Life here doesn't give me too much to complain about. I have so much to be thankful for! Sometimes I don't have a lot to do, but that's when I try to rest from being crazy busy during the rest of week. Anyway, like every week, on Monday I went to work, and then after a bit of rest I went to play in a volleyball game which we lost 2-3 to a team of oldies. We even won the first two games, making it even more aggravating...
On Tuesday things went like normal except that a mom from one of the kids at Vissenty wanted me to come teach her older daughter a private English lesson that night, so right after work Isabelle took me to her house. I met Maurine, a girl about Anouk's age, and helped her a little bit with a story she had to write on her own just using some random pictures the teacher had given them. The story was...how you would expect it to be haha. I wasn't about to rewrite the whole thing though, so I corrected the grammar and did my best to have it make any sense. I'm not 100% that I succeeded...
Otherwise, the lesson went great, and her mom said Maurine really appreciated it and liked my 'methods,' so that's comforting! I like to think these people aren't just paying me for nothing. That wrapped up my Tuesday though, so not much more to talk about...
Mercredi! Wednesday was a blast. On Tuesday night I got a call from Fabienne to tell me that Thomas couldn't do a lesson Wednesday, so I woke up as late as I wanted and lazied about for a while, got on Facebook and three minutes later had made plans to go down to Valence for the day!
Turns out Ashley (one of my English friends who lives in Annonay) was planning on going down there to go ice skating and go out to dinner with some of the other assistants and she invited me to come with! I didn't have any plans at all for the day, and as tempting as it was to stay in my room slaying dragons all day, I can always do that back in the States. So I said yes!
After a quick bite to eat I walked down to the gare (which takes the better part of an hour) to meet Ashley at 14h00 to take the bus up to Péage de Roussillon where we would catch a train down to Valence around 15h00. Well turns out our train from Péage was about 20 minutes late, and we were ten minutes early anyway, so we walked down to a bar in town and sat down for a cup of quite tasty hot cocao : 2€ (remember this for later). Fun fact : the French serve their hot chocolate with cubes of sugar on the side - in case you want to add sugar to your cup of liquid chocolate...yo dawg...! meme comes to mind...look it up :P Anyway I had to try it of course, and honestly it doesn't really taste any different. I think I'll stick to my already not-so-healthy-so-not-gonna-make-it-worse hot choclate. Merci.
Thirty minutes later we headed back to the station and hide a peaceful ride down to Valence. Ashley is a pro being familiar with Valence, so we headed out from the station and walked around (at the first corner I was lost) and made our way to our friend Jess's (another rad English girl who's an assistant in Valence) apartment. We hung out there for a little bit and got in touch with the other assistants in the area who were waiting for us to show up so we could all go ice skating.
Another English girl, our friend Emily, lives down the way from Jess so we walked down to her place and then we all headed out towards to rink to meet up with everyone else. It was too bad our train was really late, because we lost a lot of time of skating and they closed like 30 minutes after we got there. We had fun though. I didn't learn anything new, but it's comforting to know I can still skate - kindof. I can go really fast, that's it. I can't stop, can barely turn, and every once in a while can pull a full spin. The good news is that I only fell once! The bad news is that for the next 3 weeks I would have burns a little above my ankles where the skates were rubbing against my skin.
More of our friends met up with us at the rink, but didn't skate with us because it was too late. We all walked away from the rink to a bar to get some drinks and fries before meeting up with MORE people for dinner at the Vodka Steakhouse that was right in front of the train station. I had another hot chocolate - 3.50€ (big city prices are typically a lot higher than the smaller cities like Péage, where my cocoa only cost 2€. Bah, humbug!).
The girls ordered either wine or beer, which was all cheaper than my drink, AND they had more to drink. We were there for maybe an hour being joyous and whatnot, and the fries were really teasing and I got really hungry so eventually we left to the restaurant to at least find our seats and so we could munch on some bread while we waited for the rest of the party.
I forget how many we were that night...after some quick thinking and reanimating the night in my head I think we were 11. I would draw out the table for you but I don't have a pencil, and also that would suck for my computer screen. Also I suck at drawing. Also I don't think I took any pictures of the whole group...we'll see after I'm done writing (that's when I go look for pictures to add). ANYway.
For dessert I had to get this 'marron glacé' dish, which was chestnut ice cream. I don't know if I've mentioned this on here before...but I am obsessed with chestnuts now. There's a smaller chestnut called 'châtaigne' but it's basically the same, and they're WAY good. I've had crêpes de marron, gateau de châtaigne, crème de châtaigne mixed with fromage blanc, and now marron glacé. I could eat the stuff all day. All. Day. Long. Out of a chestnut bowl with a chestnut spoon. So good.
Basically I stuffed myself. Most everyone did. Some of the girls were a little silly by the end of two carafes of wine, but we were all having a lot of fun so we went from the restaurant to another bar for...more drinks! Haha I'm still getting used to the night life here...
We parted ways after another hour or so, after convincing our Puerto Rican friend that our English friend was of royal blood and knew the Queen and everybody. That was hilarious. Jess, Ashley, and I all headed back to Jess's for the night, only to get up a few hours later to catch a train back to Annonay where Ashley had to work. I couldn't imagine having the strength to do what she does! A powerhouse, that one. The force must be strong with her.
This would be a good break point for my next post about the Fête des Lumières, which was an adventure in itself!
Continue straight on to the next post if you wish…
No comments:
Post a Comment