School school school and authentic French dinner

Bonjour!

Lately, it's been all about the school work. I have 2 papers due this week and I have a presentation due the very first day back after the break in January, so my plan is to finish that before my flight to Atlanta, too. The work has been keeping me indoors, but so has the weather, because it is literally FREEZING outside. It's snowed a few times already, but I can mostly feel it in my toes after about 5 minutes of walking around outside.


Here's some proof! After Monica and I went to the Bastille Market on Saturday morning, we had to thaw our toes on the heater in my apartment.


This past Friday I was very luckily invited to dinner by Monica's landlord and his wife (I say luckily because I just happened to be there when he invited Monica and her roommate for dinner). Now, I already like French food, but home-made French food is AMAZING!! The landlord cooked the actual dinner and his wife made the dessert, and let me just walk you through how cool that evening was:

When we first got there, both the landlord and his wife were very welcoming- they took our coats and purses and told us to go sit in the living room where we all had some appetizers and drank champagne and pretty much introduced ourselves. They made this loaf of bread that had all these amazing spices in it- I have no idea what it was, but it resembled meatloaf with the mix of stuff inside. There were almonds and pistachios and the champagne was very good too. We talked about where everyone was from and finished the champagne among the 5 of us.

After that, we moved into the dining room for the dinner. They had put up a Christmas tree and had 2 candelabras lit on the table. The entrée and the main course were very French according to our hosts (they were meticulous about that because they knew we would appreciate it). We first had a vegetable dish that was served cold and was soooo delicious, and the main course was meat roasted with carrots that was so tender and juicy... it's making my mouth water all over again. With our meal, we drank a bottle of red wine from the south-eastern part of France.

For dessert, we had spiced cake with fruit compote and vanilla ice cream. The best part was the wine though: it was specifically a dessert wine because it was very sweet.

If our hosts were being perfectly true to French custom, then I assume that French dinners in general are extremely delicious and you get to drink a LOT of good wine! We spoke French for the full 2 or 3 hours we were there, and I noticed my French getting better and better as the night wore on (but honestly I think the wine helped a lot, ha ha!!). As far as the topics of conversation went, it wasn't much different than what you could expect from any dinner party back home. I think the weirdest question of the night was: "Have any of you had any French lovers yet?", but that's about all (only one of us said "yes", and it most definitely was not me because I have an amazing boyfriend back home!!). We complimented the hosts on the cooking several times that night, made several toasts in several languages, and thanked them profusely at the end of the night. I'm hoping for another invitation before my year in Paris is over!!


After the dinner, Monica and I decided to walk around St. Michel a bit and we found this! No, it's not a second Halloween in Paris. It was a bachelor party! Apparently, bachelor parties here mean wearing ridiculous costumes and drinking. I'm guessing the pig was the bachelor.



On a not-so-light note, I know some of you have heard about the potentially bad situation yesterday (Dec. 16th) at a shopping center here in Paris. The police found 5 sticks of dynamite in Printemps, which is a big store close to the Galeries Lafayette that I talked about before. From what I heard, nothing actually exploded, it was just a threat, and everyone is safe. I was nowhere near Printemps yesterday, so no need to worry. And just to make Mom sleep easier, I promise to stay away from major shopping centers for the moment.
Here are some links to news articles if you want to know more:

Article from guardian.co.uk

Article from The Connexion

Article from the Washington Times

Bisous XOXO