If only I could cook.

I know I've said this before but time really does move faster in France. Another week in France is already underway and I have the strong feeling that it's going by too fast and it'll be the weekend soon and then next week and the week after and then JUNE and won't know where the time went.
Yikes.
The only good thing about time moving this fast is that so far my days have been pretty much chock-full of fun stuff, cooking adventures, delicious food and time to write and read.
Oh and did I say delicious food? By food I really meant desserts, and coffee.

Also by delicious food I am not in anyway implying that since I've came to France I've become Julia Child, because I haven't; and probably won't. I am learning slightly how to cook and some things have turned out pretty good, mediocre, or my personal favorite "well we haven't gotten sick yet." The other night I made fried pears cooked in a Nutella and butter, which will probably give me a heart attack later but at the time was pretty good. I've also managed to make turkey and salmon on a couple occasions and of course, spaghetti. I tried making rice tonight to go with the salmon, which would have been really good had I cooked the rice how the box said : "12 minutes in boiling water" instead of: "12 minutes in water that was boiled and now is just hot..."
Who would have thought?
But the important thing is that I am learning from my dumb cooking mistakes and there have been less and less meals that fall into the "we haven't gotten sick yet" category.


The last few days in France have been incredibly great. Over the weekend Betsy, Mary Beth and I went and saw "Les femmes du 6eme etage" which is a French film about a group of Spanish maids who work for rich families in Paris during the 1960's. It was really funny and good, there was a love story element to the movie, which was nice but (I think) was pretty...well...French and slightly strange. However, by far the best part of the movie was that I could understand it! And follow along and didn't feel lost ever. Which makes me incredibly happy and feel like I'm doing really well in my comprehension.
Saturday, it rained but despite this Betsy and I went to the Marche and bout some fresh fruit and veggies and then made a quick trip to Carrefourre for the essential french cookies and crackers and other delicious things. We went window shopping au Centre-ville after that, met up with a few girls later in the night and ended up at the bar "Les Varieties" where we had some DELICIOUS crepes and coffee. The drinks were pretty low priced there too...aaaand they have karaoke on Thursdays, so we're definitely going back in the near future.
Sunday, a group of us had plans to walk to one of the big park's in Angers and later to Ile Saint Aubin for a picnic. It was an incredibly beautiful day for a long walk and a really good time, although we didn't actually get to visit Ile Saint Aubin (we couldn't find the bridge, haha). We had some fresh baguettes, cheese, cookies, and Cidre for our picnic which was pretty much fantastic. By the time we got home I was pretty much dead inside though from all of the walking (almost 10 miles all told, in about 5 hours) and lounged around the rest of the day and did some homework.

Ok, I don't know if this is normal, but I'm not really homesick. Or missing home too much. Skype + Facebook makes it easy to talk to anyone I really want to, and I live with Betsy so I'm not completely isolated with my host family. Not to say I don't miss things, because I do, such as:
1. My friends and family, obviously. Can't you all just move here?
2. My car. I DESPERATELY miss driving my car, relying on public transportation is just not my favorite thing in the world, even though it's more cost efficient.
3. Cheap food, particularly doughnuts. France is just more expensive, but the food is better so it's a pretty even trade most of the time. Except for the fact that they don't have doughnuts, which are one of the main loves of my life.
4. My incredibly warm green blanket.
5. Bagels
6. A big selection of micro-brewed beers. (I should probably just learn to like wine more, and then I wouldn't have this problem)
7. Singing really loud in my car or just in general.

That's really all for now. Oh, awesome discovery, the alarm clock in my room has a radio on it. So for the last few days I've been rocking out to some French music (but also a lot of American music) which has been GREAT!

Much love, Sarah

A List of Do's and Don't

Things to do in France:

• Speak French.
• Explore (Avrille, Ponts de Ce, Saumur, La Rochelle, Strasbourg, everywhere)
• Eat bread/chocolate/nutella/cheese/other delicious things
• Send postcards
• Watch French Tv with my host mom
• Have a wonderful time!

