Things I Never Knew Until I Moved to France*

I never knew about a Raclette, which Liam's sister introduced us to last weekend- not just a cheese, but an entire dinner of fun (above)! Underneath that plate that's cooking our endives and tomates and pommes de terre and courgettes there are little slices of cheese just melting away into a gooey delicious mess that YOU choose to drizzle onto your aforementioned cooked veggies (or meat) when they're ready. Fondue for germa-phobes. And delicious.

I never knew that you could get tablets for the washing machine come in small squares even when your machine doesn't call for tablets, or that the water here is so hard that white shirts become gray like in a detergent commercial before-hand and the toilet needs to get scrubbed every week and let's not even talk about what's probably happening to my tea drinking teeth ....

I never knew that patisseries are lined along the walls with confitures and compotes and often chocolates and other sweets as well, or that if you walk outside and decide your croissant is so delectable that you'd like to eat it while you walk that you will be scorned by passersby.

I never really imagined that my small kitchen would welcome small pans, small pots, small bags of lentils and pasta and that you CAN get popcorn here, it's just suggested on the back that you grate emmental or gruyere over it while it's hot.

I also can't really get straight the idea that ordering du the (some tea) = a tea, or that if I say une the (a tea) it doesn't work because really it's un the (masculine, not feminine) and really, I never knew that I would constantly get stuck ordering deux the (two teas) which mostly is the mistake when someone else is around to accept the other glass.

I knew my butter and yogurt sections of my grocery would be huge, but I never knew that it would be difficult to find natural, with acidophilus, large tubs of yogurt rather than tiny, delectable, environmentally dangerous ones.

I never knew how much I absolutely adored caramel de beurre sale whether it's in a jar from the market or in a crepe from a new crepe place that came highly recommended with chantilly on top or in an eclair at Aoki or macaron at Pierre Herme, it's most definitely my new favorite.

*alternately, things I may have known but didn't truly understand until I moved to France