Monday-back to the grind with morning french class and a quick lunch at St. Nicholas (our favorite quick cheap eats of traditional french food-at least it seems pretty traditional?) but the afternoon was new and exciting with a mandatory wine and cheese tasting! (obviously not required to drink the wine but nobody was particularly dissuaded either...) this event consisted of four and a half hours of learning about wine and cheese, their production, locations in France etc. however all in french which made it a little difficult to be particularly sure of any of the facts. What I think I've gathered (though please take this all with a grain of salt or an entire shaker maybe) is that first you look at the wine for floaties (yes that is the technical term as defined by the dictionary of Mary Beth) then you look at the color to determine it's age (all of ours were 2-3 years), then you swirl it to see how quickly it falls down the side of the glass-this determines how much alcohol the wine contains, finally you smell which I guess is completely subjective so really you could say anything and just tell people you're a wine connoisseur and they'll probably respond with "Oh yeah I definitely smell the pickle" in order to seem as wise as you (that's what I do anyway) We got to sample four reasonably sized glasses of wine and 4 amazing cheeses plus two tapenade and beaucoup de bread.
When we got back for dinner we went upstairs and I emailed and researched (mostly for future trips) and then at 7:45 we were called down to dinner. However when we were called down to dinner our host mother berated us for not coming down of our own initiative at 7:30 and she calls up and has no idea if we're home and it's very rude (although we've been doing it like that for 2 weeks so I think really it was rude of her to wait 2 weeks to say something...) Then at dinner she asked if we were going out-I said yes for a little bit and she later in the conversation brought up how you shouldn't ever go out during the week only the weekends blah blah blah. Dinner consisted of soup with a bazillion star shaped noodles, salad with hard boiled egg and pine nuts, cheese plate, and an apple.
So we went to meet our friends and head over to the Australian Cafe again, we get there and enjoy a couple of one euro beers and who should walk in? Madame's son! SO apparently we're not the only ones who believe it's acceptable to enjoy ourselves on a Monday night-my response at that point? "suck it lady!" (also thank you for feeding us and letting us stay in your home...) The best part of the Australian Cafe is the Grease Mash-up song. When it came on last night a couple of us were dancing (along with many French people) on a table, and of course we all knew all the words. Apparently (despite the fact that there is only ever American music played) this is very uncommon, I deduced this fact due to the plethora of cameras flashing in our direction during this musical number (lip syncing contest anyone?) we called it an early night (as Madame does have a bit of a point about the weekends) and returned home via tram. However, at the Place de la Comedie quite a few very homeless very drunk people boarded the tram along with their dogs.... one tried really, really hard to get money from us before eventually breaking out into a very loud french song.
Today school lunch and conversation again. Though on our way to school we did run into Professor Shain who seemed very lost and confused and walked with us to school? That man surprises me only when he does nothing to be surprised about. Conversation included a discussion about paying people to go to school-yes very useful. Then we went to a cafe to read some Modern Europe (the most daunting task ever) and returned home for dinner where we made a point to say hello and ask how Madame's day was and of course promptly return downstairs at 7:30-where this time we learned we must empty the coffee filter in the morning-another task she failed to mention to us during our tutorial. Dinner today was mashed potatoes with ground beef in them followed by salad with walnuts and raisons (though apparently it's a faux pas to have salad and meet on your plate at the same time), and an apple. At least this crazy woman knows how to cook-it's her one redeeming trait.
Today I'm still questioning whether or not I've been clean since I've been here
I'm also wondering if this woman will EVER let us do laundry, I'm almost out of underpants (and you deltas know how I go through those...)
A Bientot!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment