Excusez-moi!

I'm sorry I have fallen behind- yet again!- on the blog but this time I actually have a sort of good reason: I've been working like crazy on my MobileMe account! I realized that the last pictures I had loaded on there were from Italy and this fact was just unacceptable to me. So, you now have a couple THOUSAND pictures to entertain yourselves with as I plug away at the blog over the next couple of days. This coming weekend is my last one in Pau ( =(  ) and I have decided to leave it open to enjoy what I haven't yet seen in this beautiful and wonderful city. This also means that I should have some free time on my hands- if the blog isn't caught up by this weekend, it will be by monday!

Anyways, please feel free to go enjoy my pictures and take your time with them: I worked really hard to get every single last one up but there are many!

http://gallery.me.com/ranthy

À bientôt

The Most Fabulous of Weekends: Weekend 8

Friday: Toulouse here we come! I got myself up early today to be at the university by 8:20a to head to Toulouse. We left late (as usual) but pretty soon we were on our way... and what a gorgeous day it was!

Can you believe that one can take pictures like this on a bus??

Incredible

We made one short coffee and chocolatine stop and we eventually rolled into Toulouse- "The Pink City" as it has been nicknamed for its red brick buildings. It was around 12p when we pulled in, so the first thing we did was take all of our baggage to the hotel's storage room and then head to lunch.

All of us crammed into the baggage storage room!

Our hotel

Lunch time!

We ate at a great and chic local joint called "Chez Jules" (Jules' Place) where we had three courses: a yummy tomato salad, a mouth-watering saucy chicken and mashed potatoes dish, and a divine chocolate mousse dessert. It was fabulous.

Our salad

My table! From left: Joseph, Alexis (silent "s"), Jenna, Me, Aleca, Gavin, Tyler, and Steve's forehead

Chez Jules

Our main course... OMG!

Our dessert!

After lunch, we headed as a group to the nearby Office of Tourism to get maps and pickup our tour guides for the next hour and a half. We were split into two groups- french speaking or english speaking- and since the groups had to be even, a lot of us who wanted to be in the french group were made to go in the english speaking group. That was me... darn. At least we were going to understand every little bit of the tour!

We all fell in love with this city...

Just to the left of this building is the Office of Tourism... not bad huh?

We hung out here for a little bit while we waited for our maps and we mostly spent the time in the sun. Some even whipped out the frisbee and got to work on having fun.

Gorgeous Toulouse

Then it was tour time. We walked through the courtyard of Toulouse's Capitole (City Hall) building, saw the massive Occitan Cross that is engraved on the ground in front of it, saw a ceiling of about 150 paintings that depict Toulouse's history, saw the largest Romanesque church in Europe, and more.

The courtyard of the Capitole. I felt like I was back in Italy...

City Hall

Now you see why it is called "The Pink City!" Back in the day, Toulouse was constructed completely out of bricks because it was a poor city. However, Toulouse was also a main stop on the largest trade route in Southern France, so it wanted to represent itself as a rich city. The bricks of Toulouse's buildings were then covered in chalk to resemble the marble of wealthy cities. During WWII, there were spikes in national pride all over the world and spikes in regional pride all over France. Toulouse began to see that its architecture was unique. It became proud of its red bricks and refused to leave them covered. Toulouse has been "The Pink City" ever since.

Still standing outside of the Capitole: there is a giant Occitan Cross imprinted in the ground in metal. It is believed that the four sections of the star represent the four seasons and the three points in each section represent the months of that season. If this is the case, this might be Leo (mine, my dad's, and my brother's sign).

Across the way from the Capitole there is a strip of restaurants and boutiques that are covered by a gorgeous art display: a ceiling depicting Toulouse's history. The first painting you see in the picture illustrates red brick pride.

Next we kept on our walking tour. We passed by a few truly gorgeous sights, and we couldn't have had better weather to appreciate them.

Notre-Dame du Taur, 14th century bell tower

Lovely streets <3

The Basilica of St. Sernin, 1080-1120; it is the oldest Romanesque style church in Europe and has what is considered the most beautiful pipe organ in France inside

The bell tower: the curved arches on the bottom two levels are rounded in the Romanesque style; the top two levels have pointed arches in the Gothic style (these were added later)

Toulouse had more money when this was built so they were able to add white stone. But, they also kept the brick as well, being that it was so pretty

Happy, fun day! (Don't mind the woman who totally just blasted through my picture)

Inside the basilica are the feet of Saints Sernin and Christopher (the Saint of Travelers). Travelers have been coming to this church for centuries to touch Saint Christopher's feet to be blessed in their travels... we touched them too.

