It’s not all snails and frogs legs
It was always a worry of mine, when I moved to France, that I would be force fed the dreaded escargots and cuisses de grenouilles. Needless to say, I survived. I had brief encounter with an andouillette (a kind of pork sausage made with intestines and chitterlings) but I’m trying to erase that from my memory. Frogs’ legs on the other hand, actually surprisingly bearable, they are very small and mostly just tasted like chicken.
There are many things I will miss from the French lifestyle (the strikes I was happy to leave behind), namely food-related.
Spending £1 on a pastry in the UK will probably get you a stale croissant or a dodgy tart, but €1 for my morning pastry was one of the highlights of my day. The French take a lot of care in their food, from luxury restaurants to high street croissants. Even McDonalds there is better than ours, they sell Macarons in the McCafe!
Lunch is a really big deal in France, and everyone takes advantage of their lunch breaks. As I was working in a school, I would spend 2 hours in the staff room in awkward silence with the other teachers. As I quietly tucked into my sandwich, the teachers would whip out full cooked meals, which were always accompanied by a baguette and fruit compote. There was fish, steak, industrial size cans of peas, weird lumpy-looking casseroles, all very strong-smelling but they loved it. I soon adopted this, as 2 hours is a long time to fill with a small packed lunch, and although I never went as far as a full English roast, they definitely encouraged me to make my lunches more exciting!
Nevertheless, there was one home comfort I missed from England. One thing I had to stock up on every time I flew home. Tea bags. Could not have survived my time abroad without them!