Birthday à la French

So my birthday was March 12. I told myself, "I don't normally have a birthday party, I don't want to make a big deal about it. It's cool if I don't do anything." But when my friends found out when my birthday was, they decided THEY were going to do something. Thursday, at lunch, my friends brought me a home made lemon meringue pie (baked by Thibaut, who is an expert in the kitchen) and candles! With the entire class around me, I blew out all my 19 candles, to the cheers of my friends. It was really a super birthday, and a memory I'll keep for the rest of my life.

I TOLD you I'd get the Paris photos up sometime or other.

So here we are with some images of Paris to sum up my trip in January. Starting with the Victoire de Samanthrax, aka the most beautiful statue I've ever seen. It's seriously breathtaking.

Stereotypical picture of the Eiffel Tower. No, I didn't go to the top because there were too many people. I went to the Musée d'Orsay instead.
Versailles, and Marie Antoinette. Lovely.
And, together with Versailles in all it's splendidness, we have... Jeff Koons, and his enormous plastic lobster and other works of art. I could be persuaded to appreciate it, if it weren't for the fact that I was there to see VERSAILLES, and history, not vaccuum cleaners put into plastic boxes to make a statement.
Finally, a rather blurry photo (I was in a hurry) of Paris in the snow! It doesn't snow much in Paris because of the pollution... But it did for me!

Ski, suckas!

Hey, everyone! I know I said I'd get my photos up of Paris and all that coolness, but at the moment I've decided to ditch school for a week and a half to go skiing in, where else? the Alps! So, unfortunately, I haven't had the time to work out the cable problems I've been having with my camera which means you'll all just have to wait for my photos of Paris, which will be accompanied by my photos of Tignes, "le plus bel espace du ski du monde."

Skiing in the Alps is pretty amazing. The ski resort is enormous. It's impossible to see it all in one or two days (so it's a good thing I've got eight or nine). And it's been snowing off and on for the past few days, so there's powder everywhere, which is nice, but a little tough to ski in. But over all, it's a skiers dream.

Holiday Update!

So the holidays have come and almost gone (I go back to school Monday, boohoo...) but not without their fair share of exciting holiday activity. Noël (that's Christmas for all you who don't speak French) marked my first journey outside of the south-west pocket of France. I spent eight hours in the car as me, my host family headed to Normandie. I thought it was cold in Orthez, but I was horribly mistaken. The farther north you go the colder it gets in France.

So anyway, Noël, French style, is a lot like New Year's Eve. Everyone stays up past midnight to great Christmas. And they eat oysters. Lots of raw oysters. Christmas tradition: seafood. But mainly oysters.

After Normandie, I bebopped over to Bretagne to visit the other side of the family. I got to check out Nantes, and saw a very large mechanical elephant. There are some things in life I'll never understand.

Over four days, each meal was like a holiday feast. I guess it's just the French way of storing up fat for the cold French winter.

So then I returned to Orthez, and two days later took the train up to Paris to visit the daughter of my host mother for a few days (and of course, to see Paris!). I traveled with the niece of my host mother, who is super sweet, and in the last three days, we've visited the Luxembourg, Versailles, and of course done some Paris shopping. This evening I decided to go check out Notre Dame, and unfortunately got completely lost in the Latin Quartier of Paris. When I finally did get to Notre Dame, however, it was just in time for mass, which was nifty. And, above all, very beautiful. Unfortunately, after the mass, I decided to head back to the apartment and got lost again. But now I'm pretty sure I've seen most of Paris, and I've also burned off all my holiday fat.

Tomorrow I'm going to go check out the Eiffel Tower and hopefully hit up an art museum or two. Who knows?

I'll have all sorts of pictures coming soon, though, thanks to the camera my dad sent me for Christmas.

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année à tous!

French Stereotypes Episode 2

So, back by popular demand (or just the demand of my father) is the wonderful section that dives into the facts and myths behind French stereotypes!

French people drive really small cars: Not exactly true. I've seen two smart cars and one tiny Italian car in the 3+ months I've been here. In general, they drive normal sized cars, though I do see the occassional SUV. I have yet to see a Hummer, however. My other seemed to be under the impression that the French don't use large tractor-trailor things for shipping. They do, just like in the US.

French people don't say the letter H: although technically they don't pronounce their H's in words, I have noticed that French people tend to say H's at the end of words that don't need them, like "lundi" becomes "lundihh." And in English, it's true that they don't say H's when they should, but they also tend to insert H's where they don't belong, like "I have eight hats" becomes "Hi 'ave height 'ats."

NEW! Some stereotypes to replace the ones I've broken:

French people are super obsessed with having neat school papers: I'm serious. Their papers have like a thousand lines on them, to make sure everything is nicely lined up, they use rulers to underline everything, write in different colors. It's all far too organized for me.

French people don't go barefoot: my host mom always gets really shocked when I don't wear shoes inside. I guess it's a cultural thing, since I love having naked feet.

Exploding Churros!

So last night was my final night in my first host home. I'll be moving in with a new family today, and to end things with a bang (which turned out to be unintentionally literal) my host sister and I decided to make churros. This is the second time we've cooked together, the first time being our adventures into the world of fudge, and that didn't go so well, so you'd think we would have taken a hint.

But anyway, at the beginning it wasn't too hard. Sometimes we were a little confused by the directions of the recipe, especially since it was all in Spanish, but we managed to make the dough, and fry a few churros before disaster struck. We were just finishing off our second and final batch, and Mathilde and I were leaning over the pot of boiling oil to examine a rather bizarre looking churro when BAM! there was a very loud noise, we were covered in hot oil, and Mathilde's mother came running into the kitchen to scold us.

Besides having rather painful burns on our face and necks, we were relatively unhurt. But my host mom wasn't too happy. She scolded us while mopping the floor, and then went to bed. Mathilde and I ended up staying up until midnight cleaning oil of walls and cupboards and pots and pans, and we found a churro that had flown from the kitchen all the way into the hallway. Overall, despite the fact that I now have a funny white burn under my lip, it was a lot of fun.

And we're planning to get back together in a few weeks to make Christmas cakes. This time, the recipe's in German. Oh, and fudge. Christmas fudge.

Turkey Day with the Froggies

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Naturally, living in France, I don't get Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday off, but I did get to give a presentation in English today on the topic. Unfortunately, the prof decided to set it up more like a question-and-answer session and kept talking about weird stuff. He's nice, the prof, but he's not very interesting, even for the French. So anyway, I brought a whole bunch of markers with me to school today, and as a little celebration, my friends and I all drew turkeys on our hands. Yay!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! I know I did.