My daily 15 min bike ride to the beach!

I suggest you put the video on silent because I was having trouble adding a song! 

Tour de France 2012

Thanks to a phone call from the family's friend, we found out that the Tour de France was riding through the neighboring town! So we all quickly finished lunch and jumped in the car to see it! As we walked up to the road, we weren't sure if we had missed it, but to our luck we were just in time!  Before the bikers, many cars covered in advertisements passed through beeping their horns. After the bikers, helicopters swarmed the air as they recorded it for all the people at home.  From the start of the race, my family has been watching bits and pieces after dinner or on the weekend. It was great to experience the energy and excitement of all the people waiting and cheering everyone on.

chanter - to sing

Sing, Sang, Sung......I wish it was as simple in French!

Grocery Shopping

These windows don't exist!  It's all paint!

Montpellier

Crepe Time!

Yesterday I learned how to make crepes! They are quiet simple.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour and the eggs. Gradually add in the milk, stirring to combine. Add the salt and butter; beat until smooth.
2. Heat a lightly buttered frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each crepe. Tilt the pan with a circular motion so that the batter coats the surface evenly. If there is any extra batter, pour in back into the mix.
3. Cook the crepe for about 2 minutes, until the bottom is light brown. Loosen with a spatula, turn and cook the other side. 

My New Addiction

I am head over heals for Speculoos crepes!  Speculoos cookies were traditionally baked just before St. Nicolas' feast on December 5th in the Netherlands, Belgium, and nothern France. However, now they are available all year round! The cookies contain cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamon, and white pepper, they taste similar to gingerbread cookies, but WAY better! Any who, this speculoos paste  is drizzled on crepes and can be added to anything else. I'm in love. 

Sunday's Picnic

If you look closely you may recognise the trees from The Lion King!

Yesterday the whole family packed up the car and headed to the bay where family friends were waiting for us to hop in the boat.  We all jumped on and crossed the bay to our secret shady picnic spot with about 6 other families. We spent the day playing in the water, eating, talking, and playing music. One main difference I noticed besides the numerous amounts of baggettes,  was the generosity and love of goat cheese! One person sliced chunks out of the cheese wedge as everyone else took turns fetching their piece. The team effort really reminded me that "I'm in France!"  In addition, we had someone jammin out Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson (in English but with a French accent) on his guitar. The song almost reminded me of home, except for the fact that many words were accidently replaced with others or missing..... like "Banana Panckes!" It was pretty much a different song with the same beat, but still enjoyable!

Wine Tasting

Saturday evening my host parents invited me to a wine tasting event that their friends organized. We were north of Montpellier at Pic Saint-Loup, which is a wine region.  We were surrounded by mountains and vineyards as we ate dinner to a live music performance. It was really lovely. 

Above is some typical French food which we ate for dinner.

It includes:

 Chevre (goat cheese) 

Prosciutto and cantaloupe 

Terrine de Campagne (pork and pork liver patte) 

Le Fricandeau pate de campagne (pork surprise)  

Homemade Chips 

This is a picture of my family and their three cousins who are visiting from the north of France. We eat every meal outside in the backyard. All year round my family eats outside, including the winter! All they need is a sweater to keep warm.  (I'm jealous!)

Every day our eating schedule is about the same. It's a bit different from America.
9:30 am: Breakfast
1:30- 2pm:  Lunch
5pm: Snack
8:30-9pm: Dinner

A Typical Day

It's already in the middle of my second week, I can't believe how fast these days are flying by!  Waking up at 9:30-10am is no longer a good idea. I'll need to save my beauty sleep for when I'm dead and start my day earlier!  Like every morning here,  I started my day by eating breakfast outside. I was still half asleep when I walked into the kitchen and couldn't understand one word of French that my host mother was saying. I then continued to pour orange juice into my coffee thinking it was milk! It was definitely my most out of wack morning so far. All of my friends at home know that I'm FAR from a morning person, but I think this was their first realization.

After breakfast it was "English Time!" The oldest son and I walked to the center of the village as we spoke english the entire time.  He has taken English classes through out highschool and took part in a cultural exchange this past May in North Carolina. Before we returned home we picked up The International Herald Tribune in English to use for another English exercise.

I often forget that I am in France. I tend to become very comfortable in new places and forget to focus on all the little details around me. However, once I come back to my senses and notice that I'm in a new place, I become fascinated by everything around me! Every home in this village is painted a light pink, tan, or white,  with different colored shutters and  deep red-orange roof shingles. All of the homes are surrounded by a short cement fence and contain a wide variety of beautiful trees, plants, vines, and flowers.  I believe the people here really take pride in their front and back yards since there are so many different types of leaves and flowers at each home which I've never seen before!

(I'm living in the white house on the left! The house right next door is beautifully covered in vines. The picture doesn't do it justice.)

When we arrived back home I went swimming in the pool and then enjoyed a family lunch. Today we started with prosciutto and cantaloupe, followed by a potato, tomato, and sausage salad with bread from the bakery, and finished off with yogurt mixed with homemade nectarine jam. It was mmhmmm good! My host mother is an amazing cook! I'll be posting some of her recipes soon.

My plan for the rest of the day includes reading a french blog of a traveling journalist I met in Athens. He's from Quebec and has been traveling over the past 6 months from the USA to Australia, New Zeland, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Jordan and a ton more places.  A group of us met in our hostel and had a blast spending the day together while exploring the city of Athens. If you're interested in checking him out, copy and paste his stories into Google Translate! Check out the video he posted on June 29th from Athens! We are all eating gyros and enjoying the wonderful live music. As for me, this will be a perfect opportunity to practice my French and catch up on my friend's adventures!      http://www.montourduglobe.com/   Later I hope to go on another walk near the bay and through fields of flowers and vineyards, and this evening I will be meeting up with my sister and her host family in Montpellier for West Coast Swing Lessons! Yippie!!

À Bientôt!

Engl-ench to Fren-ish

This past week I took an intensive French course in Montpellier to refresh my memory. Every morning I woke up around 7am, got ready, enjoyed breakfast outside next to the pool (coffee and a piece of a baguette topped with fig jam) and then hopped on the bus to the city.  It has been really amazing for me to see how my French has improved over this week. The first day I arrived I had a very difficult time getting my point across in French. All of the French I had learned in the past had vanished. Luckily my family understood English, so they consistently helped me translate what I was trying to say from English to French. HOWEVER, now all the words have come back to me!  It's an amazing feeling to be in a French class, on the street, and with my French family and be able to understand a majority of what is being said without translating every single word separately. For the first time ever,  I am experiencing what it's like for a language to just "click."   The difficult part now is conjugating all the verbs and making sure all the words I want to say are in the correct order. I have so much I want to say, but it comes out so slow! My goal is to have all the words pouring out of my mouth effortlessly by the time I leave. It's still the beginning, so I have time!