This photo is my absolute favorite out of the thousands I took. We were on an excursion in Arles when this scene somehow happened.
The colors of Venice were beautiful.
I walked down this street almost every single day.
Photographing Paris by night was magical.
Before the semester had even started I knew that I wanted to go to Italy during our vacation time. The only issue was I hadn’t really planned anything before leaving the U.S…. I had thought that I could find a travel agency in France that would plan everything for me; however, I learned after going to three agencies here that they can only plan flights and trains from France to Italy and NOT plan/book anything in Italy. I really didn’t have time/didn’t want to figure out every detail, so I of course asked my dad if he could. (He has been organizing our summer vacations since I was little.) I was fortunate enough to be able to travel with Sammy, a friend from Linfield. Our trip started in ROME.
Rome in Two Days
Saturday
1. Colosseum
We decided to do the Colosseum Saturday morning as our first sight. After traversing the metro (very easy), we walked outside the station and the colosseum was right in front of us. Our tickets had already been bought online, which I recommend doing because the ticket line was extremely long. We hadn’t planned on taking a tour but a lady that came up to us was very persuasive.
Gorgeous
The colosseum used to have boat battles with a flooded stadium. (How this worked? I have no idea.) Later, there were many underground tunnels and a stage that once covered them.
The inside was like a skeleton.
What really surprised me is how little of the Colosseum is left. The area in the center is only the underground tunnels, there aren’t any more seats, and this is all understandable because it is SO old.
Holes in every single one.
The saddest piece of information the guide shared was that all of the holes in each column are the result of stolen metal, which was valuable at the time. Because so much of the interior structure was stolen, one of the sides had fallen down and has been rebuilt since then.
Can you tell which side was restored?
Our tour price included another tour of the ruins just adjacent to the Colosseum. The ruins of a once thriving palace were magnificent and made for some great photos. After going through the ruins we made our way to the Pantheon (not too long of a walk). We realized that the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Spanish steps were all very close to each other.
A road right behind the Colosseum.
2. The Trevi Fountain
The fountain was our next stop, where we also found some delicious gelato for lunch. (We knew that we had to eat pasta for our first dinner in Italy so we saved roomed for it.)
Even though the water wasn’t there the monument was still magnificent.
I was very sad because the fountain was closed off for construction, so I couldn’t throw a coin in to make a wish. I will just have to come back to Italy again. (The Trevi Fountain opened back up the week after we left. Seriously…)
I just wanted to be like Lizzie McGuire.
3. Spanish Steps
Not only was the fountain closed but the Spanish steps were also; completely gated off so that no one could sit anywhere on them.
Where is the construction… and workers…?
The steps are located right next to some high-end stores and the metro. Sammy also found the Keats Shelly House right next to the steps where we were able to look around at old writings and possessions of poets.
It was nice going to many touristy places that didn’t have large crowds, but the drawback was that construction is usually done in the tourist off-season. Another thing I liked about the off-season was that the weather was still great (it only rained once).
Sunday
4. The Vatican: Sistine Chapel
One Sunday of every month the Vatican is open for FREE. So you can imagine that large masses of people go and why we chose to go that day as well. Arriving early was a necessity, so we thought getting there around 8:30 a.m. would be fine (with it opening at 9:00 a.m.). There was already a long line wrapping along the exterior wall of the Vatican by the time we got there.
This is only the front of the line.
After finding the end, we discovered that the family in front of us spoke French. So, naturally we struck up a conversation with them and found out that they lived in Aix also! Talking with them helped make the 45 minute wait less boring and go by quick.
Once we were inside, we struggled to find where the Sistine Chapel was, (I was thinking it was just like any other church you could just walk into) but instead we traversed through numerous rooms full of sculptures and paintings until we finally arrived in the chapel. In fact, we went through SO many rooms that by the time we actually stepped inside I didn’t realize that I was in the chapel until Sammy pointed out the famous paintings.
Part of the walk to the chapel (and more construction).
Sadly, I forgot to break the rules and snap a photo of the celebrated ceiling artwork.
5. St. Peter’s Basillica
The line to get inside the church took us less than two hours (there was what looked like a funeral being held so that delayed it quite a bit).
The square was crazy crowded.
Inside the church I realized that it was much larger than I had thought. After we had looked around, we climbed the dome to the top (€ 6) and the view was beautiful.
The view was worth the climb!
You can never go to Paris too many times right?
The twinkly lights come on every hour at night!
