Exactly one month ago I left France to return to Canada for a visit. Tomorrow I am heading back to la France. I wanted to write down some observations that I made about the contrasts between the two countries. I'm going to do this quickly so I can get back to packing. I'm telling myself that maybe I will edit this later, but I probably won't.
First of all, the jet lag was awful. It wasn't just a seven hour time change, it was a 30 degree Celsius temperature drop. Another thing that was difficult was readjusting to the food. From what I've heard, France (and most of Europe for that matter) doesn't allow their food to be genetically modified. The grapes all have seeds in France! I don't even know if you can get grapes with seeds at all in Canada at this point. They just don't sell because seeds are bitter, and they're kind of a hassle.
I have been finding that the food in Canada is a lot more expensive. It is also much cheaper to buy processed, prepackaged food in Canada than it is to buy fresh ingredients. In France I find it to be the opposite. I think this could very well be related to North American obesity, and the thinness of French people, even though there is a fair amount of fat in their diet. Here is the thing: humans need fat to live. I was talking to my sister yesterday about food groups, and I told her that I didn't take much stock in food groups. To me, there are three things a body needs to live: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Then there are vitamins and minerals. Hey, I'm not a nutritionist or anything, but my friend and I came up with two rules that seem to work for healthy eating:
Mildred's rule: If you can't pronounce one of the ingredients, it's bad
N's rule: If it has more than 5 ingredients, it's bad.
This works for me. I also completely object to anything low-fat or sugar-free. In France I found yogurt that was sweetened with stevia. I thought that was pretty neat. Stevia has kind of a weird taste though. A little metallic or something.
I think that another reason that French people are thinner is that they aren't obsessed with removing the sugar or fat from their food. They ENJOY their food. They eat things that are delicious. They eat chocolate for breakfast: chocolate cereals, nutella, chocolatines (croissant-like things containing CHOCOLATE). When you eat fats, you feel full.
Anyway, I've been finding the food here hard to stomach, so I've been sucking back the pepto bismal on the recommendation of one of my friends who lived in Berlin for 6 weeks. Apparently he experienced a lot of indigestion when he came back, too.
One food that doesn't cause indigestion, but is awesome: yams. I never eat yams in France because they are kind of expensive (they are imported from Israel). In Canada, they are imported from the States and they are pretty cheap. Actually, I just did a quick wikipedia on this, and these things I am eating in Canada are SWEET POTATOES which is a completely different vegetable than YAMS.Yams only grow in Africa, Oceania, Asia, and Latin America. I'm going to have to try these Israeli yams and see if they taste differently.
I`m going to stop talking about food for a moment and write about the contrasts within Winnipeg itself. Winnipeg is a cold city. It wasn't even the coldness I found so difficult, it was the contrast between being warm inside and going outside where it is 40 degrees colder. The buildings in downtown Winnipeg are all connected by a series of skywalks or underground tunnels. It is a strange city. I have no idea why people live here. I am going to miss my loved ones terribly, but I feel that it is time for me to leave. My skin is dry and falling off, and my cuir chevelu (my hair leather - aka my scalp) is disgustingly flaky. It's through no fault of my own. I've been trying all sorts of moisturizers and shampoos to stop by body from falling apart here, but I have to conclude at this point that I don't belong here. But I am leaving plenty of dead skin cells behind for the dust mites to remember me by.
