A very French rentrée

So with New Year's out of the way, back to la vie française! I wasn't very motivated to start work again, but once I was back in the classroom I was happy to be there (thought I can't say the same for the students). However with the start-up of classes, most teacher's needed to do review from before the break, so I only ended up working 7 hours last week, which is less than I used to work in a day at this time last year. *le sigh*, life is so hard! :p

This past week has also been particularly "French". January 6 was Epiphany, which the French celebrate with a particular cake called "La Galette des Rois", or the King's Cake, which takes it's name and tradition from the 3 kings in the bible. The cake has a fine pastry and is traditionally filled with almonds, but can also be found with fruit or chocolate fillings. In the cake a trinket is hidden (traditionally a bean), and whoever gets the piece with the trinket is King for the day and gets to wear a crown and order everyone around.

our yummy galette

So Kerstin and I decided to hold our own fête for Epiphany, and invited Robyn and Erika over to share our galette with us that we picked up at our local bakery. It was oh so tasty, and guess who was King Queen for the day? Moi! I found Marilyn Monroe in my slice of galette (what is it with MM and cakes?) We had a very nice little celebration and it was so nice to get together with friends after the holidays!

who shall be King?

je suis la Reine!

the Marilyn Monroe trinket I found in my slice (thank god I didn't bite into it!)

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of hanging out with my welcome family again, the Weiersmüller's (see December's post "The 7 hour lunch"). They had invited us to see a basketball game and dinner after. I was thrilled to be able to spend time with them again! I was picked up Saturday night by Anne, Pascal, their daughter Lyna and the Colombian student who lives with them (I forget his name) at the train station and we drove to the newly renovated stadium just outside Nancy. There was a crowd waiting to get in and we stood in the very French lineup (people here don't really know what it means to lineup, they just crowd together and hope it gets them somewhere). The match was Nancy SLUC against Hyeres-Toulon (we won! 77-65 or something like that). To be honest I actually hate watching sports (other than gymnastics and figure skating, and obviously hockey come Olympics time) and find games quite boring, but the ambiance was nice and it was fun watching Pascal and (insert Colombian student's name here) get all excited about points and calls and plays etc. Pascal kept explaining stuff to me, offensive moves and defense and calls etc etc which I barely understand in English, let alone French. Overall it was a good time though and during 1/2 time Pascal, (Colombian student) and I went outside to play tag with Lyna on the playground. Afterwards we went back to their house in Malzéville and had a fantastic dinner. Beet and corn salad, and Pascal had made an amazing traditional garlic aioli (which I always thought was Italian, but apparently it comes from the south of France) with steamed vegetables. We of course had an aperitif, a nice Alsatian wine, and for dessert they had bought chocolate delicacies from their local bakery (I had a 4 layer mousse, mmm) and of course tea. After my first meal with them, I knew full well that I would be there awhile, as they all quite like to talk and ask questions, and finally by the time 1:30am had rolled around they finally decided to take me home. (At least it was only a 3 hour meal this time). It was a lovely evening and I had a great time chatting with all of them. I'm looking forward to my next visit with them, Anne is insisting on doing a day trip to a little Alsatian town only accessible by car and exploring some of the wineries. Woo hoo!

2011: so far, so good!