French Fine Dining

I promised that I would write a new exciting post soon, and since I always keep my promises, here it is:

To start off, I should probably just say that this post isn't actually all that super exciting unless you are a gourmand (food lover) like me. And yes, if that didn't give it off, this is yet another food post. Last friday, my host family took me to the best gourmet restaurant in Privas called La Chaumette. I forgot if it has one or two stars, but it's considered a good restaurant if it has any stars at all. (Cafés and MickyDs don't have stars.)

Oh my gosh. It was so good. The whole French dining experience at its best. I was honestly not expecting to go to a gourmet restaurant friday evening. Usually, my host family orders pizzas and we have a laid back meal in pajamas. (Or now that I think about it, I'm usually the only one in pajamas.) Anyway, after school, I went on a long run and was dying of heat by the time I got back. I took my shower, threw on my sweats and a hoodie and was ready to settle in for the always-anticipated Friday pizza movie dinner.

However, my host dad announced we would be going out for dinner so I went back to my room and changed from sweats into jeans. (My whole family had been joking about going to McDonalds, and since I thought they were legit being serious, I was completely fine leaving the house with my comfy clothes and no makeup.)

I started getting suspicious when we made a turn that took us in the opposite direction from McDonalds. We ended up driving to a classy hotel which had an intimate, beautiful restaurant with waiters in tuxedos, and that's when I wished I had taken a little more than 2 seconds to get ready. One waiter greeted us at the door where he took our coats (and in my case, a hoodie) and hung them up all neatly on hangers. At that point, I was just glad I had decided to take a shower!

We were led to our table, and besides us, there was only one other couple in the restaurant. I know that's usually a bad sign, but this was an exception. We were served so many courses, and every plate was so delicious and flavorful and ultimately just really pretty to look at!

I can't remember most of the menu, and I didn't know what half of it was anyway, but here's what I do remember:

1. A starter of sushi, other appetizer-like substances that I'm sure have names to food-critics or people who know the slightest thing about food, and chestnut-flavored white wine. After that was another starter of sautéed salmon in a really fluffy lemon-lime mousse.

2. An entrée of eel and asparagus with gelatin in a citrus-y sauce, and another entrée of thin raw beef slices served with black salt and some type of soft cheese.

3. For the main meal, we were served poultry stuffed with spinach and asparagus on the side. It was served in a gravy with morille mushrooms (which are to die-for). There was also bread made from chestnut powder and puréed potatoes in a side dish. After that came a soup with more poultry and vegetables.

4. After the main course, they served a quick "palette cleanser" of mousse made from chestnut cream (I'm not sure if I already put this in my blog, but Ardèche (mainly Privas) is a region well know for its chestnut products. 

5. There might have been something in between that I forgot, but I think dessert came just afterwards. I ordered a dish of tropical fruit, sponge cake soaked with some type of fruity alcohol, papaya gelato, and a fruity sauce that was flavored with vanilla from Madagascar. The other option was tiramisu, which was also very impressive. The waiter arrived with a plate that had a chocolate sphere on it. He then lit some other type of alcohol on fire and poured it all over the chocolate sphere which then melted and opened up to reveal the tiramisu. I love France!

6. After that came coffee time. Espresso served with macaroons and other little cakes. And.....then it was done.

Since I thought I was going to McDonalds, I didn't bring my camera, but Simon (my host brother) had his phone and he took lots of pictures on that. Hence, the wait for the pictures. They aren't the best quality because the lighting was dim and the phone camera was a little fuzzy, but they're better than nothing.

Before I end this post, I just want to point out another thing about the French dining experience. When we were given the menus, the server was ready with two different types: one for the women (which was distributed first), and another for the men. Basically, a fine French restaurant will never give women menus with the prices. The prices are only displayed on the men's menu because they are supposedly the ones who invited the ladies out to dinner and they are the ones who will pay. It's a little old fashioned, but the French place an emphasis on the act of upholding traditions. After learning that, I had to ask, "Well, what if there are only women out dining together?"In response to that, the waiter told me that they will check ahead to see which lady made the reservation, and she will be the only one to receive a menu with the prices. Interesting.

Now that this post has gotten a little out of hand (I'm starting to notice that it's always the food entries which go on and on and on) I am going to stop here for now. Overall, La Chaumette was one of the most amazing food experiences I have ever had in my whole life, and next time, I'll think twice about putting on a nice shirt and a little mascara before I leave for McDonalds.

