One more adventure to the Carnival!

I know it's been a long time, sorry! The past week or so has been pretty boring. I didn't think that homework, presentations, and administrative stuff would be worth posting about. I did read "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert for my literature class!  (450 pages in 5 days what what?!?!)

The other day some friends and I decided to go visit a museum in town, Le Musee des Beaux Arts because it will be undergoing renovation for quite a while so they opened it up for free to the public. I was actually quite surprised as to the quality and quantity of paintings that were present. They even had a Picasso!


After spending quite a bit of time perusing the museum, like any good person, we ventured over to the carnival (yes again), walked around, andddd got some yummy food. Can we say crepes and beignets?!?!

I also must share some pictures from the carnival itself. Firstly, the awesome Aquaboule game was up and running!

To go along with this awesomeness, there were a few decorations that I thought were well interesting. Most countries including the United States and France are quite the melting pot of cultures, but I've never seen this combination before.....

Life is good

Despite of classes and finding out that I should probably read an almost five hundred page book by Thursday, things are going great in France! I bought some peanut butter and jelly (fig! delicious!) so I have a little bit of comfort food to remind me of back home. Nothing big has gone on this week since the carnival and it looks like tomorrow I'll have boxing and then reading time! I will however be hopefully making some macaroni and cheese! Om nom nom so delicious. Pictures from this extravaganza should be coming soon hopefully. Tonight was a great chill day with a little bit of grocery shopping, a picnic, laying in a field, speaking a little French, and just talking about life. Every once in a while, it's good to just relax and take a little time to take it all in. Good night for now!

Carnival

Just like in the States, the French enjoy their carnivals as well! There just happened to be one in town until October 5th-ish but some people heard that the rides were half priced last night, so how could we pass that up?! Five of us decided to make an adventure out of it and explored the carnival and of course the food!

Seeing how all of the rides were half off, how could we turn down a ride on the ferris wheel?!

After getting freezing at the top of the ferris wheel for a while, we figured we deserved some yummy food. The carnival here is basically the same as the states with a few awesome additions. They had kettle corn, cotton candy (called barbe a papa - papa's beard), candied apples (pommes d'amour - love apples: very French non?), fancy peanuts/almonds, candy (lots of taffy), churros, and of course the amazingness that are crepes and beignets. I have been craving a crepe for a long time but I saw these huge beignets and the fact that they had salted butter caramel topping for it and just could not resist. So....delicious...two points for fried dough, rolled in sugar, with a delicious caramel in the middle...lasdomwoeiniowhemlksdmnoi. If I could pick my dreams, I would probably choose that...every day! Next time of course I'm going to have to go back to my old love in the form of a nutella crepe!

*Insert photo from my facebook page because I did not take one with my camera*

Most of the rides were your average carnival rides and the games were basically the same such as balloon pop, throwing games, and claw machines. There were a few cool ones such as their version of Deal or No Deal and one where you chose a cord out of several hanging down, with each one being connected to some sort of stuffed animal so everyone won! The best game however would have been the 'Aquabulle' which would have been a plastic ball you climb in and roll around in water, but alas it was not open :(

Overall, festivals are awesome, I just need more time to try all of the delicious snacks!!!!!! As for now, I must go finish some homework and find lunch before class!

Grammar...It's taking over!

You know you have been in France long enough when while walking down the street you hear someone having a serious conversation and you overhear a certain phrase and you get excited about it. Besides the average slang and random phrases that I have never heard, the other day I was waiting at the tram stop and overheard someone use the subjunctive tense with a phrase I did not know required subjunctive. Even though it is the most annoying tense ever, I am one of those weird people who finds grammar (only in French not English) utterly exciting! I wish I had a hardcore grammar class here, but alas I must put up with only reading, speaking, and analyzing :(

On that note, classes are still going well, even though some of them I would gladly trade for a day of manual labor. Sometimes certain teachers here just do not make the cut in making a class interesting let alone informative haha. I do have a literature presentation due next Thursday and I had planned on presenting Honore de Balzac, but it turns out that that will be the topic for next week so it would be horribly boring for the students to hear a presentation and a lecture on him. In lieu of this, I decided to go with his partner in Realism, Gustave Flaubert (who hopefully will be approved by my teacher today). I was already a third of the way through Balzac's book, but hey no complaints here because it just gives me more experience with the interesting, sometimes too realist viewpoint!