On a boat in VERSAILLES
Ryan still needed to buy his ticket when we arrived at the station, which he somehow did very fast. We all made it on the train, then realized it was a three hour ride (I didn’t really think about how long the ride would be) and I had nothing to do. The train took us to Gare du Lyon train station where we (more them and less me) figured out which metro to take. We arrived at the Gare du Nord station and after finding the exit we walked outside to see PARIS. The first thing I saw was, of course, cafes lining the streets.
Gare du Nord
After dropping off his things we were ready to explore Paris! The metro was closed by this time (11 p.m.) and we didn’t want to try to figure out the buses, so we just took a taxi to the La Tour Eiffel. The tower looked pretty close so we got out of the taxi and began walking towards it, seeing the Champs Élysées on the way. Unfortunately, the last showing of the twinkling lights on the tower was when we were in the cab, which we learned after waiting for the 2 a.m. showing to see nothing happen. (I was very sad.)
No twinkly lights but still picture-perfect.
I LOVE student discounts. Our tickets were only €7 to get access to the gardens. There are beautiful gardens on this huge piece of land and also a manmade body of water in the center. (Why are the gardens and palace so large? Pourquoi pas.) AND you can rent a boat, which of course we did, and paddle around to see the picturesque scenery by water.
We wandered around the gardens some more, then made our way back to leave since the train ride was about 30 minutes and we wanted to get back to Paris.
It was a long enough train ride for Tabong to take a nap.
My goal for the night, which I made our goal, was to get a lock on the Love Lock Bridge for my boyfriend. So after we got off the metro we headed in that direction. Our first picture stop (the guys loved the picture stops) on the way to the bridge was at the Louvre.
I can’t not take a picture when the Louvre looks this good at night.
The lock I had to buy to store my things at the hostel came in handy.
These are all of my favorite things.
The bridge we ate under and found a club behind us.
On our early morning stroll we saw L’Arc de Triomphe and decided we would walk there first, then find the station after. Unfortunately, by this time Ryan’s phone, which had been getting us everywhere, was dead and we were wandering aimlessly. Some people on the street told us it was more than a mile walk and by this time in the trip my feet were dead. Thankfully, there are endless taxis and we found one easily. Since we arrived at the train station around 6 a.m. the seats where we sat down were the seats we ended up sleeping on, waiting for our train to come around 11 a.m.
He’s always sleeping…
Staying out all night and not having a place to stay isn’t ideal for everyone, but I would definitely recommend it. Paris is such a large city, so it wasn’t scary and we had things to do to help us stay up. Just walking to each monument and seeing them lit up at night takes a good amount of time. And everything about Paris is just extremely beautiful at night!
The gates of Versailles
I cannot believe how fast these past four weeks have gone by. In three weeks we will be having our midterm exams and then our week-long break. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning more and more about French culture thus far and absolutely love interacting with people here. Since it has now been a month living in Aix, I wanted to share some interesting things I have noticed here so far.
The view every time I look out a window.
As part of my program with AUCP I needed to sign up for a club, (an activity where I can interact with local residents) so I decided to do yoga. The class was very different…Yoga here, or at least the studio I’m going to, is more about meditation, chakras and breathing than exercise. My language partner, Laurent, (it was his first time ever doing yoga) did the class with me and he loved it. The class wasn’t terrible, but it is just not exercise at all and bizarre to listen to everyone breathing so heavily. I think we did only four or five poses during the hour because the focus was mostly just on breathing deeply.
One of the streets I walk on ever day.
A narrow passageway that I also walk through each day.
Ma mère didn’t know what banana bread was! She showed me some brown bananas one day, so I, of course, asked if she was going to make banana bread and she responded with, “quoi?” Usually she will make some kind of dessert with the bananas but never a bread (which the French would usually call banana cake, not bread). I then found a recipe with French instructions since the measurements are different here. When I asked her where her teaspoons and measuring cups were she pointed to some pots and pans… Not understanding what I was asking for, I proceeded to show her some pictures of them, to which she said she just uses a spoon and a teacup to measure. Her grandson was at the house, so he helped me make the bread (which was basically just thrown together without being exact at all) and the ‘pain de banane’ turned out delicious!
I came home later in the day from school to see that they had eaten half of the loaf already.
People wait outside for the grocery store to open. On some days when I have earlier classes I see a small line around 8: 30 a.m. outside one of the larger supermarkets. This was very strange to see, but then I realized that in the U.S. we have numerous amounts of stores open 24/7 or at least very early in the morning, but this isn’t a prevalent option in France. The markets are usually open before the grocery stores.
