Beef

Last night we had the Mexican students over for tacos and guacamole. We had chicken fajitas a few weeks ago and had found Mexican spice at the grocery store. This time we decided to try beef tacos with the Mexican spice that had been shipped from home. We made all the food and put the spice on, but when we were tasting the meat, we just couldn't get it to taste like home. That is when we decided that the problem was the meat. It wasn't bad or old or anything like that, there is just a different quailty of meat here. Yes, being from the part of the country we are from, we are used to some really good beef, but it is interesting to me that the beef would be so different here. Apparently it is what the cows are fed that completely changes the taste of the meat, but on a more general level, the French cook their beef very differently than in the States. If I would go out to a restaurant here and order a steak I would expect for it to be brown on the outside and mooing in the middle. The French firmly believe that if you cook the steak any longer than that it is a total waste of the meat. I know some people back home that eat their steaks with no pink in the middle, and I would consider that ruining the meat, but I'd rather not having it still mooing at me. A little pink would be nice, but here that would be a travesty and an insult to the cook. This is possibly the reason that I haven't eaten beef in a restaurant since I got here.

Pharmacy

I hate taking medicine. I really really do. Especially for colds because I know that they will pass eventually. Last week I picked up a wicked cough from somewhere and until Friday night was doing fine. I was sleeping ok, but still didn't feel great. Friday night though, I slept 3 hours due to coughing fits that wouldn't stop.

As a side note, never before in my life had I realized what people meant by lumpy pillows. I have never experienced them before coming here, but now I have. No complaints because I didn't buy them, but whew, lumpy pillows get rocky when coughing a lot and not being able to sleep.

On with the story...As you know, I was in class all day Saturday and was coughing to no end. So, I caved and went to the Pharmacy to get something for it. The pharmacist was really nice and asked me a thousand questions about what was wrong and how long I had the cough, etc... I was impressed by how elaborate she was before giving me the medicine. I ended up buying tablets to help loosen the junk in my chest. They are working quite nicely and I will be cough-free soon enough.

Saturday??

This weekend we did something I thought was very un-French. We had class all day Saturday. And to make matters worse they told us we will do this two other times this semester. We didn't have class at all on Thursday, but somehow we did on Saturday. What? I mean seriously. I was shocked when I first looked at the schedule. I just thought that there was no way that people who value their time off so much would make Saturday class necessary. Our schedule is so random that I think we could have fit it in sometime during the week. But as with everything else, we went with it. Thankfully the teacher was really good and kept the class interactive, but sheesh.

Saved by Skype

Alright people, next time you are at home and watching the Jayhawks, help me out a little bit and get online. I don't care what form of online media you use, either facebook, or skype, or aim, whatever, but please help me. Here's what happened. As we know, the Jayhawks played K-State this past weekend. The game was on at 1 am our time, so we went out to dinner, then to the bar for a bit and then headed over to a friend's house that was letting us come over to use his internet and watch the game. So we sign into get the live stream and have no problems for the first 35 minutes of the game. Then the game got real tight and the international community following the game flooded the interwebs. This caused mass hysteria in the apartment where we were watching because our feed kept disconnecting every 10 seconds. As you should know, the game was touch-and-go for our beloved Jayhawks and we kept having to reconnect which really loses its excitement by the 4th or 5th time. So, I was frantically trying to find people online to update me on the scores more efficiently than espn.com was doing. Hmmm...who'd I find? no one! Finally I got ahold of my parents on Skype and had the last few minutes for play by play including yelling and hollering and general relief. So, all I request is , like I said before, for the love of Pete, if you are at home watching the game, please get online in the event I'm having a heart attack at 3 in the morning in a foreign country.

