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.

The French can eat anything with chocolate

At least that's what I'm discovering. They have chocolate in their cereal; not chocolate flavored cereal, but actual pieces of chocolate in their cereal. And yogurt too. What we consider pudding, they consider chocolate yogurt. And you know how people say the French wo,en are skinny because they eat in small portions? Not true. They eat a ton. Every meal (even dinner, which, as Gilles told me, is a small meal) has three or four courses. I am going to get so fat.

I've been having a lot of adventures before school starts. Friday, Sylvie, Mathilde and I went to the beach, and I cut my poor foot up on some underwater rocks, but besides that it was oodles of fun. Oh, and women don't wear bathing suit tops if they don't want to. Definitely a sign of culture differences between here and the US, because Mathilde told me that there was a nudist beach a few kilometers over, indicating that this was not one.

Saturday, Gilles took Mathilde and I to Lourdes, a place where a few hundred years ago a shepherd saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. Now the town gets millions of pilgrims each year. The cathedrals there were enormous, and really ornate. It's hard to describe except to say that it's breathtaking. Unfortunately, my camera decided to stop working once we got to Lourdes. It's better now, but that was unfortunate.

School starts tomorrow, so there'll be a lot less of me romping around the countryside, but Sylvie has arranged for me to participate in drama, yes, drama, at the lycée. Which will no doubt be insanely difficult, but good for my language skills!