Lunch at Flunch

As usual, there has been a whole lot of things that have happened since my last post. (I really need to come up with a new beginning sentence.) Since my fantastical trip in Espana, I've taken little day trips all over to Montélimar, the little town where my host sister lives in the Vercors, Die (I kid you not, that really is the name of a town here, Valence, Balazuc, and the happy little town of Joyeuse. I've experienced the presidential elections, met the mayor of Chomérac, taken hikes in the mountains, gone horseback riding, eaten my first meal at the oh-so-famous Flunch, spent a day meeting the cute little doggies at the SPA, and I practically perfected my Chopin Impromtu. It's been slightly busy here.

The first thing I remember doing since coming back from Spain was taking a little day trip to Montélimar with my new host mom, Christine. It was a gorgeous day, and I was surprised how cute of a city Montélimar is. I've been there several times to buy nougat, but I never really saw the actual city. Who can concentrate on the pretty buildings and scenery and such when there's nougat to be bought? Bet you didn't think of that.

The most exciting thing I visited in Montélimar (besides the nougat) was the Museum of Miniatures. It was so cool! They were amazing miniatures and each one was unbelievably impressive. They had a Monet repainted on a grain of rice (!) that had all the details viewable only with a microscope. Can you imagine? With my luck and lack of responsibility, I probably would finish this amazing painting on a piece of rice and proceed to lose the grain. NNNOOOOO!!!!!! ( Imagine me sobbing in the corner and pulling my hair out because I can't find it.) Since that's the first thing that popped into my mind, I've decided not to go into a career of miniatures. Other than that, they had tons of other crazy pieces of art like 5 camels passing through the eye of a needle and the world's smallest Eiffel Tower measured at 2mm. I can now say that I have been to the largest and smallest Eiffel Tower in the world.

A few days after that, my host sister, Helene, invited me to spend the weekend at her house in the Vercors. I love going to her house so much. She lives in the middle of the mountains where there aren't many neighbors whatsoever and she lives right next to a vineyard and a river and it's just really beautiful! We spent that afternoon walking in the mountains before heading back to Chomérac to see the elections.

Since my host mom works at the town hall, I watched the process a little; think long and primitive - paper ballots counted by hand. (And if you don't keep up with politics at all, Hollande won over Sarkozy.) I was surprised at how laid back the elections were here. It probably just seems that way after the last huge election where Obama ran and everyone was invested in one way or another, but the election here didn't seem like a big deal at all. Once Hollande was announced, people went right back to their lives like nothing had happened.

Since I have a terrible problem with rambling on and on I'm going to skip over several days to give you a quick summary of my lunch at Flunch before I leave you with some photos to fill in all the fuzzy spots. Basically, I've heard all this talk about Flunch (a self-service cafeteria) all year but I've never actually been there. With the Delenne's, it was always an eating option that was the first crossed out. So, after all this terrible hype, my host sister finally invited me to go there and of course I said yes. We went to the Flunch in Valence and it really was flat-out gross. The whole ambiance led to the typical Flunch experience: the salad bar had more brown and white leaves of lettuce than green, the guy at the table across from us was picking his nose and eating it afterwards, and the guy in back of us was picking his teeth with a toothpick for about 30 minutes. In addition, there was some brown sticky stuff on the table that Helene somehow managed to get on her forehead, and there was a yellow sticky substance on my water glass. I must admit though, that I feel that more French now that I've had my Flunch experience.

Sorry for leaving you all on this note, but I'm gonna say good-bye for now. Here's some pics to cap off the post and get your mind off Flunch:

Montélimar

Drôme

Drôme

Election Day!

Helene at a vegetarian restaurant in Die

Horseback riding with Helene

May 8th: WWII memorial service in Chomérac

Flunch!

Sticky substances at Flunch

SPA event in Valence

Balazuc