Movies

Due to an extremely long night out the night before, we decided to take it easy one night and head to the movies. We wanted to see In the Air with George Clooney, so like normal, we looked in the paper, found where it was playing and headed off to the theater. There are multiple theaters in Clermont, the biggest being the one in Place de Jaude, which is also where the mall is. We went to a smaller one though, and really had no idea what to expect. We used our student ids and paid 4 euro for tickets. 4 euro! Sweet! We then went in search of the concession stand just to see what it was like. We followed the signs and ended up at....a vending machine. Luckily, as a true American I had brough gummy bears and worms with me to the show. So we enter the theater and it is pretty nice, kind of like one of the smaller theaters where they show movies that have been out for a while in the States. We take our seats and the movie beings, in English, with French subtitles. As the movie progresses we realize that either American humor doesn't translate well, or the subtitles aren't clueing the audience in on the humor, or the French just don't laugh during movies. The Americans are laughing, while everyone else is dead silent. Kind of strange really. To boot, we have said gummy bears and worms and of course the packages aren't silent as we are passing them back and forth. I can only imagine the French in the theater were seriously having their American stereotypes reinforced while watching this movie with us.

fitness

For the first few weeks we were here I didn't think people in France worked out at all. I thought maybe just the fact that everyone here walks all the time must have been sufficient to keep everyone super skinny. I'm not sure they are so healthy, being as most of them smoke all day, but being a little more interested in getting cardio activity, I tried running on the streets. Mutliple problems with this proposition. The first being that it is super cold outside. I didn't so much bring clothes for running outside every day and we've already discussed how expensive laundry is. Secondly, I live in the middle of the city so there is not really a good area to run where I don't have to wait for street lights, etc... There is a park, but I ran around it once in 3 minutes. Running a few miles in it would make me dizzy.
Then, I heard from the other American students that they found a gym! Woot woot. Promptly signed up for it, it is decently priced and has classes and a pool. Sounded like a pretty good deal to me. I went to spin class for the first time on Friday. Whew. Class wasn't hard, I mean it was as hard as a normal spin class, but I definitely didn't learn the vocabulary necessary to participate in a spin class in a different country. You wouldn't think it would be hard right? You would, in theory, just follow what the teacher is doing. Problem was the room was so packed I couldn't really see the teacher, so I had to follow the people in front of me, but I had no idea what was going on next, etc...He was saying it, I just wasn't getting it. Oh well, it was a good work out none-the-less. The weekend hours are of course screwy, being that we are in France and all. The place is open from 10-12 on Sunday. Uh huh. So I'm headed back this week for all kinds of fun-filled activities. I'll keep you posted.

Hours of Operation

As our schedule of classes here is completely random, on Thursday we didn't have class so we decided to take a short train ride (40 min and 9 euro) to Vichy, a place that the French talk very little about historically due to this town being the place where the Nazis occupied France. Now the French in this area talk about Vichy for its shopping and its "spas", which are really just thermal areas. Interestingly enough, the big hubub is that Vichy has shopping open on Sunday, which is really strange because almost nothing (including the grocery store) is open on Sunday.

We got on an early train and headed out. We arrived and there were huge flakes of snow falling from the sky. As we proceeded throughout the town we promptly noticed that nothing was open. Granted it was only 9:30 am, we should have known that the French are very good at opening at 10, working til noon. Closing for an hour and a half for lunch and then opening from 1-4 and going home for the day. Quite interesting really, how people have time to purchase things while they are supposedly working. The French do have a 35 hour work week, and are very good at making sure they get their time off. Apparently we weren't in Vichy during the right season because we walked quite a bit and, finding not much open, decided to have some hot chocolate. After walking back to the "Boutique Mall" after that, we found it completely empty. Nothing even in the place. I guess it wasn't a hub of activity after all.

When all else fails? Time to eat! After going to two different places that were "closed", yes restaurants closed during lunch time, it must have been since it was January, but anyway, we finally found an Italian place where had a true European lunch of eating, drinking wine and taking our sweet time. As shopping seemed to be the only option after lunch, we headed back to the train station to get our tickets before looking for a place for dessert. As you can probably decipher by now, of course we didn't get dessert because all the places that serve lunch close at 2:30 to get ready for dinner. One big thing to get used to between the States and France, if I want to eat out, I have to be on someone elses schedule, not my stomach's.