Avignon

Time is flying by quicker than ever! Weekend outings have become routine, school days blend into the next, and vacations come and go. And while I've fit so much into this year, I just can't wrap my head around how time keeps accelerating. I counted the days today, and here it is: only 28 more days of school (!) and 95 more days in France. It honestly felt like last week when I last counted the days and had 115 left to go. The numbers are becoming more and more realistic, and I wish I could just put a pause on it all and yell "STOP! Lets just slow things down a little bit more, and I'll figure this all out." Unfortunately, yelling "stop" does nothing so I guess I'll just have to learn to pick up the pace myself.

In addition, I've had more energy this past week than I think I've ever had in my whole life. I'm supposed to be hearing back from colleges any day now and I hate waiting. So much. (I'm kind of a huge hypocrite for saying this, but I just wish this week would fly by already so I can get my decisions.) I've still got Boston College, and I'll be happy to go there if my other schools say no, but I really really want to get in to Brown / Pomona / Pitzer or a combination of the three. I'm trying to gear up for rejection, but there's still that little voice in the back of my head that tells me: "Hayley Chwazik-Gee is amazingly amazing and why would they ever say no?" Well, in response to that, I'm sure my math teacher would say, "well your 2 on the AP Calc isn't helping you out so much, and neither is your boringly average SAT score," but come on, other than that, I am a catch. So anyway, if the Universe is out there reading my blog, I just want to say that I'm sending you good vibes, and I hope you you send me something (hopefully in the form of an acceptance letter) in return.

Back to all the energy boost this has been giving me, I have been trying to put it all to good use. I've started going on hour long runs in the forest after school, and yeah...that's about it. (I suppose that was anti-climatic.) Anyway, they help, but it's still super duper annoying because I have to lie in my bed for about an hour with random thoughts and images and visions racing through my brain at the speed of light before I can semi-fall asleep every night. I mean, whatever happened to the good old days when one could just hit the sack and call it a day?

Other than all that, I suppose I can tell you about my weekend in Avignon. My host parents took me there yesterday, and it was a very nice, relaxing day. The weather was gorgeous and sunny, and I even enjoyed just staring out the window for the hour and a half car ride south to the beautiful Provençal city.

The main attraction in Avignon is the Palais des Papes, or the Popes' Palace. During the Catholic Schism, the popes relocated from Rome to the city of Avignon and 9 popes lived there during the course of about a century. I went around with an audio guide, but I didn't understand too much. Usually, I have no idea what the narrator is saying in English, and since I listened in French this time, I was just flat-out lost. However, you really don't need a guide at all to be impressed. Just standing there in the huge, ginormous rooms will leave you speechless at first. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous castle, and I plan on going there again in April with my mom and sister!

Avignon is a very old city that dates back to hundreds of years before Jesus, so there is plenty of history and culture to see. Roman ruins, pope things, a medieval wall around the city, the bridge of Avignon, churches....you get the picture. And if that's not for you, each summer there is a really well-known festival at Avignon with tons of shows in every nook and cranny of the city. They have everything from Shakespearean plays to modern plays that are held in schools, in the castle, on the streets; literally everywhere. Sadly, I will be home before that all takes place, but it'll just give me another reason to come back and visit!

That's all for now. I have another entry coming soon, but I need to get the pictures from my host brother because it isn't worth writing if there aren't pictures. (Trust me, they are the best part.) Anyway, it will be a pretty exciting post in my opinion, so you'll just have to tune in and wait!

The Crocodile Farm

The Dollé's took me to a Crocodile Farm this weekend in Southern Ardèche. Pretty awesome, right? I was a little surprised when they told me all about it because this is what I got from the conversation: We're going to an exotic crocodile farm right next to the nuclear power plant in the middle of nowhere. When I hear something like that, I usually think, "O.k. Hayley, got to keep working on the French, but don't worry, it's getting better!" (And that right there is my habitual self motivation in the mirror.) However, they weren't kidding and I didn't misunderstand. Last Sunday, we drove to the middle of nowhere in the rain to this huge warehouse-looking structure with the ginormous power plant billowing smoke in the background. (I know this sounds like a nightmare, but it was less creepy in person. Sort of.)

I enjoyed the crocodile farm. As soon as we walked in the building, the artificial sun and heat and tropical plants were all very welcoming after the cool, dark, rainy exterior. We spent several hours walking around the structure and learning all about crocodiles. Now that I'm very knowledgable about them, I'll give you a few facts:

1. Crocodiles are very very very lazy
2. Crocodiles in Ardèche eat twice a week
3. There are 23 different types of crocodiles
4. Crocodiles live to be around 100 years old
5. There are only 20 albino crocodiles from Mississippi left in the world (2 of them are living next to a nuclear power plant in France.)

