Joyeuses Pâques!

Happy Easter! Today, I am enjoying the day off for a holiday I never knew existed, Easter Monday. The French love their vacation days!

Escargot! With fancy escargot fork!

On Saturday afternoon, I headed to Toulouse (which I visited last semester) with my host-family to visit their close family friends. We had a huge dinner that night, and it wasn't even Easter yet! Wine, toast with ham (of course), anchovies (passed), escargot (believe it or not, I ate another one!), some kind of reddish pinkish fish (kind of looked like koi...), vegetables, homemade mayonnaise, a huge amount of this delicious bread, raw sheep's milk cheese, and pineapple. It was delicious! I was soooooo full.

Outdoor market

The next day, we slept in (or at least, I did), and we walked around Toulouse for a while, stopping at a couple of huge outdoor markets and a big indoor meat market. We also walked by Le Capitole and saw the Basilique Saint-Sernin, which I remembered from last time. Unfortunately, it was rainy and gloomy, but all the brick buildings in Toulouse still looked really pretty.

Le Capitole

No egg hunt, sadly! I don't think it's as big of a thing in France though. And here's a fun fact, in France, it's not the Easter Bunny who hides eggs, it's Easter bells. Yes, bells. I was positive I misunderstood my host-mother when she told me this, but it's true. The story is that the church bells don't ring during Lent because they fly off to Rome. Then, on Easter, they fly back and scatter Easter eggs as they go! I know right, whaaaaaaaaat. How are bells supposed to carry eggs? Bunnies at least have paws!!

Basilique Saint-Sernin

For lunch, we had an even bigger meal than we had the night before. Two more types of wine (I tried one from Bourgogne!), some kind of oval ham thing, then something called "cochon glacé," which means "frozen pig." It was not actually frozen, but it was from a can, and there was clearish gelatinous stuff around the solid bits, so it kind of looked frozen. Yeah... I passed on that one. Then we for the main course, we had lamb and pork, salad, mashed sweet potatoes, and bread. Then of course, the cheese course, with four types of cheese - Roquefort, goat's milk cheese, and two kinds of sheep's milk cheese. And then on top of all that, we had homemade apple tart and caramel vanilla ice cream for dessert! Nomnomnomnomnom. (Maybe this is the reason I fell through one of my host-family's kitchen chairs today... Yikes.)

After sitting around/napping for a while, we headed back to Bègles, stopping at my host-father's parents' house for dinner. (I was still stuffed, so I ate like a tomato.) Then I got home and opened an awesome Easter package from home! I cannot believe how much Easter candy my mom got into that box! As soon as I started to cut the packing tape to open it, I could smell the sweet aroma of Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs wafting out to me. Mmmmmmmmmm. Merci beaucoup!

À bientôt!