Okay, I know I havent posted in a super long time, but I had a two week vacation and was without internet a lot of the time. The last time I posted, I think I wrote that I was having some friends over that night. I make cookies with oatmeal and raisins, and some with m&ms. I made crepes for dinner and a salad lyonnaise. My host family has this cool crepe grill that you can place in the middle of the table and it has small round indents that make little crepes and everyone can make their own crepes :) We played a game called taboo (I think theres a game in English like that too, but we played in French) and watched a movie called Burn After Reading...it was really strange. The next day Laura and I just kind of hung around the house getting ready to go to Champagny on Monday. Claire and Michel got back from the mountains Sunday night. Laura and I left Lyon with Michel at about 11 am Monday and stopped to pick up Remy (host cousin). We got to Champagny around 2pm after picking up groceries on the way. I wont talk about all the days at Champagny because they were all about the same. Wed get up about 9am, eat breakfast of cereal, bread, butter, jam, coffee, tea, get ready for the day and watch some olympics (we had a hard time watching the figure skating because it was always on at about 2 or 3 am because we didnt get the channel that played the delayed games, just the channels that played them live), eat lunch about 12:30 pm of sandwiches ( baguette buttered with fresh ham) or something else. Go skiing, or just walk around the town until about 5, come back, have a 'gouter' (snack) of tea or hot chocolate with cookies or bread and nutella. Then watch the olypics or news and then eat dinner about 8 or 9pm and go to bed around 10 or 11. We played scrabble with Claires mom a couple of times and it was hard! I kept seeing words I could make in English, but I completely forgot all the words I knew in French! I went skiing twice, once at Champagny and once at Courcheval. We came back to Lyon Sunday night (we spend 6 days there) and on Monday I made bugnes with Michels mom and Claire. They were good, and pretty easy to make. They are made with a dough that is rolled super thin and then cut into strips and cooked in oil. After that I got ready to go to Paris. Tuesday morning at about 10:10 we caught the bus to the train station and caught the TGV at 11:00 to Paris. The train broke down twice (once inside a pitch black tunnel!) but we finally make it there around 1:30pm. We went to a restaurant, called La Gazzetta, straight away that Michel had reserved. It served food kind of like Iron Chef American, we ate three small entrées (appetizers) of a small slice of gourmet pizza, a soup, and a spread to eat with bread. Then I chose the fish and the a dessert of orange genoise cake and rasperry icecream. After that we took the metro to our hotel. I was surprised that the metro was so beaten down looking. Its a lot less nice than the one in Lyon, though much older too, however we were able to get around on it without any difficulty. We stayed at a small hotel called Hôtel du Nord (Hotel of the North). Claire and Michel had already stayed there at least once before. Then we went to L'Hôtel de Ville where the mayor of Paris lives. After that we went to Notre Dame but arrived too late to climb up to the top, Michel said it was best to do it a different day anyways because it wasnt so nice out (though we never did go back, and that was the nicest day we had :) ) then some guy came up to get while I was waiting for the other to finnish walking through Notre Dame and asked me to put my finger through a hole in a string. I told him no thank, but he asked me again. I said ok because there were a bunch of other people walking around, and I was bored :) So he proceded to make a bracelet by braiding the string and then tied it around my wrist, Im sure he was hoping I would pay him for it, but I didnt because I didnt ask for it in the first place :) So after that we walked along the Seine and went to a large garden area. It used to be the place where all the farmers would go to sell their produce, but eventually there became too many farmers to fit there and the government turned it into a large garden and build a giant underground mall. Then we walked around until it was time for dinner, where we went to a restaurant called Le Baratin (sweet talk) where we met a friend of Claire and Michels I really liked there dessert it was called Chocolat au fondant, sort of like fudge, but softer, more chocolatey less sugary and softer. The next day we ate breakfast at the hotel. It was several slices of baguette and a fresh croissant with jam and coffe, tea or hot chocolate. Then we went to a free museum about the life in 'old France'. It was intersting, then we went to the Louvre (but not inside) just to see it, and the walked to a restaurant to eat, and then all the way down to L'Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees. Then we walked up to Sacre Coeur and another guy asked me to put my finger through his string, so I showed him my bracelet :) Then we went to dinner. The day after that we got up and first tried to go the museum de Picasso which Michel had found in his handy dandy guide. Though, his guide was published in 2005 and didnt mention the museum was under construction. So we went to the museum of Natural History, the history of how humans evolved from monkeys, though there were a lot of real sized fake animals that werent about the evolution of humans...then we found a Korean restaurant just around the corner and ate lunch, I thought it was very good. Then we got ice cream and then went to the 'Panthéon' though its not the one in Italy. There was a really cool thing inside that proved that the earth turns. It was a solid ball hanging from a string (rope) which swung by itself and there was a large solid gate around it with numbers, and if you stayed there long enough, you could see the the swing of the ball would turn (by looking at the numbers marked on the gate). Then there was a cellar/ basement thing where we saw the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau (which was intersting for me because we have been studying texts by them in French class), Victor Hugo, etc. After that we went and sat in a café and ate crepes (waiting for Michel to finish with the Panthéon :) ) and then went back to the hotel to get our bags, and then went to a restaurant near the train station and had dinner, and then caught the train at about 9pm and arrived in Lyon (with no difficulties this time) at about 11pm. We tried to catch the bus back to Montchat, but since it was later at night, we would have waited for 45 minutes, so we took the tram a little ways a walked the rest of the way. I think we woke up the whole neighborhood with the noise from our rolling suitcases on the road! The next day I slept in until about 11am :) It was so nice! Then I did basically nothing, but think about how much I didnt want to start my homework. Saturday I went to a movie with Michel, Shutter Island (it was in English!!!) and then ate dinner at Ingrids house with her family and watched a movie there called Le Dîner des Cons (The Dinner of Idiots) it was a old French movie about a group of guys who would host dinner parties and would invite people, whichever one of the guys invited the stupidest/most idiotic person won. It had no subtitles and I understood it!!! :) Then Sunday I finally started my homework. I wrote a four page (double spaced) French Paper on a play called Les Mains Salles (Dirty Hands) by Sartre. Today was the first day back from break, it was so loooong for me and I got out at 1 pm, I cant imagine what the other students who got out at 6pm were feeling! I finished my English homework when I got home. In Europhysique, were studying how football is like chemistry...my teacher is a little strange. Then I did my math, though not very well, and then I started writing this! All in all it was a very good vacation and really relaxing to not have to think about school work.
Its also been warm out lately, spring is here! When we went to make bugnes with Michels mom, there were tulip buds in her garden, and Claire told me they will flower in March!! Thats really weird! Claire told me we will be able to swim in the pool in May! Thats REALLY strange!
1) La Seine
2) Yummy Korean food!
3) Champs Elysees
4) Glass triangle at the Louvre
5) Notre Dame
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