La Mousse au Chocolat

Wow. This week has been an utter whirlwind of excitement!

Thursday, we headed into Albi for French class. The professor seems very nice. This semester we will each be paired up with a French student who will show us around & help us with our English. We were given a tour of the university by the students. We didn’t learn any French in French class so we’ll see what tomorrow brings. We then ate lunch at the cafeteria. I wasn’t impressed. Everyone said that it’s better than Torvian but I haven’t eaten there in a year so it’s a hard judgment call for me. We then headed into the city of Albi for a little tour. We went to the Cathedral of Saint Cecila. It was gorgeous. We then had free time to walk around. We decided to stop at a little café. We then met the deputy mayor of Albi who gave us some history of the town & its existence. Afterwards we stopped at the Casino, which is a very large supermarket (think Wal-Mart but larger). They had 5 aisles for wine & another 5 for hard liquor. It was definitely different then Pennsylvania. We then just had dinner & exhaustedly fell into bed.

Friday we started out with Art History class. We made la mousse au chocolat. I can’t say I ever want to make it again. It’s just raw eggs & chocolate, which kind of grosses me out. We then headed to the classroom where he talked about art & such/so forth. We were each given a painter to do an expose on next class. Mine is Raphael. We then had lunch which was our Tour de Table. Where we learn about what we are eating in French so we can get a better grasp on our French vocabulary. After lunch we had a little French ‘race.’ We were split into teams & had to label different things in the kitchen, classroom, & common room. It was quite the challenge since I know no French. Afterwards Ed, Dr Woods & I decided to take a bike ride. It was very nice & peaceful. It was lots of fun, until we had to ride back up the hill. That hill is a killer but I can proudly say that I made it up without stopping/dying! (: We then had dinner & two French students, Laura & Angeline, came up to have desert & happy Kool-Aid with us (:

Saturday was a little bit of a lazy day. I attempted to wake up early to start on my Art History project but then everyone wanted to go to the grocery store. All week John kept saying that his birthday was in September yet wouldn’t tell us when. He decided to wait until the night before to tell us. So Tim took us to the grocery store so we could buy cake & other goodies for him. The town was supposed to be having a day of history to get to know the town & such. But of course, we had the wrong day & it was really Sunday. So we were down in town & decided to go up to the ridge. It was a very nice view. We could see the back of the monastery (which you can’t ever fully see from our view). It was very nice.  We then watched the town play some bochie ball & then went to Nadine’s to chill. I had a sugar crepe & wasn’t a fan. When we got back, Becca & I made John’s cake. Of course that was sort of a disaster. In France, the batter is already made. You don’t have to add anything to it! You just pour it in the pan & cook it. It was fabulous! We then celebrated John’s birthday after dinner. The French girls came once again & Laura brought her boyfriend (who speaks no English) but he was entertaining anyways. Of course we had a toast to John, cake & ice cream. Angeline was telling us Friday night about a ‘syrup’ that goes on ice cream that is very strong but good & helps with digestion. There was peach & blueberry. I tried the blueberry & it was to die for. We then gave the girls a tour of the house & of course Kerstin had the idea to scare everyone since there had been so much talk about ghosts & ‘the white lady.’ Apparently if you say ‘La dame blanche’ twelve times she will come & kill you. The French students were telling us about horror stories they had with it & Laura’s boyfriend was utterly freaked out even when Shane said it once. They are quite a thrill.

Sunday we went to church. It was very nice. It’s wonderful that it’s right next door to us. When Ed & I walked in we were immediately welcomed by the priest. Unfortunately, he only speaks French so it was hard to communicate with him. We met Peter & Margaret who run the choir & thankfully know English. The mass was in French but thankfully Margaret had printed out the whole mass in French so we could follow along. It was a very nice mass & the French just added some flair to it all. Later that afternoon we went back to the town & got our tour that we thought was Saturday. It was nice to learn about the history of the town & people’s differing views of it all. We then just kind of chilled & worked on our plans for the long weekend/break. We are going to London for the long weekend & Rome for the break with day trips to Assisi & Venice. It shall be fun.

This morning, Monday, we had our first Inquisition & Society class. It was nice just sitting in the stone room on the couches chatting. It was interesting to see that our book went along very well with the history we were told about the city of Albi & everything just fit together perfectly. We could relate to everything we read. It was extremely nice. All of our classes fit together, it’s really a fabulous thing. I just got out of the History of Medicine class. It’s just Dr Woods & I. We sat on the front patio & just discussed what we will be doing. It’s such a nice, relaxed environment & I feel I shall definitely enjoy the class. Now I’m off to Non-Western history class, oh joy… I doubt it will be bad at all.

As you can see, so far things are going pretty fabulous. I like the idea that we only have each class once a week so we have time to do our assignments. We are constantly running around & it feels that we have no free time to blog or do homework! So looks like I better go get on that!