Egg Hunt & Poisson d'Avril

Yesterday my friend Krissy, who is from Nova Scotia, Canada, and I decided to create a Facebook event: “Chasse des oeufs de Pâques!!!” Yup, that’s right, Krissy and I are hosting an Easter egg hunt on Sunday at 3 in one of the local parks and it’s a BYOB (bring your own baguette) event. I’m so excited that we’re doing something for Easter! But that meant we were going to need some eggs.

So Krissy and I went on a mission during our hour break between literature and translation. First, we headed to Deux Euro because due to the nature of its title we figured it would be cheap to pick up a bunch of plastic eggs. While they had plenty of items for two euros, they didn’t have any eggs. So we went into Multimum which honestly I didn’t think would have anything because it mostly sells cook and dish ware and I was right, it didn’t have any eggs. Afterwards we went into The Place, a type of thrift store near the Grand Theatre. Nothing.

Then we figured ok, Monoprix will definitely have plastic eggs because it’s the largest grocery store around. Negative. They had a whole section of Easter chocolates and candy, but no plastic eggs. By this time we were getting desperate so we traversed the crazy French road and went into a confectioner’s to ask if the lady knew where one could buy plastic eggs. We tried explaining what we wanted and she thought we wanted molds in which to make egg shaped items. Luckily, one of the professors from school was in line behind us and addressed us in English. She also wasn’t sure exactly what we were looking for, but once we told her it was for kids and for hiding she knew what we were talking about. She suggested going to Carrefour (another major grocery store), but Carrefour is far enough away we’d need to hop on a bus. She offered to drive us there, but we said we had to get to class (because by that time we really did need to go to class.)

I never realized that buying plastic eggs would be so difficult. In the States, they’re a dime a dozen, but not here.
On our way back to school we thought of other ways of doing an Easter egg hunt. I suggested buying real eggs, hard boiling them and then decorating them, or just buying a bunch of chocolate eggs (though those would be really hard to find considering they’re the size of a grape). We wandered into another promising store along the way and low and behold, they had plastic eggs! Unfortunately, they weren’t the type we wanted. These ones were decorative plastic eggs that didn’t open up, had a ribbon attached to them and were three euros for six…SO not worth it. Our last stop was Diagonal, one of the smaller supermarkets a couple minutes from school. We went in just to see how much real eggs would cost and discovered you could get ten eggs for one euro. We bought the last three cases and then raced off to class with our bag of eggs. We were a little bit late, but I figured if we just yelled “Poisson d’Avril” after entering we’d be ok.

“Poisson d’Avril” is the French April Fool’s day, except literally translated it means “Fish of April.” According to French Wikipedia it originated in 1564 when France was reforming its calendar. The government moved the start of the year from March 31st to January 1 and thus, people who wanted to keep the old calendar would have pranks played on them and paper fish pinned to their backs. (Though apparently there are problems with this theory that I’m not going to go into detail about.) Anyway pranks are supposed to last all day and you’re supposed to attach a paper fish to somebody’s back and yell “Poisson d’Avril.” Oh and the chocolate shops make tons and tons of chocolate fish (along with bunny rabbits, chickens and eggs).

After getting out of class at seven, I raced home for dinner, which also very conveniently starts at seven. When I got to the Foyer I said, “Bon soir” to Madam like I always do and then said, “Nous mangeons le poisson d’avril ce soir, n’est pas?” (Good evening. We are eating the fish of April this evening, isn’t that so?) Madam got a huge kick out of that because of course we weren’t actually eating fish tonight (although surprise, surprise there were actually bits of fish mixed in with the potato salad. It didn’t taste bad, it was just funny.)

Krissy and I still needed some more eggs so we went back to Monoprix at nine. As we were leaving, Krissy tried to grab a grocery bag for the eggs, but the cashier girl told her that she couldn’t have any bags. Krissy looked totally dumbfounded, and you could almost see the words “Why won’t she let me have a plastic bag?” printed on her face. She was just about to ask why, but then the girl said, “Poisson d’Avril!” I just about died of laughter. It was the only successful prank that I witnessed all day, but it was awesome.

Happy April Fool’s! Or Le Poisson d’Avril, if you’re in France.

Heidi

P.S. Also just so you know: "poisson" is fish, "boisson" is a drink and "poison" is poison. Be careful not to ask for the latter at a restaurant.
Also, look! Spring is here!