The farm was a scientific research center and it is also a place where they bring endangered crocodiles as a safe-haven and breeding ground. The center works on introducing the crocodiles and the offspring back to the wild. There are tons of other facts that I learned but I forgot them all. It was a worthwhile visit though and since I rather love animals, I thought it was all interesting.

Once we left the farm that afternoon, we went to Chateau Grignan in the Drome Provençal (it was my second visit there) and after that we went to the creepiest, and I mean creepiest, antiques shop ever. It was huge and scary, and it would be the perfect setting for a Hitchcock film. This shop was also in the middle of nowhere, and it had every possible nightmarish thing imaginable. Dolls with missing body parts, dummies, chainsaws, empty dungeon-like halls, and clowns.

I enjoyed this place a whole lot less than the crocodile farm. I also thought it was terrible not only for the creepiness, but also because they had poor animals living in horrible conditions. There were camels standing out in the cold rain without shelter in a small enclosure, and there were these poor, poor birds (cockatoos and other very social birds) that were stuffed in a very small, very dark rusty iron cage outside. There was no natural light in the cage (or no artificial light for that matter) and they were all standing on rusted steel bars. The cement floor was was covered in the birds' waste and my heart went out to them.

Other than all that, there's not much else happening here for a little while. I didn't have school yesterday or this morning because my class is taking a baccalaureate exam for next year, and since I'm all graduated, I was free! Unfortunately I've got 2 hours of economy class in about 15 minutes, so I should probably go change out of my pajamas...

Carnaval!

It officially feels like spring here. For the past week, the sun has been shining non-stop and the flowers are in bloom. I've spent the past three days basking in the hot sun on the patio, and I've finally regained some color in my pale winter skin. Every time I walk outside without a jacket I'm thrown into an instantaneously really great mood (unless I'm heading off to class after lunch or something). All in all, I just want to thank gloomy, cold upstate New York for helping me appreciate the sun and a blue sky.

Now that that piece is said, I can talk about Carnaval! (My new favorite day of the French school year.) It is basically a day where people dress up in costumes to celebrate the beginning of spring. (Oh - and carnaval is the French spelling of carnival, so I just thought I should stick that in here somewhere.) Our school's Carnaval was yesterday; I dressed up as a playing card (the Queen of Hearts) with Mathilde and another friend, Charlotte (not my host sister). We spent all Sunday making our costumes with the help of paper board and a lot of computer images and now I'm pretty sure there's no more colored printer ink left in France. Charlotte made earrings and rings out of cards, and we coordinated our outfits to be black and red - down to the fingernails haha! 

I was slightly worried because Charlotte and Mathilde are in the same class and they started an hour earlier than me, and I didn't want to be the only one decked out (yes, pun intended) in an absolutely ridiculous costume in my class. And as it turns out, I did look ridiculous and overboard because only about half of my class dressed up (and, mind you, in outfits where you don't have to worry about walking through doorways and such), but I really didn't care because I thought I looked rather fantastic. The weirdest part was walking to school all alone the morning of with random people just staring as you walked by. However, to be completely honest, I kind of felt invincible in my costume. (Yes, it sounds weird, but I can't think of any other way to put it.) As the day went on, I felt less and less self-conscious and on the walk home that evening, I didn't care one bit what people were thinking. 

The main festivities occurred around lunchtime. I brought a picnic and ate with Mathilde and Charlotte outside. We ate our smoked salmon sandwiches, chips, drinkable yogurt, and little chocolate hearts on the grass under the perfectly warm sun. Almost everyone brought picnics, and there were even several people who were ready with blankets and huge parasols haha :p 

After lunch, we all headed to the outdoor track to parade our costumes. Carnaval also consists of a competition for best costume, so there were judges and runway music playing. First place went to my host brother, Simon, and his friends who dressed up as Tetris. I must say, their costumes were really great and original, and they certainly spent a lot of time making it. Here's some pictures of the costumes:

One thing that surprised me was how laid back the school was about dress-code for Carnaval. There was a group of boys that dressed up in kilts and paraded around the track flashing everyone multiple times; including the teachers. (They won second place.) Oh, and Marlboro won for best individual costume. There were also male teachers dressed up with half of their shirt unbuttoned and all their chest hair sticking out. Euh... 'Nuf said. In addition, there were tons of students who brought fake real-looking guns to school as part of their costumes; surely one thing that would never ever, in a million years, pass in an American high school! - Halloween or not. There were some awesome costumes, though, and I definitely agreed with first place going to Tetris. 

