Food Again

The escargot were alright,  but I think they are an acquired taste.  They were made by Sophie's mother, the picture below is of her cooking the escargot.I think so far my favorite dish here is quiche.  Sophie's recipe for quiche is awesome, so I typed a copy to make at home.  I also really like the sea food and a lot of the salads Sophie makes here.

In the YES orientation in Canada, they told me to bring kraft dinner or something for comfort food, but I'm not all that emotionally attached to kraft dinner, so I didn't bring anything.  The food I've most missed actually is Baba Ganoush and corn chips.

Today we went to a farmers Market, which is called a "marché". I thought we were going for a walk.  I'm still not exactly fluent in french, although I can now carry descent conversation and understand what is going on in movies.  In the marché, there were three counters of cheese.  I got to try two different kinds which were both really good, I forgot to get the names of them, which I should really start writing down.

One of my favorite parts of travelling to France is all of the food I've had the chance to try.  It has even made me think that a possible career choice for me is to become a nutritionist.  I don't think I'm a good enough cook to be a chef for a living, but I have an avid interest in the molecular composition of food and how it relates to the production and use of energy and other vital substances in the body.  Also, I love taking about it, so it's possibly a perfect career choice.

Some pictures of the marché:

Today at lunch I tried spiral shellfish, which I liked less than the muscles and more than the escargot.  We also had prawns which are delicious but really hard to eat.  You only eat about a sixth of the fish, the rest you have to carefully remove from the part that you eat (which is in the middle).  I forgot to take a picture, but if you don't know what a prawn is it's like a big shrimp, and you only eat the inside of the tail and a small portion of the middle part of the body that is attached to the head.

I've been looking through Sophie's cookbooks and I took pictures of some of the recipes I want to try.  She has two cookbooks full of desserts.  I think they were both gifts, because this family doesn't eat a lot of desserts.  I also looked through another cookbook with entrees and appetizers (and more desserts).  I found a new truffle recipe!  I can hardly wait to bake for Christmas now.  I'll have to make a quarter of each recipe so I can make it all.  With what time I do not know, I'll have to invent a new hour - somewhere between 6 and 7pm.

That's all for now folks,  I'll post again either tomorrow or Wednesday  :)

Voila!  On mange ça ce soir:  It's escargot, and if I like it I'll definitely be making it at home :)

The Food Here, Part One

As the title suggests, I have quite a bit to say about the food here.  First of all, people here eat at different times then we do in Canada.  On school days, I'm used to eating at 6:30am, 11am, then 4 or 5pm.  Here I eat at about 7:10, 13:00 (1pm), and 20:00 (8pm).  I'm getting used to it, but it actually took a while to stop being absolutely famished as soon as I got home.  Not that it's a bad thing, actually eating late could prevent being really hungry at 3am, (if I was ever still awake at 3am).  The next thing I want to talk about is regional food.  Each little region of France has it's own special dish.  Here in Vendee, there are "haricots" (beans), cooked with various spices which is quite tasty.  There is also brioche, a soft bread usually in the form of a gigantic muffin that is really soft and delicious.  I'm going to attempt to make it for the next Canadian potluck I attend.

I really thought that I didn't like seafood, but apparently I was wrong:  I just don't like river fish.   I tried muscles and loved them.  This is my plate:

I didn't think of taking the picture until after I'd eaten all of them, but we added an uneaten one in the top right corner.  I also tried sole, which I believe is flounder in English.  It was also very tasty.

Another difference between French and Canadian cuisine is the structure.  Here if you're in a restaurant for lunch and dinner there is always a first course, a main course and a dessert.  You don't order a hamburger at a restaurant, that's just fast food places.  When you have guests over you can have an apéritif, where you serve wine and a small snack such as nuts or chips and converse with your guests.  What kind of alcohol you drink and the snacks you serve depends on what region you are in.  Oliviere asked me what a Canadian apéritif was.  I don't think there is one.  I'm not claiming to be an expert on Canada, but my colleagues in Nairn occasionally invited each other over for a beer on the porch, and whenever guests come over we always offer them something to drink, it's doesn't have a name though.

