ICE

29 February 1996

So here I am - this week is my 1 year anniversary in France, and I've been
thinking about it all week.  It is an important event to me.  I feel as though
I've been through a variety of experiences, but that I really get along quite
well now.  My French is horrible, I still don't feel I've mastered the French
roads, I wish I could buy some tortillas, but overall, I've become a much more
functioning adult.  This compared to the infantile manner in which I had to live
my life for so long (always relying on other people, never really contributing
myself).

An example is the cookie-making.  After a number of trials and errors, I finally
have some recipes that actually work (half metric, half American measure; half
typically French ingredients, half typically American).  When we go away for
the weekend, I can bring some cookies.  Voila.

This morning I made reservations for a room in Paris for a conference in two
weeks.  Three phone calls took me about 5 minutes, and I had the reservation I
wanted.   All the little things that have taken me so long in the past work
much more smoothly now.  (To call Paris one must dial 0 to get out of the
office, dial 16 to get Paris, wait for a tone, dial 1 for no reason at all, and
then finally the number.  This took me forever to figure out one day last
Spring.  Also, to make a reservation I have to speak and be understood in my
broken French, I have to have a list of hotels to try, etc.)  After a year, its
so nice to see the progress.

But, and there is always a but...

Tonight I am having people for dinner -- without too much trouble I found the
ingredients, did some pre-cooking and cleaning (have managed to find the 'javel'
that is required to get the water stains off the walls), and basically got
organized without too much trouble.  I'm having Mexican food complete with
Corona beers.  As a last detail, I needed ice so I can put the Coronas in a
bucket of ice in typically California-barbeque-in-the-backyard style.  I had a
picture in my head of an ice machine, and thought it was just a matter of
remembering where I'd seen it.  When I realized the mental image was of an ice
machine with the word "ice" on the side, I knew exactly where I'd seen it.  No
go.  As an alternative, I went to the Casino (supermarket).  They have all the
fresh fish on ice.  I asked.  No, normally they "don't have the right" to give
out ice to customers, employee A says.  Employee B says to A that for regular
customers they do it sometimes.  Oui, says A, but one can never tell.  Depends
on who's there, but normally they don't have the right.  So what does one do? I
inquired.  That was met with the universal shrug of the shoulders, followed by
"one can get ice in the summer".

Oh, my France!  Always new things to discover!

PS There was a little more to the conversation above.  I said something about
how ubiquitous ice and ice machines are in the States (that's what I thought
I said), and A said with a smile that France is not terribly advanced.  I felt
a little bad and certainly didn't mean to be complaining about France, so I
added that Americans do consume a lot of ice - doesn't matter what sort of 
drink they're having it must have ice in it.  Seems I've had a lot of
conversations just like this in the last year..

I returned to the Casino a couple of hours before my dinner party, inquired
about ice, lucky me Employee B was there, and I got a nice double-plastic-bagged
package with perfect crushed ice for my flotilla of Corona beers.