This is a meme I’ve done for two years now: at the end of 2009 and the end of 2010.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
- Became a French citizen (dual US citizenship)
- Finished my Masters degree in comparative literature at the Université de Nice… with honors! (I still can hardly believe I managed it)
- Started sewing seriously, for my own wardrobe, rather than just one or two pieces a year
- Subscribed to the opera in Monaco Monte-Carlo

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I decide things as I go.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, a childhood friend! Also, more colleagues had babies. All are happy and in good health, though one delivery was a bit scary.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
A grade school classmate early in the year, yes.

5. What countries did you visit?
Italy, but only briefly, and only Ventimiglia, which is on the border with France.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Last year I answered “peace”, which was abundant in 2011, I’m happy to say. Right now I’m at a place where I genuinely don’t feel I’m lacking anything important. I do hope that others missing that peace could experience it.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The day I freed myself from a man who turned out to have been dishonest all along. As happens with that sort, his false self fell apart all at once. Having experienced that before (not in such a close relationship, though), I knew to just let him drop and move on. I’ve been terrifically relieved since then, thankful for friends and happy for my independence.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Clearly, finishing my Masters degree with honors, in French, while working full time. I was so nose-to-the-grindstone that three months after my thesis defense, I’m still cleaning up piles that formed in my apartment!

9. What was your biggest failure?
Due to school expenses, again I didn’t manage to get my bathroom water damage repaired. This is a priority for 2012.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
2011 was remarkably healthy for me.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Sewing patterns and fabric. I’m set for the next few years. Also, my new cycling shoes. They’re so great, it’s like having a new bike.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Definitely, without a doubt, the same as last year: my friends’. Their presence, sincerity and kindness meant a great deal to me. I feel blessed to know so many neat people, who value empathy and trust.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Appalled – he knows who he is and why. Depressed – not for very long, paradoxically. It reassured me of the value of honesty, responsibility, and empathy. Seeing people who are so fundamentally dishonest that they can convince you of sincerity for a short while (with a well-practiced false self), is more depressing for their own account. They’ll never know what it is to trust another, nor what it is to trust themselves, even. Any joy and attachment they may display are naught but a camouflage for profound alienation.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage, food, and books.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Finishing my degree and riding my bike!

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
This one, posted by a friend in response to a joke I made about being a cannibal (my Oregon university’s mascot is the Duck, and I baked a free-range duck for Christmas):

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Much happier.
b) thinner or thicker? Same.
c) richer or poorer? Richer, again, though that’s not saying much :)

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Bicycling and playing my digital piano, but that would have meant spending less time on my studies.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
I’m thinking about this and can’t come up with anything. Everything contributed to healthy growth, even the negative.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At home alone, but surrounded by Christmas cards and well-wishes from friends :) And not entirely alone, thanks to my two feline sweethearts.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
I thought I was falling for a bit, but nope. Instead I learned to better appreciate trustworthy friendships; the love that already exists in life.

22. How many one-night stands?
I’ve never had a one-night stand and dare say I never will. I think I’ll delete this question next year, it’s kind of pointless.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
“Sense and Sensibility” (the BBC miniseries, which I only just watched this year, and loved).

24. What was the best book you read?
Roots of Survival: Native American Storytelling and the Sacred by Joseph Bruchac.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
1980s punk rock. I missed a lot of it as a kid.

26. What did you want and get?
An excellent graduate education.

27. What did you want and not get?
I suppose this could have an obvious answer, but it doesn’t, really. Sometimes, when you don’t “get” something that you thought you wanted, you discover that you’re surrounded by things that are just as wonderful, in different ways.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I didn’t really pay attention to movies, what with my studies.

29. What did you do on your birthday?
Relaxed a bit from work and studies.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
The year was immeasurably satisfying as it was; I’m happy with it.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Independent

32. What kept you sane?
Friends and creativity, as well as Kanoko and Susu (my cats).

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
The Occupy movement.

34. Who did you miss?
Faraway friends

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Sue! We need to meet IRL too :)

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
Being responsible, compassionate and assertive is very invigorating.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Who needs lyrics when you have rock, a muscle car chase, explosions, and CATS? (There is also a dog.)

