Noël en France!

Christmas in France! Was joyeux! I went with my host-family to my host-father's parents' house in the campagne (French countryside), which is sort of like being on a small farm. They have a lot of chickens, an aggressive goose, and many cats (unfortunately, no dogs though). And they're surrounded by rolling fields and old stone houses and everything. Their house is really nice and big, and the second floor is like an apartment for guests. There's a kitchen, a bathroom, three bedrooms, and a dining room area. There's even a fireplace! There are also these really cool hanging hammock chairs, which I spent roughly 75% of my time in.

We had a Christmas tree up there too, and I got to decorate it. I spent 40 minutes untangling a string of lights and wrapping them around the tree, only to discover that they didn't work... but otherwise, it looked nice!

I set this table - pretty nice, huh? This is actually from the
26th, but we can pretend it's from the Réveillon.

We arrived the evening of the 23rd, and the main celebration was the next night, on Christmas Eve. It was me, my host-family, the grandparents, another family with two small children, and a mother and daughter who are family friends. You know how Americans usually eat extra early on holidays? Well French people do the opposite. Around 9:00, I became afraid we wouldn't be eating until like midnight. Luckily though, the appetizers started around 9:30 or 9:45. First was a ton of oysters and some kind of sausage thing, which I passed on, but there was also some really good bread, of which I probably ate half a loaf. For the main course, there was boar and potatoes. I tried a little bit of boar, and it was okay. Then, of course, was the cheese course, with all this really good cheese from Normandy. The adults started getting into a heated conversation about politics which I didn't totally follow, so I just sat there trying different cheeses for like half an hour. 

Finally, there was dessert around midnight - chocolate chip cookies! Which I made! And an ice cream buche de Noël. It's weird because French people like don't have chocolate chip cookies, so everyone was like "Ohh, what are these?" "What are these called again?" "How did you make these?" "Uhh... flour and stuff..." Also there are no chocolate chips here, so I had to cut up two chocolate bars by hand! The dedication!

A few minutes after midnight, my host-brother started bugging his parents that Père Noël could come now - turns out they do presents at midnight! After a few minutes, my host-parents gave in and everyone got up so Père Noël could come. There was a six-year-old girl there, and her mom covered her with a blanket on the couch so she couldn't see, and everyone shouted about seeing the sleigh, and my host-father flashed the lights a lot when Père Noël finished. It was adorable! Then all the presents were neatly under the tree and all pretty for like 30 seconds before the kids pounced. 

The next day, I thought we would all sleep in after staying up until like 2am, but instead I was awoken by the grating polyphonic melody of the My Little Pony theme song being played repeatedly outside my door, so I rolled out of bed around 9. On actual Christmas, we pretty much sat around and played games and ate more. It was a little weird since actual Christmas is when we do all the celebrating at my house. I missed my family, but I talked to them on the phone for a while which was nice.

We stayed there the day after Christmas too, and had yet another big meal with some family friends who came over for lunch. We also went for a bike ride, so I can check "bike in the French countryside" off my France to-do list!

Some more photos:

The hammock chairs!

Believe it or not, this is a refrigerator!

*Gasp!*

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas! À bientôt!

Joyeux Noël!!!

For Christmas, I am celebrating with my host-family and some of their friends and family at my host-father's parents' house in the French countryside. In France, most people celebrate Christmas on the 24th - le réveillon de Noël! So we're going to have a big dinner tomorrow night (and lots of wine, I imagine), and then my host-family told me the mostly just sleep in and hang out on actual Christmas. We are headed over ce soir.

I am sad to be away from my family on Christmas and my dad's birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!). It doesn't really seem like Christmas without going home to see my friends and family. But I'm watching Christmas movies right now to get myself in the holiday spirit. Even though I'm a little homesick, I'm excited to experience a French Christmas!

Joyeux Noël!!!

Un Croque-Madame!

I had a croque-madame the other day! A croque-madame is a grilled cheese sandwich with ham inside and extra cheese on top, and a fried egg on top. So basically, a croque-monsieur plus an egg. I have now had both halves of the croque-family! One more thing checked off my France to-do list.

À bientôt!

Un Magasin des Aliments Congelés

The other week, I was walking around with two of my friends, and we went to this store that sells only frozen food. It's called Picard, and they have every frozen food imaginable, including escargot! They even have insulated carts.

The best thing though, was this cookbook on how to cook frozen food. I really don't know what there could be besides "Step 1: Microwave." I guess the French have to get all fancy even when it comes to frozen food!

In other news, Le Chat unfortunately also likes my new room. When I'm sitting on my bed, I don't want to climb down to chase it out everytime, so I've started throwing my socks at it to get it to leave. This, however, can only work twice before I'm stranded...

Also, I leveled up to a peanut butter and jam sandwich! Ouais! And I am pretty positive you can't understand how exciting this is.

À bientôt!

