Almost finished...with the month

The end of the summer semester is coming down to the nitty gritty and we are receiving crazy amounts of homework on top of weekly speeches and about 3 testes per week.  Thankfully that all ends on the 28^th of September.  Here’s an update of the days since I last posted.

Sept 14^th – Nothing too exciting.  Ate pork with pasta for lunch but I’m not a huge fan of pork so I went a bought a croque monsieur (amazing ham and cheese sandwich for those who don’t know) from a café in the school.  For dinner that night my host mom made the exact same meal that they served at lunch that day so I was in luck (NOT!).  I ate it because I was hungry and there really wasn’t a choice there. 

Sept 15^th – I had two speeches today and anyone that knows me knows that I abosoluteley hate public speaking.  I would rather run naked through the town than give a speech.  My speeches were on Disney around the world and shoes so they weren’t tough topics, I just HATE giving speeches.  For lunch we had chicken in “alfredo” sauce and “tater tots”.  I put them in quotes because things here are never like they are at home.  The tater tots were really good though and I had been craving fried food so that helped.  For dinner we had bean and sausage casserole.  When she sat the casserole on the table I said “Oh, Hot dogs!”  and she laughed and laughed at me.  Being the food shelted child I am, I mistaked the French sausages for hot dogs.  She made an amazing from scratch lemon cake.  It tasted like lemon poppy seed bread which is one of my favorite things at home!

Sept 16^th – Another gross lunch at school = me getting another croquet monsieur at the café.  Then we had scrambled eggs with ham and herbs for dinner.  They are huge on eggs for dinner here.

Sept 17^th – We only had a half day of school today because we were leaving for a field trip for the second part of the day.  It was amazing.  We went to Anjou Trogloditique. (An-joooo Tro-glow-dee-teek)  Even I can’t pronounce it.  It is a huge amount of caves that were dug out and turned into houses by farmers.  Their farms would be on the top of their house.  Everyone was getting really annoyed because they would continuously have to duck everytime they entered a cave but not me!  I fit in quite well with the French people from 100’s of years ago.  After that we went to wine caves and saw how it was made and where it aged.  The caves were neat but had MASS amounts of mold on them that was black and about as big as my head hanging down from the ceiling.  YUCK!  Then we got to taste wine.  We tasted sparkling white = yum, sparkling rose = really yum, and sparkling red = not so good.  Being able to buy alcohol here legally, I bought 3 bottles.  After that we visited a vineyard and then ate dinner in a restaurant that was inside a cave.  The specialty at the restaurant was mushrooms so my friends got extra food.  They did serve rillets, pork pate, which has become about my new favorite food here.  I ate lots of that.  Another fun school field trip.  Field trips are always better when you can have a little bit of wine during them.

Vicki, Patrick and I happy about our wine.  Courtney was sad she didn't get any! 

House made out of a cave

Sept 18^th – Did errands today.  Went to the post office, grocery store and then ate lunch at school (which was a mistake!)  It was beef stew and white rice.  Let’s just say they put raisins in their beef stew and I’m not even for sure that the meat in the stew was beef.  It looked a little shady.  Took a nap and then woke up just in time to eat dinner.  We had guinea fowl (tastes just like chicken).  My host parent’s daughter was here visiting so we got to talk with her at dinner.  We had amazing tarts for dessert.  Because my host mom is so wonderful and knows that I don’t like fruit, she bought me one with chocolate and lemon custard.  It was like heaven in your mouth!  I will definitely be asking her where she bought those.

Sept 19^th – Today was castle field trip day.  We started at 7 am and didn’t stop until 8 pm.  We saw three different castles but didn’t have very much time at any of the castles so it was the fast forwarded tour of all the castles but I was sure to take pictures of EVERYTHING.  At the last castle my friends and I stopped to get ice cream before we got on the bus.  Ice cream here is so good!  For dinner at home we had pork wrapped in puff pastry and broccoli with parmesan cheese.  It was all really good!  

Castle we visited

I fit in quite well with the people from 100's of years ago.  I think I was the only tourist there that wasn't a child that could have gone in this door.

Sept 20^th – Pork again for lunch – OMG People here freaking love pork!  I just want some chicken every once in a while.  Is that so hard to ask for!  I just ate a big plate of green beans.  School was boring.  For dinner we had gazpacho (cold tomato soup) and steak and sausages on the grill with French fries (only here they are only called fries).  I really enjoyed the soup and fries but the steak not so much.  It was pretty much still mooing so I just cut it up and moved it around so it looked like I ate some.  I think my host pretty much expect that I won’t finish everything on my plate any night.  I was so happy to see fries at the table though!!!

Sept 21^st – Today was the civilization test and when I was taking the test I noticed these red bumps all over my arms.  Freaked me out a little bit but I finished my test.  I think I did pretty good on it.  Thankfully a 10/20 is a C here.  For lunch it was chicken cordon blue.  My favorite with mashed potatoes.  YUM!!!  I went to the doctor which was an odd experience.  Because of the red dots all over my arms and legs, she told me to take off everything but my bra and underwear so she could look if they were anywhere else.  After she finished with that, instead of telling me to put my clothes back on she took my blood pressure and looked in my nose, ears and throat.  It was an odd experience.  I do have a respiratory infection which stinks especially since I’m in France.  For dinner we had peanut chicken and white rice which was really good. 

Sept 22^nd – Stayed home from school and slept until 12:45 and ate some breakfast and then slept for 2 more hours.  Watched movies and laid in bed all day.  It was great!!! Had pizza for dinner because the dad was in charge of cooking.  Its about what my dad would have made too. (Love you dad! You know I’m kidding)  I was totally okay with pizza.  It had sausage like summer sausage on it, not sausage like at home.