Doors

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” – Walt Disney

 Eglise Saint-Sulpice

 Le Louvre

 Host family's house, Malakoff, France

 Hôtel-de-Ville

 Hôtel-de-Ville

 A l'Olivier, an oil shop

 along rue de Rivoli

 Sacré-Cœur Basilica

 Collioure, France

 Collioure, France

 Le Panthéon de Paris

 Le Panthéon de Paris

 Le Panthéon de Paris

 La crypte du Panthéon de Paris

 Versailles

My French meal plan

Living in a host family, I have a meal plan arrangement. Host families provide breakfast for the student every day as well as a full dinner twice a week. Breakfast is typically yogurt, fruits, bread and jam, and juice.

I am not sure, but I believe the toaster is specifically extra long in order to be able to toast baguettes.

Dinners provided by the host family consist of multiple courses in order to present a typical French meal.
We typically begin with a salad and bread. The salad is eaten off a saucer, but the bread is torn off the baguette and it rests on the placemat rather than on the plate with your food. That is called the entrée.
Then the main course is dished onto plates. Upon eating all your food, it is perfectly normal to use your bread to wipe up some of the extra sauce that is left on the plate. That is the plat principal.
After the main dish, conversation continues as you choose from a couple different cheeses along with (guess what!) more bread. There are sometimes a pâté or two (a meat spread) to try as well.
Then my host sister will typically grab yogurts and cremes from the refrigerator, along with a couple fruits to choose from, and that is dessert.

I have had everything from a Russian Borscht soup (my host sister's boyfriend is originally from Russia) to homemade potatoes au gratin. I might add that the potatoes were even better than those that typically decorate the table on Thanksgiving, due to the real French cheeses they use here. This week we also had tomates farcies, a very typical French family meal and one of my host sister's favorites. Tomates farcies are large tomatoes stuffed with porc, veal, or beef and bread crumbs or rice. None of the recipes or photos I found on the internet did my host mom's cooking justice, but here is a recipe to give you an idea. The giant tomatoes lined up in a casserole and topped with their little chapeaux look just perfect coming out of the oven.


Other times, I am on my own for meals. I usually stop by the Carrefour grocery store for supplies to make myself lunch or dinner.

When the weather is nice, I can have a snack and work on homework at the table in the garden.

Nuit Blanche

The French expression "passer une nuit blanche" means to go the night without sleeping, and each year Paris hosts an event called Nuit Blanche where museums, food carts, and more are open throughout the night to encourage both citizens and tourists to spend a "nuit blanche" encountering Paris in a new way.
This year's eleventh annual Nuit Blanche was the night of Saturday, October 5. Exhibits and museums were open for free, while DJs lined the Seine river. Fashion, art, music, and cuisine combined to create a big event. TimeOut gives a brief, English listing of events, while the program can be found in French here.

We downloaded the app, checked out itineraries, and planned our night, deciding to go to le Grand Palais to see the Felix Vallotton exhibit "Le feu sous la glace." We waited in line for the museum, entranced by the lights, music, and smoke coming from the building.

 

Imagine the last scene of Night at the Museum where there is a big party inside the museum, and that will give you a good idea of what we got to experience. We went through the exhibit viewing an immense amount of works, all the while hearing a hint of the music coming from outside. As we then stepped onto the balcony of the Grand Palais, we entered the lit up area we had seen while waiting in line.

There was a DJ, strobe lights, and bartenders giving out free drinks. Meanwhile, a slideshow of art pieces was being shown on one of the walls of the balcony. It was an extremely amusing way to view the arts before walking down the street to Pont Alexandre, where we concluded our night by watching a firework show over the Seine river.

Lactose-intolerant while abroad

I am the unfortunate lactose-intolerant person living in Europe, but that does not stop me from trying all of the French cuisine.
Don't get me wrong, I often lay down at night regretting most of what I ate that day. But that is not going to keep me from participating in cheese tastings, getting ice cream cones on the beach of the Mediterranean, trying authentic French Onion Soup, or eating a croque-monsieur at a cafe. I try to convince myself that the delights of the moment are greater than the pains later.

Although there has always been one dairy product I have never been fond of, and that is milk. And if there was any way to make milk even less appealing to me, it would be this:

Unrefrigerated milk

The French do not refrigerate many items that Americans believe require chilling, such as eggs, fruit, and unopened milk. My host family's refrigerator is very small in size in comparison to our giant appliances in the US, so even if they did chill items such as these, they simply would not fit inside.

I am rather amused by this observation, because contrary to American belief, these items will not be ruined if left out on the counter rather than tightly sealed and stored in the refrigerator. Looks like we need to loosen up a bit in the States.