Ma Nouvelle Chambre!

I'm staying with my host-family for my second semester in France too, but today I changed rooms! Sadly the other exchange student who was living here left over the weekend because she's headed back to Colombia for college. So now I get her room since it's bigger. Since we moved out of the dorms early, I was here first so I would've gotten the bigger room, but my host-family was in the middle of adding wood paneling to the wall, so I moved into the smaller one. But now, after a long hard day of moving all my possessions a grueling three feet across the hall, voilà!

Aaaaaaaaaand, at long last, I finally ate a peanut butter sandwich today!!! Together again!!! SO HAPPY!!!

Fun fact: In France, loafs of sliced bread come without the two end slices. 

À bientôt!

J'ai gagné du vin!

So, I did another race today, and I came in third! Which was not particularly difficult, since I'm pretty sure there were only 3 (possibly 4?) people in my age group. But guess what I won! Hint: only in France...

Yes, the prize was a bottle of white wine! My 13-year-old host-brother also won a bottle of wine. Oh, France! I also got this rose:

Classy, classy, huh?

Also, it was difficult to understand the announcer when I was up on the little stage getting my wine because he was speaking into a microphone right next to me (and it was in French of course), but I'm pretty sure he said I looked like an American because I was wearing a backpack with a reusable water bottle in the side pocket.

À bientôt!

Le Beurre de Cacahuètes!!! Finalement!!!

So I finally made peanut butter!!!!!! I'm so happy!!! Peanut butter, how I have missed you!! It was actually pretty easy; I just ground up a bunch of peanuts. I was going to use my host-mother's food processor, but then she decided I should use this pulverizing machine they keep in the garage. It was kind of like a 1980's version of the Magic Bullet. The peanut butter is pretty good!!! A little salty, so next time, I'll try to be careful to buy the grilled but non-salted peanuts. Looking forward to having my first peanut butter sandwich in a long time!!!

Also, I am officially on winter break now!! Yay!!! 

À bientôt!

C'est du dessert?

Look what I saw at the grocery store today:

Chocolate escargot! Yikes!

Entrecôte! (C'est quoi exactement?)

Today, I discovered that bottomless fries, something I thought existed only in America, nay, only at Red Robin's, are also available in France!!!!!!!!!!! Two of my friends who I hadn't seen for a while organized lunch at this nice restaurant downtown. They chose it because 1) there's always a line out the door, and 2) they had heard of these telltale unlimited french fries. It turned out to be quite the experience.

I was a little late (okay, pretty late), so when I got there, they were already at the door to get in. But it was weird because when they let us in (only one party at a time from outside), it was just to stand inside the door and wait some more. And then to stand upstairs in a hallway and wait. And then to stand inside the upstairs dining room to wait. Eventually after all these intermediary holding cells, we actually got a table. There's only one thing on the menu, so ordering was easy! The only meal they serve is entrecôte and fries. I guess entrecôte is some kind of steak, but none of us were really sure, and internet searches proved inconclusive.

Whatever it is, it's good! Since everyone orders the same thing, they brought our food pretty fast. When we first saw our plates, we were like, these are the incredible portions everyone's talking about?? Oh, France! But then they swiftly brought out this giant heated plate of meat for the center of the table. And refilled our fries like every 10 minutes. It was crazy! The steak was really good and tender, and covered in this buttery sauce that was probably really unhealthy, but was delicious. And the fries were pretty good too! Sadly, ketchup is not really a thing here, but they were good on their own. They call this type of fries "allumettes," which means matchsticks because they're so thin. OMG, I ate so many because they just kept piling them onto my plate, and then I had to eat the new ones because they were so warm and crispy. At least they gave us salad before the main course...

Anyways, it was weird to have such huge portions because usually French restaurants actually give you just single portions, not enough for like three people, like restaurants back home do. That, plus all the fries, gave the restaurant a bit of an American feel!

I left filled with that warm feeling you can only get from a good steak slathered in melted butter. À bientôt!

Porto - Finalement!

So I went to Porto, Portugal!!! Where I  met Zorro and touched the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! My friend and I pretty much decided to go to Porto because the airfare was ridiculously cheap (less than $50 total round trip) and because going to Portugal sounded awesome. And it was!

We arrived in the evening, and took the tram (which was super modern) from the airport to the station right by our hostel. Our hostel was really nice! It was kind of empty though, which was weird. My friend and I were the only people in an 8-bed dorm! But it was in a good location and very clean, which is the most important thing. And it was across the street from this cool blue tile church! I didn't know this before we got there, but it turns out ceramic tiles are really big in Portugal. There were a lot of really pretty buildings covered with them.

For dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant! I had the salmon, which came with potatoes and tomatoes. Curiously, there were plates at our table, but then the food was served on a separate plate with a serving spoon. Even though it was a single serving. Little do the Portuguese know, they're actually washing twice as many dishes as they need to! Anyways, the salmon was really good! I was a little jealous of my friend who got fries with her meal instead of just potatoes - how American of me!

