I keep thinking I'm going to write and then putting it off for later and never actually get to it, so here I finally am.
It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks around here. What with Thanksgiving, the choir concerts, Rotary party, and Noël-In I feel not a little stretched, which is probably one of the causes of the cold I've had since Wednesday night.
Thanksgiving was a rather larger affair than I had imagined it would be, consisting of four different families and about 15 people, all crammed around one average-sized table. Casey and David and I skipped our afternoon classes Friday to start the cooking (pies and cookies), but Casey basically ended up being the one who did all the work. David and I watched Juno. Unfortunately we couldn't stay at Casey's forever, since she and I had orchestra and choir, and while I'm sure she would have skipped orchestra, I couldn't afford to skip choir the day before the first concert. No secret here-I would much rather have gone to orchestra, where I actually feel welcome. After practicing basically non-stop the past week for my flute solo with the choir, at the practice the night before I was informed that I wouldn't be needed any longer. Talk about a burn. But I guess I wasn't too concerned since I got to skip the last concert to go to the Rotary party Saturday. I'll get to that in a bit.
Saturday was the actually Thanksgiving dinner for us, and Casey came over that afternoon to help me finish the cooking. I helped a little more this time, probably because David wasn't there to distract me. And just to prove I did something, I'm going to list everything I helped with, for the benefit of my own ego:
Seasoned the turkey
Peeled the limes
Made the stuffing
Taste-tested the stuffing
Helped stir the onions
Taste-tested the onions
Made the second half of the gravy for the green bean casserole
Taste-tested the second half of the gravy for the green bean casserole
Cut the slices of the cranberry jelly thing
Offered one to Casey to taste-test.
So you see? I wasn't a bump-on-log amoeba-like shape in front of a computer this time. Go me.
David arrived somewhat later (cue rolled eyes from me and Casey) just in time to repeat three of the seven steps I partook of. Take a gander at which three that might be.
Unfortunately, I had to leave for the concert and missed the greater part of the meal itself, but I was told that David acted very valiantly on my part and denied his stomach, trying in vain to make the French wait for me to come back to start eating. Unfortunately, the French egos are difficult to quench, and between the bowing and unnecessary encores, the concert lasted a whopping two hours. I half wonder what made the audience stay sitting that long. But of course, they were determined to get their money's worth, even if they had to block the doors to prevent the choir from escaping. Oops! Did I say escaping? I meant leaving.
Anyway I did come back and enjoy a rather pleasant rest of the evening partaking of turkey and mashed potatoes and drawing on Casey's tablecloth that her mom sent from America. It was Damask. Fancy. For more information see my Thanksgiving pictures on Facebook. Most of them are of the tablecloth.
The next day hosted an event that was as uneventful as uneventful events can eventually be. This event being the second choir concert, and my last for the season, made all the more unbearable with the knowledge that Casey and David were in Switzerland together. No more commentary needed on this subject.
Then Wednesday, just as I was beginning to stress enormously about how the heck I was going to finish my costume for this weekend, I went to Mayelle's house (a French friend, one of the few whom I still allow to speak English to me) after school for several hours. I actually had a really nice time. Her mom, a Vietnamese woman, cooked us a Vietnamese lunch with these meat rolls and sauce and lettuce that were seriously heaven. And which later showed up in Mizuki's contribution to the Rotary party. They were gone in a matter of minutes. Anyway we then had coffee and cheese and watched Arthur the Invisibles in English with French subtitles. :) Then there was a gateau-tarte type thing with raspberries that made my mouth water. She showed me her room and tried to teach me a little Italian, of which all that I understood was that there was nothing I understood. Then her mom made us a somewhat more French meal for dinner-Raclettes, which is basically boiled potatoes+cheese+sausage or ham+Anne's mouth. I've had them three times so far in France and they definitely tie with Cunelles (basically Matzo balls with French sauce) and with Brioche au Saucisson, which is a Lyonnais specialty. Lyon is the food capital of France. We have good food. It happens.
Thursday and Friday were sick days. I woke up feeling like crap and decided to stay home instead of braving the 7 hours of school that would have faced my unwilling body, nose, forehead, and stomach. My host mom had gotten me a doctor's appointment for Friday but that morning she called me and informed me that the doctor had fallen ill herself and had canceled all her appointments. So instead I set myself to the task of ignoring being sick like Dad always does and hoping it'd go away. I don't know how he does it. But it didn't work.
I started on my dress/costume for Noël-In, got frustrated with the sewing machine and gave up. But I did get quite a lot done. I decided not to go to orchestra practice for the third week in a row, being as miserable as I was, and will now have to pay for that by being ridiculously behind.
