Adventures in France: Blessed

Day Eighteen

Today I woke up the earliest since I've been in France! (to avoid torturing my fellow cadets back home, I won't say what time that was.) I actually did want to go on a run as well but I was waiting on a package delivery this morning where I would have to sign upon its reciept. Which was delivered and I seriously have the best family. My mom, of course, overdid it with her care package but I am definitely not complaining. But no more packages because the shipping costs are absolutely ridiculous. But if you're reading this--mom and dad, I LOVE YOUU! And that's not relative to how much Korean food you send me, that's unconditional! I don't even know if I'll be able to finish all of this, but don't worry, I'm a problem solver :) --I did my first French homework which was just passé composé and l'imparfait conjugations. I made strawberry toast for breakfast and watched a Francis Chan video--he is so convicting, I definitely recommend looking him up on youtube. (short blurb: I was able to hear him talk at the Passion Conference at the start of the new year and it was down-right phenomenal!!) Got ready and was out to have my first meal in a restaurant--solo!

There's a local cobblestone alley about a 10 minute walk from my apartment that is FILLED with the coolest French restaurants so I wanted to try one of them. They all have a "formule midi" menu where it's a fixed menu of either (entrée + plat) or (plat + dessert) for a very reasonable price. At this specific restaurant, it was 13 euros! For a gourmet meal made by the chef--you really can't beat it. Today I had le porc rôti (roasted pork) and for dessert, la tarte tatin (a play on apple pie). It was SO BEAUTIFUL and good! Haha. Then I tried to walk off that amazing meal and headed off to class which was great fun with my teacher, Ludvine. She's hilarious but she got pretty upset with us at the end of class because no one responded when she would ask questions and a majority of the class never contributed to discussion. She's really cool--as long as we participate. Thankfully, she wasn't lecturing me because when I talked to her after class about next week, she said I've done well with my participation. Yesssss! Class if 4 hours, it's difficult if only the teacher is talking. So I had class and planned a dinner with two other classmates tomorrow night! I'm excited because they're both super nice. Rosaura is from Colombia and the other guy is from China. By tomorrow, I will have memorized his name! It's quite strange to look at my schedule for the week and the only thing I see are two meetings and then everything else are lunch/dinner/movie plans. I am so blessed to have this opportunity to just embrace the experience that's life. To actually be able to go about my day without a suspense/assignment/cadet breathing down my neck with something else I have to do. I love my school, absolutely!, but this semester was very much needed. After class I headed back home and started making plans for what I'll do with my "winter vacation" starting the 2nd of March. Dinner tonight was avocado with mayo, pumpkin casserole of sorts, yogurt, and fruit.

Funny story. So last night I watched the French movie, Heartbreaker (L'Arnacoeur) and of course when I pronounced it, I was greeted by very confused facial expressions. So then I tried to explain it by doing hand gestures of someone breaking a heart in half--that didn't work. Then I said something along the lines of "someone who *hand gesture* un coeur...le couer...uhhhhh" haha and I kept repeating the title, trying to work on my enunciation and then my hostdad was like "OHHH, L'Arnacoeur" in a perfect accent (which I obviously hadn't used) and we all started laughing, lol. We were all apologizing for not explaining/understanding what I was trying to say. But it was pretty funny. Then I asked them what their favorite French movies were and we started a discussion on that and he showed me to their DVD collection and went through all of their movies (like 300) and started picking out the French ones and giving me a short synopsis on all of them and recommending which ones I should try. That was very, very sweet of him. I was beyond thrilled because I'm always looking for ways to have more conversation with them, but to not be so forced about it. I'm about to try one of the movies, I'll give a review of it later once I've finished.