Tuesday: Mostly my days this week have consisted of going to my french classes. There's not much to say about them yet but I can tell you that I like my teachers. I technically have one class a day but they happen in two sessions (one three hour period in the morning and a two hour period after lunch) and I have two teachers for all of these classes. My first, Mme Levieil, is fun but she tends to drag on and on whatever it is we are going over in class. My second teacher, Mme Baudry, I love. She's younger- probably 30- so she has a sense of humor like those of us in her class. She's very serious about teaching us french but she is very fun and tries to make jokes every once in a while to keep us focused. Don't be fooled, though- she is not a pushover. In our first class, for instance, she let it be known that if she hears us speaking english in her class we will be required to sing a song in french and she will pick the song. Phew! There's no way I won't be fluent by the end of this program; french is surrounding me everyday, my classes are entirely in french, and I'm not allowed to speak anything BUT french when I'm at school. Prepare for my english and grammar to slowly start declining as I fill my head with this second language...
I was invited to have dinner with my buddies tonight (Roshanna, Allie, and Chantalle). They all live in the residence halls so we crammed into Rosie's room and Allie and Chantalle each brought over a dish. Because I couldn't contribute to dinner I thought I'd go buy a dessert. Unfortunately, there wasn't a place open at the time I went so we mutually agreed I should bring the next best thing: a drink. Allie and Chantalle picked out a 2-liter plastic bottle of Sangria for less than 2 euro. I was good with it! I brought that and Allie shared a green apple liquor that she just "had to have." Needless to say it was a fun [safe] night with your typical college-kids-cooking-dinner-for-themselves food. Allie made scrambled eggs, Chantalle brought mashed potatoes, and Rosie made a really good asian-inspired soup. It was actually a pretty good meal and we had fun sitting around getting a little bit silly and telling stories. Plus, Roshanna (the opera singer) gave us a free concert of Disney songs after she had a little bit to drink.
Wednesday: Class again today but I had dinner at home. Tonight we had a broccoli and cheese soup and then.... pizza! Christine made a thin-crust, Italian style pizza with nothing but fresh tomato sauce, cheese, some green olives, and small pits of ham and bacon. It was delicious! Plus, and I am so doing this with pizza for the rest of my life, there was olive oil for dipping. OMG if you've never dipped [real] pizza in olive oil you are missing out. With that we had a rather strange but good salad of apple slices and something that looked like a cross-breed between onions and celery. I can't remember the name; it started with "e." Anyways, that was sliced with the apples and it was good, but I kind of didn't care about it with the pizza sitting there on my plate. During dinner, Christine told me that I don't speak french like most Americans: my pronunciation is very good and I don't have too thick of an accent when I speak! And Lionel agreed :)
Thursday: After class today I was invited to go downtown with a group of USAC students. I guess they've been going downtown to drink almost every night but they said they were going to dinner tonight. I knew it would get a little crazy, though, when we were walking from school to downtown and one of the guys- Tyler- pulled out a bottle of red wine from his bag and took a swig. That's a pretty hilarious sight in the middle of the day on a busy street.
When we got downtown, we grabbed a bench and everyone who had wine pulled out their bottles and started sharing. I bought myself "pain au chocolat," which is like a croissant pouch with thick chocolate inside, and we just enjoyed the experience. We sat there for a good couple of hours watching the sun set behind the Pyrenees. Got some fabulous pics!
It strikes me now, looking at these pictures, that they look photoshopped. And that's what makes them that much more incredible: all I did was hole up my camera and press the button.
Friday: The last day of class for the week... whoo hoo! I finally just up and bought a photo ID card for the bus system for 15 euro and now I can use any bus in Pau whenever I need until February 13. So as great as it's been to walk to and from school, I'm going to start giving myself a break from the half hour workout. I took the bus home today by 3:30p and had plenty of time to enjoy my afternoon and relax. Christine woke up from a nap and watched the first half hour of Titanic with me in french :) When Guilhem came home from school he was supposed to start his homework but got distracted by the movie. I felt kind of bad for watching it in the living room and distracting him- especially because him and Christine started arguing pretty heavily after a little bit of that- but I honestly found something enjoyable in his distraction. I don't know what it reminded me of but hearing him go from writing furiously at the table behind me to feeling him standing right behind my head staring at the movie [off and on for 20 minutes] was so typical 13-year old.
For dinner, we had another orange colored soup (carrot and peanut I think) and then a pasta dish. Bow tie noodles, slices of a very small hot-dog looking meat, mushrooms, and sautéed vegetables with a light olive oil and herb dressing. Very tasty and a very good evening!
Tomorrow I'm going to Lourdes with my group of girls. We're going to spend the day doing whatever we can; hopefully we can see the château, museum, and cathedral. Lourdes is less than half an hour away by train so we should have plenty of time to enjoy our saturday there and make it home in time for sleep. I'm excited to tell you all about it tomorrow!
Goodnight
