Hey all,
Sorry for the massive delay, I kept getting caught up with other things but now I am in bed with potentially the flu so I have the time to update- before I fall asleep again. I think I updated on Monday so I’ll give y’all the short version of the rest of the week and try to keep the rest of my updates more timely/a reasonable length.
Tuesday – Took a tour through Le Marais (The Marsh) which contains lots of historic buildings that survived Haussman’s urban renewal. Way back in the day no one wanted to live there but soon it became the aristocratic section of town. Now’s its tres hip with lots of art galleries, restaurants, quirky shops. Then after grabbing Chinese food with the one and only Danny Chin, we headed back to Accent for more intensive French. Had dinner with my host family and just stayed in.
Wednesday- “Very Contemporary France” seminar at Accent where the staff there briefed us on useful things like the French political spectrum, how to read the movie listings, and famous French singers. We picnicked in Accent for lunch (baguette, Brie, strawberries, and cookies from the Fanprix across the street) and then had more intensive French – which was pretty much focused on the subjunctive. After class I headed over to the Champs-Elysee to meet Danny and we got pastries and macaroons from Laduree, a swanky old fashioned French patisserie.
Here comes the fun part. I had promised my host family I would make them pancakes to eat with the maple syrup. So I make the batter and the first pancake turns out great, if a little brown…so I decide to turn the stove down. Unfortunately, I turned it up. I noticed the pancakes were a little browner than I would have liked but didn’t notice the severity of the situation until my host mom came in and started opening the windows – the kitchen was filled with smoke! I was obviously horribly embarrassed but they said they liked them anyway (and they weren’t just saying that – one of the girls in my program is staying with a friend of my host family’s and she said that her host mother had talked to mine and had liked the pancakes -phew!) After dinner with ma famille d’acceuil we attempted to go to an Australian bar with other people from our program but failed to find it so we got hot chocolate, and when we finally did find it, we only stayed for about 10 minutes because we wanted to take the metro home and it closes at 12:30 a.m.
I’ll tell you more about my week in my next post…