Wimp = muaviett / poule moulée (wet chicken!)

I decided that I am going to start putting french words and their english translations that I learn in the title spot, that way you guys can learn a little french too! :)

Ok, correction: Printemps de la Jupe was not for engineers. I misunderstood. It was a once yearly thing to talk about the roles of men and women in society. I didnt really understand what this organisation does, but the meeting was really boring and I didnt really follow along...
On Tuesday from 8-10 am we were supposed to have the engineer meeting. However, the engineers werent warned, and thought they were teaching from 10-12. So we missed our first class (of Euro English, which is boring anyways) because it took us a while to figure out if the engineers were comming or not, and then we went to our second class of English for one hour until 10am and then met with the engineers. It was more interesting than the meeting on Monday, but they didnt give us any useful (in my opinion) information. They gave us the gender statistics for each job, and the time frame of work, but not what we would be doing everyday, or even the diferent types of engineers, ect. It wasnt a very clear presentation, though that could have also been because I didnt understand everything.
Wednesday was an eventful day. I took the bus to school with Ingrid and Laurie. What we got to the bus stop we normally get off at, another bus was there which has a stop closer to our school. We took it because it was cold, windy, and rainy outside, and then cut across a fenced-in park to get to school. The gate to the park was locked and we didnt have time to walk all the way around again. So we had to climb the 12 foot tall fence and run the rest of the way to school. We didnt make it. So we sat in detention for an hour, then had an hour of math class. After math on Wednesdays, we usually have gym (we are currently doing swimming) though this particular Wednesday we didnt have class, but we couldnt go home for whatever reason either. Laurie and I were hungry so we walked to a bakery and bought two brioche parline. They were really good! After, we sat in the detention room and just talked. Laurie, Anne-Sophie and I talked about what were going to do after highschool. Most people in the French school system have to make up their minds on a career, or a general area, at the end of 10th grade. The choose to go into a 'line'. Everyone in my class chose to go into the 'science line' which is where you can do the most things, or so I have heard. There are also the 'language line' and the 'economics line'. When you choose a line, you automatically get classes the next year (from 11th through 12th grade) which are geared towards that area of studies. Laurie and Anne-Sophie dont know exactly what they want to do, so right now they are both thinking of going to Italy next year for an exchange. After school, I went home and had lunch with Michel, Laura, and Claire, and got a package from Aunt Bonnie! Then I caught the bus with Ingrid to go to Place Bellecour to buy Bensimons. Bensimons are tennis shoes that are very popular in France right now. They come tons of colors and styles, I bought some blue ones! While we were at Place Bellecour, someone from Unicef stopped us and asked us to right the ferris wheel, and all the proceeds would go to Haiti. So we did, and then there was a groupe of college students waiting on the ground after who asked questions and taped our answers for a school project or something, though only Ingrid talked!! :) After that I came home and changed for dance class. At dance, we had a guest hiphop teacher who taught us a choreography of hiphop which we will somehow incorporate into a dance we do later on. It was fun, but really hard! He had us balance on our heads (though luckily no spinning!) and on our hands with our elbows supporting our legs. That night we ate dinner while watching the movie Les Choristes (The Chorists) which Ingrid lent me. It was a good french movie! It was about a boarding school for troubled-ish boys (Claire told me they had supposedly been to court and the juge referred them to this school, though only a few were mean in the movie) and a new teacher who liked singing. He had trouble controlling the boys at first, but eventually got through to them by starting a choir. The ending was a little abrupt, with the teacher being fired by the principal, and all the boys who had pretended not to like the choir throwing little paper airplanes out the window with nice goodbyes written on them as the teacher exited. All day thursday I was really tired, and I had class from 8am-6pm :( Though today I got to sleep in because my English teacher was absent, so I started at 10am! Then I had 2.5 hours of chemistry and physics right aways :( but then lunch, TPE, one hour of Italian (I dont really have this class, I just went with Laurie, Ingrid and Anne-Sophie for something to do, and the teacher is really nice and doesnt mind) and then one hour of History and Geography and then I finished at 5pm! Tonight, a Norwegian girl, Ingrid, is comming over to spend the night (she is with AFS too) and then tomorrow Laura, Ingrid, and I are catching the train to....I dont really know where, though its the same small town we went to after the first month here. Tonight, Claire and Michel are driving to a friends cabin where they are going to stay the weekend and snowshoe on a mountain.

