It's getting cold!

Another long wait I made you do. I'm sorry. This week and last weekend have been pretty packed and I shall gladly explain myself. First off, it's starting to get cold/windy/cloudy/rainy here. Nothing close to South Dakota cold, but it's cold. Had to sport my yellow had and gloves for the first time thursday morning for my photography class. On wednesday I had a midterm in my least favorite class, the louvre (which is sad). Maybe in the future I'll have a write-up explaining myself, but not this time. It went alright I think. So that was nice to get that out of the way. Then wednesday night there was a soccer game, France beat Austria 3-1, so that was good. Alright, let's start with the big events.

Chartres Cathedral

Last friday, my program took us on another adventure, this time to Chartres Cathedral, located in the town of Chartres which is about an hour away from Paris by train. It is a very famous cathedral for it's gothic style architecture...and just being crazy huge. When we got to the cathedral, we spent some time just taking in what we were looking at. Headed inside, saw a massive nave, with a ceiling that stretched forever. But, up towards the front of the cathedral, something didn't look right. As you can see in the picture, which is a terribly taken picture, it almost looks like a picture hanging from the ceiling...it was! Behind that was scaffolding upon scaffolding. They were trying to refurbish some things I guess. But it was really unfortunate that they had to be doing this when we came. We had a guided tour through the cathedral with a pretty famous lecturer. Can't remember his name, but he said he'd been giving tours for 50 years at Chartres and has given tons of lectures in the States too. Due to wanting to keep the noise level down, everyone in the group had to wear these radio headphone thingys that were quite interesting as you can see in the self picture. After the tour, we had about two hours to roam around the city. It was also very cold and windy that day. I treated myself to a nutella/banana crepe. They always warm me up. Interesting story. So when we were waiting for our train back to Paris, an announcement came on saying there had been an "accident" and the train was going to be late. Though we have no evidence, our directors in the group told us that when they say there has been an accident, that usually means someone got hit by a train, either suicide or accidentally falling onto the tracks, and that sometimes they give the train driver a year off vacation (I can't remember if it was a paid year or not) due to being traumatized. But like I said, it's not for sure this happened!







La Fete des Vendages

All of last weekend there was a festival going on celebrating the harvest of the grapes. On saturday I decided to check this out. I went alone due to all my other friends being busy...but they missed out! Each day, they had various events starting in the morning and going all the way to night. The main events were clustered around Sacre-Couer (first picture). Which is a famous church on the top of a hill in Paris, and has a crazy view of the whole city. I get there, and it's practically like the arts festival! The little streets around Sacre-Couer were lined with 'booths' of cheese/sausage/wine/candy/etc just anything and everything. And all of them were giving out free samples. The wine ones were the most popular, people just grouped around them. I didnt want to spend all my time in these groups so I just kept walking and occasionally was offered some cheese or sausage which was amazing! There were soooooo many people though. It was kind of frustrating. The roads are so small, and a mass of people will be walking one way, and another mass the other, so then they have to squeeze by eachother, but THEN you have to factor in the people that stand infront of the booths which creates a barricade for people going one way. OFTA, sometimes I couldn't even move. Just came to a complete stop for like 5 minutes. But, I like lots of people around, so it wasn't too bad. Besides all this food, there were tons of performers, mostly music. I took a ton of videos of these people so I'll have to be selective of which ones I upload. I came to this around 6 because at 8 there was supposed to be a human pyramid event, like the ones you see on tv where they get like 7 levels of people then fall over, but miraculously don't get hurt. Welp, I didn't see no human pyramid. Musta misread something on the events page. BUT, I made up for that because around 10........
Le feu d'artifice!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FIREWORKS!!!!! Right infront of this church, in the middle of Paris. It was excellent. They had huge speakers playing really classic old french tunes, and everyone would start singing along...except me. It was a grand time. The pictures and video don't do justice.



Not sure what that instrument is, but it's great!

Let's bang on drums

Harmonize

Little tipsy are we?

Just to show you all the people around

Grand Finale


Birthday Party

On tuesday was my host mom's son Yann's Bday. He turned 36 and her other son Fabien who is in his upper 20's came. There is a family friend, Camille who has been staying at the house for a while (waiting on his visa to go over to the states, but having difficulties with it). So in total, there was five of us. We started at 8 with some champagne and some goodies. A bowl of baby tomatoes and olives and a plate of some bread thingys. The first picture shows all this and Yann looking at a book he got as a gift, but it's a bit dark.
Around 9, we finally moved to the table. I was told what we were going to eat was a very special dish, and eaten only a couple times a year. It's called Raclette, and I must say, it went straight to my number one favorite dish.





These pictures gives you a grand idea of everything, and I shall explain. Firstly, you are probably wondering who is who!? Left, Camille (he is 22, engineer, super cool, is supposed to be going to MIT to research a new engine) Middle, host mom Eveylne (dont know exact age, very nice). Right, other son Fabien (upper 20's, think he is just finishing up his PHD, very smart, and talks ridiculously fast). On to the dish! The second picture gives you a better idea of what the plate of meat looks like. There was ham, bacon, some meat I'd never heard of, um um and I can't remember the other. Back to the first. So first, everyone loads their plate with meat and cheese. I wish I would've taken a picture of the cheese. There was a massive bowl just fuuuullllll of this cheese (it's also called raclette). In the center of the table you can see this little grill thing. On top, there was a bowl of potatoes and then you can use the top to grill the HAM. I started grilling the other meats and they looked at me funny. They said usually it's just used to grill the ham, but it wasn't a big deal. Next, it's tough to see, but right under the piece of ham on the grill you can see this little handle sticking out of the grill. Each person got one of these square inserts, and you would stick cheese in it and place it in the slot, allowing it to melt, then scrap the melted cheese off with that wooden scrapper you can see on the plates. I learned that if you wrap a potato in some meat then put the cheese on top, it makes for a magical delight. After this, it was time for the cake! It was a small super chocolately/fudgey cake. The video shows us singing happy birthday to Yann. First it's in french, then english, then german (not in the video but later we tried to sing it in spanish) Fabien and Camille were the only ones who knew german, but pay attention to Yann, he thinks german sounds funny so he always just rambles some german sounds out. Sorry about the turning of the camera, forgot it doesn't automatically adjust.

By the time Fabien and Yann left, it was 11:30. Quite the night, but very enjoyable.




My parents sent me a magical package of homemade cookies, nature valley bars (oooooo UNL Hewit Dining Center...I miss my massive bowl of nature valley!) and various candy bars...plus a wonderful note. I finally got this package on thursday. O snickerdoodles how I love you so!