too many people around makes julia feel awkward

Okay, so yesterday, two of my host mom's sons and their girlfriends came over for lunch and dinner (and lunch today, too). I don't know how old any of them are, but they're pretty fun to be around, for the most part. Yoün (Yow-when) is definitely the clown of the family and he plays the guitar. His girlfriend Carolina is from Spain but she's entirely fluent in French, so I'm not sure if she's just lived in France a long time or just her parents are Spanish...Whatever. Emérique is pretty quiet compared to Yoün. Claire is his girlfriend. She's kind of punk-like. Lots of piercings and skater-punk type clothing. She's pretty nice, though. Emérique is Youna's dad. (Claire is not Youna's mom, though.)

Anyway, last night we had REAL quiche lorraine. The first kind had no meat, just goat cheese and whatever goes into the dish. It was okay. I ate it without argument and didn't find myself wanting to throw up after tasting it. I know - so NOT typical Julia. =P The other quiche had eggs, I'm pretty sure and cut up pieces of meat. It looked like sausage but I kept hearing the word canard (duck) thrown around a lot...So I just ate and pretended it was sausage. If it really was duck, well...I'm just going to pretend it was sausage and don't want to know otherwise. For apéritifs last night, we had some kind of cheese snack things and a sweet white wine made somewhere here in the Loire Valley. It's the only wine I've liked so far...The kind we drank yesterday afternoon was a red wine and it was just too bitter for my tastes. I finished my glass, but definitely couldn't ask for more. The wine we had with dinner was also a red wine but it was even MORE bitter than the first kind, so after taking a sip, I just asked for another "verre" (glass/cup) to drink put Coke in. I actually used the word "tasse" but apparently a "tasse" is like a coffee cup or something similar that you use during breakfast to drink coffee or tea or whatever out of. I can't for the life of me remember what we had for dessert but it wasn't too bad, if I remember correctly.

Today for lunch we had two different choices of similar dishes. The first was mashed potatoes with cheese (goat cheese, most likely, because it looked similar to something yesterday), baked together. The other was mashed potatoes with cheese and some sort of meat. They said "viande" which generally means meat, but I'm not sure if it's a specific kind. It looked like ground-up hamburger meet. It was all mixed in together - the meat, the cheese, and the potatoes. It was really, really good! I had 2 servings and some country wheat bread, and only drank Coke this time. They had pulled out the same red wine from the night before and I thought to myself, "Um, yeah no. Not only is it disgusting, I just took my medicine and alcohol plus anti-depressants are a NO-NO!" For dessert we had some sort of brownie-type cake and one that had apples in it. I only tried the chocolate one because I wasn't in the mood for apples.

I drank some mint tea after lunch and sat around for just a bit. Then I told everyone I was going to go call my sister and talk to her for a bit. I've been in my room ever since. Everyone's nice enough, but they speak French so very quickly and I only understand a few words every now and then...And then after understanding them and quickly translating them in my head, they've moved on completely and I'm lost again in the conversation. I mostly just sit there because I don't have any idea what they're saying...They don't ask me many questions, though. It's okay, I guess, since I'm a little afraid to speak much around so many native speakers. Yoün told me last night that I speak French very well and I, of course, said thank you, but I didn't exactly feel worthy of the compliment since I can't even partake in their conversations about anything...It doesn't really make me feel stupid, though. It just makes me a little annoyed that they don't seem to make much effort to help me understand what's going on. Maybe they think I understand it all, but you'd think that when I just look quickly from person to person with a confused look on my face, they'd get the hint. But alas! No, apparently they aren't so observant...

Since it's Sunday, there is hardly anything open and therefore NOTHING to do. It's terribly annoying, and Andrea and I were just talking about it on instant messenger. She suggested next Sunday we have some sort of itinerary planned so we don't feel so...awkward and bored sitting at home. Perhaps after starting classes this week, we will have more to do and won't feel so useless all the time. Tomorrow I need to send out a few letters/postcards - mostly to SAS (3 separate ones...that's 0.85 euros each (again multiply by about 1.4 or so - roughly $1.20 PER letter) for my internship this summer. I'd send out more letters to a lot of you who read this blog if it weren't so darn expensive! Oh, I think I have CORE 200 stuff I haven't done yet. Perhaps I should do that so I'm not so bored right now.

I can't wait for classes to start. Something to do besides sit around or walk around downtown and buy things I don't need...

Je vous aime!
♥
jh