Also, I realise that I make a lot of errors in my blog posts because I dont proof read them and I am slowly loosing my English, so Im sorry!! I hope you can still understand everything :)

Last week went by pretty fast, nothing much out of the ordinary. Everything is pretty normal now, no surprises, nothing really new, sort of feels like I could have lived here forever. Except for the language difference :) If I listen carefully in class, I can understand everything, but I still have trouble listening and writing at the same time. I will start to write down what the teacher is saying, and then when I listen again, they have started talking about a whole new subjet, which makes for funny looking notes, but I guess the point is to keep learning, not have perfect notes. My French teacher has this way of talking in strange sentences. which. dont make. sense because she. stops. in the middle. and stresses. sylables which. are not usually. stressed. It makes it a lot harder to understand what she is saying when I am trying to make sense of only half the sentence.
Anyways, this past weekend I didnt do much either. On Saturday night I went to see a movie called A Serious Man with Laura and Michel. It was in English!! But it still wasnt the best movie I have ever seen. Today I have to go back to school in half an hour to watch a presentation for the organisation Printemps de la Jupe (literal translation: Spring of the Dress...I have no idea why it is called this, maybe I will find out). This is a presentation for an engineering job, though even if you know you dont want to be one, you still have to go. I think it will be interesting, hopefully! This comming weekend we have the half-way-through weekend with AFS. It strange to think that I am already/only halfway through. I havent decided which one fits better. Im not really looking forward to it, other than seeing everybody, but we always have to play weird games, they never let us just talk. Ok off to see Printemps de la Jupe:)

Le Gourmet de Sèze

On Saturday I was supposed to be at Le Gourmet de Sèze at 9:00am. I took two buses and walked the rest of the way. Its not a very big restaurant, only about 15 tables. The kitchen was small too, but the area where the pastry chef worked was TINY! Though I guess it was big enough for her (the pastry chef) to work in. I arrived at about 8:45 am and everyone was already there. The Chef (aka owner, Bernard) gave me a chef shirt and an apron to wear. I helped the pastry chef all day, making bread dough, forming rolls, preparing dessert plates, filling small white chocolate shells with mousse, cleaning, ect. The restaurant is open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, reservations only. There is an épicerie (small café) joined to the restaurant (and owned by Bernard too). In all, there was one girl working in the épicerie, one pastry chef, three regular chefs, Bernard (head chef), three servers, one dishwasher, and me. During the service time (lunch= 1:30-2:30, dinner= 9:30~11:30) the pastry chef and I prepared five desserts for each guest. They were all fairly small. The first one was a crème brulée covered with a little bit of chocolate ganache and topped off with a chocolate piece with cocoa butter writing that said 'Le Gourmet de Sèze'. The second was a fruit salad consisting of one small piece of each fruit; kiwi, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, mango, lychee, cranberry, prune, apricot, pineapple, banana, madarine orange, normal orange, and grapefruit. This plate was topped off with mint jelly, two small scoops of ice cream (a fruit one and vanilla bean/ crème anglaise) and a red fruit coulis. The third dish had a round biscuit base wrapped in a white chocolate shell. The shell was filled with pieces of lychee and then topped off with a passion fruit mousse. The garnish was a sprig of mint, a tiny scoop of ice cream, a vanilla bean, and a piece of apricot. The fourth was a cup of chocolate mousse with a small scoop of chocolate ice cream in the middle, then a small layer crème anglaise and a round piece of chocolate. The fifth was a hot dessert, molten chocolate cake with a sauce I forgot the name of, though its made from the root of an endive... :) Lastly, the guests were served a café with madeleines (small spongy cakes in the shape of a shell) we made. I made one mistake and one almost mistake :) The mistake was squirting the red fruit coulis on the fruit salad plate too sloppily for the pastry chefs liking, she yelled at me saying it was too ugly! Then I almost dropped the entire tray of crème brulée/chocolate ganache when I looked up to smile and say merci at the guy holding the fridge-room door open for me! After that I decided it would be better to look a little rude and not say thanks, than drop an entire tray of desserts!! :) I stayed from 9am to 3pm. Then took a tram and a bus back home, then Claire took me back at 5:30pm and I stayed until 10:30 pm, though it wasnt even the busiest time for the pastry chef yet, but I wasnt allowed to stay past then because I am a minor and apparently there are laws about that. Bernard also sent home some dessert with me, though it wasnt the same as what we had made. He sent ile flottant (floating isle, a dessert made of whipped egg whites floating in a crème anglaise sauce), a café crumble, and a chocolate cake-type thing. We ate the dessert after lunch and dinner yesterday, it was all really good. Yesterday I didnt do much, and today I went to Part-Dieu after school to buy a swim suit for gym this wednesday. In other news it rained for a couple days, and now all the snow is gone, which gives me the false hope that spring is right around the corner!