Inside the church

Then it was on to the Church of the Jacobins; so named after a group of Dominican Catholics known as "Jacobins" because they originated from "Jacques" street. This church also houses half of the remains (the left side and head) of St. Thomas Aquinas.

And in we go...

This is the ceiling of the church. And you are seeing this picture with me looking straight down at the ceiling above me.... it was kind of like Alice in Wonderland. There was a perfect, massive mirror around the base of the main pillar of the church, and that allows you to get a good look at the palm tree effect of the veins on the ceiling, as well as a view of the windows as they change colors....

So the entire church consists of one single nave (large hall) and no side wings. There is a row of massive pillars down the center to split the church in half (back in the day, there were curtains in between the pillars to block the view of the Jacobins from the "believers," as our tour guide called them). On the left side of the pillars, you have heat; on the right, cold. At the far end of the church there is the beginning of hot (pictured above) and the beginning of cold, side by side. The windows slowly fade from hot to cold all the way around the church.

Lastly, we stepped outside into the beautiful cloister to see the bell tower and garden. This tower is the reason the basilica's was added on to- when this was built, it was taller than the one over at the basilica, and that just would not do.

A beautiful place to be

Ahhhhhhhh =)

And then we were free to explore! Today just happened to be the birthday of two girls in USAC and they wanted to go buy some beers from a nearby grocery store and take them down to the river. About half of our USAC group ended up deciding to do this too and it was the perfect way to spend the afternoon. The 20 or so of us bought our beers and started walking towards the river. This is what we saw:

Lots of Toulousians out enjoying the sunshine with drinks, or guitars, or cigarettes, or bathing suits, or however it was they wanted to enjoy their day. It was beautiful!

The famous Toulouse bridge and the strip of park next to it

We walked a little further to a bigger park, found a shady spot, and spent the next 3 hours (at least) sitting on the grass, playing frisbee, laughing, and enjoying the gorgeous day.

And off we go!

Loving life

Cheers!

I totally played!!

I think this will remain one of my favorite afternoons from my entire France experience. We had so much fun and were feeling so full of life today.

In this picture, you get a sense of how fearless we were all feeling at this point: Carl decided that he could jump over Gavin's head, and found out that this isn't so. Please tell me you don't love the presence of the frisbee in this picture???

Around 7:30p we split up to go get ready for dinner. I went back to mine, Aleca, Jenna, and Sarah's room to get ready with the first two girls (our roommate Sarah was doing her own thing). Around 8:30p we headed to the dinner spot: Pizza Pino! We were totally jazzed to go have some more fun on this incredible day but were immediately sucked dry of our good vibes when we showed up at the restaurant to find that literally everyone else in the group had sat down at two long tables and had already ordered drinks. There was no room for us at those tables either. Needless to say, we were irritated. We felt like we had been totally shrugged off as if we didn't matter and it made us feel unwanted by the group. We went and sat at a nearby table for the three of us but it was far enough away that we couldn't even participate in the conversation. We were fuming for a little while and taking turns giving the whole, "what does it matter; let's not let it ruin our day; who cares, we'll have more fun this way anyways," speech when our food arrived. After that, I don't even remember when the bad vibes went away- all I remember is that Aleca, Jenna, and I had such good, intense, fun, and interesting conversation that I completely forgot those other people were even there. Like I was surprised when they started walking up to our table to say they were heading out at the end of dinner. "When did you get here?" I remember thinking.

My dinner: carbonara with ham!