It’s been a long while since my last post. Thanks to all of you who patiently return to my site! As you can imagine, I’ve been busy working, whether at my job or on my Masters thesis.

I finished the bulk of my thesis a few days ago, and am now wrapping up translations of cites that were in English originally. Not an easy thing to do, since French is not my native language. I didn’t start learning it early enough to gain as much fluency as in English, beginning only at age 11. Just soon enough to have a good spoken accent, but not quite young enough to soak in an instinct for French phrasing. I really notice it in my French writing. Where in English I barely have to think twice, or when I do, it comes relatively easily and I know how and why, in French it’s a bit like pulling teeth. The demoralizing bit is that I can see that it doesn’t “read French”, but I don’t exactly know how to tidy it up.

My thesis defense will be sometime this month, in any case before the 30th since that’s the final deadline. Having picked a subject that I love, and having thoroughly enjoyed the research and writing, even when it gave me headaches, I’m actually looking forward to it. Oral presentations were my bugbear in youth, but having lived in three countries and fumbled around in several languages has served to wash away most of my embarrassment when speaking. Why worry about a subject I enjoy and discuss happily, when I can remember shopping in Finland on arrival and the only words I knew were “kiitos, kiitti, anteeksi”? (“Thank you, thanks, excuse me” respectively.) Why worry about mutual comprehension in a language I’ve spoken for decades when I can recall talking like a 2-year-old and entirely enjoying “discussions” I had in basic Mandarin Chinese with taxi drivers and artisans? Years of traveling have taught me the golden rule: try to speak their language, listen, and recognize that all humans know what it is to feel silly. Trust that they’ll relate, and the vast majority of the time, they will. Those who don’t, or who make you feel uncomfortable, are giving you valuable information – namely, to find someone else to speak with.

Life aside from my studies has been going very well too. I’m finally in a place where I’ve been able to start relaxing and enjoying the fruits of years of hardship and sacrifice. Where I can just sit in my adorable apartment with my adorable cat and enjoy life.

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busy, working both at the office, and at home and at the university library on my Masters thesis. Above is a photo of the pile of books currently at the foot of my sofa – several others I’m also using are sprinkled judiciously throughout my apartment. This pile actually has 15 books in it, and there are another three around the corner, not quite in the picture. The fall semester of my Masters degree had three courses, two of which I’ve received grades for, and I’m happy to say it went very well, with grades (“notes” in French) of 16/20 and 17/20. In the humanities, it’s practically unheard of to get 20/20; a grade of 19/20 is extremely rare, 18/20 is quite rare, and 17/20 is, well, very good! When I was in the fourth year of my bachelor’s degree as an exchange student in Lyon, I had an average of 14/20, which was already very respectable for a non-French student, and good for a French student too. I honestly didn’t expect I’d do better than that in this Masters program, so it’s a very pleasant surprise, and has definitely motivated me to work even more carefully on my thesis.

Kanoko checks in on me from time to time, poking his head in the open French doors to remind me that there’s a life outside, and by the way, if I could refill his treat bowl with tuna, that would be mighty fine. Recently I decided to stop giving him pre-made wet cat food as treats, and instead buy canned fish, which is healthier. (He already eats good “carnivore” dry food, mainly Orijen and Acana.) As a result, I bought one can of every type of plain, non-seasoned fish at the supermarket and did a week-long taste test, one at a time. He disliked mackerel, found sardines only mildly acceptable, liked salmon, and, naturally, adored tuna. So now he gets tuna and salmon during the week, for his evening treat. (For info, cats shouldn’t be fed a tuna-only diet since it lacks taurine, which is essential to feline health. Kanoko’s dry food gives him everything he needs, and the fish is a perk.) It’s fun to watch him eat it because he’s very methodical: first he licks the fish dry, without eating any of the meat, then he saunters outside to enjoy some fresh air and watch birds. An hour or so later, he comes back inside to eat half the fish. Another hour later, he comes in to finish it off, and has a sip of water. Just a few days ago, he then began crouching over his empty treat bowl to meow at me weakly and sorrowfully, as if to say that without a refill of fish, he might faint. I call him a silly cat, he looks at me, nonplussed, and returns outside, his weakness suddenly gone.

