New Friends and Culinary Adventures

Back in my room after dinner with my host family, and contemplating the fact that I have yet to find a French desert that I don't like. It's really quite extraordinary- and it's a good thing I walk so much.

For dinner tonight we had a carrot salad, then sausages and ratatouille with rice, and then this phenomenal bread called pain perdu (lost bread) that I'm pretty sure is the basis for french toast. It's bread that's prepared in a pan with eggs and sugar and milk and some other words that aren't in my vocabulary, and it's phenomenal. Last night we had these little potato balls, kind of like tater tots but without the grease, and I was really excited about them. Last night we also had escargot- dun dun dun! It wasn't the main course, it was more of a side dish, and my host sisters freaked out when they saw it coming out of the oven because apparently it's a real treat. My host mom told me that they don't get to eat it very much but they had some left over from Christmas. I'd tried escargot once in the states and hadn't liked it, but I wanted to be a good sport so I took one. And then hilarity ensued. I proved to be ridiculously inept at using the little fork-thingy to dig it out of the shell- Louise helped me (she's 10). So then I'm holding it speared on my fork, and Charlotte (13) is going "Ne le regarde pas! Ne le regarde pas! Si tu le regarde, tu ne mangeras jamais!" (Don't look at it, don't look at it! If you look at it you'll never eat it!") Both Louise and Charlotte had, at this point, wolfed down about 7 each. So I popped it in, and it actually wasn't bad- I'm not sure if I care for the texture, but the sauce was good. Then Louise asked me what kind of weird foods Americans eat, and I couldn't think of anything, so I said corn dogs. I then spent 10 minutes trying and failing to describe a corn dog, with the added challenge of French. I was never able to completely convey the idea- it's really just not very French at all. So then the girls came to the conclusion that the most American thing they could think of was peanut butter, which they seemed to view as the height of American cuisine. And, as it turns out, peanut butter and jelly is not something that appeals to the French- the girls thought I was joking when I described a PB and J sandwich. The whole exchange was just hilarious, especially with little Louise desperately trying to figure out why anyone would ever put a sausage on a stick, a la corn dogs.

My propedeutique (language session) has been ongoing this week, and they're not kidding when they say it's intensive. It's also very early, especially with my 40 minute commute. But I like my professor, and I've made a few friends in the class, which is nice.

The last few days I've been going out to lunch with a few girls I've met here, and we've been experimenting with stretching our weak dollars are far as we can. Today we went to a RestoU (university restaurant) at Cite Universitaire for lunch. They have them all throughout the city, and at mealtimes you can get a salad, entree, and dessert for under 3 euros if you show a student ID. It's certainly nothing gourmet, but it's probably comparable to a lot of what I eat in the dining hall at Oxy. Our lunch ended up costing less than the coffee/tea we got later at a little cafe in Chatelet- 4 euros a cup! I'm really enjoying meeting students from other schools, with different college experiences and different reasons for being in France. Plus, it's so nice to have someone to share experiences with when everything's a little bit different- you feel less silly trying to figure it out.

I registered for classes yesterday, and got into all the courses I wanted. The only rough spot is that my lit class at the Sorbonne apparently has 2 lectures and a seminar instead of the 1 lecture and a seminar that I was expecting. One of the lectures is unfortunately a half hour after my grammar class at IES, and the Sorbonne's across town, but luckily as an American student I'm only graded in the seminar, and French students don't really believe in coming to class on time anyways so I can be 5 minutes late (it's a huge lecture hall). So I'm taking two outside classes, at Paris VIII and the Sorbonne, and 3 IES classes. I'm really excited about my Paris Museums class- it's an art history class where we study exclusively subjects that we can see in museums throughout Paris which we visit every week. I also know someone in all of my IES courses, which is really nice.

Tomorrow night we have an IES welcome dinner, which should be fun. I'm still adjusting to the French time table- they eat very late, usually after 8, and meals are very long. Although the late dinners work to my benefit quite a bit- when I eat with my family I can still stay out exploring until 7 or so, and when I cook for myself I can have sole use of the kitchen if I eat between 6 or 7, which is when I eat at home anyways. Although they don't drink milk, and that makes me sad. They don't even really have milk the way we do- they have more like half and half which goes in cereal, tea, etc. and weirdly doesn't have to be refrigerated.

Wow, there's a lot of food in this update. I really do things other than eat in France! I'll hopefully be at a museum Thursday or Friday, and then Sacre-Coeur/Monmartre one day this weekend, and then IES classes start Monday and university classes the following Monday. So stay tuned!