The Beginning

Well it's just two days before I leave for Paris to enjoy some pain et vin in the Marais. Unfortunately the weight limits of my luggage are cramping my style and I'm leaving out some important clothing items to make room for my dictionaries and important books like Love in a Cold Climate. I would never even consider moving one state away, much less across the pond, without my Mitford Sisters.

But it's lovely being ABD. Today my most important project was to determine whether I looked more intellectual or European with my reading glasses or my distance glasses. This is a very important decision. I am including the pictures below so that you can vote.

For those of you who don't know, the name of my blog comes from the question I am most often asked when in France and someone asks my name. While it sounds very exotic in the United States and even vaguely exotic in the Netherlands, in France "Fontaine" just means "fountain." So when I say my name, they all say "Fontaine, you mean like 'fountain'?" and I reply "oui, exactement." Then they usually assume, despite my weird Jane-Austen-like first name, that I am French and I have to explain, "no, in fact, my father was a Dutch immigrant to the United States who changed the name from its original 'Fontijn' to something more pronouncable like 'Fontaine'." And they get really bummed out. My friend Antoine's mother has decided that in fact my ancestors were French Huguenots who fled to the Netherlands to escape the wrath of Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, but that originally they existed in perfect harmony somewhere in central France, thanks to Henry IV's compromise with his wicked mother-in-law." (See Rachel, I do know some Early Modern history!)

So there you have it - the entire linguistic background of my last name and inspiration for many a European fantasy. So off I go to my FB fun (the you-know-what program is now codenamed FB to avoid those pesky RSS spies in the archives). Bon voyage à moi!

So which ones make me look smarter?

Reading glasses:

Distance glasses: