A Year in Grenoble: December 2009

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Adventures in cooking

Happy New Year (almost)!

Yesterday I received cooking lessons from Vivi, who is aghast at my skills in the kitchen. We made a souffle, but I think the more accurate discription of the activity was that she told me what to do and I attempted to do it. Unfortunatley, I still managed to mess it up. Vivi had commenced stirring clockwise and I had continued stirring counter-clockwise. She was very stern when she said that I must stir in the same direction throughout the recipe because it's all the little things that count.

Ironically, while I was looking over the recipe (one of the few times Vivi has used one) it said noisette de beurre (peanut of butter). When I asked her what that meant, she said that it called for a peanut-sized pat of butter and that if it said noix de beurre, one would add a "walnut" of butter. More measurements that are a little sketchy are a soup spoon, coffee spoon, half a yogurt jar, a fist full, etc. For being so persnicketty about stirring direction, the French are a little lax on the quantity of ingredients. I'm catching on though.

Bisous a tous!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Skiing for Dummies

Hello,

Today was a momentous occasion because I went skiing for the first time in Grenoble. Whenever I get asked if I ski, I can now answer proudly that I am a veteran Alpine skier. We woke up at 7:30, ate, borrow ski boots from a cousin, and finally hit the slopes at 10. Gone are the days where you have five thousand ski tags hanging from your coat. Instead we had little disk thingies that you put in your coat pocket and then at the date to the lifts, you simply put your arm up to the scanner and you're good to go.

The day did not start off to well. First, Vivien forgot to bring ski googles for me so I did the first hill with tears running down my face. That was fixed when he borrowed some from his friend's apartment. On the second ski lift, I dropped one of my gloves while blowing my nose for the thousandth time. While Vivien and his friend were looking for it, another of his friends and I continued to ski. I'm pretty sure my right hand was bordering on frostbite by the time new gloves were found.

All in all, the hills weren't too difficult, but then again, we weren't doing black diamonds. The only trouble I faced was with one hill that was basically a wall of ice. I did the splits and then slid backwards down the hill for a good 10 feet. My legs were trembling after that one!

We finished at about 3:30 and then ate a picnic of pate and quiche in our cars before heading back. Because it snowed the entire time we were skiing, my hair is currently a matted mess and I was compared to a snowman several times because of the good inch of snow covering my jacket and ski pants, but I had a great time. Good thing we're going again Wednesday!

Ciao ciao

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Updates

Hello all,

Since I've been absent for the whole month of December, I thought I would do a little backtracking. The second week of December was filled with exams. The first of which happened to be on a Saturday morning at 8 am. Despite having set my alarm for 6:30, I woke up at approximately 7:15. The bus that I HAD to take left at 7:25 and it takes 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. Needless to say, I sprinted my little heart out to get there at exactly 7:24. The next four exams were uneventful. I wrote an essay on Napoleon and spouted out useless numbers such as the percentage of French people who go to Church. Not many, let me tell you.

After exams were done, we had a little party at the house of the director of our program. Since she didn't have a Christmas tree, the three of us Albion girls said we would buy her one for her apartment. We were a sight to be seen; two of us carrying a 7 foot tree with the third carrying our purses through downtown Grenoble. There were many stares, but we kept trudging and finally got it up the stairs to the third floor.

My birthday was the 19th as many of you know, but I celebrated it on the 18th with my host family. The fam got me a ski jacket, which is great and Vivi made chicken especially for me because they don't eat it in France but they know that I like it. Vivien got my a gift too, but because I want to keep this blog G-rated, I will not show a picture. It was a pack of playing cards with nude men on them--very classy. We all had a laugh over that one, especially Viviane, who showed a deep interest in the pics. I also celebrated with my friend in the Christmas market. She made me a cake and we got some hot wine. We got some strange looks for that too, but it was memorable.

This week was also memorable. Christmas Eve we ate escargot, in the shell this time. The family was laughing at me because I didn't know how to work the pincers to hold the shells. It was very Pretty Womanesque. Christmas Day dinner started at 1:30 and we finished the five courses at about 5:30. I can't remember it all because I had a foodcoma but it included fois gras, smoked salmon, lobster, steak, lots of dessert, and, of course, champagne and wine.

I got a pretty good haul for Christmas, including jewery, lotion, a calendar, and last but not least a tree ornament of France made by Charlotte. Viviane's sister got the family a Wii and it was the best idea ever. We stayed up till 12:30 last night playing it. It is a sure-all way to get kids out of your hair, which I'm sure J-P and Vivi greatly enjoy.

