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.

Weekend of firsts

Hello all,

Things are going very well here in France. This week I tried to find a couple of museums that I wanted to see and discovered one frustration with France. You cannot find anything. The signage is absolutely horrible and when I asked people for directions they had no idea. The first museum was the Musee de la Revolution Francaise. I took the train from Grenoble to the stop that was called Vizille-something else. The museum itself was in Vizille, and seeing as it was host to a rather important museum, I assumed that the train would stop right by it. When I got off the train, I walked around and bit and could find no trace of the museum so I asked a middle-aged guy where it was. Turns out Vizille was a ten minute bus ride away. He offered to take my by car since it was not very far and (very stupidly) I accepted. I realize that he very easily could have been a axe-murderer, but sometimes you gotta have a little faith in people.

The other museum that I tried to find (Musee de la Resistance and la Deportation) took me three days to locate. There would be little signs saying Musee with no mention of which meseum it was and then they would just stop. I tried looking at the map on the back of the brochure, but it was missing streets. Then I tried asking people and they either had no idea or they would say that it was just around the corner (which it wasn't). Extremely frustrating considering I was wearing three inch heels and was practically crippled after finally finding it; however it was extremely interesting and saddening because it focused on the French resistance fighting against the Germans during World War II and gave first-hand accounts of people who had been deported to death camps and survived. Interesting fact that I discovered: Jean-Pierre's grandparents hid Jewish children in their home in the mountains and Vivianne's grandfathers were both resistance fighters.

The time that I do not spend at museum's is usually spent at the shopping mall in Grenoble. It's awesome! I found a store called NewLook that has a whole floor dedicated to women over 5'7''. I went a little overboard on pants, and then because I had really long pants, of course I had to get some really tall shoes to match, and then some purses to go with the shoes... you get the picture.

In the future I will be playing volleyball also. I got to sign up with the club at the university and I'm really excited about it. We meet every Tuesday from 6-8 to play games. It's pretty intense because they assign you a team by skill level and positions, but I'm feeling good about it. I'm kind of curious to see if they wear the usual volleyball gear of spanx and kneepads or if that's an American thing.

This weekend I had a couple of firsts. On Saturday, Vivien, Sabrina, a friend of Vivien, and I went to a couny fair. Usually I don't really enjoy that type of thing, but this had skydivers, parasailers, and hot air balloons. I thought there was going to be a really serious injury because the skydivers and parasailers would hit a wind spiral, spin out of control, plumet toward the earth at 100 km/hr and then at the last minute they would pull up into a landing position. The announcer kept yelling "C'est enorme!" and it really was impressive. The best part however was the way that we got there. Drumroll please....motorcycle. Both the guys are really into motorcycles, and these are not Harley Davidsons, they are racing bikes. It was enorme! I wish I would have taken a picture because I was wearing one of Vivien's huge motorcycle coats with protective padding, a huge helmet, and then my brand new three inch high boots. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more motorcycling in the future.

Another first was in the culinary realm. For lunch on Saturday Vivianne said that we were going to have steak-frites and asked if I wanted my meat "cuit ou tartar." (Translation: cooked or raw) In an effort to be more French, I said that I would take it tartar. I assumed that by raw it would be slightly cooked but red in the middle, but when she brought it out it was really raw. I mean it was a patty of ground beef that had not touched any heat whatsoever. I'm very proud to say that I ate it all and enjoyed it greatly with a little mustard and some Whertchester (not right, I know). The others took theirs with a raw egg, but that was going a little too far for me.

The other first on Saturday was my first taste of Chartreuse. Vivien, Antonin, Antonin's girlfriend, and I went to a pub in Grenoble called O'Callaghan's. I decided to get something that was a traditional drink and oh man! It is 110 proof and a sip of it and you can feel the effects, but it was really good. It's herby and very green, which threw me off a little. But all in all we all enjoyed ourselves along with the 5 thousand other people who were there.

I'm sorry for not posting very often, but it will be every week at the minimum and I'll try to post a couple times a week.