1) Snow in Lyon!!!

2)All the chefs and the girl who works in the épicerie.

3) Three of the desserts for two people; fruit salad on the left, then white chocolate and crème anglaise

4) Me with my very big shirt and apron on filling the white chocolate cups with passion fruit mousse over the chunks of lychee

5) Me plating the fruit salad

Small Update

I just got back from meeting with the owner of Le Gourmet de Sèze (a restaurant in Lyon). Michel told me it is very highly regarded. It is apparently one out of (a maximum, though not necessarily) 10 restaurants in Lyon which are awarded stars (called Etoilé Michelin) by the Michelin guide book. It has been awarded one star (out of three) since 2002. The owner, Bernard Mariller, was very nice and not intimidating at all. He was happy that I was so excited about baking and told me I could come in this Saturday at 9:00 am to work with them. He also said I could take notes and pictures if I wanted, and could come back in the evening!! I am excited, so hopefully it will be a lot of fun and a good experience.

§ µ £ ¤ € (some of the different symbols of a French keyboard)

Saturday night I went to Chloés for dinner with Laurie, Justine, and Ingrid for Claires goodbye party. We ate a lot of little appetizers for dinner, including Chinese Chips, which I had never heard of before, but they were big, fat, white crunchy chip-like circles that if you stuck them on your tongue, they acted like pop-rocks! So that was cool :) Then we ate pavlova which Claire made (apparently it is a very Australian dessert) and talked. Ingrid and I left at about 12:30 am and ran back to Rue de la Balme (we live on the same street) because it was snowing hard and there was a bunch of snow on the ground. Sunday I slept in and then after lunch we went to a museum in Lyon and then to the movies with Marie-Pierre and Aliane. That night for dinner we ate endives wrapped in ham, covered in a beshamel sauce and cooked in the oven. I usually dont like endives, but cooked like that they werent bad! :) Monday I finished school at 1:00 and went to Part-Dieu to eat lunch with Laurie, Chloé and Claire. We took the bus back, and Chloé and Claire wanted me to go to the film history class with them so I did that until 6:00 and then went home. Tuesday was normal, and in French class I got back my Bac Blanc test.......0.5/20! I guess that means there is only room for improvment :) Today I had math class (which I am actually sort of understanding now, since we moved on from derivitives to trigonometry) and then the last class of badmitton. Next week we start swimming, and I have to buy a swimsuit soon. Then I came back and ate lunch and then Laurie and Claire came over. Laurie wanted to make banana bread because she watches Desperate Houswives and there was banana bread in one episode, and Claire like to bake too (and really likes banana bread). It turned out good, we found semi-brown bananas, but not really good-ripe-brownish-black ones. Then I went to dance class. Today we finished our dance to Men In Black (still havent seen the movie), though each class the teacher sort of forgets what we have already done, and changes a lot of things. Its semi-confusing. Then we started another dance to a song in Greece (the theme is movie songs this year). We are supposed to finish 5 dances by the middle of June, and we have one and a half in 4 months! I dont think were going to get there... :) Tomorrow I have an easy day, I am not going to have my TP SVT class or my Hist/Geo class. Then I dont have Hist/Geo on Friday either. Today Michel called an aquaintance (the father, who owns a restaurant and specialises in pastry (!!) of a kid who used to play basketball with Victor) and asked if I could shadow him for a day. He said yes!! So, if I understood, I will be shadowing him this Saturday!! Also, I have decided that when ever I like something my host parents cook, I will take a picture of it, and write down the recipe, so hopefully at the end of the year, I will have a real French cookbook. But we will see if I actually stick to it... :)
Tomorrow Claire Leaves for Paris on a bus :(