Everything is from the grocery store or market.
It makes me feel better when ma mère looks at my homework and says, “This is hard… How are you supposed to do this!” In my class about the European Union some topics are hard enough to understand in English, but in french it can be next to impossible. Doing more research (in English) really helps me understand the harder subjects.
Went from reading TinTin this summer to actual french books and let’s just say it was a big change for me.
I learned from ma mère that there is a saying for when you eat a fruit that you’ve never tried before. The saying is, “Quand on mange un fruit pour la première fois on fait un vœu.” (When you eat a fruit for the first time you get a wish). One of ma mère’s friends had brought over some figs from his tree, so we ate some figs and I had never tried them before. Now I’m obsessed with them and buy some every chance I get.
Some of the largest grapes that I’ve ever eaten.
Ma mère, along with other student’s host families, is very conscientious about electricity and water use. I have been reminded more than once now to turn off the light in my room when I leave (something I had a hard time doing back home so my dad installed a motion-sensor lightswitch, which makes remembering to switch it off here even more difficult).
She definitely saves money not having a drier. (Yes, that’s my underwear hanging outside.)
I didn’t think it was possible but showering here became even stranger. I started noticing ma mère turning on and off the water frequently and didn’t understand what she was doing. After telling this to another student she said it’s normal for her parents to do the same thing because it saves water. So now, not only am I showering with a shower-head that I have to hold, but I am also turning on and off the shower when I put on shampoo and conditioner.
Très Français.
One of the harder things to get used to is always getting out of class late (sometimes 15 minutes). In the U.S students will start packing up their things even before class is supposed to be finished and professors usually get the hint that it is time to stop the lecture. Here, however, I have had professors that are late to class frequently and almost always go over the time when class should be finished. Our grammar professor just didn’t show up to class one day and now we have to make up the class on a different day.
I will never get tired of this view.
I adore my language partner! Laurent is definitely what I expected from a French friend: always late, eats well and drinks wine. My language partner has been late every time we have met up, which I have just accepted. We were supposed to do yoga together last week, but he showed up too late so the doors were locked already.
Laurent!
I can’t get over how good the sweets are. There are crêpes everywhere, the best cookies I’ve ever had at La Fournée de Joseph (this place is right by our school, so sometimes I go twice a day…shhh), Bueno Bars are literally in every store and the Speculoos spread is so good that it can be eaten straight out of the container. Usually the crêpes are not eaten for breakfast here. Crêpe stands aren’t even open before 10 a.m., which is really sad.
Crêpes à GoGo is really hard to resist when I pass it every day on my walk home and to school.
The notebooks are not the same… They have some kind of weird graph paper instead of college rule. (I’m happy I brought two notebooks from home.) The paper is taller, so it sticks out of my folder that I also brought.
It is hard to tell but there are even smaller lines in-between this look-a-like graph paper.
BREAD. SO MUCH BREAD. I love it, but there is no way I can eat as much bread as ma mère does or as much as she offers it to me. Every single night there is ALWAYS bread with dinner. Not only does ma mère insist on me eating bread but also cheese. I am very happy that I love Camembert because she usually likes to pull some out after dinner. After an amazing dinner (I have loved everything that she has cooked) she will also always ask if I want dessert (yes, of course, I want three crêpes but should I eat that many after that filling dinner? NO, but I do anyways because pourquoi pas).
An alligator gummy on top of a rose shaped crêpe…oh mon Dieu.
The French find it very strange to eat some bread with cheese AND put jam on it. This is a combination that is popular with us students at AUCP for lunch or a snack. When I told ma mère about adding jam she gave me a very weird look. Here, jam is mostly only used for breakfast when they will usually eat bread with butter and jam.
Sometimes we drink wine with our baguettes, cheese and jam because we’re in FRANCE.
I also don’t know why, but it really amuses me when I see people carrying their baguettes. I didn’t know if it was actually true before but yes the french buy baguettes VERY frequently. I have now seen on multiple occasions a mom carrying at least three or more baguettes. Why a family needs THAT much bread is something I don’t think I will ever understand, along with the fact that everyone here is so skinny. (I do not understand. I have been eating crêpes and bread but the opposite is happening to me.)
I love them all.
We learned that chopsticks, along with other things like a wand, are called baguettes and I have yet to figure out why
Une Viennoise Choco. I finally learned the name of this tasty bread, which I buy a little too often.
