Can you believe I’ve been here for over a month already? We’re going on a month and a week… And I know that you really just want to hear about
First, our host family puts aluminum foil (mistakenly called “tin foil” by many people, myself included on a day when I’m not minding myself, even though it is nothing of the sort. It’s aluminum through and through) over everything. Well, it’s not that much different than saran wrap (or whatever the non-brand name is), right? It turns out that if you leave it in the fridge for too long, it gets a nasty, green stain on it. Then it just gets worse as you reuse it. Well, my first few weeks here, I was a bit revolted by the idea of eating out of a container that had been sealed with the semi-rusting seaweed green aluminum foil, but I figured I could manage since it (usually) didn’t touch the food, and since everyone else was eating, I didn’t want to be the rude one out. Well, this goes on for about a month (until last Tuesday night) when I observed the son, Amoury, make a sandwich and pull out the fresh roll of aluminum foil. Not only does the piece he tears off have the green stain through the middle of it, but it seems that it’s a decorative feature of the foil, not mold after all. So, the moral of the story is that I feel a lot better about using it and eating the food, but it still creeps me out that they would intentionally make aluminum foil look like it was going to give you cancer if you ate out of it. I guess it’s one of those things… “Someday we’ll know.”
Another revelation I had was about the pink toilet paper. Oh, wait, I still haven’t figured that one out. I have, of course, seen pink toilet paper in the store, but never have I seen it used, much less in the seeming abandon they have propagated its spread throughout the country. That is to say, a lot of the private residences have pink toilet paper. I blew my nose with it; it’s even scented.
My final cultural... thought (I would hate to call it an insight, since I feel like an insight should make you a better person, and I’m not sure this is helping with that), is that while explaining why my roommate runs every night and I do not, I had to explain about when Laudie and I went skiing and I hurt my knee. Turns out that the word for “to hurt” or “to injure” is “blesser,” which you probably realize sounds a lot like “to bless” in English. In fact, to say “I hurt my knee” you say “Je blesse (pronounced ‘bless’) mon genou” (emphasis added). I pointed out this false cognate to my family, and they rejoined with a story about how some missionary had gone up and said a prayer over the pulpit asking the Lord to bless (a.k.a. “injure”) every one of the members present. Not a meeting I’d like to be a part of, but hey, you win some you lose some. Better luck next blessing. That's all for today, but I'll get some more in tomorrow.
La vida es bella!
La vie est belle!
Life is beautiful!
Jeff
P.S. Ireland was amazing. Yes, my life is an adventure. I wouldn't have it any other way ;-)
2 comments:
Haha, i'm still laughing out loud about the green mold on the foil... that is hilarious!!! Scented toilet paper? That's not a bad idea! Haha, oh jeffrey... that is too funny, i can't get over it.
haha the foil then made me laugh too! All this time you could have peace of mind if you had found out that it was normal!! Oh and about the toilet paper, that reminds me we use to have blue, pink, yellow, green toilet paper (have no idea where it came from) but it was great for toilet papering... a work of art!
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