weird things about France:
-Their keyboards are very different from America. Every time I try to use one, I forget that the Z key is where the A is. So annoying.
-They give baby-sized coffees here, legitimately the size of a shot glass. Luckily they are also quite strong, kind of like espresso.
-At cafés you pay as the waiter brings the drinks, not after.
-At restaurants you must ask the waiter for the addition or else you will be waiting at the restaurant forever.
-In all buildings, the stairs start at 0 so when you climb up a floor are only then on the 1st floor.
-The bathrooms are completely enclosed stalls; the one at school has a weird cage thing on top.
-My all time favorite is the French put their bread on the table rather than the plate. Genius!
-They also sop up whatever is left on their plate with that bread. Yummy. Reminds me of my dad.
Sunday was a wonderful day in general. I started out by baking a carrot cake with Molly. We found out converting everything to grams is super confusing and that the French have very different cooking equipment than Americans. We couldn’t find a basic rectangular square pan and had to use two circular ones. There are also no cooling racks. And as far as ingredients, there is no cream cheese at the grocery store, as far as we could tell. Also, grating carrots sucks when all you have are the small blades from a food processor. Soo many carrots.
After we somewhat successfully completed our cake, we grabbed some lunch at Batmans – yes, batmans - since basically all other restaurants, stores, and shops are closed on Sunday. Then Hank, Emma, Hannah, Molly and I hiked the Bastille. It was super chill. We stopped near a sweet tower along the way and had our lunch at the most amazing viewpoint. It was super windy, though, so a little scary being so high up! The whole rest of the hike we kept stopping to take pictures and check out different views. We decided to go all the way to the top, where there were some really neat memorials to soldiers who had died defending Grenoble on the very mountain where we stood. Kind of crazy.
The rest of my Sunday involved doing the 3 assignments I didn’t do all weekend. Fun times.
Monday, I got a new host brother! His name is Èlie and he is a graduate student at the Université de Grenoble – studying math. He seems really nice and really shy. I also went for a run/ did core and yoga with Emma and Nicole before dinner. It woke me up and made me feel a lot better! At night, I decided to watch the new Harry Potter (finally!) on my computer. Hopefully this will be prepwork so I can go watch it in French at the theaters with Molly.
Also, we had beignets last night – which are basically the best mini donuts in the world. So delicious. I’ve taken over dishes for Nicole in the evening. Last night she told Èlie, that it’s my specialty. It was adorable. I told her it was because I used to take over when my brothers washed the dishes when we were younger. I thought it was a treat. Haha. Oh children.
FAILLLLLLLL. I just realized that my class was supposed to be at 8:30 this morning and not 10:40. I skipped my first class, accidentally. Shit! Baaaaaa, I just emailed my professor. I am super stressed out, because I think I may be in the wrong level classes and I was going to chat with her about this after class. I am way above and beyond in understanding the grammar but have a hard time infiltrating it into casual conversation. I need way more practice in fluidity of speaking as well as pronunciation and oral comprehension. I’m worried that the pace will be too slow and that once I get used to hearing French and speaking, I’ll be at the wrong level. I know my pronunciation isn’t great but I think I just can’t formulate ideas faster than other kids in my class. Stressful! I could be wrong though, I’ll have to see what she says – which will have to wait another day! I’m also bummed because I’m not allowed to take Université de Grenoble courses because I am not at a high enough level L.
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| Les Boulles et Grenoble |
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| Stug City with the Wind |
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| The Crew at the Top! |
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| Sweet tunnels |
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