I absolutely love the markets here. I wish there was one every day instead of every other and that they didn’t close around 1 p.m. My 15 minute walk to school is even better when I get to smell the freshly baked breads, different kinds of spices and numerous choices of sausage. I saw pesto, wasabi cheese and other different colored cheese that I didn’t even know existed. The market has more cheese options than I’ve ever seen before. (The samples are always good too.)
You can get cheese in red and green to match your Christmas decorations.
Update on the toilet situation: I still cannot flush it the right way, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I figured out how to get the button unstuck so now the problem is a lot better.
Came very close to buying this book.
C’est mon anniversaire! – Es ist mein Gerburtstag! – It is my birthday!
This weekend I turned 20! I celebrated the fact that I still can’t legally drink in the U.S. by going to Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.
Not for eating, just for looking, but probably won’t make it back in my suitcase in one piece.
I was able to convince Sammy, a friend from Linfield (also at AUCP with me), to go the festival.
See the hanging angel guy in the background?
Not only was I extremely nervous to be traveling to a country where I don’t speak the language, but also to a festival that brings in thousands upon thousands of people for opening day. I had read some articles how it wasn’t a smart idea to try to go on the first day of the festival because you won’t get into a tent and you won’t have a good time. The opening day however, was my birthday so I HAD to go, regardless.
Marstall Tent!
In my opinion, Marstall is the prettiest tent.
We felt very accomplished after arriving early to our flight in Marseille, having no problems finding the S8 train from the Munich airport and then changing to take the U1 train and finding our AirBnB apartment.
There were cute things like this everywhere.
The man who owned the apartment was extremely helpful and spoke excellent English. He told us which tents he recommended going to, what time we should get there, how to get home and the best way to get back to the airport. Thankfully, his English was easy to understand!
The grounds reminded me of the Puyallup Fair back home.
I had been to Munich this past summer with my family and had taken a video of the route we would need to walk to get to Oktoberfest (weird, I know). I think I had the wrong address when I took the video because I could not figure out where we were at all when I tried using it. So my backup option was the directions I had looked up and saved. Sadly, my sense of direction with German street names was terrible and I couldn’t figure out where to go after the second turn. My last plan was to find people wearing lederhosen and follow them to the festival. The first people we found that spoke English, told us we could just ride the bus with them, so we did! They told us that they were actually in a band at the festival in the Armbrustschützen tent.
Our tent! It can seat almost 7,000 people.
At 7:30 a.m. we started waiting in line to get inside the Hofbräu tent. I could see the door from where we were standing, so I was hopeful that we would have an easy time finding a seat. The doors opened at 9 a.m. (This was really exciting because we originally thought that we would have to stand in line until 12 p.m. when the first beer is served.)
Since there are a lot of tourists that don’t speak German, the workers just blow whistles at you, expecting you to understand what they mean.
Once the doors opened everyone stated pushing and screaming in excitement, resulting in us being squished together like sardines. After making it through the doors we saw many empty tables but then realized that these were the reserved tables. (If I attended Oktoberfest with a large group every year then I would reserve a table.) At the other tables, open for everyone, there were already many filled ones. The others had people standing on top of them reserving space for their friends. At this point I started freaking out, thinking that we wouldn’t get a table, but then I started to ask people if we could sit with them (since there was only two of us) and finally a table said yes!
So. Many. People.
Our table was a group of people from New Zealand, who had come to London for work. They were nice and taught us a new card game. (They also say Paper-Scissors-Rock and not Rock-Paper-Scissors…strange, but they thought the same of us when we said how we say it in the States.)
I think his name was Mat…maybe Mike…
The tent sold pretzels (bretzel) and drinks like water and pop, BUT no beer yet. Sammy and I shared a huge pretzel, which was delicious and ate a sugary pretzel later in the day.
Great breakfast right?
Finally 12 o’clock came around and the first beers were served. With beers, comes bathrooms, and the bathrooms were AWFUL. Angry, drunk girls who need to pee and have to wait a long time in a crowded, tiny line is not an ideal situation.
No idea what most of these said, but they were cute.
Another thing that I hadn’t read was that the servers needed to be tipped about €5, per beer, to start out with. If you don’t, they won’t come back to serve you again. So we gave the tip and she always came back. We also noticed that the waitresses wear wrist guards because they can be carrying up to 10 beers for each table, all day.
Loved this beer.
