A quick round-up of the last couple of weeks.
17/11/09 Grand Debut of "Ca Marche" at Melody Maker
At some point during this semester, whilst we were in a pub consuming cider and beer, Oli and Chris decided that they were going to form a band and have a gig in Melody Maker (aka Chez Conrad). It was one of those rare pub conversations which actually leads to something being organised. Chris plays the piano and Oli plays the guitar and pretty much all the IEP foreign students turned up to see them, as well as several representatives from Zephyr. Melody Maker is fairly small so it was packed. Miro came as well and invited a French friend to meet her there. His name was Cedric and he brought a couple of his friends. One of them was called Cedric too. I have never met a Cedric in my life before, then I meet two at once. So, a combination of Oli and Chris playing some classic crowd pleasing hits, several glasses of punch and trying to explain to some Frenchies the meaning of "awkward" led to a very enjoyable evening all round.
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23/11/09 English Speaking at Agrocampus Ouest
My French teacher at the IEP has a double life as an English teacher at the Agrocampus in Rennes. This is a sort of agricultural college/university where they study something called Agrology (I think). Anyway, our teacher invited all the English speaking students at the IEP to go and meet some of her classes, to chat to them in English about our experience of living abroad and generally about the countries we are from. The French students looked fairly terrified to start with but aided by some tea and cake it wasn't too difficult to get a conversation started and to find out that most of them want to spend their year abroad in Australia or New Zealand. I also had to explain at least 20 times where Aberdeen is and even where Scotland is a couple of times. I tried to encourage some of them to go to Scotland, especially the ones who said they were interested in marine biology. It's hard to compete with the prospect of studying the great barrier reef for a year though, so I'm not sure how successful I was.
...............................................................................
23/11/09 "New Moon"
Monday evening, we decided to have a girls' trip to the cinema. Well, in fact none of the boys wanted to come, for fairly obvious reasons if you know what the Twilight saga is about. "New Moon" is a film about vampires and werewolves and humans, based on some novels which I have never read and the sequel to the film "Twilight". It's a fairly terrible film with regards to the plot and the characters but there is plenty of eye candy to distract from the fact that it is completely ridiculous. Luckily, the Gaumont cinema was showing it in Version Original (ie. English) because I think watching it dubbed into French would have just been too much.
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26/11/09 Thanksgiving
Yes, I know I'm in France and not the USA, but any excuse for a feast. Priscilla is from Boston so she was our Thanksgiving co-ordinator. She picked out all her favourite/must-have Thanksgiving recipes and shared them out amongst everyone according to cooking facilities. Since the meal was happening chez moi, I was in charge of the turkey. Except, the French don't really eat turkey, except at christmas, so there was no turkey to be found anywhere. We weren't organised enough to order one in advance so in the end I went to a poultry seller at the permanent market halls and got the two biggest chickens possible. And I got the woman at the stall to cut the heads off for me.
Here is the menu for the evening:
Roast chicken (me)
Stuffing (lots of it due to a mistake in weight conversion by Priscilla)
Cheesy mashed potatoes(Chris)
Green beans with onions (Oli. Enough to feed a small country.)
Candied carrots (Martin)
Sweet potatoes (Pao & Lau)
Butternut squash (me. Surprise surprise)
Sweetcorn (Christian)
Cornbread (Bjorn)
Cranberry sauce (made ingeniously by Janis with dried cranberries and juice)
Apple pie (joint effort of me and the Mexicans)
Vanilla Icecream (supplied by Jan)
Wine, cider, beer, mulled wine...
It was AMAZING. In between the main meal and dessert we had to have a break so we played a bizarre form of charades in 3 rounds. First round, you choose a name from the hat and then you have to describe the person using as many words as you want so your team can guess. Second round, you are only allowed to say one word. Third round, only gestures. This turned out to be totally hilarious partly because of the names that people had chosen to put in the hat and partly because we were playing in French.
Another excellent evening all round and a fairly deep food coma followed!!
.............................................................................
28/11/09 Miro, Wallace and Gromit
Miro came over on Saturday to catch up and to escape her host brother, who has la Grippe A aka. the dreaded swine flu. We were thinking about going to the cinema but the weather was minging so we decided to stay in, have dinner and watch a DVD. After some deliberation, we chose Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit. Unfortunately, the remote control for the DVD player is broken so we had to watch it in French, but it was as good as in English, even though the accents are missing.
Oooooh Gromit, Fromaaaaaaage!!
