Quelle bonne chance

With the exception of the oiseau, we are lucking into "so many good things." Last night we had our first dinner with our French families (my group actually has two--an older couple Mondays and Wednesdays and one of the tutors' mother Tuesdays and Thursdays), and on the way there, one of the guys who did the summer program said this lady was the second-best cook, and apparently, the woman whose house we go to the other days is the best. Besides that, everyone talks about how great Bellegarde is, although I've been to several of the other apartments by now, and they are really nice too.

Anyway, dinner was really, really good. I've just realized there are almost no pictures of food in my blog, and I'm in France, so I should do something about that. Peut-etre I will take some pictures at our next dinner. We had un gratin (oui, potatoes au gratin that had beef in the middle), une salade of vegetables in vinaigrette, and compote de pommes, which is sort of like applesauce with larger pieces of apples and is served cold. I guess it's a fairly common French dessert because it's the second time I've had it while here. And of course, beaucoup de pain and beaucoup de vin. and sangria as an aperitif.

It was kind of funny because the couple never even asked our names until two courses into the meal. That's a French thing, I assume, mais c'est interessant. Mme Daniel said she didn't ask us because she knew her husband would, and sure enough, he did. They also didn't ask many questions about the program, etc, which was nice on one hand because we weren't bogged down with questions about ourselves, but it was also difficult to just jump into the conversation, especially since the French student sitting between Elyse and me was impossible to understand. I'm sure we'll be able to converse with them more as time goes on though. We do spend several hours eating dinner together twice a week. oh, ha, their dog is named VHF, short for very high frequency, and we ate in their garden, which is beautiful.

I've been thinking this is the best set-up because we get to live on our own but still interact with a French family fairly often, and Mme Daniel said the same thing last night. We've been kind of worried about not getting as much practice with our French as we'd like because most of the Vanderbilt students speak in English to each other, but I think that between dinner, classes, roommates, and day-to-day interactions with French strangers, it will still make a difference. We will see...