La Vie Chérie: February 2013

Thursday, February 14, 2013

2012 Wrap Up

After my vacation with my parents came to an end, I resumed my normal routine of working 12 hours a week, scampering around Dax on the weekends, French Coffee Friotellas on Wednesdays, attending the home rugby games and burrowing indoors on Sundays since nothing is open and the weather was usually discouraging anyway.

At the end of November we held our own Thanksgiving, which I not-so-cleverly dubbed Frenchgiving. Although only 2 of us are actually American (Emily and I), Emma lived in the US when she was younger and used to celebrate the holiday, and the others were eager to try it out. We missed out on many of my favorite traditions, including watching the Macy's Day Parade, the football game and watching the loads of Christmas movies on TV. I was sad to not be home, but it was still a lot of fun to celebrate here. We had some of your typical foods, such as sweet potatoes with marshmellows, stuffing, gravy, butternut squash and a green bean casserole. We also had some non-traditional foods, such as french onion soup (I made this last year too) and pigs in a blanket. Instead of turkey since it's hard to acquire one and we don't have the capacity to cook one anyway, we went to the market that morning and got two farm-fresh chickens. Not a bad substitute! And of course we had plenty of wine to go around.

We celebrated a lot of birthdays towards the end of the year as well: Emma's was in mid November, Rosalyn's and Sherry's at the beginning of December and Emily and Natasha's right before Christmas. We had the standard cake and ice cream for each. If we were feeling fancy we went to eat at a nice restaurant. We also celebrated our friend Emilie's birthday by going bowling and eating tapas at this place called Tex Mex which was fun. I somehow beat everyone (~20 - 25 people) during the first game since I kept getting lucky with strikes and spares. When we played a second round though, I came in second to last :(

At Tex Mex

I made a couple little day trips, one to St. Jean de Luz/just across the border in Spain with Keidy and a teacher from school, one to Bayonne with Sherry and Elena and another to Bordeaux with Emma and Rosalyn (we met up with Natasha who was staying with her friend for the weekend). The best parts were the Christmas markets - best invention ever. Good food, hot wine and tons of cool gifts. The Christmas market in Bordeaux had a tiny little animal petting farm which was sahweet. There was a silly billy goat that kept staring at my drink. In Bayonne we went to a chocolate museum which was mucho mucho better than the one I went to in Biarritz. In Bordeaux we also ice skated on the outdoor rink.

In St. Jean de Luz

Bayonne

At the chocolate museum in Bayonne with Elena

Bordeaux

In Bordeaux with some hooligans

One Sunday morning Emily, Emma, Sherry and I went on a wine tasting tour with a very eclectic teacher from the high school. She took us to Jurançon, south of Pau for "La journée des portes ouvertes" (day of open doors). Numerous wineries in the region host free wine tastings for the occasion. Each also had really good food typical of the region. By the 3rd one we were a bit white wined-out and all passed out on the ride home.

In Jurançon

In mid-December, I traveled to Montpellier to meet up with Andrea, my friend from my host family when I studied abroad in 2010. She lives in Colombia so we don't have many chances to see each other. We stayed with our host family so it was fun to see them as well. It was weird to be back though without the familiar faces I was accustomed to seeing in that city. Also I forgot how sketchy it could be with the homeless/gypsy/traveler population. Note to self: don't listen to your friends when they tell you you don't need to buy a tram ticket; you will get fined. It was fun to go back to the places we used to go out and I went to my favorite restaurant: this hole-in-the-wall asian fusion place (where I incidentally almost choked on their stir fry). All in all it was a good weekend, full of reminiscing. Miss you, la petite folle!

The week before break, we decided to hold a Secret Santa gift exchange. We held it in my room since I'm an xmas freak and had the most decorations. We each brought a dish to share (I made spinach artichoke dip mhmm) and Emma played Santa's Helper handing out gifts. Emily turned out to be Santa thanks to a Santa hat she got, given by yours truly.

Secret Santa

Out of nowhere it was already Christmas and we were each on our way home, to visit family, or to travel across Europe with friends for the holidays. I had a minor freak-out on the way back since I had forgotten to print one leg of my train journey and then forgot to make sure my flight was confirmed (oops!) but both turned out fine. My flight was delayed and then customs in DC was a complete mess. However, it wasn't nearly as stressful as the time I flew home after study abroad in 2010 with the big snowstorm (I had a break down at Charles de Gaulle thinking that I wasn't going to make it home for Christmas at all- people had been sleeping on yoga mats in the airport for days).

When I left the US back in September I didn't have the intentions of coming home at Christmas, but I'm really glad I did. I couldn't imagine Christmas without my family (& Cami, my cat). It was also really great to see a bunch of my friends. I made the requisite Tyson's trip, went skiing, went to a day spa and had a lot of lazy mornings. And I got to ring in the New Year with these two goofballs:

Bonne Année!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Vacances de Toussaint: Roma

I can't believe how long I've been putting off writing this post. So here it goes:

The last stop on my trip with my parents in November was Rome.

We arrived late at night, so I didn't have a grand first impression of the city. We got to our hotel, which was located a block or two from the main train station, Termini. There were a lot of weird people hanging around, so we got out of there as quickly as we could.

We went to a restaurant down the block from our hotel that was in our Frommer's guide book. It looked like a typical Italian restaurant, except none of the waiters were actually Italian. The owner was young and couldn't have been more than 28 years old (in my notes I had described him as, "unfairly beautiful"). We engaged in a brief conversation with him in which he grumbled about globalization and cross-culturization and how the Chinese are producing everything for everyone now. He then proceeded to introduce us to his Mexican/American girlfriend in his restaurant full of Bangladeshis (that term sounds weird, but I look that up and it's right). Talk about crossing cultures.

On the way back there was a server standing outside a different restaurant trying to lure in customers and for some reason mistook me as German and kept saying "Guten nachten" or "Guten tag" and other German salutations depending on the time of day. I saw him almost every time we left the hotel and never bothered to correct him.

I don't know why, but I wasn't as enthralled with the 'Eternal City' as I thought I was going to be. It was my first time in Italy and I had really been looking forward to it but I think I built it up in my head so much that when we got there I was under thrilled.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool city and amazing to see the ancient ruins that predate Jesus by hundreds of years and art history landmarks that I had studied in class like the

Pieta, Sistine Chapel, Arch of Constantine and (of course) the Colosseum.

What amazes me is that all the ruins are just plain in the middle of the city. The Forum is next to one of Rome's busiest roads and local citizens just go about their business passing by these thousand-year-old ruins.

We were in Rome the night of the election, so my mom got up about every hour or so in the wee hours of the morning to see who won. And then when our waiter at breakfast the next day commented on Obama's win, my mom told him that Obama was my dad's boss. Which technically is accurate, but with many hierarchial layers in between.

One aspect I felt let down on was the food. In general it wasn't nearly as good as the famed, authentic Italian food I had heard of. We found a couple of really good restaurants, but there are so many tourist trap restaurants we had to be careful.

For some reason there's a large number of Bangladeshi immigrants in Rome. They work in the restaurants, they own bakery or convenience shops and they're the annoying guys ruining the major attractions by flinging the glowing toys up in the air or shoving key chains in your face.

A haunting old friend joined us from the last time I traveled around Europe with my parents: Rick Steves. He was the bain of our Spain trip. We had to do everything the way Rick Steves said. Man that guy is pretentious. Although he does have some pretty good tips and self-guided walks and museum tours.

I'm really glad we were there during off-peak tourist season because I can't even imagine what's it's like in the summer. We were harassed incessantly when we were within a mile radius of the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica by people trying to sell us "advanced" or "exclusive" tickets to skip lines. People tried telling us we would wait 2 hours to get into the museum. Not true. I think we waited 10 minutes and we didn't even reserve tickets in advance. We ignored everyone pretending we didn't speak English, but one guy saw the book and shouted, "I know you're American, you've got Rick Steves!"

Here are some highlights of the trip:

Our first day we wandered around the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. The Forum was the heart of ancient Rome, where many important government buildings still stand (in ruins) and where the hustle and bustle of everyday life took place. There's a temple now dedicated to Caesar in front of which he was betrayed (I think..). The Colosseum is just enormous and it blows my mind that what stands today is only 1/3 of the original structure. Much of the layering is still present, so you can see where they used to hold the exotic animals or gladiators before they were led up to fight.