Dinner was late for both Guilhem and myself (he had done something with a friend after school) but it was delectable just the same. We started off with a soup that Christine was extremely proud of: a blend of carrots, cauliflower, milk, cream, chicken bouillon, salt, water, and ginger. It was SO good; and that with fresh homemade bread? Forget about it! Guilhem boiled up some very tasty noodles for the two of us to split. I put olive oil, salt, pepper, pimentel, and parmesan on mine. We had our protein with slices of french lunchmeat-type ham (which I am slowly growing very fond of), and we had our veggies in the form of another apple and endive salad. Dessert was the usual goodness: natural yogurt with raspberry preserves. Ahhhhh.....
Tuesday: Nothing incredibly spectacular happened today; I know this because I've been writing short excerpts about each day in a journal right before bed (which I use for the blog) and the only thing I wrote for today was what we had for dinner. haha If you hadn't already figured out what my favorite part of the day is, you should now be able to at least guess. ;)
Dinner tonight was the rest of Christine's incredible cauliflower, carrot, and ginger soup with bread. We then had the rest of Guilhem's noodles dressed however we wanted. The real main course was perfect, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth fried eggs with a spinach salad. And we topped this loveliness off with the typical yummy dessert. Gosh I love French food.
Wednesday: Yet another day where all I cared to write about in my journal was what I had for dinner. haha I do remember, though, that I had my second english lesson with Lucille and Emile downtown after class. That went well because today I brought Disney songs for them to listen to in English and I could tell that that was way more intriguing for the both of them. Afterwards, I enjoyed a really nice walk all by myself out in the sunshine along the Boulevard des Pyrenées. I walked all the way from the Palais Beaumont (at one end) to the château (at the other) where I bought some more gifts for my family. It was a great couple of hours of alone time to just enjoy the beauty of the day, and I got to practice my French with the shopkeepers where I bought those gifts. :)
A beautiful day in Pau!
Nothing like celebrating the sunshine with a train ride! :)
The Palais Beaumont covered in sunshine
The mountains are hidden but that's the city down there! And you can also see the big red tower that has the pole at its top that points to different peaks as your perspective moves walking down the Boulevard. There are plaques along the street at the exact points where the tip of that pole moves in perfect alignment with a peak; the plaques give you the name and height of that particular peak you are seeing.
Lionel made tonight's soup and I actually got to watch this one being prepared. He had set a pot on the stove to simmer earlier in the day with big chunks of carrots and halves of onions slowly turning to pulp inside. Before dinner, he took the pot with the thoroughly boiled veggies and added two slices of his homemade wheat bread, some seasoning, and a spoon of crème fraïche and blended it all into velvet. Every night since I've been here, I've been asking what's in the soup; and it's almost always the same sort of ingredients- some sort of vegetable base, milk or creme, and bread. But when I've gotten the answer, it never occurred to me that bread was in the soup... I thought they were always talking about the bread we eat with our soup! Well, you learn something new every day. After soup, we had a simply divine homemade pizza. Mmmm my mouth is watering again! The pizza was a super then, crispy, flatbread with small chunks of ham, black olives, mushrooms, tomato sauce, and shredded cheese on top. Oh this was just so so good; you're going to have to take my word for it. We had a spinach salad with this and I nearly giggled when they brought out my favorite dessert after. I was one happy girl that evening.
I wish I could say the happiness lasted, though. After spending a little time downstairs with the family, I said goodnight and headed up to talk to my family at home on ichat. I talked with them for a good hour or so and then started getting ready for bed, when I realized that I didn't feel so well. My throat had started hurting and I thought I felt a fever coming on. By the time I had gotten myself all ready to sleep, I was dragging myself to bed and I could feel that I had a fever. Needless to say, I took some Ibuprofen, wrote my host family a note explaining that I wasn't well, texted Rosie that I wasn't coming to class in the morning and might show up in the afternoon, turned off my alarm, and gave myself a good night's sleep. I was actually very worried that I had gotten so sick so fast and was truly nervous to have a fever; I don't think I've had one in about 5 years.
Thursday: I woke up around 10:30a this morning feeling slightly better. I could tell that my fever was gone (at least for the moment) but my body felt like it had been hit by a train. The back of my neck was beaten with a baseball bat in the middle of the night and someone had been kicking my calves too. I was just really achy and sore all over and could tell pretty quickly that I would not be making it to class in the afternoon; I needed at least a day to rest.
