This weekend, the group traveled to Réauville, Provence in southern France. We arrived on Friday afternoon and immediately jumped in the pool/baked in the sun. Loveliness. I napped, journaled, and just chatted until supper time. For supper we started with an apperatif – kierres, anchovies dip, and red pepper dip followed by 4 more courses - salad with liver and chicken, duck with zuchinni and cheese, a HUGE cheese platter, and lemon meringue pie. Delicious. We finished supper at 10pm – so long - and then moved on to hanging out and star gazing. What a life.
The next morning, we met for breakfast at 9. We had an amazing spread of different breads, cookies, jams, juice, hot drinks, and CEREAL!!!!! I have been missing cereal so much and eating it this morning made me so incredibly happy. I have been eating so much bread all the time and I really miss my yummy milk, cereal, and fruit combo. Great start to a perfect day. Literally.
I’ve realized that so much of my blog is dedicated to food. Don’t worry people, I’m not becoming obese here – in fact I think I eat about the same or less than I usually do. Here, food is just such a huge part of the culture. People here are so proud of the dishes they produce. I can’t tell you how many times Nicole has said, “Do you like it?” I seem to tell her every meal and she never tires of the compliments, she’s so proud! Here, meal time is social time. People don’t snack here they just have big, delicious meals. It is normal to have 3 hour meals - chatting for hours on end. It’s no wonder the kids in school have 2 hour lunches every day and that no one complains about leaving school at 5:30!
After breakfast on Saturday morning, Molly, Emma, and I went for a walk down the road and came across another beautiful village, a great viewpoint, and a donkey. Then, we took a bus to Grignans to visit a chateau. We learned about a famous literary figure Madame Sévigné who lived in the castle in the 17th century. Apparently, she wrote really beautiful letters to her daughter Franҫoise Marguerite, wife of the lieutenant general of Provence, during the reign of Louis XIV - a very interesting time period since Louis XIV was executed during his reign! It must have been challenging for her son-in-law to be a royalist during a time when people were being imprisoned and executed for even showing hints of loyalty towards the monarchy. (I know this thanks to my French history class, go CUEF!) We were given a copy of the letters but unfortunately because the language was so different back then and because I am not super good at comprehending French, it was a struggle to understand/ see the beauty in the letters. I cannot wait for the day when I’m fluent and can easily understand everything. I’m not perfect but I’m definitely getting better. I am excited to see where I’ll be at the end of this program.
The inside of the chateau was incredible. It is a smaller chateau and one that seems realistic to imagine people living in. Seeing the scuffed floors mixed with the antique furniture I could actually picture the people doing the scuffing. So cool to imagine people living in the very chambers we were gawking at.
It was literally a perfect day yesterday. After our morning walk and tour of the chateau, Molly, Elita, and I decided to explore the town because we weren’t ready for lunch yet. We found this beautiful hidden church where we were totally alone. It was nice to find a church that wasn’t a tourist trap. It was simple yet elegant and my favorite church thus far. After, we roamed the streets and somehow ended up exactly where we started. We stopped in some of the stores and met this amazing woman from Grignans who lived in the United States. She went to art school in Minnesotta and has visited Wisconsin, New York, and California. She was super nice and showed us a book of her favorite glass bead artists and explained how she created her own glass beads by melting strands of glass she specially ordered from Italy and the United States. She was just such a cool lady and someone I could really imagine myself being in the future. After, we grabbed some sandwiches and salad and went back to the church to have some lunch. We strangely all didn’t feel like eating our own meals but wanted each other’s food. It worked out perfectly. Cheap, delicious, and share-time = the best.
We also got some delicious ice cream and the little cups they came in were HILARIOUS. They had a picture of a banana sleeping on ice cream and a little penguin flying over balls of ice cream. So bizarre. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about how much Hannah and Emma would appreciate them. Gotta love our baby animal obsession.
After the chateau, we went to a vineyard where they make their own wine! We got a tour of the facility and ate the most delicious grapes I’ve ever had. So fresh and yummy! We also had a surprise game. It consisted of everyone picking a cork, putting it their mouths, and spittting it out as far as they could. The winner got a bottle of wine. So strange. Then I had my first degustation. We tried 6 different types of wine. We learned a couple different tests you do to judge. You slowly twirl the wine in the glass and watch how fast it drips down. The faster it drips, the stronger the wine. Then you judge the color – which for white wines is darker the longer it’s been in barrels. Then you smell it. Then you mix it up really fast and smell it again – which is totally different! Then of course is the taste. Yum. Definitely was a little light headed by the end of it! I was a little disappointed he didn’t describe the wines more as we were testing them. I could tell which ones I liked and didn’t like but it was hard to explain why.
We went back to our hotel, looked at pictures, and then had another 3 hour dinner. It was a bit of a crazy dinner. I just love our program director so much. Oh Micheline. I love when she throws in bits of English in her super thick French accent. At one point she described the food as “finger-licking good” and at another attempted to say house, high, and hill. Since the H’s are so difficult to pronounce for French people, she way over pronounced them and it was super funny. She also talked about how one end of the table was speaking English and the other French. She just kept pointing to our side of the table and saying “l’aisle francais” and looking down the table and saying “l’aisle anglais” – aka English and French wings. I also was in my crazy mood and poor Greg had to deal with the ultimate showing of antsy-ness. For some reason I just wanted to get up and sprint. I didn’t so, Greg dealt with the consequences. At the end of dinner Molly and I just ended up making these purring/bird noises. I was super excited that we spoke in French the whole meal in “l’aisle francais”. It was neat to compare this dinner to the last full dinner we had with the group at the beginning of the trip. So much improvement!
After dinner Molly, Elita, and I literally just lied on our bed laughing and doing random things on the computer for hours. It was wonderful. It felt just like sleepovers from the good old days. At one point we skyped with Kaitlyn and youtubed the werewolf song in 30 Rock. Such a bizarre night. I love it.
Today (Saturday), we’re going to visit the small towns of Fontaine de Vaucluse and Gordes, tour an abbey and a lavender museum . I’m excited to see what it has in store. I’m also pumped to go running in the countryside tomorrow morning when we have some free time. Everywhere you look is literally picture perfect. It’s like I’m living in a movie. I keep asking Molly, “Is this real life?!?!” I am just so appreciative of having the opportunity to escape reality and live in a dream world for a while. It’s incredible to feel like I’m living in the scene of a movie every single day.
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| view from my window |
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| pool time |
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| donkey |
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| Grignan |
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| The 3 Musketeers |
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| sweet hidden church |
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| glass bead workshop! |
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| inside the chateau |
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| for you emma and hannah |
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| YUMMY grapes |
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| Greg cork spitting |
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| good color? check. |
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| almost dinner |
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| CHEESE |
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| and again |
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| Chateau de Grignon |
I woke up at 8 and was going to finish my blog entry but ended up talking to EMMA!!!!!! It made me so so happy to see her and made me really miss Hannah too. We need to set up a 3-way ovvoo date at some point! But anyways, I loved comparing the differences in our study abroad experiences. She can literally only talk to the people in her program because she doesn’t speak Vietnamese. I just can’t imagine not even having the opportunity to have a real discussion with a local. It’s rough! We are experiencing such different struggles at this point in our lives. She’s seen some shockingly terrible and just plain different things in Vietnam, whereas Europe is another high-class society just like America. I can’t even fathom some of the events she told me about. Here I am living in a movie world and there she is seeing this completely other world – it’s crazy just how different lifestyles are! It made me especially sad that in Vietnam there is not universal education – only the rich kids can go to school. She made me think of how much needs to be fixed in the world. Like how everyone should be able to have universal education!
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