The next morning, we got up early and headed down to the Douro river. We got a little confused, and went down what may have been a private street. Woops... But eventually we saw this!

The Ponte Luís bridge! The top part is tram tracks, the bottom part is for cars, and pedestrians can walk on both levels. The bridge is really cool looking! I loved the color of the metal, and the the two level/arch structure is really interesting. Plus it looks really cool contrasted with all the cute colorful houses along the banks. We spent a long time taking pictures of the bridge, and then crossing the bridge and taking pictures of the Douro. We walked along the river a little too and saw all these neat old wine boats with wooden barrels on them. I don't think they actually use them anymore, but they definitely looked cool! I wish we had seen some actually sailing down the river.





We wanted to tour a wine cave, but they told us the English tour wasn't for another two hours, so we walked up this big hill to see the view from the top of the bridge. We also saw this aerial ski lift thing that you could take from down by the river to up to the top of the hill, by the bridge. It was a little eerie watching it, because all these pods were going by with no one in them. And there were very few people in the street, and almost no one in the tram when it went by. This added to the effect of our empty hostel and the gloomy weather, and compared to some of the other more tourist-packed places we've been, Porto seemed almost post-apocalyptic!

Then we went to like my favorite part of the whole trip: the wine cave tour!!! We went to Sandeman, which I highly recommend if you're ever in Porto. You can recognize them by their awesome Zorro with a wine glass logo. While we were waiting in the lobby for the tour to start, we were watching their promotional video montage on the big flat-screen on the wall. I thought my favorite scene where a hand passionately plunges into a stew of fermenting grapes and emerges with an oozing fistfull, until I saw the scenes of the wine cave tours being given by someone dressed as the Zorro logo! "OhmyGod wouldn't it be so amazing if our tour guide was dressed like that too?!" I asked my friend. "Turn around, very slowly," she responded. And there was our guide, DRESSED AS ZORRO!!!

"OMGOMGOGMOGMOGMGOMGOGMOMG, IT'S ZORRO!!!" I whisper-yelled to my friend. He had the hat, the cape, it was crazy! It was so appropriate that we were at Sandeman because it has always been one of my dreams to be led on a wine cave tour by Zorro. I could barely contain myself, in fact, I pretty much didn't, when he was leading the way down the aisles of dramatically lit old wine barrels. "It's so dramatic!!" I "whispered" to my friend. I tried to at least be discrete with the picture taking. But I guess he heard me because when he stopped next to a poster of the logo, he explained why they wear the hat and cape and said, "So don't tell your friends you went on a wine cave tour led by Zorro." My friend and I started laughing, and he looked right at me and said, "You already did, didn't you?" "Uhh, yes..."

Anyways, even besides not-Zorro, the tour was really cool, and there was a wine tasting included at the end. (Not-Zorro kept asking us if we were sure we were over 16 (the drinking age in Portugal). *sigh*) We tasted two wines, a white and a red. Surprisingly, I actually preferred the white this time. And I really wanted to ask not-Zorro to take a photo with us, but he changed out of his costume before I had the chance! It was very sad.

Then we took the bus out to the beach, so we could see the Atlantic ocean. We also saw this awesome sculpture thing that looked like a UFO made out red netting. By this time it was raining, so we didn't spend much time at the beach, but now I've touched the Atlantic Ocean from both sides!

When we took the bus back to the main part of Porto, we finally had lunch, and then walked around in the rain for a while. We checked out some souvenir shops; they all had these cool painted wooden roosters. I guess they are a symbol of good luck in Portugal. I got a tiny one for my desk!


Later, we went back to the bridge to see it all lit up at night and the lights along the river. It was really pretty! We were pretty exhausted though, so we soon went back to our hostel to lie down for a little before going to get dinner. We left for dinner around 8:00, and we were still at the cafe, waiting for our check at 11:30... Service was a little slow. And I guess Portuguese people eat even later than French people, because people were still coming in the whole time we were there. Around 10:30, this huge group of people around our age, who had a reservation, started coming in, and they were still just getting drinks when we left, so I guess they must have started eating around midnight!

One Porto specialty is the Francesinha sandwich, which is quite something. We didn't try them, but we saw people eating them in all the food places we went to. They're like a foot high! And surrounded by fries! From a menu: "This sandwich is made with bread, wet-cured ham, spicy smoked sausage, fresh sausage, steak, and covered with melted cheese and a hot, spicy, and rich tomato and beer sauce." We seriously saw some that had even more different kinds of meat in them. And of course, after all that, you need beer sauce on top. 


The next morning, we got up early and flew back to Bordeaux. And schoolwork. Yikes! Overall, Porto was really fun, and I'd definitely like to go back to Portugal some day, maybe to visit Lisbon.


À bientôt!