Sammy and I had decided we needed to try the famous roasted chicken (hendl). It was probably the best chicken I’ve ever had. So good, that I forgot to get a picture of it before we devoured the entire thing. So good, that we got another one the next day. I would definitely recommend getting a hendl.
Remembered the picture of our second chicken!
At around 4:30 p.m. we decided to leave our tent. (We didn’t need anymore beer and wanted to see the rest of the festival before it became too dark.) The grounds had an amazing atmosphere. Everywhere you look you see people dressed in their traditional German clothing (I was sad I didn’t wear any, but the clothes can be very expensive) and the tents and stands are intricately decorated.
Goals.
For dinner we ate bratwurst-style hot dogs. We were exhausted and decided to find our way home. It was too much work to figure out where to go and I didn’t want to get lost, so we just took a cab (only €11). Make sure you write down your address because the taxi driver will most likely have no idea what you’re saying!
I wanted to try them all.
Our flight on Sunday wasn’t until 3:45 p.m., so we went back to Oktoberfest at 10 a.m. to look around, buy some more souvenirs and go check out the inside the other tents. We then found our way to the train station (about a 15 minute walk from Oktoberfest) and arrived at the airport without any problems. The S8 train from the festival to the airport is the best way to go because it’s only €10 for a one way ticket and only about an hour long ride.
It was like a morning bun but sooooo much better (I think there were hazelnuts in it and I LOVE hazlenuts).
Overall, it was a birthday weekend to remember and I can’t thank my parents enough for providing me with great opportunities like this.
Au revoir! Auf Wiedersehen! Bye Oktoberfest!
I want to start off by saying: I LOVE it here.
I realize it has only been a week since my french journey began, but I feel as if I have been here for much longer.
Le priemier jour
After arriving at the airport with the other three Linfield students and finding our luggage; we found the host families waiting for us. I saw three older women standing together and knew it was some of our host mothers. For some reason they reminded me of the three ladies from Mama Mia. They had huge smiles and were very welcoming.
Ma mère, Andréa, greeted me, like the french do, with a kiss on each cheek. (I was nervous I would mess this up and be awkward, but she just moved me in the right direction and it was very easy.) She is retired and she has two sons and one grandson. One son lives in the United States so, she isn’t able to see him very often.
We ate ratatouille with bread and some cantaloupe when we arrived at her petit apartment. We had a cup of tea in the afternoon, then went for a walk around the park to find the bus stop. For dinner we ate a quiche like food(she said it wasn’t exactly the same as quiche) with mushrooms and blue cheese in it, which was very tasty. I brought out my present for her of chocolate and she loved it!
The apartment is small but fitting for her and theres more than enough room for me. She has pink toilet paper and a tub/shower that has no curtain or door… She doesn’t have a microwave or a dryer, so her clothes line dry outside. (She keeps on reminding me of my grammy more and more.) She has been super helpful and usually always understands what I’m trying to say, which, to me, is quite impressive since she doesn’t know english very well.
This is apparently normal…
Le deuxième jour
Our first day of orientation started Monday morning. Ma mère rode the bus with me to make sure I didn’t get lost. The commute to school is about a 10 minute walk to the bus from her apartment, then a 10 minute bus ride and then about a 15 minute walk along the road, Cours Mirabeau. There are markets every other day on Cours Mirabeau and other streets as well. Vendors sell things like clothes, food and jewelry (all of my favorite purchases).
There are 26 students and six of them are boys, which is actually pretty high for this program. AUCP requires you to sign a contract saying that you won’t speak english for your time here. This is a technique that will be essential for me to better understand and learn the language. Just talking with my ma mère has helped me and classes haven’t even started yet.
Our first day was exhausting. Orientation was almost all day with two hours for lunch in-between. Some french students from another university took us out to eat. Our day at AUCP was finished at 5:30 p.m., but after that we had to go to Monoprix (a store that sells food, clothes, products and basically whatever your heart desires) to get our photos taken (if you have ever seen the movie Amelie you will know what I am talking about). The photos were necessary to get our bus passes.
I took the bus home and by the time I arrived it was already time for dinner. (Dinner here is at 7:30 p.m. or later.) For dinner we ate endives wrapped in ham and covered with a lot of cheese. I don’t think I’ve eaten endives before and what she made was soooooo delicious. I watched the news with ma mère and then passed out in my bed.
Could this place be any prettier?
Le troisième jour
My first time taking the bus by myself (so nervous!) ended up being extremely easy. There is a large fountain by the bus stop near my house. Then there is another huge fountain by the bus stop that I get off for school. There are also other students that ride the same bus as me.
