My 100th Post! Quel drame !

Quel drame ! What drama!

Saturday was chilly again, but Caitlin, Katherine and I braved the wind to go to the Place de Lices market around 9am. I mostly just wanted mini-muffins, and I got 16 to have two of each flavor! I also had to go to the central bank branch and get a bank check to pay for the Paris apartment in June. Oh, the joys of explaining myself in French to strangers...

We also ended up buying food for lunch, and I tried paella, rice with mussels, shrimp, calamari, chicken, steak, chorizo, and yummy spices. We sat in the Tchai House for awhile too, a tea house/café place with the only chai tea lattes in town. Caitlin and I napped in the afternoon while our third went on a rendez-vous with a male assistant ;) Apart from a quick stop at H&M for returns, we were in for the evening and made tacos with an El Paso kit that Ma sent me in the most recent package (eating the leftovers now, yum!).

After that, I decided that I wanted to go clubbing. Caitlin was easily swayed, so I prettied myself up and we went to Le Delicatessan, a club set in the old Prison Saint-Michel with stone vaulted rooms, around 12:45am. Tangent here: French clubs don't open until midnight, but they stay open until 5, 6 or 7am! In the US, it's more like 10pm opening and 2am closing! Ack! We went "early" because girls were free before 1:30, and we got waved through the line by the bouncer who spoke English with us and thought we were cool. He even knew where Tennessee was!

So at this point, the club was still rather empty inside, so we got (incredibly expensive) drinks and settled at a table to wait out the slow times. Two French guys from Normandy came up to talk to us--one was a baker whom I complemented on the deliciousness of French bread, and the other had actually worked in East Tennessee for awhile and had been to Knoxville! WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! Lol!

When the dance floor was fuller, we joined in and met some other people who wanted to speak Franglais with us! I suppose they heard us speaking American ;) I talked to another French guy who had worked in Chicago, so we reminiced a bit about the Windy City. It was a super fun night, and tons of people wanted to talk to us! I'm so happy we did it! We got home around 4am, and Katherine was sound asleep on the air mattress.

The next morning, Katherine got up early to go to the ice skating rink, and Caitlin and I joined her after a few more hours of sleep. Katherine is a skating pro, so she showed adept Caitlin some tricks while I wobbled around a few times near the wall. I think my last ice skate was Freshman year of college! People held my hand the whole time then... Sigh...

It was intense but a good excuse to get out of the apartment on a boring Sunday. The big crisis occured when we returned to my apartment and the electricity was out! I, of course, freaked out and called the electric company and my landlord, but then Caitlin found the breaker box downstairs and pushed a button that fixed everything! Hooray! Thanks to her for pulling me through all the troubled times in France! :D

Katherine left us for home and a skype date with her sister, and Caitlin is bumming here with me until her 7:15pm train. Phew! What a wonderful, exciting weekend for the occasion of my 100th post! Thanks for hanging in there, friends!

Weekend

I made it through my long class day by doing the Valentine's lesson and asking the ice breaker questions--both activities the kids enjoy while they end up saying really funny things!

Caitlin and her friend Angela came to Rennes last night, and we had a delicious dinner at the Crêperie Ste Mélaine, which is the best in town, or so I hear. I believe it after tasting organic cider, a vegetarian galette, and a crepe with chocolate, coconut flakes, and coconut ice cream... Yum! We lingered there for over two hours--a perfect French evening. To cap off the night, we watched the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the other two fell asleep within the first hour, so I'll have to finish it today.

Why did we go to bed before midnight on a Friday? Because we got up at 8am to visit the market! Well, it actually took us about an hour and a half to get up and drink coffee before we left... So at 9:30ish, we braved the drizzle to go shopping. Other times that I've visited the market, I've waited until 11ish, so the streets are packed with people. At nine and under a grey sky, there wasn't a crowd and I really enjoyed it! Angela was looking for Breton caramel, so we found some at a bakery stall. I spotted mini-muffins and had to have some--pistachio, caramel, chocolate, chocolate chip, and nut!

After that, I gave my usual walking tour of the old city, and we ended up at my place around 11. They just left to catch a bus to Mont St Michel for the afternoon, and I cooked myself lunch and got back into bed to finish the movie. I'm still sleepy from three mornings of getting up in the 8 o'clock hour--how am I going to readjust to having real classes or a real job?! France time is ruining me! Lol.