Today I received a letter from the Ministère de l’intérieur, de l’outre-mer, des collectivités territoriales et de l’immigration that begins with: “J’ai le plaisir de vous faire savoir que vous êtes Française depuis le 13/12/2010.” Translated: “I am pleased to let you know that as of 13 December 2010, you are French.”

Nice Christmas present, eh!

I can now vote in French national elections, as well as European Union elections, and will no longer have to worry about ever-changing immigration laws for non-EU citizens (which I was, until the 13th of December). I have kept my US citizenship, mainly to continue voting and participating there as well, so I have dual nationality.

My name is Anna, and I was born and raised just outside of Springfield, Oregon, USA. I started learning French when I was 11 years old, and fell in love with the language and culture — our teacher had visited France often, and her own passion for the country came through in all her lessons. I continued my studies through university, earning a Bachelors in French language and literature, minoring in music (piano and saxophone performance), and also studying a good deal of anthropology and comparative literature. My senior year was spent as an exchange student in Lyon, France, from 1997-1998.

At the time, I had a boyfriend from Lyon who had been hired by Nokia in Helsinki, Finland. I went along, not only because of him but because my parents had worked with Finns during my childhood, and had visited Finland themselves, so I was curious to learn more about the country and take the chance to live there. While in Finland I was a freelance English, French and cross-cultural instructor, giving courses to CEOs and managers at major Finnish businesses.

Two years later, in 2000, my then-partner and I decided we’d like to move back to France. He was an IT engineer, and I had started doing translations, so we agreed to move to Nice, with its proximity to Sophia Antipolis (France’s Silicon Valley) and Nice’s central location for my own freelance purposes. I’ve been in Nice since, remaining despite a difficult breakup several years ago. I still work as a translator, copyeditor and technical writer, but have been an employee since landing a job with my favorite client in 2006.

My blog actually began some time in 1995, while I was still at university in the US. A friend and I had become captivated by the World Wide Web and its possibilities in 1994, and had created a site for our university’s marching band. A few months later I decided to create an online journal, as well as a personal reference site on France (now defunct). My journal has changed along with me over the years, to what you can read now. Every few years I remove older posts that I no longer feel attached too, which is why you won’t see the entire past in my archive.

On this site I write about what’s important to me currently. At the present, that means photographing Nice and surroundings, gardening, slowly renovating the apartment I purchased in 2008, and occasionally posting about my two furballs. I don’t delve much into my personal life, since privacy is important to me, and for the same reason, I don’t often mention other people either. Writing can be fulfilling and interesting, but the Internet is not the same as a book.

While I enjoy sharing knowledge about France, there are certain things I will not address in detail: how to move here, how to get a visa, how to find a job. Anyone curious about these matters is best served by looking up their nearest French embassy or consulate. Also, while I would love to share the cultural aspects of working in France, I don’t, since I work in a consulting firm with several clients, some of whom read this site! I wouldn’t want any misunderstandings to arise.

Inspired by a great modern Swedish/Finnish folk music group (Hedningarna) while fiddling with online maps, I had the idea to map the Norwegian side of my ancestry. The result is great! I gave each point its town/city name, and in some cases listed people from certain locations. The two points in Latvia are odd ones out, corresponding to just two people. All the others form a very clear line into Norway, namely the Lofoten Islands and Lenvik, in Troms. All towns/cities without a stated country are in Norway, while the others have a country name tagged on. Holding your mouse over a point in the left-hand list will also highlight it on the map.

