Parlez-vous français?

May 7, 2010

Fete au Fromage!

So had my last French class for a while yesterday.  I was really happy because I really don't like the material in the class I am taking right now.  I am currently very sad that I will be missing out on speaking the second language which I love so much next year.  From here on out, my schedule just doesn't allow for me to take any extra classes besides the ones I need for my major.  I am so scared that I will lose everything which I have worked so hard to learn and perfect.  Fall 2010 will be the first semester since Fall 2004 where I will not be taking a French class...SCARY!!!

Anyway our last class was actually quite enjoyable.  We had a min party with fromage, pain, and chocolat (cheese, bread, and chocolate).  We also spoke ENGLISH...I know, blew my mind too.  We had a very nice selection of traditional and non-traditional French versions of these foods.  I was feeling very adventurous and therefore had to try everything (this may be due to the fact that I skipped lunch again yesterday...oops!)

1. Cheese-
We had lots of brie cheese which is probably the most stereotypical French cheese there is.  Whenever you think of fancy French cheese I think this is the type that comes to mind.  We also had chevre cheese.  This is a type of goat cheese.  This is my new favorite type of cheese.  I never thought I would like goat cheese since I am a true Wisconsin girl and I love my cheese that comes from cows.  This cheese however tasted very much like cream cheese and tasted soooo good on the bread we had.  If you ever get the chance I would highly recommend buy some of this delicious cheese!  We also had swiss cheese which I tried but am not very partial to.

2. Bread-
Of course we had traditional baguettes.  It would not be a French meal without the long pieces of French bread that you see in the movies when trying to make something or someone look French.  In traditional French manner we also ripped our own pieces off instead of cutting them (again this may be due to the fact that it probably wouldn't be good to bring a large sharp knife into a classroom but we will just disregard that :) ).  We also had some other bread and pretzel bread, neither of which is particularly all that French.  The peta bread was ok, we had some spread to go with it.  My new favorite however is the pretzel bread.  It was like a pretzel on steroids broken up into little, almost bit-sized pieces.  It was sooo delicious especially with the chevre I was describing earlier, YUM!

3. Chocolate-
Ok so I was exaggerating earlier when I said we had chocolate.  All we had were those cream filled Pirouette cookies.

All in all it was a very good last French class.

Well that was a good break from writing my last French paper.  Drawing parallels between John Martin's Lost Paradise and Anne Hebert's character Eric in Le Premier Jardin is definitely not my first choice for a raging Friday night, but what can you do?  It is finals week after all.

A tout a l'heure!
Rachel

May 2, 2010

Blast from the Past...

On Thursday I happened to be lunching at the Terrace when I ran into my high school French teachers.  It was so great to see them and we got to catch up on stories from high school.  They were there with their seniors on the annual trip to Madison.  The trip includes a visit to Van Hise to see where language classes are held at the UW, a tour of the Chazen museum to look at French art, and lunch at the French House on campus.  The "Maison Francaise" is a house like a sorority or fraternity house.  People can live there and speak French with each other and have a good time!

We got talking about our trip to France and reminiscing about all the fun stories we had.  They still don't believe Tassia and I that we had a male visitor in our room.  To this day, Tassia and I stick by our story though.  We knew there had to be someone there when we found shaving cream in the sink, our bathroom supplies were used, and a man's shirt was hanging on the door.  Also we like to remember Danny's face when he got stuck on the metro.  We thought he was long gone until we found out Tassia and Bridget was with him.  Oh yeah Brad got stuck there too but Tassia and Bridget were the ones who would be able to get the boys back :) (sorry Brad!).  Bill took us on so many strolls.  Mme and Mme talked about how they were going to take the same trip that we did; Paris to Biarritz to Provence to Nice.  They talked about how they were requesting a lot of the same hotels we stayed in.

Talking with them was so much fun.  I am super jealous of all the people going on the trip this year.  I want to go really bad and know that some day in the future I will get my chance to go back.  After all I am a French Badger ;)

A tout a l'heure!
Rachel