I haven't eaten out much, but a few of the things people eat at amusement parks and touristy areas are waffles, crêpes, and chichi (or churros in the US), which is a kind of large sweet french fry served in a paper cone with chocolate, caramel or nutella (they're very big on nutella here).  They're delicious, but the day I had some I forgot my camera, so here is a picture from the internet:

They are about one inch in diameter, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.  I actually prefer them to the one crêpe I had in Paris (It was undercooked), I'd definitely recommend these.  They may have them in Canada, although I've never seen them before.  I think they're an American thing.

So far there are very few things I've tried and not liked.  I don't like sausages here.  That's one thing that Canadians can definitely do better (in my opinion).  Don't tell the Germans I said that.  And pâte, that one is not really to my taste.  It's a kind of meat spread you eat alone or serve with bread.  And that's it, everything else is amazingly delicious (at home, mind you, the cafeteria at school is a different story for part 2).

So that's it for now, the food is so interesting there may be a part 3, and there will definitely be a part 2 as soon as I remember to take a picture of the school cafeteria.

School (continued)

So it''s been two weeks and two days since I arrived here, and I have to say my French is much improved.  I'm actually starting to understand a little bit in philosophy class, and that is all arbitrary ideas and confusing words.  It's one of the hardest classes for everyone here.  My SVT (biology) class is the second easiest next to English, because it is all stuff I've already done in Canada.  Physique et Chimie is very difficult, it is a combination of Physics and Chemistry, and since I've done Physics but not Chemistry, it rotates from being mildly confusing to EXTREMELY confusing in turns.  Homework takes three times as long to do in French because I not only have to translate the words from French, I have to figure out what the question is asking for.  Anyone who has done math or physics related questions in a textbook knows that they always word the question in the least understandable way while still being specific enough to point it out when you get the answer wrong.  Math is also very difficult, although wonderful host father Olivier has been helping me out with it.  He's an engineer and works in an usine, which is French for plant of a manufacturing nature.  Today I was able to answer a question in physics, although it was a pretty easy question.  We had to come up with a contemporary example of a progressive wave that travels on two planes.  My answer was "La Ola" which is a Spanish term commonly used in French.  You should look it up.  In Phys. ed the other students choose 4 sports to do this year.  I got to choose 2 sports because I only stay for a third of the school year.   I chose swimming and gymnastics.  I spoke to my art teacher and he says I can do anything I want in his class since I'm not preparing for the bac.

The bac is so important it needs it's own paragraph.  The French baccalauréat is the end of the year exams for the terminal class here.  It's huge, and very difficult.  The way teachers talk about it now is similar to the way people talk about exams a month ahead of time in Canada, and it's in June.  I guess it's like SATs in the US.  Because I'm not preparing for the bac, nothing I do here means anything, and because I'm an anglophone, anything I do right is applauded and anything I do wrong is perfectly understandable.  Being an exchange student is awesome, because I'm literally only there because I want to learn something, and I only do homework because I want to improve my french and keep up with the class.  Marks and tests don't matter, I'm here to learn.  How often in a lifetime does anyone ever get to say that I wonder?

In this school, there are two English teachers, and they both speak English with a British accent mixed in with the French accent.  The way they put things is slightly different, and I keep thinking it's wrong how they put things in class in comparison to the way I'm used to speaking English, but I've realized that it's just that they're learning British English instead of Canadian English.  An example is they say "he has got a prosthetic leg" rather than "he has a prosthetic leg" it's not wrong, I'd just never use it in that context.  On the topic of accents, I've had a lot of confusion trying to pronounce my name in French so that they can understand it here.  Brennan especially, here it would be pronounced "Breynnon" with a french accent, and even though I've heard my first name with a French accent all my life from the french half of my family, it is apparently with a Quebecois accent because I get blank looks every time I pronounce it.