The three of us took our time enjoying a couple of glasses of wine and then having some coffee before heading out. We were chatted up by just about every male waiter in the place so we were feeling pretty smug when we left. The cold shoulder by the rest of the group was all but forgotten! When we were done at the restaurant, we strutted our stuff back to the hotel to join everyone in someone's room for a very loud gathering of obnoxious not-quite-21-year-olds-in-France. Aiya. Needless to say, it wasn't long before the front desk manager came up to tell us to shut up or go out. I had me a small glass of vodka and coke made by the lovely Aleca but I barely got to finish it before we kicked ourselves out on the town. The next stop was a nearby bar for which we ladies had coupons to to get free Sangria! The bar had about 6 other people inside so we weren't that keen on staying, but we did get our free Sangria and it was really really good. Afterwards, we joined the whole group at the park we were at earlier today to be noisy and just have a good time. There were a lot of open beers floating around so our volume level began to draw some attention: probably ESPECIALLY when others noticed we were speaking English. I kid you not, we could have charged admission for the crowd of random large men we attracted. I don't know what was so interesting about a group of 25 not-so-sober Americans but they started surrounding us like we were circus animals. A few of us (Aleca, Tyler, myself, and a couple of others) started noticing the weirdness of the whole thing and moved ourselves to the outside of the mosh pit. That was when we realized that our group was slowly being surrounded by more and more strangers wanting to chat us up and was little by little being pushed back into the park benches. Well, that was enough of that! We split up, dove into the group, gave everyone we passed the subtle but very serious warning that we were leaving right now and they needed to come with, and then gathered whoever chose to leave and started walking. Phew! No one seemed to be robbed, hurt, or drugged so I'm thinking we made it out of there just in time. 

The next thing we did, was walk our whole party all the way back to the river to check out the bars in that area. That seemed to be where the party was at, but it was so packed that we couldn't fit our whole group into a single one of them! Us ladies, though, formed a single file line holding hands and slithered our way to the back of one bar to use the bathroom. After that, we all sat outside on the wall overlooking the river and laughed and goofed off for a little while. Eventually, we were too freezing to sit there any longer and started walking back the way we came. And that's when we came across it: the epic.... the amazing.... SPINNY THING! Ladies and gentlemen, us fully grown college students spent the next hour and a half taking turns cramming onto a large, tilted bowl-shaped toy to be spun until we were in pain or couldn't breath from being smothered by other bodies. I do not know why this was so appealing, but it was, in a way, one of the funnest things I've ever done. This probably has to do with where I was and who I was with.... and knowing that our time here is coming to an end. It sort of felt like a celebration of life. Around 2a, we headed back to the hotel to crash. The next day we were heading to Carcassonne and we were leaving early. I went to bed tonight a very happy girl, indeed. =)

Chez Moi

Hi all,

Just thought I'd let you know that I had a FANTASTIC time in Toulouse yesterday and Carcassonne today. I'm home safe and sound now and am heading out for a day with the family tomorrow near the Spanish border. Will hopefully write about my weekend tomorrow evening.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Today (April 2nd) marks the 3-month anniversary of my departure on this journey. It also marks the beginning of the countdown until my return: exactly 1 month and 2 days remain! We only have about 2 and a half weeks left in Pau (which sounds like a blatant lie to me even as I write it) and I am already feeling the heartache set in: I am going to miss this place, this family, these friends/comrades, and this experience in a way that will truly hurt inside. They have all become dear and precious to me, and I am already struggling with the reality that these things must come to and end and there is nothing I can do about that. I am looking so forward to coming home; but I am not looking forward to leaving. Ugh.

Anyways, I'm on a little bit of a high from these past two days and can't wait to show you the pictures and tell you the stories that go with them!! Talk to you soon... à tout à l'heure!

Week 13

Tuesday: I woke up around 10a today to have plenty of time to eat breakfast, shower, and get ready for Business in the EU at 1:30p. I decided to switch back to the mug I was using in January (about half the size of the bowl I usually use) because I wanted coffee but not too much.... I don't want to rush my stomach in the opposite direction. This all went over fine and I was able to eat lunch with the family at 12:30p. For lunch today we started off with a salad of julienned carrots and then had a main course of leftover baked chicken (Guilhem got to have chicken nuggets, the brat) and big trees of broccoli. Lionel covered his with olive oil but I didn't want to take things too quick today food-wise. We finished with cheese but I turned it down- perhaps tomorrow. Then we had our fruit (I had a banana) and it was time to head to the bus for class.

Class was whatever. The only exciting thing that happened is another student gave a 10-minute presentation on Poland as part of an on-going class project. We have each been assigned a country that's a member of the EU to present to the class on a specific day. We have to give a short history of the country and talk about its financial status in regards to doing business there (is it easy, worthwhile, costly, etc). Actually, I'm presenting tomorrow and my country is Hungary. Awesome.
After class, I went upstairs to one of the computer labs to kill two hours because... tonight was my first cuisine course! I showed up at the USAC office at 5:15p as planned and then Ryan walked all of us foodies over to where the class was being held. There ended up only being two other people with me tonight: Noah and Mari (both USAC). There is another girl, Jamie, who is also signed up but missed this first night because she was in Nice. The class was close by; it was just across the parking lot behind Carrefour in a community type of building. The kitchen there can be rented and it also had a cute little dining area attached. We met our teacher, Françoise, and then commenced to cooking! The menu tonight was: Dégustation Pâté Basque, Piquillos, Poulet Basquaise avec du Riz Basmati, Éclair au chocolat, Fraises (Basque Pâté, Stuffed Peppers, Chicken in a Traditional Basque sauce with Basmati Rice, Chocolate Éclair, Strawberries). The pâté and éclairs where bought and the peppers and strawberries only needed to be prepared, but we got to cook the Basque chicken and rice. Françoise took over a few parts when we were moving too slow, but it was so great to watch the process, smell the smells, help here and there, and talk with her and these two other students I haven't had the chance to spend much time with.

Stuffing the peppers

The chicken :)

To make the chicken, we started off with four seasoned chicken breasts cooking in oil in a covered pan. Then we added sliced up green bell peppers, then cut onions, then some crushed garlic. When the garlic began to brown we threw in a big can of tomato sauce and Françoise added some water to stop the cooking of the garlic. This was left to simmer under cover while we ate our appetizer (the rice was already cooking now too).
The pâté was interesting but overall I liked. But I really really enjoyed the peppers. To make these, we filled hollowed out mild peppers with a mixture of herbed cream cheese, crème fraîche, salt, parsley, and provençal herbs. Yummy yummy!

Our table

Happy Sam!

Appetizer time! I don't know why this is blurry but I don't like it...

Then it was time for chicken. To make this plate, Françoise used traditional striped Basque plates, formed the rice into a mound (which I can now do too), laid chicken next to that, poured on sauce and veggies, and created the Basque cross on top of the rice with two bell peppers. It was fan-tastic.

Our dinner and our menu

Lastly, dessert! Like I said, the éclairs were bought but we cut up and prepared the strawberry dish. To do that, we started with bowls of sliced strawberries, topped them each with a big spoon of crème fraîche, and sprinkled on some sugar. So simple and terrific!

It was a great meal. We ate well, had great conversation, and learned some tricks of the trade. It was still super light out when it was time to go and I took the bus with Mari. She's a lot of fun and I'm excited to spend some more time getting to know her. When I finally got to my neighborhood, the sun was just starting to set and I figured that my family was probably finishing dinner; so, I decided to walk a little bit to kill some time. I saw a really pretty Basque-inspired house, was complimented by a complete stranger who said I had "luminous" eyes and wanted to know how I could be so charming, and I passed by the guy who gave his presentation in class today (Rodney) who was out for a jog.

Lovely <3

When I was settled in at the house, I delivered my gifts to the family (one very messy, leftover éclair and five slices of the bread we had had at dinner) and then I got to work on my presentation for the next day. I think I went to bed very late tonight but I did get everything finished: I typed up a pretty nice handout with all kinds of facts and interesting things about Hungary and found a really cool brochure on Hungary.com (clever huh?) that I was going to use as visual interest during my presentation. I e-mailed these to Ryan right before bed knowing that he could print the handouts in the USAC office, but I wasn't sure if he would be able to play my brochure with his computer on the projector. I guess we'll see in the morning. Goodnight!

Wednesday: I woke up today around 10:30a and the first thing I did was look for Ryan's response to my e-mail. He said that he had already printed out enough copies of my handout for everyone but that I would have to ask Carl to bring his laptop for my brochure. Carl and I commented back and forth on facebook a little and basically left it that he would bring the laptop and we'd see if it would work when we got to class. Okie dokie.
Lunch time: we started off with thin slices of tuna pâté (just for Lionel and I, for whatever reason) and then the interesting, fun, and delicious-all-at-the-same-time main course: a pipping hot, microwave-safe plastic box full of sauerkraut, little potatoes, and bright red, slender sausages. These were like hot dogs on the inside but looked like they were wrapped in a wax that needed to be removed (except that it wasn't wax and was supposed to be eaten). It was so German-y and I really loved it- the flavors took me somewhere great... I don't know where but I want to go back!
After lunch, Christine had to take Guilhem to his weekly Theatre class at a community center I always walk through on my walk to/from the house, so she offered to drop me off there as well since it's close to the university. We finally had a short break today from the grayness and wetness, and it was just gorgeous out. I noticed walking up to the university that the grass is almost more yellow than it is green. Why? Dandelions of course! This place is covered with them and I just love it.

It is wildflower central in Pau right now. 

One of the guys in my class, Rodney, walked up next to me in the parking lot so we walked into class together... about 10 minutes early. Oh well. It gave us time to look at the map on the wall and talk about all of the places we still wanted to go or were planning to go. After that Ryan came in with my handouts and then slowly but surely people started showing up one by one. Eventually Carl came in and we tried to get the brochure running. It finally loaded on the projector but wouldn't play past the first slide. Mince. Oh well, it gave everyone something to look at for a few minutes. I gave my presentation to a full class (minus Chai) and it was no big deal. Phew! The last thing that could possibly get me all nervous is over!
Class finished about 15 minutes early today and then I met Cécile in her office to head downtown for our french and english lessons. Lucille and Emile go to a sports center type of place every day after school to play a little bit and let out some energy. Today they were in this giant, green, concrete room playing the Basque version of racket ball (I forget the name of it) with a bunch of other kids and a few teachers.

Lucille in the purple shirt, Emile in the white

Cécile and I sat in the waiting room and talked while we waited for their class to finish. While there, a German woman who Cécile seemed to know pretty well, came in to do the same thing we were doing. I was so happy she came early and was able to kill time with us; what a charming woman! She got caught in her words every once in a while like I do, but she was much more fluid in her french and had such a characteristic German accent that it reminded me of my Opa. She spoke almost everything with the tips of her front teeth touching and kept the biggest, sunshiniest smile on her face that it just warmed my heart. She sat there trying to solve her brand new cube (Rubiks Cube) and chatted a lot with Cécile. I know that Cécile wanted to hear me speak but I was so happy to listening to this adorable, happy woman.
Lucille and Emile finished their class about 40 minutes later and then the four of us headed over to the nearby conservatoire to find a quiet table and do our english lessons. I worked with Emile first today and he was a pill as always. He has too much energy to focus on our lesson or pay attention to things I have already explained to him. But at least his lesson is only a half an hour, and then I get to work with Lucille- who is much more appreciative of english. The two of us worked on her homework for a little while and then did a couple of activities in her english workbook. It was a lesson in patience for me to watch her do her homework: she took a good five minutes to slowly write just the directions for each activity she had to do. It was cool to watch her do her cursive letters ("M" and "N" are beautiful and don't make any sense to me) and incredible to see her persistence in presenting a neat journal by whiting-out every little mistake and re-writing with her fountain pen. She's 11... and those were just the directions!
When our lessons were finished, I politely turned down a ride from Cécile and walked myself down the Boulevard de Pyrenees to meet up with Aleca in Place Clemenceau. It was shopping time! Unfortunately, waiting for the kids to get out of their racket ball group left Aleca and I with very little time for shopping (everything closes around 7p). We did find a very cute store called Pimkie, though, that had reasonable prices, but we were only in there for about 20 minutes before the vacuum cleaner came out and the music was turned off. Guess we'll have to come back tomorrow...
When all the shops were closed or closing, we decided that we could start looking for a place to eat dinner. On our way towards the château we came across three USAC girls (Grace, Mari, and Julie) who were sitting on a park bench each with a take-out box of noodles in their hands. It was perfect, and I found it to be so American!

Grace, Mari, Julie... and noodles

We chatted with them for a few minutes and then kept on our way. We looked at a few menus and then settled on the place we were probably going all along: Visnu! This is the Indian restaurant I was invited to way back in January with Chai, Rosie, and a bunch of others. I am STILL full after everything I ate with Aleca tonight!

Told you: tacky, but friendly

Visnu's version of a bread basket

That would be our appetizer: garlic nan and what was a super-soft lamb, vegetable, and spices meatball. Now it is a mushy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside pancake and I like it.

Our food: on top you have Aleca's mix of chicken, spices, and all kinds of seafood (and the nan of course), our bottle of wine, and on the bottom you have the saffron rice we split and my steaming hot bowl of cubed chicken, peppers, onions, and spices. SO GOOD!