The family tree is here, and records go back to 1308, with the deaths of Eindrid Hvit and his wife Birgit Bårdsdatter. It was fascinating to map these: their history came to life in a way. One of the main lines descended from a Swedish knight named Karl Pedersson Schanke, born in 1360, whose family largely remained in Häckås, part of Jämtland County, which was then part of Norway (now in Sweden). Then there are several people from the Rist family, who seem to have moved around Germany a lot. They and others who weren’t already in Lenvik or Flakstad eventually congregated in Trondheim, for the most part. The family from Flakstad seem to have been rather active in Flakstad church, and ancestors on my great-grandfather’s side included a few priests, in Denmark (St. Petri, a German church in Copenhagen) and Norway (Astafjord). In addition to working the land (which many owned) and sailing the seas, others included two sheriffs, a watchmaker, a legal scribe, and a diocese scribe. I suppose that makes me an internet scribe, these 700 years and 23 generations after Eindrid and Birgit passed away.

I made the map using VirtualEarth — I had to create an MSN account, but then I could create a “Collection” and save points to it along with notes for them.

First: thanks to everyone for your well-wishes! It’s nice to see you all! (I know my blog isn’t comment-inspiring, I myself only comment elsewhere once in a blue moon… so I understand it, but it is nice to “see” people.)

The very first thing I repaired for my new apartment was my mailbox. The lock on it had twisted right from all the key turns over the years and it no longer closed — a simple wrench to tighten the lock bolt fixed that. It’s liberating to learn basic handiwork: how to drive a nail, turn a screw, drill a hole, manage nuts and bolts, and so forth. The best way to learn is to mess around with no expectations and with things that can be ruined, since you’re guaranteed to make mistakes and encounter weird surprises at first. Once you realize through trial and error that just about everything mechanical can be repaired simply by figuring out what attaches what, where and how, and that it usually consists of screws, nuts and/or bolts, life becomes much less intimidating. You then also have a better idea of what can actually be fixed, as opposed to things that are indeed irreparably broken or that require a professional.

Today my table and chair will be delivered, as well as my brand-new refrigerator. My previous, rented apartment came furnished, with appliances as well, and the apartment I shared with my ex for four years also had appliances, apart from the washing machine I chose. Meaning this is the first time I’ve ever bought a refrigerator! Nowadays there’s an excellent choice of environmentally-friendly refrigerators. The one I bought is a well-known FrenchSwedish brand, which is an important point because unlike other refrigerators made by American and German companies, this one comes with a nice rack to hold wine bottles inclined ;-) It’s 1.5m/5 feet tall, with a 208l/55gal top refrigerator and 61l/16gal bottom freezer, and only uses 240KW/h… per year! At 11 euro-cents the kilowatt-hour, that translates to 26.40 euros/year. For comparison, smaller refrigerator-freezers used between 310-350KW/h per year, which is nonetheless an A efficiency rating (excellent), and naturally, larger ones used even more.

Somewhat related through wastefulness/efficiency, there’s an interesting thread about decluttering with lots of different experiences, all agreeing that “less is more”. I too had the unchosen yet liberating feeling of satori when I left my ex and was left with nothing but my clothes. The only things I missed were my books, plants, music and my computer. (The books were kept for me, but I couldn’t exactly do anything with them. All the furniture, and the computer I’d always used — we had two — had been out-and-out taken, based on the claim they had never been mine. Mais passons cela…) I’ve never been able to do without books. I missed them so terribly in the months following that I even dreamt about them. One of my favorite dreams three and a half years ago, when I was living in a furnished motel in Nice and despairing of ever finding landlords who would rent to a single foreigner (with no guarantor) and a freelancer, was of my brother and a dear French friend visiting. They’d brought my lost bookcase, full of books, knowing how much I wanted to see them all again. (Meaning my brother and the friend as well!) As for my computer, it was not only my livelihood at the time, being a freelancer, it was also my connection with loved ones. Thankfully, family pitched in so that I could get a laptop to bide me over until I got back on my feet.

Once my landlords found me (yes, they found me, through this very site! :) ) and I moved into my now-previous apartment, I realized how much I’d missed cooking: thus my current joy in picking out a new refrigerator that I know from experience shall be used well. Losing everything helped highlight what held the most meaning for me: my cat, dependable clothes and shoes, a well-thought-out kitchen, books, plants, music, sewing, a comfortable chair to read in and a table to create on. That, bookcases, a bed, and a place for Malo to go outside and for me to grow plants are all I need to be happy. And I do love my bike as well!