Things NOT to do in France:

• Microwave a sandwich after putting mayonaise on it
• Empty a whole can of green beans in the frying pan while trying to cook turkey at the same time
• Step in pony poop
• Think that it's okay not to carry an umbrella around at all times
• Think that it's okay to wait until Sunday to buy groceries
• Eat an entire(big)  loaf of bread in 6 hours
• Have a half-blind cat puke in my bed again

The last week or so in France has been a whirlwind. I'm quickly learning that the weather is insane in Angers and yes it will rain, be cloudy and then be beautiful outside all within the same hour. I'm also getting acclimated to being in class again and having school work after my month-and-a-half long break. Additionally I'm ATTEMPTING to try and figure out the names of the students in my Langue class. I say attempting because over half of the students are Asian, and have Asian names which my Indo-European-speaking mouth does not want to even begin pronounce. But I'm going to try; it could take all semester but I will at some point be able to pronounce at least most of the names...I think.
Over the weekend I went out to one of the Irish Pubs in Angers with a few of my friends for drinks and good company. Needless to say it was a lot of fun and we walked around the Centre-ville and the streets around the Universite for awhile before calling it a night. The next day Betsy and I walked to the Market by the Jardain du Mail which was HUGE, even at 1230, which was actually pretty late.  The weather was sort of rainy all day, so after that we sort of just wandered around town all day and did a tiny bit of shopping before calling it a day. This brings us to Sunday, a day where NOTHING (except Macdo) is open in France and the streets are so empty that you start to wonder if there was an evacuation and you missed the memo. Which means buying the essential things like...toliet paper are a tiny bit difficult, or impossible...
Luckily Monday morning came pretty quickly and now there's a giant 12 pack of toliet paper in the bathroom, a fridge with food and a new package of do-it-yourself CREPES along with Nutella!
Suddenly, life in France is just about as great as it could be.

Things aren't always as they seem

If there's anything I'm learning incredibly quickly in France it's that things aren't always as they seem, and though this might seem very obvious and you might all be thinking "well no duh Sarah, moron" I feel like the whole idea of it takes a brand new meaning in France. Maybe if I had actually read up a little more on French culture I would have known this sooner, but since I didn't...it's literally a whole new world everyday for now.

For example, my host family. For the last....week/2 weeks I've been UNGODLY intimidated by them, particularly the host-mother, since every time I'd talk to her it would seem like I was not doing something right or something like that. In addition, she would never ask Betsy and I if we wanted to eat with them, or even how we were, if we made it to school etc. While other people's host families seemed like they wanted to know absolutely everything about their lives, if things were okay, and fed them on a regular basis etc. These differences sort of surmounted in my mind and created this image in my head of my host-mom being this terryfing french woman...

Luckily, however, Betsy and I put on our big-girls pants and decided to just try and talk to our host-mom and see if we could eat dinner with her every Thursday night. Which brings us to the present evening.

You see, we didn't specify a time for dinner, so first Betsy and I were both just upstairs doing homework and hanging out waiting for dinner, when we heard the dinner bell. Yes, that's right, the dinner bell. I didn't think they still existed either, but they do and are used in our house to indicate that it's time for the young ladies living upstairs to come downstairs and eat. Who would have thought. After this we go downstairs and have this SUPER GREAT dinner with our host-mom, which was made up of this potato/ham/onion/cheese/omg delicious casserole in a cream sauce (served with salad, of course) followed by sweet bread with apples put in a caramel/sugar/sauce of heaven.
And the best part?!
We found out our host-mom doesn't dislike us! She just didn't ask us to dine with her because usually American students don't like French food (too much sauce or something?) and she was very friendly during dinner and we are no longer intimidated by her. Definite Success!

Headlights can be practical too!

So turns out I actually have used my head light for something during my stay in France. At this rate I might use it AT LEAST 2 times, rather than never!