Outside of class I have kept myself busy with running, boxing, random trips to the grocery store, and making dinner with friends! Boxing has been going well and the coach is definitely starting to warm up to me. I now get to help demonstrate techniques with him for the class! In our last class there was apparently a guy that took boxing last year and he put me with him with the reasoning that he wasn't allowed to train with his friends because he hit too hard haha. Bring it onnnnnnnnnn! I am definitely enjoying boxing though and it is definitely training my French comprehension skills on work out vocabulary. Of course, after a good couple of hours of working out, one must eat, so I have made several trips to the store for delicious French foods! the other day a friend and I had a dinner of a baguette, sheeps cheese (perdy good!), dried sausage (it's everywhere), carrots (for the vegetable factor), and mini tartes nantaises (almond tart om nom nom!). The other night, we went over to my Iranian friends apartment which is twice the size of mine, and made a beef stew type thing with a ratatouille sauce over rice. First cooking attempt: Success! The next item on the list is mac and cheese in a skillet!

African Dinner

During the first few days of orientation, I met several students from all over the world. During one of these encounters, I met a guy from Ghana and we seemed to run into each other just about every other day or so just by chance. We were even able to go down to the Jazz Festival together during that first weekend as well. We had many discussions about cultural differences, food, religion, music, etc, and because of that, he invited me over to his apartment to experience a little bit of African cuisine and I would have to say that it was absolutely delicious. It was simple, but complex at the same time. American food tends to be served in large quantities with little spice, whereas this food was full of flavor. We started the meal off with some rice with a tomato based stew with chicken and finished the meal with another stew and potato bread/dumpling. Most of you already know that I am quite the lover of food and I really enjoy trying new types of cuisine and am open to just about anything. The only food that I have a little bit of a problem tolerating are olives, but I am getting over this dislike! All in all I was able to spend two and a half hours of some quality entertainment with my friend and his roommate. During this time we were able to discuss just about every subject from politics to religion, to music and had a great time doing so. I have really enjoyed this study abroad for it's French aspects but also because I have been able to meet people from so many different walks of life and have been able to live a few hours in their shoes and see their perspectives on the world. It's not just Americans out there you guys ;) so get out there, explore, and learn!

I like cheese....

I really really like cheese. Like, it's delicious, but there are too many choices! I just don't even know what to do with myself when I go to the grocery store. So far I have tried Brie, Camambert, goat cheese, a type of blue cheese, two soft cheeses (Tomme Blanche and Vieux Panne...the latter was good but quite stinky though), and I still have another soft cheese from this region to try after I finish the goat cheese. I just can't seem to control myself with these delicious cheeses...good thing I'm boxing and running!

On to more serious topics, I am now known as 'the American' in the boxing class because I am the only non-Frenchie, but the coach is slowly warming up to me! After practice yesterday I went to the grocery store and had a blast just walking up and down the isles. I also officially have a coffee mug now! After that, I played some ping pong where we had a little Olympic Games of sorts with representatives from North America, Asia, and Europe. Thanks to yours truly, the United States of America were triumphant! After this tourny of sorts, my group of friends joined up with the Canadians and decided to explore the downtown area. Somehow someone had managed to get passes into THE night club in town so seeing how I had never been to one and well...it was free, might as well go right? (This is especially important because apparently the cover charge is normal 20-40 euros)

We left the residence and got on the tram, but unfortunately there was some miscommunication and the majority of the Canadian students took the tram too far and were not able to make it so that was kind of a bummer. Once our little group finally made it out to the club there was a huge line wrapping around the building to get in, and each person had this free ticket. You had to make it in by one o'clock however to get in for free so we were beginning to think that this was a lost cause, buttttt we may or may not have made some friends and hopped in line close to the front so we made it in just in time! It was absolutely crazy inside with lights, smoke machines, and some most excellent music. The DJ for the night was apparently this really famous guy who happened to be in town so people were going crazy over him. I would have to admit though, that he was probably the best DJ that I have heard. Even though these kinds of places are not my usual hangouts or my most comfortable situations, I still enjoyed myself and was glad I was able to experience a little bit of the night life in France!

Sadly enough though, we had a huge temperature change here in the past week or so so now it is quite chilly. This made my head freak out so for the past week I have had a sore throat which is almost gone now, but it has replaced itself with a stuffy nose. This is not the sick kind of sick, it is just the I'm-just-going-to-mess-with-your-head-and-make-things-annoying-for-a-while kind of sick...blarg. It makes speaking French well....interesting.

CANDY!

Oh and I have determined that Canadians have cooler candy than Americans. They have 'Smarties' but they are not chalky sugary candies, oh no! They are candy coated chocolates! Babam! They also have 'Kindersurprises' which are an hollow chocolate egg with some kind of fun toy inside. My first egg contained this cool looking yellow dude with a paintbrush as hair and when you wet it with water and rub it on some colored paper you can actually paint with it! I guess I'll just have to make some kind of beautiful mosaic soon!