That would be the end of my fantastic meal (and I'm about to burst!)

And that would be Aleca's.

I'm awesome!

Aleca loses.

But she does beat me in wine consumption haha

This came with our receipt. What it is exactly, no one knows...

The two of us killed a good hour and a half here just enjoying the great food and the tacky, friendly atmosphere. We were the only two people in the dining room for the first half an hour and by the time we left, only two other parties of two had shown up for dinner. It was a quiet evening.
Unfortunately, we had lost track of the time and Aleca had to be back at her room by 9:30p to log onto her school account and register for classes. We ended up having to power-walk to the bus stop (which feels great on a topped-out stomach) only to find that the next bus wouldn't be there for 20 minutes. Aleca kept saying she would run but I talked her into a taxi. There was no way it would be more than 10 euros to take us to the university, and having taken it twice I am well aware of how quickly a taxi could get us to her place. We called for a taxi, he took his sweet time getting to us, and we hopped in about 2 minutes before Aleca's time slot. Five minutes later, our hair was sticking straight out behind us and we were shocked to find ourselves in front of the residence halls. Wow- quicker than I remembered. The two of us paid the guy (who knocked of the 0.60 we owed him, probably cause we're cute) and then sprinted to Aleca's room. The rest is history: Aleca did what she needed to do (except she wasn't able to register for everything she needed because she hasn't declared her major- something she hasn't been able to do lately since it requires showing up to the registrar's office... in America), I flipped through a magazine, Aleca signed on to skype and I got to meet her hilarious family (minus her dad because he is somewhere out in the Mediterranean defending the great US of A), and we mostly just hung out. Aleca opened a couple of beers for the two of us, and I'm thinking that we are pretty much two of the coolest girls ever.
Around 11p we decided to see who was up in the place. We wandered down the hall, saw an open door, heard Carl's obnoxiously loud voice, and went on in. We spent the next couple of hours hanging out with Carl, two french guys, and a few other USAC guys who showed up later. It was actually really fun just sitting around having a good time. We also took our circus down the hall at one point to a french girl's room to score some free food (it was one of our french friends' idea). All of the frenchies were very happy to meet us (and make fun of us, I'm sure) but we didn't stay long. Afterwards, the guys in the group all decided that now (about 1a) was a great time to head over to the local karaoke bar. Aleca and I weren't really up for this so we tried to escape back to her room, but not before one of our friends- Andres- seized one of each of our wrists, shouted, "I got 'em both!" and tried to drag us into the elevator with everyone else. It was pretty funny, but it was even funnier when we got away and waved triumphantly as the door closed in their faces. Ha ha!
It was definitely time to head home. The bus system closes just before 12a here so I had to walk, but at least I had my iPod with me to keep me calm on the walk. I keep it in one ear and turn it down very low so I can hear around me. But one does start to get a little paranoid the longer they are walking at night by their lonesome self and I was a little sweaty when I made it back to my room. Oh la la... too much excitement!

