautiful shot. I was so pissed that the camera didn't turn on in time. All the guys around me said, "did you get it? did you get it on camera?" in all their different accents. I had to sigh and say, "no. I just missed it. But my hubby will be happy to know I saw it at the very least." Or at least he better be.

Let's see if I can insert a little video clip of their actual play. You'll see DH at the left of the screen quite close up then at the end of the clip he is on the far right side of the goal! How on earth did he do that? It must be magic or fast legs! so, that's pretty much all I got for that. The other team ended up scoring a goal in the injury minutes (the ref seemed to let the injury time go on and on and on...) they went to two 10 minute overtime halves, no one scored, and Team GoZo won in a penalty shootout. My man scored - his penalty kick, that is.


After the match we all went to Charlie's Pub in Sain-Genis and enjoyed a nice cool beer. We tried to get kababas from Pamoukale, the Turkish?, restaurant next door but they were out of bread. So we ended up with a little plastic container of shaved meat and some french fries. Not the best meal, but hey it was food and we were starving. I've been trying to post a bad picture of Charlie's taken last May on a dark rainy night..but it doesn't seem to want to show up. Something strange has happened to blogger. Oh well, I guess we'll see how it turns out in the final post.
I have so much that I should catch up on. I had wanted to post pictures of our trip to Pittsburgh back in May/June, we had our friend from college come visit us this past weekend and I need to put up those photos...geeze, I'm really behind. I'll try and catch up, but no promises.

Grilling out

meet our brand new grill! Isn't she a beaut? We picked up this baby for a mere 15 Swiss Francs at Jumbo, the Swiss version of a Lowes or Home Depot (though smaller). What a great price you must be thinking! Yeah, me too when my DH told me he'd gotten a grill so cheap. Every other grill we'd seen in France or Switzerland was outrageously expensive. I mean you could barely find a grill for under 100 Euros how did he manage to find this gem? Well, there's a reason this lovely grill cost so little...because it too is little. That's right it is sitting on our patio table. The thing is barely 2 feet tall! But DH is so very proud of the little thing. And, to be fair, I guess we don't really need a huge grill for the two of us. We can use our neighbors from time to time which is bigger. Besides, this one is portable. Yeah, let's look on the bright side of this pint sized grilling machine.
Aaah, here's a picture of the happy fellow putting together our little prize of a grill. I hope he doesn't strain his back bending over that miniature version of a grill! I'm not taking him to the hospital if he does. You know, honestly, I think just about everything in Europe is smaller than back home in the Ole' U.S. of A. but most things aren't THIS small! Then again, what was I expecting when my beaming husband told me he'd purchased a grill for 15 swiss francs? I mean, did I suddenly think that his mother's bargaining skills had magically transported themselves into him? That the ability to find a bargain and drive a price down had been some genetic ability lying dormant until this moment? I should have known better. To be fair, for all it's tininess it does grill up some mean cornelle chicken (that's a special marinade my mom always made some people call it 4-H marinade). Mmmmm.....mmmm....boy was that some good eatin'. That is after the silly thing stopped smoking.

Feeling Independent

A very belated Happy 4th of July to all you fellow Americans out there. We didn't really do much to celebrate here, we've both been quite busy lately. On Friday, the 4th, we actually went Tangoing. I thought it was sort of funny that to celebrate American Independence we danced the Argentine Tango! hee, hee. maybe I'm the only one that thinks that's amusing. In reality we didn't go out to celebrate it just happened that there was a Tango evening at the CERN dancing club on the 4th of July.

On the 3rd the Simply Theatre Academy had an end of year barbecue for all the students and their families. So, although a day early, I did get to enjoy a barbecue. Sadly, DH was so busy at work he couldn't join us. It was nice though a little chilly. Naturally, the weather was beautiful the day before and the day after, but the day of the barbecue it rained and was quite cool. Still, there was a nice view of the lake, delicious wine, and good food so I can't really complain. I was also taken to Aligro the wholesale store in Geneva. It's awesome! It is Switzerland's version of Sam's Club or BJ's. Everything is sold in bulk. If you don't want massive quantities then this is not the store for you. The best part? They had a HUGE wine section AND wine tasting. Where else could you go shopping for bulk food supplies and get to have free wine tastings at 11:00 am? No where. Thank goodness I had plenty of shopping to do after the tasting or perhaps it would have been dangerous to drive. Hee, hee, just kidding.

Now I know where to go when we hold a massive party here - like we'll ever get around to it..but a girl can dream can't she?

well, I hate to run but Ally is cowering underneath me - there's a large, loud thunderstorm rolling through. I better go give her some TLC before she has a nervous breakdown. She's gotten much more jittery in her old age...or maybe it's just the influence of les chiens francais!





Salle Communale de Coppet

cheep, cheep, cheep, peck a little, talk a lot

Oh what a weekend. Saturday I went to a hen do (basically a bachelorette party) -ALL day Saturday. It was fun, but exhausting. We started out at 2 pm by meeting up at the Geneve Plage (the Geneva Beach), which was very cool since I had never been there before. I was, of course, running late and by the time I got to the plage there was a HUGE line waiting to get in. You have to pay 7 swiss francs entrance fee for the day. Naturally, I chose the line that didn't move. I waited and waited and waited and when I was about 4 people from the cashier a fight broke out in front of me. Apparently, 2 guys tried to jump in line and another guy said no way, jose. Go to the end of the line. They started pushing each other and one of the guys trying to jump ahead took his motorcycle helmet and "CRACK" bashed the other guy in the head. Oh my god, it was crazy. The sound of helmet hitting head echoed throughout the place. Finally, someone who worked there came out and told the guys to go to the end of the line. Did they? Not at first. They tried to jump into line behind me. The woman next to me, I would guess she was in her early sixties, wasn't going to have any of that. She got right up in that dudes face and stuck her finger in his chest telling him to get his hiney to the back of the line - ALL the way back. They didn't argue with her.