Back from break

On Tuesday I ate lunch with Laurie. We cooked the macaroni and cheese my parents sent. She really liked it and kept the box:) On Wednesday I made chocolate chip cookies for my dance class because we had a New Years celebration afterwards, and no surprise, they really liked them. I guess they are not just Americans favorite cookies anymore! :) Wednesday Michel left for Paris for a meeting for his business. We ate dinner, and then after watched Slumdog Millionair in French, well part of it. Laura and I were too tired to stay up for all of it. We ate a Galette de Roi for dessert (King Wafer). Galette translated literally is wafer. Though this was kind of like a flat honey cake. Its a tradition in France to eat one after the New Year to celebrate the Three Wise Men who went to visit Jesus after he was born, in French, they are The Three Kings. The tradition is to cut it into pieces and the youngest person in the family (which is me) crawls under the table and tell the server which piece to give to whom (though I there were only three of us, so I didnt have to crawl under the table:) ). Whoever gets the small ceramic toy in their piece is crowned king. In a large Galette de Roi, there are two ceramic pieces. Though ours was small, so we only had one, but I got it in my piece. I am king!! :) Though Michel wasnt there, and he didnt know we had already done it, so today he bought a big one! Thursday it snowed some more, and on Friday, all of our classes were stopped at 4pm because the public buses were starting to shut down, and almost everyone in the school takes the buses, some take two or three to get home, and if there are no buses, its a problem. So normally I would have ended at 3pm because during the hour of 3-4pm I dont have a class, but Laurie wanted me to go to Italian with her, Ingrid, and Anne-Sophie, so I did, and Claire came too. It was cool, I understood when the teacher spoke French, and then could follow along a little bit in Italian. When we got out of school, everyone was throwing snow balls, even if they didnt know you, they still made you their target. So, I threw them back! :) Today it hasnt stopped snowing yet and there are about 6-8 inches on the roof! This is really rare for Lyon. This morning Michel tried to start a fire and thought he opened the damper, but he didnt. For about an hour we suffocated in smoke until I decided I was going to go for a walk, and let the smoke escape through the open windows. When I got back, Michel told me that in fact, the dampers werent open! Tonight I am going to Chloés house for a goodbye party for Claire, she leaves this Thursday to go back to Australia.

Vacation Pictures (New Years on Groix)

1) An ocean view during a bike ride

2) Laura and I wading in the water

3) The beach

4) View from the top floor of the house

5) Front of the house

Vacation Pictures (Christmas in Champagny)

1) The present bench on Christmas Eve. L-R: Remy (host cousin), Mimi (Claires Mom), Fanny (host cousin), Claire, Michel