Thursday: I had to let myself sleep in and recover from last night, so I slept until about 10:30a today. When I woke up, I was the only one in the house besides the two workers, so I took my Business in the EU book down to breakfast with me. I turned on the classic radio station, started the hot water, and began making my breads: one butter and jam (I put both both red currant and black currant on this one), one Nutella, and one tiny broken piece with Nutella. Then, I commenced to enjoying my breakfast. Once I was done eating and had put everything away, I went up to my room to get myself ready. I came down for lunch around 12:20p and Christine was in the kitchen finishing the food. She told me that her brother-in-law Jean-Luc (the one who had come with Christine's sister and their kids that one Sunday for lunch) was joining us for lunch today. It was just Christine, Lionel, Jean-Luc, and I and it was kind of pleasant to be able to have a nice lunch with the adults.
For lunch today we started with an apple, walnut, and chicorée (endive) salad, then we had a very curious but tasty main course of lemon chicken. This was cooked as four chicken breasts and four slices of whole lemon simmered in the chicken juices and herbs. The chicken fell off its bone when I tried to cut it and my lemon was just seeping fresh juice from being cooked so long in chicken sauce. With this we each had a pile of plain couscous, and it was all so good. We finished our lunch with bread and cheese. I haven't been taking cheese the past five days or so after my stomach troubles but I finally decided to go for it today. So I had a creamy round of chèvre: goat cheese. It was sooooo good. Jean-Luc and Lionel each had red wine with their cheese but Christine and I still had water in our glasses so we passed. For dessert, we did not have fruit but instead had ice cream! There were two flavors available: crème brulée and café. I could have done both but just decided to go with the first. It had little chunks of burnt sugar in it and was so yummy.
Unfortunately, I completely lost track of how long this lunch with a guest was taking and missed my bus to class. I could have waited for the next one but that would show up in about 20 minutes. So I decided to walk; even though that would take at least the same amount of time. When I got to school I was sweating- the sky was very gray out today but it was really warm! I finally made it inside and went to the bathroom to wash my hands and cool down before going to sit in class (I was already at least a half an hour late so what was a few more minutes at this point). When I was done in there, I heard a weird sound on the floor like something really small had fallen. I looked down and realized that the double-stranded real pearl bracelet I had bought in China in 2008 had broken and one of the strands was dropping beads! It was about time I guess- everything else I bought there has broken by now as well. I think I am missing one or two beads from that one strand, but I did manage to save all of the other ones and get it safely into my purse. I am pretty bummed about this though. =(
Class was the same old same and my teacher didn't even say anything when I came in late- it happens all the time with others and I think he is just kind of ignoring it at this point. During our five minute break in the middle of class, though, we learned that our DELF scores had been delivered to the USAC office and we could go pick them up! There are individual scores for the four competencies- oral expression, oral comprehension, written expression, and written comprehension- but they also gave us a grand total..... 75/100!! You're probably thinking, "oh a C, that's pretty average Sam" but it's not scored like that. You only need 50 points to pass and receive a diploma and after the 50, you mostly just get to see how strong you were in general. And I am extremely proud of this score more so because my class (Group C) and the three classes above us (Groups D, E, and F) all took the B1. The different groups signify a certain amount of hours of french taken (I think there are 150 hours in between each group). So when I saw that my friend Monica, who is in the group above me, got an 85 I was stoked! This means that I was 10 points shy of someone who has had "150 hours" of french more than me... it sounds cooler now doesn't it?
After class, I had my hour-long French lesson with Cécile. We talked about movies (American and French), French musical artists, and what to see in Toulouse/Carcassonne this weekend. It was a very nice hour and I spent quite a lot of it talking; felt pretty great about this. Afterwards, Aleca and I were going to meet back up to do some more shopping but she has been forcibly committed to going to a party this evening and she needed the time in the afternoon to pack for our Toulouse/Carcassonne field trip with USAC. So I went solo. I finally found a bathing suit and simultaneously learned why french bathing suits have a reputation for being "skimpy;" I bought an incredible big, floppy, white and black striped sunhat; and I got a beach coverup for 3 euros. Sweet! After that, stores started closing for the day (everything closes around 7p here), so I grabbed the bus from downtown and headed home. Once home, I settled into the couch and wrote this blog post (up to this point). We had dinner around 8:20p tonight, and that was too late for Guilhem so he ate before us while watching a soccer game somewhere in the Middle East (and he found the Arabic commentary to be quite amusing). Dinner was simple tonight: no soup, just a main course, a spinach salad, and a dessert. The main course was a recipe that Christine hadn't tried in a while and which one of her aunts had actually created. I don't know what it's called but it goes like this: you make a ton of sauce of tomato sauce, 3 big spoons of crème fraîche, and one cup of white wine. You fill a baking dish with pasta, lay four rolls of ham on top, cover with grated Gruyère, and pour on the sauce. It was weird but good all at the same time.

The dish

My plate with my roll of ham and pile of pasta. It mostly tasted like creamy spaghetti sauce

For dessert we had sliced bananas and pineapple drizzled with a raspberry sauce. This was delicious but unfortunately sent Christine and Lionel into a little bit of a tizzy: when they brought it out, Vittorio said he was allergic to raspberries. Christine felt terrible saying, "I thought you were only allergic to strawberries, not raspberries too!" and her and Lionel went and cut up a new pineapple and banana just so he could eat his dessert. Vittorio insisted that they not bother with it at all but he was barking up the wrong tree. After this charade, it was time to split Vittorio's unfortunately un-enjoyed bowl of goodness between the three of us and eat.

Goodnight :)