Update!

(Pictures and links to pictures at bottom...)
Wow! So much has gone on since I last posted. And other people here in France on my program tell me I don’t update enough, which is creepy since I didn’t even know they read my blog. Anyways, two Saturdays ago Remy, Clare’s host dad who works for the Michelin Guide, had a wine tasting for us at his house. It was awesome…four wines paired with four cheeses. Everything was quite delicious and it was fun talking about what we smelled/tasted in each wine!

I went to Geneva to visit Justine, a friend from Brandeis, a few weekends back! It was tons of fun...had a Halloween party, met her cool friends, ate amazing Ethiopian food, saw the city, went up the tower of the cathedral, saw the jet d'eau, etc. I also bought amazing chocolate :D Very nice city even though it rained a lot. Very international and expensive too. But a fun, quick, easy weekend trip (2 hrs on a direct train!)

Two Sundays ago we went to Lyon to see the ballet of Romeo and Juliette at the Lyon Opera. It was amaaazing. Such incredible dancing and music. My seat was incredible with a perfect view of the entire pit orchestra! It was a huge orchestra: 2 oboes, an English horn even, 2 bassoons, a contrabassoon which you like never see, SIX French horns, harp, etc. etc. So awesome! We also saw a little of Vieux Lyon before the ballet, including hiking (walking?) up the hill to the Basilique de Fourviere with a view of Lyon. Very awesome building and neat old ruins on the way up!

One Friday night Clare and I made dinner here with a few friends! We made a damn good spinach lasagna with fresh mozarelle from an Italian grocery store. It was very yummy! The phrase “stop shitting on my party” has entered into our regular vocab grâce à Mathis lol. It’s quite funny. And we also always joke about how the only thing Clare can cook is tomato crumble. Brittany, Clare and I were out one night and we couldn’t stop laughing about how she’s going to make tomato crumble for her kids every day, all the time. And her kids are going to turn red and have crumbly hair. And she’ll say to them, “It’s okay…one day someone like you will be president too!” (This happened shortly after the election.) It’s hilarious! But then we realized that Clare will have future cooking classes since she’s here for the whole year, so hopefully she can learn a new dish to make too, so her kids don’t turn out to be tomato.

Last weekend we went to Alsace. We had lunch on the way up in a nice little town called Colmar, then went to a winery along La Route des Vins d’Alsace. It was amazing and so fun. I was basically in heaven. We saw where they make the wine, store it, press the grapes, and then got to do a tasting of maybe 6 or 7 different wines that they make, all white since that’s what Alsace is most famous for and what they mainly produce. It was neat to be able to taste and smell the differences between different types of wines, even among the same varietals. I bought some Riesling per my host dad’s request and some Gewürztraminer for myself!

Then in Strasbourg we had dinner at a brasserie where we had flammekueche, the traditional Alsacienne pizza, sans sauce and topped with cheese and onions, sauerkraut, and bacon (or not), served with good Alsacienne beer, and live music. It was pretty fun, but seemed more American than French though, since they played blues and lots of American songs, like Proud Mary (shout out to Sean!). It was crazy though because all of the sudden, these French people at a table next to us all at once did lines of cocaine off of their wrists. I was shocked and couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed! Crazy French kids!


Me and Clare with flammekueche in Strasbourg


The next day we saw the city, went on a boat ride through Strasbourg’s canals, saw the cathedrale and some supposedly amazing astronomical clock that was fairly disappointing, ate lunch, including an amazing fresh tome de vache (cow’s milk cheese) and perhaps the best yogurt of my life, this farm-fresh pear cinnamon yogurt! Yum! And I tried pain des épices, spice bread, a regional specialty.

Last night was la Fête du Beaujolais, a big party that celebrates the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau wine. I went up to Beaujolais to celebrate there on a trip with the CUEF (my university). It was so much fun! We got there a little after 11 pm and joined a parade of people with marching bands playing fun upbeat music, people in costume with big giant flags and banners, etc. And everyone had torches and we just walked/danced down the main street of the town of Beaujeu. There were giant green laser lights shining down the street too, so unbelievably awesome! We eventually made it to this big area where there was a giant “20” (20th anniversary of the Fete du Beaujolais) and we did the countdown to midnight, when there were fireworks and everyone got Beaujolais nouveau to drink! (Beaujolais nouveau can’t be released until the 3rd Thursday of November, hence the massive parties throughout France today….) Beaujolais nouveau is bad wine…I didn’t really like it that much…drinkable but nothing great. It’s not interesting, no character, very fruity and just very ordinary, boring wine (lower quality than vin de table in my opinion).