17/11/09 Grand Debut of "Ca Marche" at Melody Maker
At some point during this semester, whilst we were in a pub consuming cider and beer, Oli and Chris decided that they were going to form a band and have a gig in Melody Maker (aka Chez Conrad). It was one of those rare pub conversations which actually leads to something being organised. Chris plays the piano and Oli plays the guitar and pretty much all the IEP foreign students turned up to see them, as well as several representatives from Zephyr. Melody Maker is fairly small so it was packed. Miro came as well and invited a French friend to meet her there. His name was Cedric and he brought a couple of his friends. One of them was called Cedric too. I have never met a Cedric in my life before, then I meet two at once. So, a combination of Oli and Chris playing some classic crowd pleasing hits, several glasses of punch and trying to explain to some Frenchies the meaning of "awkward" led to a very enjoyable evening all round.
...............................................................................
23/11/09 English Speaking at Agrocampus Ouest
My French teacher at the IEP has a double life as an English teacher at the Agrocampus in Rennes. This is a sort of agricultural college/university where they study something called Agrology (I think). Anyway, our teacher invited all the English speaking students at the IEP to go and meet some of her classes, to chat to them in English about our experience of living abroad and generally about the countries we are from. The French students looked fairly terrified to start with but aided by some tea and cake it wasn't too difficult to get a conversation started and to find out that most of them want to spend their year abroad in Australia or New Zealand. I also had to explain at least 20 times where Aberdeen is and even where Scotland is a couple of times. I tried to encourage some of them to go to Scotland, especially the ones who said they were interested in marine biology. It's hard to compete with the prospect of studying the great barrier reef for a year though, so I'm not sure how successful I was.
...............................................................................
23/11/09 "New Moon"
Monday evening, we decided to have a girls' trip to the cinema. Well, in fact none of the boys wanted to come, for fairly obvious reasons if you know what the Twilight saga is about. "New Moon" is a film about vampires and werewolves and humans, based on some novels which I have never read and the sequel to the film "Twilight". It's a fairly terrible film with regards to the plot and the characters but there is plenty of eye candy to distract from the fact that it is completely ridiculous. Luckily, the Gaumont cinema was showing it in Version Original (ie. English) because I think watching it dubbed into French would have just been too much.
..................................................................................
26/11/09 Thanksgiving
Yes, I know I'm in France and not the USA, but any excuse for a feast. Priscilla is from Boston so she was our Thanksgiving co-ordinator. She picked out all her favourite/must-have Thanksgiving recipes and shared them out amongst everyone according to cooking facilities. Since the meal was happening chez moi, I was in charge of the turkey. Except, the French don't really eat turkey, except at christmas, so there was no turkey to be found anywhere. We weren't organised enough to order one in advance so in the end I went to a poultry seller at the permanent market halls and got the two biggest chickens possible. And I got the woman at the stall to cut the heads off for me.
Here is the menu for the evening:
Roast chicken (me)
Stuffing (lots of it due to a mistake in weight conversion by Priscilla)
Cheesy mashed potatoes(Chris)
Green beans with onions (Oli. Enough to feed a small country.)
Candied carrots (Martin)
Sweet potatoes (Pao & Lau)
Butternut squash (me. Surprise surprise)
Sweetcorn (Christian)
Cornbread (Bjorn)
Cranberry sauce (made ingeniously by Janis with dried cranberries and juice)
Apple pie (joint effort of me and the Mexicans)
Vanilla Icecream (supplied by Jan)
Wine, cider, beer, mulled wine...
It was AMAZING. In between the main meal and dessert we had to have a break so we played a bizarre form of charades in 3 rounds. First round, you choose a name from the hat and then you have to describe the person using as many words as you want so your team can guess. Second round, you are only allowed to say one word. Third round, only gestures. This turned out to be totally hilarious partly because of the names that people had chosen to put in the hat and partly because we were playing in French.
Another excellent evening all round and a fairly deep food coma followed!!
.............................................................................
28/11/09 Miro, Wallace and Gromit
Miro came over on Saturday to catch up and to escape her host brother, who has la Grippe A aka. the dreaded swine flu. We were thinking about going to the cinema but the weather was minging so we decided to stay in, have dinner and watch a DVD. After some deliberation, we chose Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit. Unfortunately, the remote control for the DVD player is broken so we had to watch it in French, but it was as good as in English, even though the accents are missing.
Oooooh Gromit, Fromaaaaaaage!!