Les euros, pas les francs

You would think after 10 years of France having the Euro that cash registers at les supermarches wouldn't ring things up in BOTH euros and francs. You know, to avoid the confusion of thinking that your food is $211 when it's really only $36 and thus the freaking out about how you'll buy food for the rest of your study abroad trip. Luckily cashiers are very nice and only laugh at people who make this mistake a little! ;) All in all though, la supermarche was a success and now Betsy and I have cidre and other goodies to make food with!

Side street in Angers, it was finally SUNNY today!

Cidre, thank you supermarche!

Nutella! Success despite looking like a dumbass at the Carrefour!

Hitting the Ground Running

Today is literally the first time since I've been in France that it hasn't been obscenely late (or I haven't been obscenely tired) where I've had time to sort of organize my life. So I figured I'd let everyone in the states know how things are going! Oh, and are they going!!

So first impressions/thoughts about France?
- The food is better (OBVIOUSLY)
- The coffee is better
- Houses/Architecture in general is just amazing, all of the side-streets are full of cool little shops or tiny houses and just magnifique. Also they're incredibly fun to just stroll along on and mange on some tasty pastry.
- However, despite this there is a great deal of dog poops on some of the streets in Angers, which can be a little terrifying when you're ambling.
- Driving in France is also a terrifying experience, it's insanely fast and the intersections are weird/not really intersections, they're all roundabouts, plus M. Pichot drives like his pants are on fire and accelerates and then brakes with extraordinary speed that caused all our stomachs to lurch. :S But I can't really critique him since he drove us around for three days (one of which you couldn't see out the back of the van because there was too much luggage) without killing us or getting us in an accident.

So, on to other things.

Jet lag is a bitch. Seriously. The first day we were in France we drove to Paris and saw la Tour Eiffel and walked around to stay awake, which was probably good in the long run but was frustrating at the time because it was FREEZING. After this we got in the van and drove to Angers, well Pichot drove to Angers. I sat in the back and literally passed out for an hour, straight into full on dreaming REM sleep. The of course when I tried to sleep later that night it did not work so well. But, it's all good now, my sleep schedule has normalized itself.

My host family seems very cool. I say seems because I haven't really seen much of them. Betsy (my housemate) and I have the whole deuxieme etage to ourselves, it has a kitchen and a bathroom/toilette on it along with our own bedrooms. I really like this, because I enjoy being independent, but at the same time I sort of wish I could easily get to know the family without feeling like I'm intruding into their own personal space. But I mean, it's only day 3/4 so there's plenty of time to get to know them.

I've done several less than smart things. Including almost stepping in dog-crap, telling Pichot that I like to drink, and making my host family think I'm dumb. (their main rule is turn off the lights, which I thought I did for breakfast, however much to my host mom's displeasure, I did not. Merde!) I also left my purse with ALL my important information in the van the first night we were in Angers. Also Betsy and I are currently not using the family's internet because for some reason our computers can't connect to it. So our host sister gave us a password for this other internet, which doesn't belong to them? Shady? I think yes.

Successes? Cidre. Hard cider the french way, which is the delicious way and a specialty in this region of France so it's pretty much at every Creparie. Crepes are also a success, especially when lit on fire and soaked in calvados. Also it's been pretty easy to navigate in Angers, and exploring thus far has been great. And my french hasn't been terrible! And I can understand people when they speak, meme s'ils parlent tres vite!

To finish: There has been one incredibly weird event in France. Last night Betsy and I were in our rooms around....10pm just relaxing. All of the sudden my door opens and in walks a cat. This wouldn't have been that weird except that it wasn't the cat that our host family owned. It was white and black with one blind eye and was SO FAT. I was incredibly confused so I told Betsy and we both laughed hysterically because we had NO IDEA where this giant cat came from. It just meandered around and smelled all of our clothes and rooms and then walked downstairs. Soooo strange. Then a few minutes later we heard our host sister yell and a cat hiss and then Anne-Laure was yelling for her parents and it was all scuffles and everything in the downstairs. After this nothing really happened, and we haven't seen anyone to really ask about it since then. But it was kind of hilarious and great.

D'accord. That's all for now that I can think of. Brain = dead after the language exam today. Classes start on Monday! Life is EXCITING!