Busy Weekend . . .

I guess this evening concludes my first real weekend in France. Last week I was so tired and shell-shocked and valises-deprived that it didn't count.
Jim flew in a former student/TA of his, Zia. She has worked at about three different restaurants and is an expert on pastry (did you know that Americans use the unflavorful crisco to make pastry more flaky because American butter doesn't do the flakiness thing because it has a high moisture content because the butter-people use water as a filler? French butter has both flavor and flakiness . . .), but has recently graduated from Duke Law and is clerking in NY. So she showed us how to do some of that cooking stuff.
Alright, you knew you couldn't escape without postings about food. Friday Sarah and I wanted an early dinner, so we found a small cafe. The covers for the menus were handstitched and the menus themselves handwritten. I had a salad with lentils, tabouli, chevre, and my favorite: "caviar courgettes" - the cook did some amazing alchemy with asparagi! Plus a hot chocolate, which is the best that I've ever tasted. We got in a long conversation with one of the waitstaff and she told us that the store was owned by her family as well as much information about Dijon, etc. I definitely need to figure out how to make the asparagus and the hot chocolate somehow . . .
Saturday was more cooking, but we started out at the marche. Which was designed by Gustave Eiffel and is really beautiful. Jim treated us to lunch again. I had some unidentified fish (sandre) and a bite off of everyone's plate (mushrooms, scallops, some dumplingish thing with lobster sauce). My favorite thing was the desserts (wine-poached pear, raspberry charlotte, creme brulee, and the molten chocolate cake). Then Sarah and I went shopping a little bit for some warm necessities - she got long johns (I've been enormously thankful that I brought mine, as it has been pretty bitterly cold here) and I got a wool hat at the chapellerie. I know that it really is wool because it is both very warm and very itchy. Then, a part of our party assembled to meet for dinner. We had some four-day-old leftovers at my apartment that would be thrown out soon, so everyone came to my place for dinner and we ate those over some pasta. We also played a card game that Sarah had bought before going out to a bar (which was a new experience for me). It was fine and it is probably something I should do in the United States when I am old enough (next fall) just so I can check that off of my list of things that I should experience in life, but I can't imagine going out every weekend like a lot of college students do. I think that I'm the biggest homebody one can hope to meet. I didn't order anything except a Schweppes for a girl who wasn't feeling well although lots of people gave me sips of their drinks. Jim has served us lots of wine but I had never tried beer before last night. I actually liked it, probably because of the cherry flavoring.
Today I went to Mass with Natalie-the-TA and enjoyed it very much, even though I couldn't understand everything. I could understand the content of one of the texts (1 Corinthians 13) and tears came to my eyes. Before the next time that I go to mass, I'm going learn the Nicene Creed and the Lord's Prayer in French so I can at least say that with the other congregants. Even when I go to Catholic mass in English, I forget how to say all of the little different things and I never remember what my hand is supposed to do before the gospel, so I consider those two pieces the next step. There is a Protestant church not far from here and I would like to visit it just to see how it is different, but I do want to attend Notre Dame regularly, partly because it is nice to spend time with Natalie and Jim and partly to more fully immerse myself in French culture, which is mostly comprised of non-practicing Catholics.
Natalie went to meet the next visiting professor, Ruel Tyson, and I grabbed a quick quiche for lunch. As I was walking home, I bumped into the other UNC students, who were heading out to a wine festival. I'd never been to a wine festival, so I joined them. It was terribly chilly and I'm not knowledgeable enough to say what was good and what was bad, but it was just fun to walk around a little French town (I hadn't yet seen France outside of Dijon). Plus all of the drunk French people amused me. Plus I wanted to ride on a train. I sometimes think that I love trains even more than 3-year-old boys do.
I do apologize for all of these blow-by-blow entries . . . after my days become a little more predictable and these become even more same-y to read, I will reflect more in depth about general topics.
Love,
Rachel