I started last week with some seriously delicious pork chops and some good news on the employment front (and I got yet another offer from a school to work for them, bringing my total to 6; it's nice being in demand). Tuesday was filled with lots of laughs - first at collège and then later at a fajita night with the Mexican assistant. So I found out that the bug that I had a couple of weeks ago ended up getting the teacher who had invited me over for dinner and her two kids sick, and I joked with her that it looks like I won't be invited back there for dinner any time soon. She told me that when she went to the doctor's he gave her a really high dose of cortisone and penicillin, as well as a couple of other drugs to round out the cocktail. Oops. I couldn't help but laugh when I heard her rasping through taking attendance, but the joke ended up being on me because I had to give a lesson for the entire period, rather than just half. It was a group of 3ème (14-15 year olds) so I decided to talk about high school, since if they were in the United States that's where they'd be. I showed them a couple of excerpts from "Glee" and a film called "American Teenager" because they talk about typical high school stereotypes, which they really liked and they were fascinated by my yearbook.
At this point I don't remember what happened during the rest of the week (that's what I get for not writing things down as they happen), so I'll just skip to the weekend. Right, so Sylviane and Jean-François took Qunxing and I on yet another adventure, this time into the Champagne region of France where they make - you guessed it - champagne (pronounced shum-pan-yuh). While the most famous city of this region is Reims, they took us to a smaller, but still well known town called Château-Thierry. Thanks to the lovely folks at Joël Michel, within a half hour, after some 15-16 generously filled glasses I was well on my way to being completely ratassed. We tasted the vin clair of each of the wines that are used to make their champagne (pinot meunier, pinot noir and chardonnay), as well as some nice red wines and a ratafia; an aperitif similar to the pommeau made here in Normandy, but instead of adding cidre they add champagne.
What happened next was a complete surprise; one because it was so good and two because it was so unexpected. After we had finished our tastings, they sat us down and prepared a meal for us with hors d'oeuvres to start, followed by ribs, jerk chicken, salad, boudin (blood sausage), andouillette (made from intestines), a cheeseboard featuring several kinds of brie, which is the cheese typical of Champagne, and a bunch of fancy pastries for dessert. All of this fo' FREE!
Throughout the meal they must have popped open two or three dozen bottles of champagne for us to drink, including a really nice millésime from 2002 (millésime means that it's an "exceptional" champagne). I would have liked to have bought a bottle of it, but it was pretty expensive, so I settled for a bottle of ratafia and a mini-bottle of a different, but still good, champagne. The atmosphere was really nice - it actually reminded me of a holiday meal with my family - even though we were all strangers we got along like we'd known each other for years. We talked about where we were from, what we thought of the food/tasting, etc. and as I was enjoying my cheese, one of my neighbors commented that he'd never met an American that liked fromage au lait cru (cheese made from unpasteurized milk). Admittedly, I might have overdone it a bit, because on the car ride home I was dying of thirst. But the ride was long, and I slept most of the way because I knew I had to be rested for that night.
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| In France, unlike in America, they keep the vines close to the ground so that they have to struggle. This results in better grapes, which means better wine. |
Saturday night was the last night out for my group of friends. The nine others were already at Caoimhlin's for a barbecue, so I met them and had a bite to eat before we headed out. While at the barbecue Liz and I spent a lot of the time talking with a student named Thomas who studied at UNC's business school and is now working for a semester in the marketing department at Ferrero, the company that makes Nutella. The club that we went to was crap, but the company was more important than the environment. There were a lot déjà-vu moments, especially in photos, where things happened exactly the same was as they did at the beginning of this experience. We finally left around 4.30, but nobody wanted to leave because we all knew what it meant. We're having "The Last Supper" at the restaurant at my school this week and after that c'est la fin.
I'm amazed at how quickly these past seven months have passed. When I was younger I never believed my parents when they told me that time only goes faster as you get older, but already I'm starting to notice it. Ça ne nous rajeunit!
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