Some helpful moving-in links:
o Changement d’adresse, run by the French government, to change your address for la sécu, les impôts (taxes) and other government agencies.
o Electricité de France (EDF), which is no longer the only electricity provider in France, but I preferred to go through them — their tarif bleu, “blue rates”, are great, and I’ve always found them to be fast and trustworthy.
o There’s water to take care of too; mine is through the building and a shared expense, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

Loan offers much better than my worst-case scenario are coming in, and with the compromis de vente (sale agreement, a legally binding document for buyer and seller) signed by all parties, barring exceptional circumstances, the apartment will be mine! These photos are from the advert (not mine), I’ll take other pictures when I have the chance — silly me forgot to do so when I had my handheld camera with me last time. The kitchen is a great size, and I like the bar. As mentioned before, the living room is decorated with fake rocks (which I’ll remove), and it has a cozy nook the right size for a couch. The façade is late art déco; the building is from the late 1940s/early 1950s. The arches on the upper balconies are repeated (without detailing) inside my place, over all the doorways. I love simple arches done like that on high ceilings.

As a few people (in real life and here) have mentioned, I’ve come a long way. The story, since its original telling isn’t online anymore: four years ago I broke up with my then-boyfriend of seven years. Four years before that, when my boyfriend and I arrived in Nice and found our apartment, he put the apartment rental agreement in his name only, explaining that it kept me safe from legal pursuit if anything happened. But when I broke up, he found a new place and I had no recourse on keeping the old one. As a foreigner with noone to act as guarantor, unmarried (single woman…), and a freelancer (i.e. no permanent job contract), landlords wouldn’t even consider renting to me. My ex also took all of the furniture, since without an apartment, I “wouldn’t need it.”

A few months later, I offered to take care of our cat, Malo, at my ex’s place for Christmas — I was living in a self-catering “apartment”, meublé in French, that didn’t allow animals. On Christmas Eve, I arrived at an apartment with no cat… no cat food dish… no litterbox… and no explanation. A few days later I learned that my ex had given away Malo as a Christmas present. (This parenthesis is where I gloss over my fury.)

A year after the breakup, I was still living in the meublé, whose owner was dropping unmistakable hints about renting my apartment to someone else for the summer. She started having prospective renters visit, since I had a lower rate than she could get from tourists in high season. One day in March, so depressed that I’d written about it on my blog, out of the blue I got an email from my current landlords, who read this site and so knew what was happening. They had an apartment that would be freed up soon — I visited and could hardly believe my eyes. It had a gas stove (I love cooking with natural gas), beautiful light, was furnished, and they hoped Malo would be able to enjoy it some day.

As if that weren’t miracle enough, a couple days after moving in, the “gift recipient” of Malo decided that cat fur was not something she wanted to deal with. That same day, Malo was back — and so was my bookcase, amazingly enough. Another big “thank you” to Landlord T and Landlord S, as well as family members who helped — without their generosity, I honestly have no idea how I would have managed.

Life has fallen back into place since then, accumulating my own furniture gradually, having a permanent job contract, and soon, my own home. I’m happy to say that living out of my hiking backpack in a dark, cockroach-infested hotel without my cat is now only a rough memory that I can look back on and sigh with relief. And I am so, so happy to have been able to stay in Nice. It has its quirks, to be sure, but I’ve come to love it. I never imagined while growing up in the countryside near Springfield, Oregon, that one day I’d own a place on the French Riviera.

This is my eye. My left eye with a reflection through my balcony French doors, to be precise, and bloodshot because this morning my cat pulled a stunt somewhat like this cartoon. Instead of a baseball bat, it was one of his hind legs that punched me. I’m thankful to still have my eye; he came very close to hitting it directly.

My eyes have a coloring that’s known as central heterochromia, meaning my iris has a circle of a different color around the pupil. In addition to having heterochromial eyes, I also have hair with sectoral heterochromia (I was born with a blonde streak, the rest is dark brown):
   
I have the Internet to thank for finally being able to put a name to my blonde streak and eyes.