Packing and Pizza

Defiantly take the absence as a sign of me being busy. No adverbs are there for this adjective. Packing, problem solving, paperwork, errands have all been emphasized by the very fact that any and all business, unless done over the Internet, will have to be halted until July 9. There’s a sense of quasi-finality in that.

I have one more full day in the United States and I will not be back for almost half a year, huge event for someone like me who has never traveled like this before. It is exciting and eerie to be spending my birthday, the coming of the Midwestern Spring, the breaking into its hot summer, and finally my country’s day of independence…all in a world I do not really know.

Ah, well, I better just keep it short. I promised Mom I’d be “99.9%” done with my suitcases by the time we go out to eat with the Roth’s. Now there is something to be happy about, Alfonso’s Pizza. Citizens of Greene County may now not their heads in agreement.) Who knew? My favorite pizza is made in the olive oil-fragrant restaurant of a Peruvian immigrant. Do Peruvians have the best-kept secret ever that they make amazing, flavorful pizza? I don’t know, but this one can.

Math and Fog

Ugh, so I have about ten days until I leave for France and I’m feeling the pressure to get things ready, get things ready right, and doing all of this with a cool head while it seems the world is losing theirs.

I just got off the phone with Study Abroad at EIU. My bill for this semester is making no sense. My total costs amount to less than $1,000 yet the total at the bottom says over $3,000. What? I checked again and again and nowhere did any of the numbers match up. Then the other day, I received a huge check in the couple thousands from EIU, saying just that it was a “tuition refund.” Again, I’m left with a “huh?” reaction. So the Study Abroad coordinator was unavailable for the moment and I can only hope this is nothing serious and there are a bunch of other numbers being processed out there that I just can’t see and make sense of this seemingly faulty math work.

A more insignificant but disappointing point is that I don’t know if or when my London Fog trench coat will be ready for France. My seamstress (brilliant, brilliant woman) lives in Jacksonville so of course I’ve asked Mom to take it into town. The trouble with having a school administrator for a mother is that they can get very busy, very stressed, and very forgetful especially during the weeks that education consultants come in.

However, one of the consultants this week is good to have around for Mom in my opinion since they get along so well. The Illinois School for the Deaf’s reading consultant is a smart, charming professor from DePaul and I’m hoping Dad doesn’t try to forbid me from going up North this evening to have dinner with her. The weather may be mercifully getting warmer but that also means potato soup fog. Ha! London Fog and Illinois fog are both problems for me! Besides deer, fog of any kind is one of the things guaranteed to make my father overly worried.

Here’s hoping for a smooth (fog-less) departure in ten days….

Making myself update and...oh, yeah! Food Porn!

Okay, so I should probably be more regular about these entries. I can’t just leave it at Chicago. However, it is not like things have been very interesting here.

Slowly I’m putting together my Europe wardrobe and it has been rather fun but not easy. Having never been there, I have to go by guidebooks and other students’ accounts of winter weather in Angers and am expecting lots of cold and lots of wet. As a result, I just bought a brand new London Fog camel trench coat while in Chicago! Just because the weather won’t look pleasant doesn’t mean I have to as well.

So that’s been a work in progress and I’ll stop there for now since I hate to bore you with a detailed account of every sweater, camisole, and pair of pants I’m dragging over with me.

HOWEVER, I will drag in my latest obsession while waiting and waiting to go to France…cooking.

In my horror at the idea of spending a whole month doing nothing, I searched for something to keep me not only busy but producing something all the time. Hence, this is why I’m always knitting, reading, writing, or something. It is all to keep away from the dismal, boring state of doing nothing.

So I’ve been perusing through the internet, especially taking the opportunity to go healthier and cheaper, trying to use the contents of my parents’ over-stocked cabinets as much as I can. While, I doubt I can take care of the over two dozen boxes of pudding mix and the fifteen packets of country gravy by the time I leave, I have almost conquered the canned fish, fruits, soups, and vegetables. We also have a box of lime gelatin that is old and fragile enough, it could have easily come from the 80s. Anybody like Jell-O?

As any new journey such as this one, we come across individuals who change us deeply. In my case, it is Les Classiques de Camille. Yes, I’m in love with French cooking.

This is actually big news to me because ironically enough in the past I judged French cooking to be too rich, too complicated, and too expensive for my eating habits. This cookbook, covering some of the most fundamental dishes and elements of the French meal, has made me see the error of my ways.

Is it easy? No, but it is simple and I do mean simple. Those five-ingredient recipes from Betty Crocker can’t touch some of this stuff. It is good, simple food. There are no complicated ingredients to cover a poor-quality piece of meat or the freshness of the eggs. As someone who can get nearly snooty about that sort of thing, this book is my ally and friend.

Ah, and let’s not forget that great “food porn” and Camille delivers. Almost every single picture and recipe had me sighing and moaning until I realized that in the wrong context, someone might get the wrong idea if they heard me! That is why it is food porn. Though not as good as seeing it in person, here are some of my favorites. I’m just going to go to the kitchen now….

Je m’appelle Elizabet(h).

Je m’appelle Elizabet was the first phrase I learned in French class when I was a freshman in high school. I was nervous and excited; much how I’m feeling right now. I was in a new school and being introduced to a new tongue. In just a couple of weeks I will be in a new country trying to master that tongue.

People ask me why I choose French. In truth, I’m really not sure. It was available. Everyone else was taking Spanish and so that just didn’t seem exciting. So French it was then. One thing led to another and by the time I came to Eastern Illinois University my transcript called me a double major in English and Foreign Language (with a concentration in French). Eastern just works that way. One can only “concentrate” on something. It makes for a very long title on the diploma. Somewhat bothersome.

Well, it is finally Friday evening and I think I am officially recovered from this whole student-visa-application-with-France thing…as it has been going so far. What I mean is I am officially recovered from my Chicago trip. France is now currently evaluating whether I am actually an honest-to-God American university student who is attending school in France and has the financial means to support herself and not some lying, no-good, illegal alien bum.


After collecting proof of identification, financial means, and good intentions, I now can’t help but wonder, what does America make international students do to study here? As a true conservative Republican, Dad is completely confident it couldn’t be much at all because of the apparent copious amounts of “’illegals’ running about.” I have absolutely no idea so I’ll set that thought aside until I’ve spoken with an international student myself.


As for the Consulate meeting, it was actually very pleasant. I was bundled up for for the weather like another ice age was coming (notice the "moscow hat" I was wearing at the Amtrak station), but even that was pleasant as well. Well, it was pleasant compared to central Illinois that day! My experiences with the French show that their paperwork is a headache but working with them in person is rather charming (and mercifully efficient). Mom noted that their office was somewhat “dingy” but had never seen such stylish interior design in any American government office. And it was true. Probably my favorite part was the mod chairs with colorful prints of ginko tree leaves and cherry blossom branches. The whole set up in general was so, so, well très chic!

In all the whole “interview” took maybe ten minutes. It would have been less if I couldn’t stop failing to press hard enough on the finger scanner.

For all who may go through the visa process to live/study in France, know that all of the tension is in the preparation and save your mental and physical strength for pressing the stupid finger scanner.

So now I am ready to take all of that pent up stress from this stage and throw it out.

So what am I going to pack?