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.

An English Speaker's Guide to Harry Potter in French

You know what's good for making friends around the world? Discussing Harry Potter. I mean, not only is he universally popular, but he's MAGICAL. However, discussing the characters and plot with someone who has read a translation can be slightly difficult, seeing as several of the names are changed. Which is why, if you should ever find yourself in France and wishing to discuss Harry Potter, I've compiled this simple guide to the French language translation of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter: is still Harry. Nothing changed here. Hermione and Ron get to keep their names to, along with all the Weasleys and Dumbledore and the Dursleys, too. The French however, like most of the world before the films came out, can't pronnounce Hermione's name worth beans.

Hogwarts: is officially named Poudlard. Worst. Name. Ever.

Lord Voldemort: gets to keep his name, too. Lucky.

Severus Snape: becomes Severus Rogue. Fail.

Draco Malfoy: becomes Drago Malefoy. Not really sure why.

Gryffindor: is spelled Gryffondor. Kind of like poor Drago, was this really necessary?

Hufflepuff: is even cooler in French. It gets changed to Poufsouffle. You gotta admit that's awesome.

Ravenclaw: becomes Serdaigle, which translates to "Claw of Eagle." As a side note, the French don't have a concept of raven, and it's really hard to explain. "Um, it's like a big crow? But not a crow? It's really smart, and it's a big black bird?" "You mean a crow?" "No, I said it's not a crow. You know Edgar Allen Poe? You know his poem? With the bird, who always says the same word?" Sadly enough, the French aren't well versed in Poe. They know the name, but can't get the concept of raven...

Slytherin: becomes Serpentard. I take it back. Poudlard isn't all that bad as names go. Serpentard... Oh, Serpentard...

Flourish and Blott's: is Fleury et Bott. I mean, really, are this changes necessary? Sort of like changing the name of Mundungus Fletcher to Mondingus Fletcher. Really? Really?

Snitch: Vif d'Or.

Hagrid: Hagrid, thank God.

Mirror of Erised: Miroir de Rised. Less cool in French, but not terrible.

I haven't read through all the books yet, but I'm pretty sure the Cruciatus Curse changes names, too. Anyway, this little list should be enough to help get you through a simple conversation covering the world of J.K. Rowling, whether you should choose to discuss it in French or English. Oh, and Neville Longbottom? Yeah, he's Neville Londubat now, biznatch.

Find Vicki on the Map!

Check out what I did! Had a little free time, so I fiddled around on Google Earth and paint and made an image of about where I'm located in Europe. Pretty nifty, eh?

The Corrida

Yesterday was November 11, and as such, all schools in France had the day off in remembrance of the end of the Grand Guerre Mondiale de Quatorze, or the end of World War I. I had been invited by a member of my Rotary Host Club to go see the Corrida, or bull fighting. Now, I know you're thinking, "Bull fights? Isn't this girl in France? When did she get transferred to Spain?" Don't freak out, I'm still in France, but being as I'm living in the very south of France, near the Spanish border, I get to experience some of the traditions that have carried over from Spanish culture, the most notable one being the corrida.

First, I got picked up by my host, and then we drove for an hour to St. Sever (I didn't realize until I wrote it while thinking in English that it's really not a very pleasant name, especially when the subject of discussion is something violent like, well, bull fighting). After a look at an exposition of corrida-inspired art, we had lunch (because nothing in France is complete unless there's a meal involved). After lunch, Fix, the husband of the woman who brought me, took me to talk with some of the other people around my age. I got into a conversation with a guy who actually is a bull fighter (though he wasn't participating in this particular corrida) and he explained a lot of the idea behind the corrida.

Basically, the bull is a special beast, because unlike most animals, when attacked, he doesn't flee, but fights and continues to fight. It's for this that the bull is considered a good adversary and the bull fighters want to engage in competition with him.

After this, I actually went to go see the corrida. It was four fighters, and four bulls killed, one by one. First the bull enters the ring, charges around a bit, then the fighter faces him one on one and spins around and dodges him for a while. Then they stab him with a few spikes. This is usually done my someone else, though one of the fighters did it himself. After, the bull is more angry, and the fighter continues to dodge his charges. Then, the bull fighter gets his sword, and attempts to kill the bull as swiftly as possible, though this doesn't always work out well.

It was nice to have Fix there to explain the traditions to me. For instance, if the crowd considers the fight to have been good, they wave handkerchiefs demanding that the ears of the bull be cut of and given to the fighter. One ear is nice. Two ears is excellent. On very rare occasions, they give the fighter both ears and the tail. And if the bull was excellent, his corpse is pulled around the arena and applauded.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I felt about all of this. It was very interesting, and at times quite beautiful, but in the end the bull always dies (apparently really strong bulls are allowed to live, but this is a SUPER RARE occurrence). I think it really helped to get the little introduction to the practice beforehand, otherwise I would have been completely lost as to what was going on.

STUPIDFREAKINGFRENCHWEBSITETHINGSPUITANDEMERDE!

Grah! I mean seriously!

This is my blog, so I'm going to take up this little pocket of the internet to rant for a bit.

Ready... go!

Okay, so I finally got around to signing up for the big Europe bus trip thingy near the end of the year because I'm tired of waiting for a response from my parents telling me whether I can go or not and those naggy emails from the lady in my district who's in charge of it asking me if I'm planning to go and why haven't I signed up yet and am I when am I going to sign up and am I still alive and I went through like pages of sign up but instead of having it in nice answer two question move on to next page format the had every fill-in-the-blank crammed on the same page and so it was really hard to figure out and I get through it all leaving large sections blank because hello, it's not the nineties, not everyone has a fax number, and I fill it all out and it gives me pages to print and I read the first page and it tells me my French host district is 5240 and I'm like, "Crap puitan! I screwed up on the second question! My host district is 1690!" So I got back and look through all my info on the website page and my host district is, in fact, entered as 1690 and it's the stupid form that's screwed up and they can't even get their stupid stinking forms right because there's so much stinking paperwork to wade through and it's stupid stinking stupidness and anyway Mom and Dad that means you're going to have to pay several thousand dollars or whatever now for the trip but I'm not exactly sure how much it costs now with the financial crisis because I stopped checking the conversion rate because it was overall too stressful and you're going to be getting a little letter in the mail with twelve or so pages to sign and then mail to some address which I need to look up again but not right now because I'm going to dinner because I can't take it anymore all these stupid hoops I have to jump through and my residence permit and all that stupid crap.

And breath in.

Thank you. Good night.

Let's Parle Franglais!

So I've decided to take this blog section mabobber to discuss a little bit about language differences. Naturally, living in a country where everyone speaks a different language can be a little difficult, and sometimes I feel mildly bipolar when it comes to speaking. I'm definitely progressing in my language skills, because now, if I try to speak or write in English, I end up ajouting French words. Just little things, like mange, parle, melange, ecrire. And if I talk to fast in French, I stick in English words too. Hence the birth of my fluency in Franglais.

As English goes, most French people have a basic knowledge, though I have to tell them to not practice their English on me. They seem only too happy to rattle off in French anyway. However, there are several things that all French people can say in English.

"Where is Bryan?" It's from a stand-up comedy act by a French comedian, and the proper response is always a malpronounced "Bryan is in the kitchen." Other useful phrases the French know from this comedian include, "It's raining today," "Where is my umbrella?" "Where is the sister of Bryan?" and "She is in the bathroom."

"We go to ze beach." I'm actually not sure why they know this one, but they say beach like the other, similarly pronounced curse word. And it's my new response to any Frenchy who tries to speak English with me.

"You take ze bus?" Not sure why they know this one either, actually....