My SAT Subject Tests were then the following morning. It seems to me that I became mysteriously sick during the SAT last year, too. Strange. Anyway, I didn't have as much trouble concentrating as usual, and I was surprised at how easy I found the tests themselves. French surprised me the most. I had felt so unprepared for it, but when it came down to it there were only a few I didn't understand, and even then, for one that I remembered being confused on and on which I took an educated guess, I looked it up later and had guessed right. Now I know how to tell people I'm lazy. That should come in handy. Je suis parreseuse...
It really was such a beautiful day Saturday that I almost forgot I was sick. It felt so welcoming with everyone in the Christmas spirit and all the decorations up for Noël-In all over the city. I took the bus to Perrache, which is the train station I'll go to to get to Paris in the spring, and then instead of being "parreseuse" and taking the métro a whole two stops, I walked from there to Bellecour along the Rue de Victor Hugo, looking at all the festive shop windows and indulging in an afternoon pain au chocolat. I walked through the Marché de Noël de Lyon, which is the city's version of Noël-In, and slightly larger and more highly publicized than that of my village, bought my dad's Christmas/birthday present, which may not arrive in the States until mid-January, and searched again, in vain, for candy cane tights like to those I had at the ripe old age of five. There are so many specialty tights shops in Lyon I expected that at least one of them would be sporting Christmas tights, but unfortunately the French 'out-of-the-box' style of dress does not include holiday-wear. It's hard to describe the feeling, but the exact temperature and windless-ness of Lyon that morning coupled with the cold sun coming from just the right angle sparked some memory of comfort that I still can't quite place, something about Christmas from a long time ago that I'm not sure even has a definition. It was almost as I was living the Macy's Christmas Day Parade in New York vicariously from Lyon. I didn't feel out-of-place for once in this big city. It felt like everything I'd ever imagined living in a city would be like-a mixture of New York and London and Paris all wrapped in one tight little bundle delivered to me just when I needed it most. I could have stayed there forever, walking down the decked-out streets of Lyon in somewhat of a dream like that for the rest of my life.
Unfortunately I did have to pull myself back to reality and found myself reluctantly home (after sauntering as slowly as possible through the Christmas festivities in La Tour) working once again on my Christmas costume. Once that was out of the way (I'm the kind of person who likes the idea at the beginning and the finished product at the end, and would prefer to leave the mess in between to somebody else) I headed over to Casey's where she and David were already well on their way to being finished with their contributions for the Rotary party that evening. I had forgotten to make my PB&J sandwiches. Some other time. I taste-tested the chocolate from Casey's dish, to make sure it wasn't poisoned, and David and I watched Superbad. We were very helpful.
Sylvie drove us to the station where were collected by a Rotarian and driven to heaven to spend the rest of the evening in. Or at least it looked like heaven. Though David did point out that heaven would have much less cursing coming out of my mouth than this earth currently contains.
Basically we all ate lot of food, took a lot of pictures, and sat and talked while the adults sat and talked, ignoring us. And at the end of the evening I was driven home in the same car as Andrea from Argentina, who is leaving us all Friday, this being the end of her exchange. Apparently in the Southern hemisphere the school year is reversed, and they have school during our spring,summer and fall, which is their fall, winter, and spring. So their exchanges consequently happen at the opposite ends of the year. Though I think it's not all the southern hemisphere that does that, seeing as there are a great many Southern Americans here who are on the regular exchange schedule, like me. Though maybe it's something specific to the Rotary clubs of the country or region.
I'll make my monologue about Sunday short since I pity anyone who has now gone through and read this entire post, which has so far taken me an hour and 14 minutes to write up.
The Noël-In in my village wasn't as fun today as it had looked yesterday, having lacked the cold sun and having added rain into the mix, but it was good anyway. It was a little awkward because I didn't think about the fact that little French children would act exactly the same around a big, older girl as little Americans do, following me and staring up at me and babbling away at me about their families or something like that. But they were cute. However their parents took absolutely no initiative at all to restrain them from pulling at my dress (which was perched precariously across my chest as it was) and shoving their hands into my candy bag. I spoke with Myriam during the parade, met her little sister, and had the opportunity to laugh at her appallingly loose grasp on English. Though there's no getting her to speak French to me. That is a battle long lost.
I had intended to go to Lyon with Dany and Jessie, a Canadian from Winnipeg and a Californian from Eureka (hee hee :) ) but it just ended up being too late and I had virtually no way to get home, it being my host sister Marine's birthday and me not wanting to disturb anyone by asking my host mom to come pick me up in Lyon during dinner. But I suppose I didn't mind too much. I felt really comfortable just sitting in bed talking to Jenna and being paresseuse for the first time in a few weeks. And then we had spaghetti and little mini cakes for Marine's birthday dinner. All's well that ends well.
