The next two days were (more or less) repeats of the first two days. I can't believe it, but I was doing the math one day and with 15 hours of class every week, we really will be completing a whole semester's worth of work in half a semester. A mon avis, that is both exciting and very scary.
My follow-up econ class on Wednesday was great, though it seems like we've dug deeper into basic economics for now, but entirely in French. We also completed a similar activity to Monday's, but had more time to go through it. My follow-up Travaux Pratique course brought both level-2 French students together and I eventually was surprised by having to go up in front of the class and do a practice entretien (interview). I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but my internship interview is this upcoming Monday. Things are beginning to get rather hectic here quite fast! For Odile's course, we had to read an article and a short story. I got through the article just fine (though, it was in English), but the short story was a bit of a challenge. However, we ended up watching the movie (which was based on the short story), so things fell into place quite nicely. The film was in French, but had English subtitles in white which, as Odile mentioned, was probably not the best idea. In any case, I think I knew enough French to understand what was going on. I quite liked it and if you get the chance, you should look it up. In English, it's called Black Girl. As a bit of a preface, following up Wednesday's courses was a meeting with Julie about our internships.
Wednesday was our planned dinner night and I aimed to go rather all out for this one. After my econ class, I went to an open air market, where I bought two much-needed scarves (only 10 €!!!) and some not-so-great cherries (I was a bit baffled as I had aimed to buy mangoes that apparently were imported from Peru). I had wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower to check and see if these old guys Trevor and I had seen the week before were playing pétanque. However, I decided I needed to get a move on prepping for dinner, if I had any chance of finishing on time to get to our meeting with Julie. I still didn't quite get around to explain what bread crumbs are to someone at the supermarché and so I decided to make the bread crumbs myself. I checked the method again on-line and realised what I had done wrong when I tried grating the bread with a grater... it was both stale and not dry enough to be broken up into pieces. So, I decided to toast the bread in the toaster oven, as I began to cook some pasta. Then, I butterflied the chicken breasts and folded ham and Leerdammer cheese into it, coating the folded chicken with the freshly toasted and crumbed breadcrumbs. I didn't quite know at the time whether the toaster oven was in Centigrade or Farenheit, so I chose to set it to 260 degrees. As it was cooking, I realised the toaster oven was in Centigrade (donc, I cooked the chicken at about 500 degrees Farenheit!). It was all good, as I had cooked it in a heavy, ceramic dish. In the end, I cooked the chicken for about 40 minutes, and the pasta for about 30 minutes, if not more. Surprisingly, it wasn't completely non-aldente, but it was definitely melt-in-your-mouth pasta. With the chicken and pasta all done, I had to rush off to the internship meeting. However, when I was on the second Métro stop, I wasn't too confident that I had shut off the stove and so had to therefore rush back upstairs to check up on it. Luckily, it hadn't been left on, but I was definitely going to run late to the meeting. Thankfully, I didn't miss much nor was I quite late; I was honestly quite relieved that others, including one of the professors, got in after I did. The meeting was yet another orientation session to the internship, particularly in preparation for our interviews. At one point, Julie kind of announced to everyone that my internship company will be paying for my lunch. (How cool is that deal?!) Speaking of food, I was getting rather hungry, so Trevor and I split from the group and made our way back home.
I had to complete some finishing touches to the dinner. After heating up the sauce and mixing it with the pasta, I poured the lot over the chicken, sprinkled quite a bit of mozarella on top and melted it all together, baking it until the cheese melted. While that was going, I had sweetened carrots boiling away. I was able to time everything together and eventually got the courses out on time. Now, I think I'm ready for my turn on "Hell's Kitchen" or something. In any case, I also made a first course of toasted bread, slices with a different cheese on it, and following that, we dug into the pasta and chicken... twice. Following that course, we had our cheese and cherries, and then somehow made room for cookies and dark chocolate covered marshmallows for dessert. OMG, was it délicieux! Perhaps unsurprisingly, we had quite a bit of pasta left over, and decided to save it for our next meal.
Thursday evening after classes, Trevor and Camille were off on take two of their movie theatre hunting adventure. They invited me to come along and we eventually found the theatre they were looking for. We briefly stopped in at a boulangerie patisserie that was nearby the theatre and then made our way back for the film. We thought it was going to be only in French, but it turned out to be in both Ukranian and German, with French subtitles. That aspect in it of itself was an academic and mindblowing challenge to get through. After the movie (which Camille had to leave early in order to make it to her host family dinner in time), Trevor and I made our way back to the house and realised that everything was pretty much closed. As we had gotten there straight from school, we hadn't eaten any dinner and thus took the opportunity to go on a food hunt. We chose to check out the Champs-Elysées, figuring it'd probably be the area that was still up around 22h00. Thankfully, we figured correctly and happened upon a great boulangerie shop place, and which was quite cheap (given the otherwise expensive nature of the CE). I bought a Caesar baguette with Orangina and a pain au chocolat for less than 7€. We then hopped back on the Métro and got back to Argentine. When we got back, I got a rather brilliant idea of eating the leftovers from Wednesday night and (I think) outdid myself again. I took the leftover pasta, and topped it off with the rest of the mozarella (that's most likely what made it taste great) and baked the lot while we ate our meal from the boulangerie shop place. When the pasta came out, the cheese had melted perfectly and had a bit of a baked crust to it. We surprised ourselves and finished the pasta; can you believe it...? The pasta, in total, was only 2/5 of the bag of pasta I bought. I have the feeling pasta in various forms will be quite the staple for us. To end off the meal, we had our usual cheese course and then got to our dessert (the pain au chocolat). Fortunately, Trevor hadn't yet tried chocolat chaud the way I had it in Noisy-le-Roi (which perhaps one reason why he responded with Pourquoi pas? to trying it), so I heated up some milk, added an ounce of dark chocolate and mixed the lot together with chocolate milk powder. Combined with the pain au chocolat, it was a great way to end yet another four-course meal.
11 years ago
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