I went down to breakfast and filled my stomach as much as I could to cushion the incoming load of medication (if you know my mother, you probably understand that I have my own little pharmacie in my room). I used the time until lunch to lie in bed, write my parents so they could know what was going on, and do a little blogging. When I heard Lionel rummaging around downstairs, I decided I could probably eat a little lunch too. The strange thing is, I didn't have any issues with my stomach- my appetite never went away and never really increased either. I'm still not sure exactly what I had, but I hope it doesn't come back!
Lionel was the only one home for lunch today and he had finished his by the time I got downstairs. He could tell I didn't feel well so he offered to make me something. In his words, "my daughter is sick; of course I will do things for her!" :) I had a spinach salad first and then he heated up a frozen fish filet that was covered in a tomato sauce. He also reheated some leftover white rice and potato slices so I mixed the rice, sauce and fish together for a pretty full, good lunch. He had to go to work after that and I wanted to go back to resting and whatnot, so that's pretty much how the rest of the day went until the evening. When Christine got home, she apologized profusely for leaving me home alone all day when I didn't feel well. She was also really concerned when I told her my neck was hurting; she thought I might have meningitis and she told me that if my neck was still hurting in the morning, I needed to tell her so she could take me to the hospital. I was also instructed to tell my parents not to worry, that I am in good hands here. Oh how true this is...
For dinner, we had the rest of Lionel's carrot soup and then had a very interesting course, which I am proud to say I ate all of: whole filets of raw, smoked salmon. With this we had another great corn, rice, green olive, greek cheese, tomato, mushroom, red bell pepper, cucumber salad. I switched things up at dessert and had cassis preserves instead of raspberry with my yogurt: an excellent choice!
I was feeling okay after dinner but not great; I had a touch of a fever during the afternoon and I had to drag my bones up to bed. I know I can't make it to class in the morning but I'm holding out hope that I'll make it in the afternoon. Fingers crossed!
Friday: This morning went about the same as yesterday- breakfast around 10:30a, a concoction of medication, and lazing around feeling exhausted. I figured out by lunch that my body was still too tired to go all the way to the university, sit through class, and come back but at least I hadn't had a fever since yesterday! I spent the day doing a lot of sitting, relaxing, blogging, uploading pictures, etc. I did finally get myself in the shower to at least be presentable for my family at lunch- I feel bad for what they had to see yesterday. ;)
Lunch was with all four of us today and I loved the whole thing terribly. It started off with a plate of nothing more than sliced mushrooms tossed with olive oil and herbs. Yum! The main course was, you'll never guess...... chicken nuggets! I don't know if they were home made or frozen but they were good! I think they were pan-fried because they were really crispy and super juicy when you went to cut them. There was a pile of warm, soft, slightly buttery broccoli on the side and Piccalilli sauce to put on our chicken nuggets. We had a round of cheese and bread and then Lionel made me an infusion of leaves that I forget the name of (vervin possibly?).
We decided to live dangerously at dinner tonight by having a very good but very spicy Chinese noodle soup to start. *FYI, the French do not love spicy things. And "spicy" to them is much milder than "spicy" in the States.* This soup was actually pretty hot and it had us all losing our cool a few bites in. Being sick, I was a veritable waterfall of tears and snot- something I was very proud to display in front of Lionel and Christine. haha I choked down the last tasty, painful bites and washed it down with water and bread. Luckily there was the ever mild and delicious tomato, cucumber, greek cheese, white raison, mint, green olive, crab, mushroom, couscous salad to soothe my mouth and throat. After this great main course, we had a truly epic dessert: *you might want to sit down* soft pear halves, covered in super creamy vanilla bourbon ice cream, topped with homemade dark chocolate sauce (as in, a crushed up dark chocolate bar melted to molten goodness and thickened with milk) and a cinnamon cookie. I die!
I went to bed feeling much better, and not just because my soul was tingling with happiness from this meal. My energy was coming back little by little and that "icky" feeling was gone. It's a good thing that I don't have anything planned for this weekend because I'd be dead weight by Sunday.
Bonne nuit!
