Headcheese

Well I’m having an awesomely busy weekend right now, but that doesn’t leave much time for telling you guys about it! So I’ll give you a bullet pointed list of highlights from the last few days and then you’ll have to wait until I get back on Monday to hear about the rest.

Tuesday: I was served a mysterious meat cut into cubes at a Rotary meeting. Having now enjoyed everything from pâté of wild boar to duck gizzards in salad, I grabbed a toothpick and dug right in. When I ask what the name of the food was, I discovered that I was eating headcheese. I was good, if you enjoy foods with large clumps of gelatin and bits of who-knows-what mixed together.

Wednesday: I went to a presentation organized by Rotary on the discovery of radioactivity and nuclear technology in the modern day. I was very interesting and I understood most of it despite the technical terminology. At the end of the presentation I had a great surprise when I saw another exchange student, who I had met at the Rotary weekend in Paris, was also present. Kate (from New York, the state not the city) was equally excited to see me and we had a great time talking and comparing our experiences of the past month during the dinner after the presentation. It was funny to see how we had become sufficiently accustomed to the language that we actually spoke franglais with each other to a certain extent and then switched to pure French to talk to everyone else.

Incidentally, this was my second time eating in a French restaurant and my first time with a big group. Even at a restaurant we spent two hours at the table and had three separate courses. I ordered the andouillette, which I was told was a delicious specialty sausage. It was very good, though lucky it wasn’t explained to me until I was a few bites in that it was made entirely out of pork intestine.

Thursday: After school ended (at 6:00) I went to go see Paranormal Activity 3 with two friends at the movie theater next to our school. It was a really bad movie, I don’t recommend it at all, but it was still fun to complain about having just seen a bad movie with friends.

Friday: I left with my host family on a two and half hour drive to Tours this morning to celebrate the birthday of 3-year-old Romain (who is Laurie’s nephew and my host parents’ grandson). We got stuck when the road was blocked for a parade, since today was November 11, the day the Armistice was signed ending WWI. We got to see military personal in their best dress walking by, and I’m pretty sure one of them, with an impressive mustache, made some comment to me and Laurie, as we both had our heads out of the window to see the parade, though we didn’t hear exactly what we said. By the time we got through the traffic nearly everyone else had already arrived at Laurie’s brother’s house. It was a wonderful family lunch of the type I have previously described, with an adorable three-year-old and his several-week-old cousin, Noha, who were the darlings of the entire gathering. The duck with mashed potatoes was delicious and put a fine finish on my week of adventurous meat-eating. We got back late, had a casual dinner (I got myself a ham sandwich, prepared à la française: baguette, thick sliced ham, and butter) and then I packed my bag for the next stage in my weekend. If you’re lucky you’ll get to hear all about it on Monday!