After the parade, everything went back to normal minus all the costumes. I had class for yet another 4 hours, so that was kind of painful, but other than that, Carnaval was a success!

French Fire Drills

We had the first spring fire drill at school a couple days ago, and I thought I might as well write a quick blog about it.

I'd like to start off by saying that a fire drill in France is more of a social event than a safety precaution. We had ours at 9 in the morning at the beginning of science class, and as soon as the alarm went off, people started talking immediately. Everyone is pretty relaxed about it here and students took their time shuffling out of class. Don't get me wrong, no one really took them seriously back in New York, but we were always kind of forced to adhere to all the rules. I just remember all the teachers shouting at us to be quiet all the time during a drill and I also remember them being timed with a stopwatch. Administration was always really proud when we beat our fastest time.

Not in France! Once we got outside, everyone strayed from their classes to find their friends and I don't think anyone was keeping track of anyone. A few guys from various classes got together for a quick soccer match, and most everyone was just wandering around and talking. I was with a couple girls from my class, and we actually lost our class at one point. I was nervous that the teacher would be annoyed with us for leaving, but when we actually found him a little while later, he was just chatting with a few other teachers and I don't think he ever even noticed us.

To be honest, I wasn't really surprised by all this because the French are generally very social creatures. Every time I go the supermarket with Anne, we stop to talk to pretty much everyone. As soon as Anne sees someone she recognizes, whether they are friends or acquaintances or coworkers, etc... we stop our shopping and have at least a 15 minute talk with them.

In America, I suppose it's a little rude to stop someone you barely know and talk for that long. It's considered a good thing to be social, but America has a very on-time culture. If you talk to someone that long in the supermarket or on the street, you might be making them late, and that is definitely frowned upon.

Because France has such a laid-back culture, this is rarely a problem. People love talking and socializing and having guests. I still remember my third day in France when I went to a dinner party with the Delenne's that lasted from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next morning. In my opinion, we were totally overstaying our welcome, but more than 6 months later, I realize that it's not rude at all. People love having guests and entertaining until all hours in the morning.

Now I realize why the French love their fire drills. They last a whole lot longer than American fire drills and they are a good way to get out of class for a while and catch up with your friends. Go ahead and socialize, and don't worry about an actual fire because really, how often are there actual fires in schools? haha - Just don't forget your soccer ball, and you'll be good to go!

Auburn in Aubenas

                                             Hôtel de Ville, Aubenas

After several months of split ends, frizziness, and grown-out layers, I finally decided to go the hairdresser's last weekend. I was a little reluctant at first because let's face it, who wants to spend their precious money on hair when you can spend it on food and travel? However, after weeks of careful deliberation and weighing the pros and cons of a haircut (this is seriously the type of thing I think about here) I came to the conclusion that I was in desperate need of a change.

I went to Aubenas to get my hair done at a little studio on Saturday. Carolina came with me, and she probably regretted it afterwards because the whole process took about 2 hours. The hairdresser used a razor to cut off a good half of my hair, and before I could say goodbye, it was already gone. She kept the length, but now it's a lot thinner than it was before and it feels kind of nice. My super long straight bangs transformed into side-swepped bangs and my one-length turned into plenty of choppy layers that start above my ears and cascade down.

When all that was done, I decided to go ahead and change my color. I've never ever changed the color of my hair, mostly cause I thought it would just look weird and unnatural on me, but I really like my new shade. It's a lot darker and it's reddish in the sunlight. (You can't see the color very well in the photo.) I'm really happy with how everything turned out and I have a feeling I will keep it up for a while.

Well, even though you're probably all enthralled by my hair, there's not much more to say on the subject (to your disappointment I'm sure). I spent all weekend at Carolina's, and I discovered that I'm a terrible bowler (like a million times worse than you probably imagine). After 2 rounds I had about 40 points to my name, and I noticed several people giggling and pointing to my scoreboard. In addition, all the guys next to me had around 250 points after 2 rounds, so it was slightly embarrassing. Oh well - at least they can't compete with the hair! After that experience, I'm adding bowling to the list of things I can't do well. The list goes something like this:

1.  Accrosport
2.  Racing Video Games
3.  Speaking in a French accent
4.  Working a Casio calculator
5.  Keeping up with the Dollé's on snowshoeing treks
6.  Being on time
7.  Checking/Answering my phone
8.  Bowling

I am officially out of things to say for the moment. I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to think of some clever witticism to end my post, but nada. Unfortunately, creativity and English seem to be failing me more and more lately these days. Sigh, two more things that'll just end up on the list...