My biggest struggle here has been trying to figure out the toilet. For some reason every time I have flushed the toilet it won’t stop flushing for a long time…and it’s VERY loud. Ma mère tried telling and SHOWING me how to do it and I just couldn’t figure it would. I had her write in french what she was saying, I translated it and STILL couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t think this would be the hardest thing for me here…
I bought a french old school phone that I can use to text and call the other students, ma mère and french students like my partenaire de langue. Writing a sentence takes a couple minutes, so I’m sticking to short texts right now.
Le quatrième jour
I finally flushed the toilet right. YESSS. It was a great way to start out the day, sad, I know. For Wednesday we had another 2-hour lunch break where I was able to explore the town with some other students after eating at a french school cafeteria. My meal there cost less than 4 euros. It was awesome. Lunches can be very expensive if you go out to a restaurant but eating at smaller places like cafes or the pizza truck a block away from school are definitely going to be in my future.
I also was apparently wearing the wrong type of dress because I was whistled at multiple times by a middle school boy. Since I walk by the middle school every day I hope this doesn’t happen again.
Le cinqante jour
Well, the toilet flushed for 5 minutes straight this morning and woke up ma mère. Will I ever figure it out? Who knows.
We had another 2-hour lunch break and decided to go to the restaurant, La Fromagerie. The three of us split a 5 cheese plate that we had our waiter choose. The cheese was of course accompanied by a glass of wine (I chose some rosé). I will be trying to go back in the near future.
We checked out the market after and I tried a really good chutney at a confiture (jelly) stand. I will be buying some to take back home. The market is really perfect for buying food that you want for the week because it is so fresh and has many different types of items. We’re supposed to go out to dinner with friends on Fridays and Saturdays because we only get five meals at home during the week. However, if I have lots of homework one week or just don’t want to go out I want to buy some food at the market and make dinner for ma mère et moi.
The pepper chutney is this vendors best seller.
J’aime le fromage.
Le sixième jour
FRIDAY. Finally the orientation is over. We learned how to place our silverware, how to cut properly, that we should wipe our mouths before we want to take a drink and which cheeses should be cut a certain way (yeah, all of that in a couple hours).
There was a lot of information thrown at us in just one week. I feel as if I know the town pretty well already, except I need to learn the street names better, but sometimes it’s hard to even find them. I don’t even know the street names in Washington (where I’ve lived for 20 years).
After a long day of being at the AUCP we met our language partners at 6:30 p.m. My language partner is Laurent and he is on his last year of college at Paul Cézanne University, which is close to AUCP. His English sounded pretty good and I just hope he will be able to help me out a lot with my French!
Cours Mirabeau
Le septième jour
I finally had some free time to go for a run! I had been wanting to run all week but there just wasn’t enough time in the day for it. I live right next to a small park, so I can easily get my runs in without having to worry about busy streets. To run a mile, I just to do a loop around the park and the area is very safe. I am also planning on joining a running club with other people who live in Aix.
After my run I met some friends on Cours Mirabeau, did some shopping, then met with some more friends from AUCP to ride the bus to chez Ryan. He has a pool, so naturally we all wanted to go visit.
La piscine est très bonne.
Le huitième jour
Sundays here are very laid back. Because mostly everything is closed, it is a great time to be with family or friends, or in my case do a lot of studying. Ma mère invited one of her friends over for lunch because his birthday was yesterday. We ate so much food. I loved it.
She started out with little weenies (petit saucissons) accompanied by some wine (vin). Then she brought out terrine de canard on some bread with a little olive on top. After that, we had half of an avocado filled with mayonnaise and a shrimp. (This is something I need to eat when I get back to the states.) We then had the main course of cooked chicken with onions, tomatoes and a little eggplant. (This was also super tasty.) After that it was time for cheese, as always. Her friend cut me a huge piece of camembert, which I gladly ate with some toasted bread. And with little break in-between to digest, she brought out the cake that her friend had brought over. The cake had an orange flavored creme in the middle, which I LOVED.
Overall, the dinner was such a cool experience for me because meals like this are so normal here and I’ve never experienced anything like it in the U.S. I will definitely be asking for some recipes from Andréa. She has been a great cook so far, so I’m excited to see what else she whips up in the months to come. I’ve only been here for a week and the food has already exceeded my expectations.
Classes start tomorrow and I can’t wait to learn even more about the French language and culture.
À bientôt!
La Vie Est Belle 