In school, there are two general differences that are apparent right away:  One, there is no such thing as a three hole punch.  Students cut and glue handouts directly into their notes.  It's a good thing I brought glue with me, because since I got here I haven't seen any hole punchers, not even in the library.  The concept is foreign to them.  Two, the standard paper size is about one inch longer then standard note paper in Canada, it is lined normally with an added grid slightly lighter and four more horizontal lines between the standard lines in a different color, also light.  It is slightly thicker and the paper it's self is super white, there are six holes on the side.  I'm not sure what the other three are for, but it's probably fancy.    It makes my paper look medevil.  Maybe you can get paper like that in Canada.  Maybe my family just always gets medevil paper.  I don't know.  What I do know is it makes notes look so much more important.  I'll keep you posted on other differences as they become apparent.

That's all for now, If you have any thoughts in response to this post you should very quickly turn them into comments before they run away   :)

Puy du fou

On Friday (yesterday), Olivier and Sophie took me to go see a play called Puy du Fou.  It is the story of the history of Vendée, the province I am currently in, and it is the largest outdoor show in the world.  It was amazing!  There were knights, cannons and fireworks, and even though it was in French, I still understood because it's mostly acting with a few poetic words in between.  It started at 10 pm and ended at 12.  The lighting was absolutely amazing.  If any of you ever go to this half of Europe I encourage you to see this show, because it is spectacular.

Beside the site of the play is the theme park, which I am going to tomorrow.  I'll take lots of pictures, but I will probably post only one.  That's all for now  :)

Here is the link to the theme park's website:  Puy du Fou.

School

Tuesday Sept 4

I went to the high school to enroll in my classes today (Tuesday).  I'm in a bunch of sciences and math classes.  I've already taken 12 U science and maths and I'm really hoping that there are some major parallels here, it would make my life so much easier.  I have two English classes a week, that much is a blessing.  After that, Sophie took me to some dance classes, a ballet class and a modern class.  It was fun, although the level wasn't as high as I'm used to.  I really want to do some classes so that I don't freeze up and stop being able to dance.  There are elective dance courses at the Lycee so I should have at least one a week.  It looks like I'll be able to take visual arts after all!  Here, l'art visuel is more like media arts.  Visual arts is actually called de l'art plastiques, and I think I'll have at least a couple of hours a week.

This is my timetable, if you have REALLY good eyes, you can see that each day is different, and that I get off school at 11 on Wednesday and 2:00 on Friday.  All other days go until 6:00pm (17:55).  The extra time is balanced out with lots of breaks.  There are two weeks off every third month, plus the summer.


First day of school:
Today (Wednesday) was the first day of high school.  I had an orientation and a civics class.  I understood little of either, and I was falling asleep in civics.  It's not like Canadian civics, let me tell you!  From what I was able to understand, there are two dissertations, an essay and an oral presentation planned for the year.  I'm glad I'm only here for 3 months, that much would be tough for somebody native to the french language, and I certainly am not.   I'm really looking forward to art.  I just found the paintbrushes that I packed.  :)
Right now I'm waiting to be picked up from school.  Wednesday is only a half day, so school ended at 11:00.  The campus here is really quite beautiful, there are trees and grass and benches, and the school is set up in five or six separate buildings.

The blue squares are buildings, the red squares are administrative buildings, and the green parts are grass.  There is a big cafeteria and a smallish library, 850 students go to this school.



Tomorrow is a full day of school, it starts with math, then physics, then biology, then an English class.  Then there is more science.  It'll be great!  I'm only here for a quarter of a year, so I'll probably be gone before any major assignments are due.

Futurescope

Monday, Sept 3

Today, myself, Marie-lou and some friends of hers went to an amusement park called Futurescope.  It has a lot of films with moving chairs, imax movies and the like.  It was very fun, although I understood only the gist of the films.  One was called "Astromouches" and it was about three flies that go to space, it was the cutest thing ever.  The whole park was really well decorated, this is my favorite picture:

It was a super fun day, although I hardly said three words the whole time.  I'm starting to get to know more french but it's still hard to understand when people talk really fast.

Bonjour tout les mondes! I'm in Laronde.  I've been told that I have a Canadian accent when I speak French, but I don't have one when I speak English.  Cool eh?

It's fairly cold here, but it's very beautiful and old.  I took a train ride today from Paris to Nante and from Nante to La Roche Sur la Yon where my host family picked me up.  It's 19:41 here but it'll be 13:41 for you guys in Canada.  That's all for now!  :)