We Officially Have a Sixth Course

Today was, more or less, perfect. I’m kind of tired, though, and want to jump ahead to the dinner portion of the day, so I’m really going to make every effort to make this a short post.

After deciding to go to the laundry place some other day (because we were still tired after working on our homework for about 5,5 hours last night), I got ready for my day and got to school on time. I had the best class with Elisabeth (Travaux Pratique) to date, as well as a great class with Odile (the immigration and citizenship in Francophone cinéma course). Throughout Odile’s class, she was able to help us all make sense of the movie we viewed last Friday, Touki-Bouki. I’m really enjoying the classes so far. Then, we had to stay for a group conférénce, this time focusing on French politics. Olivier, the political science professor gave the talk and was quite entertaining and informative, and the fact that I could understand everything he said was surely a positive sign. During the day, I was able to find a nice boulangerie near the school, and we were also told that we would be experiencing our first grève in Paris. A grève is, generally speaking, a strike; in Paris, this means an almost complete halt of all transport systems in Paris. The situation is anticipated to be bad enough that they’ve cancelled our classes for Thursday. It should be quite interesting to see how the city operates without such means of transport as the Métro not being in service.

Straight from class, Trevor and I walked to the Dupleix Métro stop, only to find it wasn’t working. So, we headed for the La Motte Picquet Grenelle stop and, en route to the stop, did some supermarché shopping. Finally back at home, I began preparing our dinner, which was yet another five-course meal. I’ve titled this entry as us having a sixth course, but we did only have five courses, with one of those courses being a possible sixth one in the future (hope that makes sense). EntouK (texting shortcut for En tout cas, i.e., In any case), our first course (i.e., the new one) was an apératif, followed by our first plat being a rather unconventional round for us: eggs. Trevor had a bunch of them, some scrambled, a few sunny-side; while I had cooked whites with sugared ham. We then finished off the leftover baked pasta, to which I melted Leerdammer and Gouda into an additional portion of pasta sauce, for round 3. Round 4 came in two parts: our cheese plate, alongside fresh mango slices. Finally, we had our dessert round, which included a special (and may I say, favoured) form of chocolat chaud: the 86% cocoa form. :)

I Will Now Forever Think « Beuf ! »

Friday was an awesome day to be a part of BU’s Paris programme. The school divided us in half, alphabetically and took us on a French dégustation, i.e., a tasting of French foods. Elisabeth was our culinary guide and told us to try different foods and then make a decision on whether we liked it or not. Our first course was focused on meat: a trânche (slice) of dry sausage, and rillettes and boudin-noir pâtés on baguette slices. From the fromagerie, we tried chèvre (goat cheese), fourme d’Ambert (a kind of bleu cheese), comté (which kind of tastes like Trevor’s favourite, emmental), and tried two types of camembert, an artisan and an industrielle form. This sort of tasting allowed us to know what to look for when going to the grocery store, when price and quality are usually in the forefront of American students’ minds. Artisan forms reveal that someone actually took the time to make the food, as opposed to the industrial form that could definitely be seen as uniform and more generic looking. This is quite apparent when it comes to go to the boulangerie and comparing baguettes. Speaking of the boulangerie and other inventive bread and sweet creations from the patisserie, we tried a bread that I had never had before (and still am not sure of the name), croissant au beurre, baguette vennoise, palimier, pain au chocolat, profiterol, baguette vennoise du chocolat, and for dessert, a chocolate mocha cake, (I think) mille feuille, and chocolate éclaires. They also taught us how to choose between two bottles of unopened wine and how to serve the different foods to guests.

After the conclusion of our French tasting experience, I joined most of my classmates from my 469 class and somehow made it through a movie from the 70s called Touki-Bouki. It didn’t seem like any of us were fans, nor did we completely understand what was going on. From the sound of the voices (and there didn’t seem to be much dialogue at all), people were speaking in French and either in Arabic or Wolof (the movie takes place in Senegal). What made it even more difficult was that the subtitles were in English but also in white, which made it quite a challenge to understand how the translation worked.

The night before, Trevor and I basically planned out our weekend and we met up with Erin, Liz, and Meredith, and headed for the Louvre. After navigating through the Métro, we made our way to Les Pyramides, the entrance into the Louvre itself. We were told that since we were registered through BU as Art History students, we could get into the museum for free; we didn’t quite understand, however, how to go about getting the student card. After many redirections and instructions by various staff members, we finally made our way to the card centre and received our student passes. [This, along with the Carte Navigo passes made some of us feel like we had tons of power, haha.] We then spent the next two hours going through the museum, including our visits to the « beuf » (pronounced bof) pieces, pieces which in their own right are amazing, but left us asking why everyone makes a big deal out of them, the clearest one being La Jaconde. After our trek through the museum, we headed for the Fondation, and once there, we all ate dinner with Gerald, Jill (hope you’re feeling better!), and Sam. I finally got the formula right and only spent 2,85 €!).

The Louvre group then left the Fondation and headed for Centre Tchèque which, as you may have guessed it, translates to the Czech Centre. Permission to preface (that’s for all the wonderful Model UNers who have somehow wandered onto this blog): Trevor loves jazz music and we’ve been looking for the best jazz group in France. Anyhow, he stumbled onto a website that lists every jazz concert and somehow happened upon the Czech Centre. We were a bit skeptical about going to the Czech Centre, primarily because the photo on-line made it seem like too modern of a place. And really, because it was a French-Czech establishment. (Haha, I don’t know why, but I kinda « czecheled » at that one. Okay, I’m done.) En tout cas, we decided (more like I started moving and there was no turning back) to go in and I asked a guy outside of the door if there was a jazz club performance inside. Through the window, we could only see a few folks chatting away. Still a bit anxious and unsure of what to expect, we were greeted by an über-enthusiastic guy who told us that the entrance was only 3 € and that the bar downstairs didn’t accept cash, but we could buy a set of tickets equivalent to 2 glasses of wine for 4 €. Now, you may be thinking « downstairs, why do you have to go down? » or something to that effect, right? In any case, we go down the stairs and the room begins to appear; the place definitely looked like a converted dungeon. At any rate, it would’ve been a cool dungeon if that’s what it’s purpose actually was; otherwise, it’d be a great wine cellar. EntouK, it was the site of the jazz concert. The music and company were great, but we couldn’t see the band from where we were sitting. We all got quite hungry after the concert and made our way to the crêpe kiosk that was conveniently right next to our Métro stop. I got a crêpe mixte (ham and cheese). I love Paris.