Do I regret not coming home over Christmas break? No, not at all. I am so happy that I decided to stay here for Christmas break, despite the departure of all my friends to their respective homes over the holidays. First reason: I have gotten closer to all the kids in two weeks time then I have in all the three months combined. J-P's three oldest are gone during the school year, so this is the first time that I've had a long amount of time to bond and I've always been closer to Vivi's kids but it's been cemented during the past two weeks. It's hard to say with Charlotte because she's only 10, but the other day I taught her how to play BS and Spoons and that's all she wants to do now. After playig spoons for the ten thousandth time in a row, it gets a little old, but I do like spending time with her. Second reason: I am going to Morocco on Jan. 4 for ten days. Third reason: I am going to a New Year's Eve party with Vivien and Cyriel. The theme is cuir (leather) so as revenge for my birthday present I got Vivien a spiked leather collar to wear to the party as his Christmas present. That got a lot of laughs too. Reason four: Cyriel has lots of time on her hands so she has been doing my hair and makeup for fun everyday. I don't know what I'm going to do without my hair and make up artist!

Here's me modelling her work

Christmas market at night (i.e. 5:00 pm)

Above: Grenoble all lit up with Christmas market

Below: pile of bottles at our house after Christmas. I'm kidding... it was the pile of bottles outside of our favorite bar, O'Callaghan's (the best Irish pub in Grenoble!)

Since I have more time on my hands now, I will blog more often. Sorry for my abscence!

Chaio

P.S. some of you may be wondering if I did the traditional 21st birthday where you drink until you pass out, and the answer is no. This birthdy had to more significance than any other since I was "of age" the moment I got here.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Winter has arrived in full force

Hello again,

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter break. Grenoble is blanketed currently and I was taking my life in my hands going to the Christmas market yesterday. I did, however, get all of my Christmas presents taken care of. Try buying gifts for 4 young adult males that you've known for 3 months...not an easy task. Christmas is a huge holiday here. The house is completely covered in Christmas lights and Christmas music has been playing since October. I have been keeping warm thanks to the layers of hats and scarves and sweaters that I've been wearing-very reminiscent of A Christmas Story.

I am finally done with finals as of last Wednesday so my time has been consumed in cafes and Christmas markets. More to come later on my plans for the New Year.

Ciao

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Corsica

Hello everyone,

This weekend was excellent because I escaped the frigid of Grenoble for the warmth of Corsica. My friend and I flew from Lyon, an hour bus ride from Grenoble, to Bastia, the northern-most city in Corsica. The flight was EasyJet, which I recommend to only the most adventurous of you. One, and only one bag is allowed per passenger, so I stuffed all the essentials (laptop, PJs, toothbrush, and that's about it) into my backpack, and off we went. There are no assigned seats -- it is first-come-first-serve. The benefit of the lack-luster service was that it cost us about $60 round-trip.

The plane landed at about 5:00 so we headed to the hotel to drop off our stuff. We went with the cheapest hotel, too, so we got one double bed complete with cigarette-burn holes in the comforter. The precursor to this was a very scary point when my friend realized that she left her purse on the bus from the airport to town. With the help of the tourism office we found the bus again, along with the purse and all its contents. The gods were with us because she had her passport, cell phone, and 400 euros in the purse and nothing was taken.

The first thing that we noticed about Corsica is that it is extremely windy. We walked out to a lighthouse on the pier and I almost got blown off. At night it calmed down quite a bit, but it was still brisk. The view was absolutely amazing with views of the Mediterannean and the mountains on the island. All in all, we didn't really do much in terms of activities, but we greatly enjoyed the people watching and the many cafes that we consumed. The one daytrip that we did to the south of Corsica, where we walked along the shore and saw the house where Napoleon was born.

The way back was a little more eventful, though. We arrived at the airport without incident, but while we were waiting for the flight, the airport staff announced a technical failure in the aircraft. We weren't too concerned because they said it would be an hour delay and then we would be on our merry way, but ten minutes later, they announced that they weren't sure that the flight would leave at all and that we could take the plane to Paris that was leaving in the adjacent gate. I asked the staff when the next flight to Lyon was and she said that it was on Friday (keep in mind that this was Monday!). Since we had to intention of staying another four days, we decided to take our chances and go to Paris. Once we told them our decision, we were told that that was all they could do for us; once we got to Paris we were on our own. We arrived on Paris and then went to the train station where we booked train tickets on the last train of the night to Grenoble. Seven hours later then expected, we finally got to Grenoble where Jean-Pierre and Viviane were waiting to take us back. I have never been so thankful to be back home!

I definitely recommend going to Corsica, but a car would have been really useful. If time allows, I will be going back, but it will be a while before I fly EasyJet again.