2)The table for 28 on Christmas Eve

3) Scenery from skiing at Champagny

4) Laura, Julie and I before skiing

5) View from the top floor of Mimi's house

Christmas Vacation

The vacation came, but now its over, and I still havent written a post. So this ones going to be long!
On the 23d we left Lyon a little after noon for Champagny, host family plus Julie. Champagny turned out to be more of a town that I was originally thinking. There were mostly tourist and ski shops, but also a boulangerie and boucherie. Claires mom, two cousins, and their significant others where there when we arrived. We made 10 in all. That was the 23d. By the evening of the 24th, 18 other family members had arrived. The day of the 24th, Julie, Michel, Laura and I went downhill skiing (ski piste) in the mountains of Champagny. It was a lot bigger than Alyeska! That night, the adults set the table and made preparations for the dinner while the kids got settled in upstairs and played card games. We ate dinner starting at 9:00 pm. We at things that didnt need to be cooked, because there was only oven for 28 people! We first ate oysters and shrimp. Then very lightly smoked salmon. For those who dont like any of the previous foods, there was a sausage wrapped in a bread type dough and baked. Then we finished off with foie gras with spice bread. Through out the entire meal each person probably drank on average 4-5 glasses of champagne/wine! After we ate dinner, we opened presents. This family has a very specific way to open Christmas presents. The story is this: When all the cousins were little, the parents gave all the presents at one time and everyone opened them simultaneously. The oldest cousin (he is now 31 years old) decided that wasnt fun, because no one got to see what everyone else got. So, he decided they would sit four people on a bench in the front of the room, give them each a present, then eveyone watches those four people open their present, they let everyone see what they got, and then four other people are called up to the bench, and it happens all over again! This, as organised as it was, still took a while with 28 people. I got three cook books (one about chocolate, and two about cheese) from Claires mother, another cookbook from Laura about mini desserts, a shirt from Claire, and bath stuff from Julie and Lola. Everyone loved the Alaskan presents my family sent. They especially loved the chocolate oranges, though I didnt explain the purpose of wacking it on the table very well, and they didnt understand why I kept telling them to wack it harder until after they opened it! :) After the presents, we ate dessert. Claire had made three bûche de noëls coffee, pistachio, and chestnut flavored. I know pistachio and chestnut flavor sounds really strange, but the French are really fascinated with pishachio in desserts right now, and chestnuts are the ultimate traditional christmas food. I had also made sugar cookies, which everyone really liked. They thought it was funny how I colored them red and green, and said they had never seen such bright colors on a cookie before! We finally got to bed (after drinking 'un café', of course) around 2:30 am. On Christmas morning, everyone slept in late. When we got up, we ate a small breakfast of bread, butter, and jam. We basically did nothing on Christmas Day. For lunch, we ate three turkeys (I still have no idea how we cooked them all) and chestnuts. After lunch, we played card games and a dice game. I went on a small walk around the town with Laura, Julie, Antoine, and Remy (other cousins). Then I called home and talked to my parents, sister, and grandpa. Then we ate a dinner of soup. The 26th we pretty much went skiing the entire day. Though this time it was at Courcheval, which, apparently is a very well known ski resort. I went with Michel, Claire, Lola, Julie, Antoine, and Lola and Antoines mom and dad, though I forgot their names :). We skied mostly red runs, but at the end I went down the last half of two black runs and didnt fall!! (Though the last half was the easier part of the black run :) ). We got back to Champagny (Courcheval is another town just next to Champagny) around 6:00 pm where we drank hot chocolate and ate dinner, for dessert, we ate an apple tart and a praline tart. The praline tart was really good. French pralines are bright pink. Though I am not exactly sure what they were made out of, I think they were composed of nuts, sugar and probably pink coloring. I asked Claires mother what she had put in it, and she told me crème fraiche (kind of like whipping cream, though solid...)and pralines. The 27th, I stayed around the house and read all my cookbooks. We left that afternoon and got back to Lyon at about 6:30pm. That night we ate dinner with Lena (Michels daughter who spent Christmas with her mom in Lyon), Théo, and his girlfriend Déborah. We ate cheese and bread (cheese fondu) because we hadnt been in the house for more a while, there was no other food! The next morning we got up early and were on the road to Bretange by 8:00am. We were five people (we took a friend of Michel and Claires up with us, Cécile) in Michels very small compact car for 8 hours. We ate a very French lunch of baguette broken into pieces by hand, cheese, and sausage. Though there was also coke, chips, store bought coconut cookies, and some chewy-fruit things. We arrived at the seaport of Lorient at 4:45pm just in time to take the 5:00pm ferry to Groix. Claire and Michels house is located in the 'town' of Locmaria. It had three stories, and the heat takes a while to turn on (a day and a half exactly) so the