La Fête du Beaujolais

Then from there we made our way back to this giant tent where there was a huge band with trumpets, sax, trombone, drums, bass, guitar and several singers and backup singers/dancers. It was crazy. They were really good and changed clothes approximately every two songs haha. And we just danced forever and hung out, drank Beaujolais nouveau, etc. It was soooo much fun! Such an awesome night and very memorable! We were all soo glad we went. Oh, and we got back to Grenoble at 6 am lol.

This afternoon Mathis made cookies unbeknownst to me, but he failed majorly haha. He misinterpreted the amount of flour and ended up putting in less flour than sugar, making the dough way too liquidy. It was hilarious and Clare and I died laughing at him because of it lol. We whipped up some new batter just off the tops of our heads based on what looked right and they turned out decently. He made them to take to friends of his, since Clare and I taught him to make them a few weeks back. So funny!

What happens when French people make cookies

Tomorrow I’m going to visit Chris in Dublin! Yay! Hope all’s well with all y’all!

Pictures for those of you without Facebook...
La Fête du Beaujolais
Lyon + Random
Alsace
Geneva

Election Day 2008!

Election Day 2008 – 4 novembre 2008

(I wrote this mainly for me just so I have an account of what I did for the elections! Not that interesting--just tells what I did on Election Day and the day after--but read if you'd like!)

After not sleeping well the night before—I woke up at 4 am and it took foreeeever to go back to sleep—I woke up extra early on Tuesday to read all the newspapers, websites, etc. online with election excitement! The day we’ve been waiting for for 8 years, the culmination of nearly two full years of campaigning, is finally here! The couple days before Tuesday, I’d read articles online for two hours before even starting my day…pitiful! I ate breakfast with my family who was very excited and optimistic for the election and went to normal Tuesday classes. Sooo difficult to concentrate, although everyone afterwards agreed that that was the longest Travaux Pratiques class yet. I ran home after class to read/watch more of the coverage online, ate a quick lunch, and then hopped on the tram to go back to campus for Translation…which turned out to be canceled! The teacher never showed up so we just left after 15 minutes. What a perfect day for that to happen! I went to the BU bureau with Clare and Monica where we took care of some random business and found out details about our election party. Then we went to Monoprix and bought snacks for the election party chez moi.

I mostly hung out at home all afternoon, continuing to read newspapers online, watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report, network coverage of the day, live streaming MSNBC video, etc. Around 22h I met up with Clare, Rachel, Max, Lauren, Marion and the Julias at Bukana Pub, where the owner was super excited for the election and gave us a free drink in honor of Obama! He also had these black cowboy-like hats that he put on himself and me and we did the Uncle Sam Wants You finger-pointing pose haha. He turned on CNN for us even though it was only 5 pm in the States and nothing was happening yet. We hung out for a while, random people came to talk to us about the election, and then Clare and I left and went back chez moi where Kelly met us!

Mathis was still up so we watched part of some movie before realized we needed election coverage as it was almost 1 am! We went down to my room with popcorn courtesy of Clare in hand and turned on NBC’s live streaming election coverage with Brian Williams! From then we just hung out all night watching and cheering and eating delicious St. Felicien cheese, among other things! Kelly fell asleep very briefly, Clare slept for maybe three hours, but I did not sleep a second! I was not a bit tired at any point either…so exciting! It was looking good all night long, of course, with Obama winning Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. And then a little after 5 am, they called it for Obama! We were all completely dumbfounded and shocked that it was called so early and suddenly! It was such a surreal moment seeing hundreds of thousands of cheering people in Chicago’s Grant Park and even news commentators without words. Shortly thereafter, McCain gave a speech from Phoenix conceding in what we all thought was a gracious and surprisingly good speech (if only he’d campaigned that way, he might have had a chance…).

