A French Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and this is the first time that I haven't been home to celebrate and stuff my face with food!! I didn't get the long holiday that I am used to and I didn't have easy access to a Thanksgiving staple: pumpkin. I didn't let the distance from American get me down, I brought Thanksgiving to France. Me and my American roomie, Leslie, made our favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Our menu consisted of: chicken, stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, mash potatoes, apple pie and pumpkin pie. It was glorious, considering that we couldn't find half of the ingredients that we needed and that our mom's weren't here to help us cook. We both love pumpkin pie, but France doesn't seem to agree with us. It took us forever to find an actual pumpkin, so we knew finding canned pumpkin would be nearly impossible. The week before Thanksgiving, we settled for making pumpkin from scratch. We found a field of pumpkins and causally took some home with us. They were free, right? We opened them up, cleaned off the seeds and baked them, then steamed the remaining chunks. We then carved out the flesh and added the necessary ingredients to make pumpkin pie filling. The pumpkin crisp wasn't the best, but for what we had, it was pretty great. We wanted to introduce our favorite holiday to our French friends; however, they had prior commitments, so we just had a lovely feast at home. Laura made us Pilgrim hats that we wore during dinner. Laura loved her first Thanksgiving meal and I am hoping she will take it back with her to England. Being a day of thanks, here are a few of the things that I am thankful for: my family back home who loves, supports and prays for me, my awesome roomies who I was so blessed to meet (and Chez Hyde Paul) and the opportunity to do something I love in a place that I love even more. Happy Thanksgiving y'all :)

Raclette, another French experience

Wednesday night our two Frenchmen friends invited us over for Raclette. This is a typical French dish that includes a ton of cheese and various meats. I like to describe it as reverse fondu because you don't dip the food in a pot of cheese, but rather you melt cheese and pour it over the meats. I have had it once back in the US, but apparently it wasn't the legit French version. My sophomore year of college, my crosscountry ski leader invited us over to her house for her version of Raclette. She used mini pickles, onions, various meats and veggies. I tried to explain this to my French friends, but they looked down upon this so-called "Raclette." However, after Wednesday night, I am an experienced Raclette eater and one step closer to being "French."

A weekend at the Gap

Our first two week vacation has officially come to an end. It was glorious. We (Leslie, Laura, Hannah and myself) spent our last weekend in Gap, France which is located in the eastern part of the country. There are three assistants there that we met in Marseille and they invited us up for the weekend. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!! It makes me miss the mountains so much. We had an hour train ride then a three hour bus ride. The bus ride was equally as beautiful. We drove around the mountains and through all of the mountain towns. The weather wasn't the best the first two days, but that didn't make me less excited to be there. Us ladies wore matching travel outfits to see how long it would take the guys to realize that we all matched.

Saturday we got up early and went to the market. I love outdoor markets and Avignon doesn't have the best selection so I made sure to wake up in time. Our friends told us that we had to eat tourtons, which were lovely. They are essentially fried raviolis stuffed with different fillings. I got a spinach one, two goat cheese ones, an apple one, a fig one and a blueberry one. They were gone within 15 minutes. Great decision. 

After the market we went on a hike. Even though it rained the entire time and I didn't have proper rain gear, it was still beautiful. From one side of the mountain, you could see over the city, but the best part was seeing the country side on the other side of the mountain. The reds and yellows remind me so much of the North Carolina mountains in the fall and are the reason why fall is my favorite season. Just another gift from God. 

The view from Jimmy's apartment. Best in Gap.

The combination of being in the mountains and the Christmas decor, got me in the holiday spirit. Good thing next week I can officially start listening to Christmas music!

Montpellier - the cycling continues by train

After three attempts taking our bikes on the train, we finally are pros! We figured out that there is a bike symbol on the door of the cart that has bike access which makes it a lot easier to find the door rather than walking the length of the train looking for the bike racks. This time we didn't even need help putting them up. We bought some much need Haribo for our hour train ride and we were underway. Once we got into Montpellier we headed to the tourism office for map to our hotel. We booked a hotel 3km outside of town because we figured that was a short walk or just a quick bike ride into the city. The city doesn't have the best bike paths, but we got a bike map and mapped out a route to our hotel. There was one tricky intersection which seemed to be our biggest problem. Of course we made the wrong turn and our "short" bike ride to the hotel turned into a 2 hour ride around the city. It wouldn't have been to bad if I wasn't carrying a hiking pack stuffed with our clothes and cosmetics  At one point we ended up on the tram line and Leslie's bike got stuck in the rail line and she feel over. Unfortunately, I missed this one and didn't get any pictures of her on the ground. We finally found our way across the river and onto a highway that led to our hotel. Biking on highways in illegal in France for obvious reasons. When we finally realized we were on a highway we quickly took an exit ramp which luckily lead us straight to our hotel. After 2 hours of biking around, we checked into our hotel which looked just like the inside of a boat. We decided to bike back into the downtown area and check out the historic sites. Turns out, it is only a 15 minutes bike ride into the city and we figured out where we went wrong the first time. We were much closer than we had thought! We biked around for a bit then ran into another obstacle: a giant hill, I would compare it to the hill in San Francisco. We aren't pro bikers yet, so we walked them up the hill. We parked them outside the giant marketplace and got some food at a boulangerie and walked around the city. Montpellier reminds me a lot of Nice. It is much bigger than Avignon and it doesn't have the dirty feel of Marseille. We went back to the hotel before dinner to locked up our bikes and ventured back into the city for dinner. By the time we found a restaurant it was 9pm and we waited another hour for our food. We were famished by the time our food came out and we definitely cleared our plates. It turned into a 2 hour dinner, so typical French but I love it. I actually enjoyed my dinner and the conversation. The next day we biked to a giant mall and went shopping. We tried so hard to avoid H&M, but we ended up there. I needed some new black skinny jeans because all of my jeans have conveniently stretched out since being here. After a day of shopping, we biked back to the hotel and walked into town for a night-time picture tour of the city. We saw more beautiful buildings which looked even more beautiful in the moon light. It rained on Sunday which was okay since we were leaving that day. We bought more Haribo (obviously) and took the train back to Avignon. Even though we were only gone for 2 days, it felt good when we got back "home".

Happy Toussant

This is the first Halloween that I have not fallen into a sugar coma from consuming too much candy or had sugar coated teeth the following day despite brushing them. My only form of American candy that I ate to celebrate Halloween were the Reese's cups MoT sent in a package and they were so good! The French think that peanut butter is low grade and I have only found the tiniest jar for 5€ ($7)!! All I want is to stick a giant spoon in a jar of crunchy peanut butter or make tons of muddy buddies. For this Halloween, we decided to bring our American traditions to France. We had a shin-dig at our apartment and taught all of the non-American assistants American games such as signs and ninja. Afterwards we went to this so-called "Halloween Party." Apparently, no one got the memo that you dress up on Halloween. I have never gotten called out so much in my life. We had to show off our American pride and own our costumes! Despite the stares and cat-calls (yes, pun intended), it was a memorable Halloween.

Toussant (November 1) is a national holiday in France and everything closes. We decided to go to Nimes, a city near Avignon, and bike around the city. I have been back in 2007, but the only thing I remembered was the giant arena in the center of town. It was great going back and exploring more of the city and actually appreciating its beauty. It was a beautiful day, perfect for biking. We stumbled across this giant garden that led to a tour that is the oldest part of Nimes. There was a great view of the city from the top. We saw a bunch of old French men playing a game similar to Bocce ball called, Pétanque. It is the traditional game of the south and I am on a mission to find someone to teach me. I'm a born and raised southern American, now I need to become a French southerner.