I finally made it into the beach, found my little group (there were 5 of us) and commenced an afternoon of sun bathing, splashing in lake Geneva, and drinking wine. Once we got our fill of the sun (3 out of 5 of us had a lovely red glow -thank god I was not one) we departed to shower and get ourselves "dollied" up for a nice dinner and some late night partying. Little did I know how late it night it would be....

We headed to the other side of the lake to a lovely restaurant in Tannay, near our offices, called Buvette de la Plage. There we had a lovely table on the terrace, right next to the lake. Unfortunately, we were plagued by bugs! Those nasty little midges were swarming all around. One of the women was a smoker and we encouraged her to indulge just to keep the bugs away. As the sun went down it got a bit better...till they turned on the overhead lights and the nasty little buggers kept dive bombing our deserts. They were literally swimming in the cream poured over my meringue! Eeeeew. it was disgusting. Carlos, our waiter, gave me another one even though I was so stuffed at that point I didn't really want it. It was a nice gesture. Carlos also had a fancy for the bride-to-be. She often came to this restaurant so new him from previous occasions. He decided this was the perfect opportunity to try and suck the bride-to-be's face off! It was pretty funny. She was rather stunned. I think there are pictures somewhere, but my camera ran out of batteries so I don't have one! At around midnight we called a taxi, piled in and headed back into Geneva for some more celebrating.

We went to a club called, Shakers. We arrived about 12:30 am I thought this would be the prime time to be there. Oh boy, was I wrong. As a couple of the women in our group had said, "12:30 is WAAAY too early. No one will be there. " It was dead. But, at least we could sit down have a drink and not contend with the crow. By about 2 am it was packed. Before the downstairs "club" section had opened there was no where to dance, so the bride-to-be triple dog dared me to dance on the low bench we were sitting on. Naturally, I jumped up and did it. I looked up and saw the bartender looking at me. I smiled, gave a little wave, and sat back down. He grinned gave me the thumbs up and motioned for me to go ahead and dance if I wanted too. hee, hee. After my first drink called a Black Rain - it was super sweet and came in a glass "shaker" with a lid and a straw - super dangerous stuff, I switched to water. I just couldn't take another sweet drink, besides they cost 32 swiss francs a piece! I don't know how people afford to go out every weekend. C'mon someone had to keep a straight head and no one else in our party seemed inclined to do so and let's face it, I don't need alcohol in me to dance or act silly and crazy I do that naturally anyways. One time when I was begging water from Philip, the bartender, he asked me if I would dance on the bar? I said, "right now? Bien sur, pourquoi pas?" (of course, why not?) So I jumped up onto a stretch of the bar that was not occupied by drinkers and shook my groove thang. I had to hold onto a nearby post, not because I was drunk, but because I had on high heels and the bar was a bit slippery. Many photos were taken. i tried to get the bride to join me and she almost did then backed out. Ah well. It seems as though my photo will soon grace the walls of Shakers (in their rotating display gallery) ah well. At least I have all my clothes on and I'm not doing anything too crazy! Besides, who knows when I'll ever get back there. It's not as though DH and I are party animals.

By 4:00 am everyone in our party wanted to leave, except the bride -to-be. So, since I was going to crash at her place I said I'd stay with her. I think I was the only one who wasn't completely trashed at that point. The bar closes at 5:00 am and when the bouncer asked us to leave the bride became quite belligerent. She did not want to leave and she was not going to leave. She knew the owner (which she does) and therefore she did not have to leave. I couldn't get her to leave until nearly 6:00 am! When we walked outdoors she said, "Oh shit, the suns coming up!" By this time I had asked one of the bartenders to call us a cab only to find out they were no longer running. The bride insisted it was fine. We'd find a cab outside. I couldn't get it through to her there were none. The public transportation had not started running yet and neither had the cabs. It was Sunday, the day of rest I had no idea when things would be up and running again. She insisted we could walk to her place. My feet were in no shape for walking. I'm not used to wearing heels and I had been dancing all night in them. I decided to call the hubby. Poor, wonderful man. I woke him up and he came and got us.
We took the bride home (the groom was in Ireland on his Stag weekend) we got some water down her, told her to go to bed and headed home ourselves. I finally got to bed about 7:30 am and slept on and off all day Sunday. It wasn't so much that I was hung over, yes I admit some of it was the alcohol - I'd been drinking alcohol interspersed with water from about 2 pm till 1 am of course it effected me - but mostly it was the exhaustion of being up all night. I haven't stayed up all night in ages. It was fun, but I don't think I'll make a habit of it.

Can't wait till work tomorrow when I see some of my partners in crime and see what exactly they remember from the evening. Should be amusing!

*no names were used in order to protect the innocent...and the not so innocent* hee, hee, hee