After McCain’s speech we quickly got ready to leave to go to the BU office for our 6 am party to watch results come in (although it was decided already!). We arrived shortly after Marie-Eve at ten till 6; I quickly set up my computer and pulled up NBC right as Obama was taking the stage in Chicago for his victory speech! Kelly, Clare, Marie-Eve and I all watched the speech there as other BU students trickled in, some already knowing the result and others still unaware. Obama’s speech was, of course, incredible and very moving and emotional. I especially liked the part about the centegenarian from Atlanta who had voted. Obama talked about how when she was young she was unable to vote for two reasons: she was black and a woman. He then talked about all that the United States had accomplished in her lifetime ending each line with “Yes we can!” Very moving thinking about how far America has come in the last 100 years and how far it could and will go in my lifetime.

We continued watching more coverage after Obama’s speech and eventually watched it again as more students hadn’t yet seen it. We hung out for a while, eating croissants with tea/coffee while being interviewed by reporters from France 2. People eventually cleared out to go to class, but as I didn’t have class until 10h40, Anna and I stayed and just continued talking for a while. I was planning on skipping class and just going home and sleeping, but no one else was going to, so I felt like I should go—plus it’d be a fun day with Obama’s victory. But the deciding factor was when Anna and I decided that we should buy champagne to take to class. We went to Les Halles where I bought two bottles of champagne (one for class, the other for dinner with my family that night). I went home to be greeted by Alain shouting “Yes we can!” with a heavy French accent! It was very exciting…Maé and Alain were both really happy and pleased with the results (like every single French person) and we talked about the election and my night for a while before I left and went to shower and read and watch coverage.

I then went to class where upon seeing I’d brought champagne, Mme. Juliers gave me the bises! She apparently loves champagne and proceeded to take 15 minutes explaining to us how to “sabrer” a bottle of champagne—opening it with a saber or heavy knife. We then all toasted the election and a better world and drank champagne (at 10:30 am!) while going around the room and saying what the election meant to us and what we thought of it. Very fun!

I then went home after class to read more and watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report live hour-long special from election night over lunch. Then I went to bed and slept for 3 hours, waking very oddly to my alarm, where I ran over to the BU office to get BU Libéré. Then I came back home with Clare who was having dinner at my house to celebrate that night.

My family said we were going to have un repas amélioré in honor of Obama’s victory! It ended up being tons of fun of course! They had some friends over to prendre l’apéritif which was very entertaining. We had port to drink along with these homemade cheese straw-like things, olives and smoked salmon. We discussed the election of course and French society and politics in general. It was hilarious because it was so typically French! Everyone was yelling and talking at the same time about everything, even though they all agreed on the issues they were discussing! So funny! The friends left and we then ate dinner. We started off with champagne before dinner and with a great salad. At one point I was trying for literally 30 seconds to get a piece of salad on my fork that turned out to be a leaf from the sunflower decoration imprinted on the plate! It was hilarious and everyone cracked up about it for a long, long time! For the main course we had blintzes which are very different in France than in the US. It was essentially pancakes that you top with smoked salmon, fish eggs, lemon juice and cream, or whatever you want of that. Very good nonetheless though! This was served with a nice Vacqueyras red wine.

Next came the cheese course, a nice board consisting of Picodon, Roquefort, St. Marcelin, Comté, a tomme of chèvre and vache, and St. Felicien. After cheese came fruit (pears and great green grapes) and then dessert, really good pear and chocolate ice cream. Alain then brought out some marrons glacés, this chestnut candy that was really good, albeit sweet, that we enjoyed with the rest of the champagne.

Funny story from the night: Mathis (just like his father) was being all negative about Obama saying nothing’s happened yet, we have to wait and see if he can live up to what he’s promising, etc. So I told him to stop being a party pooper, teaching him that English expression by translating it into French for him and his parents. He then translated that back into English, “stop shitting on our party” which Clare and I found hysterical! We all laughed about it for a long time and kept saying it throughout the night (and subsequent days!). Soon enough we looked at the clock and realized it was midnight, so Clare had to leave to catch the tram! I went to sleep pretty much immediately and slept 11 hours, skipping my morning French class because I felt quite bad when I woke up for it since I didn’t sleep the previous night!

I went to the university to meet Sam, my tandem partner, for lunch and Mme. Juliers saw me in line, saying “You weren’t in class today, Geoffrey!” as she walked by. She came back and started talking to me and Sam and ended up cutting in front of us in line. Then, she paid for our lunches! I found it pretty hilarious that I don’t go to class and she pays for my lunch! Very exciting few days and I think the feeling that Obama’s going to be our next president is still sinking in! Yay for America! I’m so proud of my country for the first time in a long time!