first night was a little cold. We ate crab and potatoes the first night. They were still alive before Claire cooked them :(. We had to fish the meat out of the claws and legs. I was in the middle of trying to clean out one of the claws when I though I saw it move. I freaked out and threw it across the room and eveyone started laughing! :) The next morning, I walked around the town trying not to get lost. I found two beaches and picked a couple of the millions of shells (illegaly because there was a sign saying it was a natural reserve :) ). A lot of the shells had holes in the middle, though I have no idea why. For lunch we ate grated carrots with a dressing, potatoes, and poireaux fondu (leek fondu made with poireau, white wine, and crème fraiche) and fromage fraise (I dont think there is an equivalent in English, though it is sort of like unflavored, unsweetened yogurt) with homemade blackberry jam...So GOOD!!! :) After lunch I went for a bike ride with Michel to tour the town. That night the parents, Jean-Luc and Françoise, of Victor's (host brother) friend Antoine, and his little brother Victor (host brothers friends brother) arrived at the house. We ate clams for dinner, which I really liked, and also french fries, which is a pretty normal combination here. The next morning Laura and I went to the market with Cécile. Then we ate a lunch of lentil salad with bacon and onions (all in the same pot) and califlower with a bechamel (flour, butter, and milk) sauce aka white sauce. Then Annie, a dance instructor (and friend) of Claires arrived. I have met her once before at an art exhibition the first month or so I was here. We then went on a bike ride Michel style on a dirt path with lots of mud (it rains a lot on Groix) and rocks:). Though it was really pretty! Laura and I took off our socks and shoes and waded in the water at a beach, though we ended up getting our pants soaking because the tide kept coming in at different heights. We started heading back when the rain came in, but we stopped at a marché de noel and ate crepes. That night the last of the New Years guest arrived; the man was on of the people we went hiking with in October, and his wife. We ate spaghetti aux coques (spaghetti with some kind of scallops, I think). The next day (New Years Eve Day) I made panna cotta, and Claire made tiramisu. For dinner, one of their neighbors came over, but just for the aperitif (before dinner drink, usually champagne). He gave Laura and I each a small, glass dolphin which is a product of an artisan on Groix. For dinner, we ate (starting at about 9:30 pm with the aperitif) oysters, shrimp, smoked salmon, two other types of fish, and a potato gratin. For dessert, we ate the panna cotta and the tiramisu. The panna cotta turned out good, but not like a real panna cotta, I had used whipped cream which made it very light and fluffy, unlike the one we ate in Italy which was more gelatinous. The tiramisu was coffee flavored and Claire makes it a lot. Its was good, though I dont like coffee much:) After that, we drank coffee and ate chocolate. The at about 11:45 we went down to the local bar (Pop's Tavern) and at midnight everyone kissed everyone else on the cheeks and said Bonne Année. After that, there was music and drinking and we danced. I left at 2:30 am though some stayed until 5:00 am! The first of January everyone slept in late. When we got up, we ate a small breakfast of bread, butter, and jam and took a walk. We ate lunch at about 4pm of a pulvarized vegetable soup (leeks, potatoes, onions, and carrots) and an omlet. For dessert we ate crepes with nutella, blackberry jam, and beurre selé, which translates into salty butter, but it was more like salty caramel sauce. The next morning, Françoise, Jean-Luc, Victor, and Cécile left. Laura and I went to Pop's Tavern with Claires laptop to use the internet. In the afternoon, we went on a bikeride to a phare (land lighthouse). For dinner, Claire invited over her other two neighbors. We first drank champagne and ate bread with a salmon spread. Then we ate salad and fish (cooked completely whole, I think the only part missing were the eyes), cheese, and then chocolate mousse (made by Claire). The next morning, everyone left woke up at 7:00 am or earlier to get ready to catch the ferry to the mainland of Francy at 8:30am. The boat arrived around 9:25, and we drove the rest of the morning and all afternoon to Lyon. We arrived at about 5:45 pm, and ate dinner in front of the TV watching a French moving called Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement). It was about a woman looking for her finacé after he disappeared while serving in the WWI. I didnt understand much, but she found him in the end in good health, though he had lost all his memory and didnt remember her.
Today was the first day back to school after the vacation. I started at 8:00am . During the night, it snowed about 3 inches. Yay for snow, boo for the absence of buses. I didnt know that there were not going to be any buses this morning (it was too dangerous for them) so I walked to the bus stop and saw the sign. So I walked all the way to school in slushy snow and got my feet soaking. Though I finished at noon, so that was really nice. Tomorrow I am going to eat lunch with Laurie. Were going to eat Macaroni and Cheese (the American kind) because my parents sent me some because she has never eaten it before:) Now I am going to go to the tabaco shop and buy some credit for my cell phone because I dont have anymore.
Im sorry this is more like a short book that a blog post. I will add pictures very soon to go with it!