Le Weekend
Today was intersting because I was invited to my host family's grandson's 1st Birthday. It was just a small event, with both sets of grandparents there (minus Alain, my host dad) and Christina and me. Soizic et Guilloume live in the country of Nantes, so I think it was about a 25-30 minute drive from the east side of Nantes, to west of Nantes where it was very rural. Their house was an old house in a small neighborhood, that they are currently in the process of fixing up. It has a lot of potential I think, and the decorations were cool, it felt very Ikea-ish :) Everyone was really nice ant they wanted to make sure that I understood what was going on, but when more than one person would start talking I tended to zone out b/c it was a little too much for my head to handle. The party began with appetizers munchies and sparkling wine and then we moved into appetizers at the table and red wine. Then for the first time I ate rice in France. It was funny though b/c Soizic's dad said that Rice is not real food for a european, it is the food of an asian man. It was interesting because we had chunks of chicken and pineapple, but there was not spice in it. I guess I am so accustomed to Indian and spicy chinese food, that when I eat rice, I expect to eat it with something spicy. Then after we continued with the red wine and we at cheese. A very typical French meal, though a French meal is incomplete without dessert, and for that we had piece of unfrosted lemon and chocolate cake type slices. They were very good, and we had white wine with dessert. Before getting up from the table we also drank coffee, except for me who had Blueberry tea from Canada. The meal was interesting b/c Soizic teaches English so she would sometimes just speak English to me, but for some reason I would always respond in French, my brain gets confused when people switch back a forth. Back to the cake though it was weird b/c we did not sing Happy Birthday, but there was a candle that was blown out, though they definitely know Happy Birthday, but I think it is more from movies. A tradition the families have though is on your first birthday you receive a coin from the Napoleonic era, I suppose for good luck. It was fun though, and interesting to see the French country side.
Yesterday was fun because I ate lunch with my family before going to LeClerc with some friends. LeClerc is basically like Walmart in the states, but they have a huge supermarket. Supermarkets are pretty disappointing here, because they don't have a huge selection and they are all pretty tiny, but LeClerc is HUGE! There was a whole HUGE aisle of cheese, it was pretty awesome, but I had to go to the soccer game, so I left without buying any food there. Though as I left I played the dumb American card, because I was sort of in a rush and the exit for people not making purchases was the opposite direction from where I wanted to exit, so I slipped out the self checkout, and of course was stopped by one of the guys guarding the front, and he told me that where I had exited was not a exit and i just kept saying sorry, and he could obviously tell I was an American or Anglophone and just let me go, which I knew would happen...but it was just faster than having to walk all the way around the store to exit (they make it difficult to exit without purchasing something). After that I met my friend another grocery store where we bought food and beer before the soccer match. They decided to buy this cheap Dutch beer, which apparently was disgusting, but I played it safe and just bought a can of Guiness. Once we got to the stadium, we stood in front of it and drank our drinks and ate dinner before entering. Once we got into the stadium, after being padded down twice we ended up in the standing section, so we stood on our seats for the entire game, participating in the chants and jeers, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately though in the last minute of overtime that the ref added Grenoble scored a point on a corner kick and the game was tied. But up until the end when it seemed like Nantes was going to win, there were huge flags flying and it was so loud. After the came we went to a cafe and hung out for a while, before heading towards a bar, but along the way we found people from IES so we ended up going out with them, it was a lot of fun, we found a pretty cool bar called the Stupid Dog, they had good wine for cheap. Then just before one I headed to the tram to catch my tram, but was early so ended up having to wait in the cold for a while. Though the weather yesterday was pretty amazing, it was the first time I didn't need a jacket :) It is finally beginning to feel like Spring here. Everyone else's sentiments are like I can't believe its already spring, but I am so acclamated to TX where it is already spring.
Another new discovery I have made is that for the most part when I read French now I do not translate it to English as I read, which is pretty cool. Its only when I run across a completely new word and I need a French to English dictionary do I convert the word.
I start midterms this week, which is extemely weird, b/c I don't feel like we have really learned that much so it should be interesting to see how these go....
Yesterday was fun because I ate lunch with my family before going to LeClerc with some friends. LeClerc is basically like Walmart in the states, but they have a huge supermarket. Supermarkets are pretty disappointing here, because they don't have a huge selection and they are all pretty tiny, but LeClerc is HUGE! There was a whole HUGE aisle of cheese, it was pretty awesome, but I had to go to the soccer game, so I left without buying any food there. Though as I left I played the dumb American card, because I was sort of in a rush and the exit for people not making purchases was the opposite direction from where I wanted to exit, so I slipped out the self checkout, and of course was stopped by one of the guys guarding the front, and he told me that where I had exited was not a exit and i just kept saying sorry, and he could obviously tell I was an American or Anglophone and just let me go, which I knew would happen...but it was just faster than having to walk all the way around the store to exit (they make it difficult to exit without purchasing something). After that I met my friend another grocery store where we bought food and beer before the soccer match. They decided to buy this cheap Dutch beer, which apparently was disgusting, but I played it safe and just bought a can of Guiness. Once we got to the stadium, we stood in front of it and drank our drinks and ate dinner before entering. Once we got into the stadium, after being padded down twice we ended up in the standing section, so we stood on our seats for the entire game, participating in the chants and jeers, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately though in the last minute of overtime that the ref added Grenoble scored a point on a corner kick and the game was tied. But up until the end when it seemed like Nantes was going to win, there were huge flags flying and it was so loud. After the came we went to a cafe and hung out for a while, before heading towards a bar, but along the way we found people from IES so we ended up going out with them, it was a lot of fun, we found a pretty cool bar called the Stupid Dog, they had good wine for cheap. Then just before one I headed to the tram to catch my tram, but was early so ended up having to wait in the cold for a while. Though the weather yesterday was pretty amazing, it was the first time I didn't need a jacket :) It is finally beginning to feel like Spring here. Everyone else's sentiments are like I can't believe its already spring, but I am so acclamated to TX where it is already spring.
Another new discovery I have made is that for the most part when I read French now I do not translate it to English as I read, which is pretty cool. Its only when I run across a completely new word and I need a French to English dictionary do I convert the word.
I start midterms this week, which is extemely weird, b/c I don't feel like we have really learned that much so it should be interesting to see how these go....
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