L'Escalade

After my rock climbing class last Monday I decided to sign up for another class Thursday as well so I could climb at least twice a week. It's a nice break from my usual hum drum of classes.
Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) night I went to a rock concert at Molodoi. None of my other friends ended up showing up, but I recognized a French guy, JP, from hanging out with Jessamy's friend, Lorrain, and his friends, so I hung out with him for a bit. The music was really loud and fun! If you want to look up the band, they have a Myspace. They're called Plus Guest.

Thursday was Jessamy's birthday! We went to a Moroccan couscous restaurant. It was delicious and filling :) Jessamy and I split the "duo Saharian" which had all different sorts of food to try, including kabobs, sausage, and other things I don't know how to describe... Afterwards we hung out at la Taverne Française with the French guys. They're pretty fun and say I speak the best french of the American group :)

Friday I slept in and skipped class (sh... it's not that big of a deal, I swear!) Then invited some people over in the evening since my host-mom was gone. We hung out and played "Trivial Pursuit: Passport au monde" with a natural French-speaker on each team so at least SOMEONE would understand what was going on :) We almost won! But not quite...

Saturday I went to Dubliner's to watch the rugby game. No one else from the group showed up, but it was okay, I like rugby enough to watch it alone :) France vs. Scotland and France won!!!! Hooray! Then I went home to get ready for the Opera, and my host-mom made rabbit for dinner so I had a little bit before I left. Not bad! As long as you don't think about what you're eating... and fluffy little bunny tails and floppy ears.... anyways...
The Opera was a recital of Nina Stemme, she sang Wagner and Rachmaninov and some other great artists that I don't remember.... but my favorite part was when she did an encore and sang two songs in French. I actually understood what she was saying! I hope I can go back to the Opera and maybe see something in French. I think it's so amazing what they can do with their voices!
Afterwards we went out for Donner Kebab, which is like the fast food here, except just that it's cheap and fast, it's not prepackaged and frozen like American fast food . It's just like hot sandwiches and wraps and stuff. Very yummy :)

Sunday Sam, Allison, and I went to le Salon des Vins, which is just like a GIANT room filled from end to end with wine vendors and you get to try whatever you want! We don't know much about wine or wine tasting, but we enjoyed ourselves well enough :) I found a delicious wine called Cent Visages, but when I came back to buy it they were all out, but I bought a different wine from the same people to bring to people back home. Hopefully next time I go wine-tasting I can bring an expert along with me to tell me what to do!
Not much exciting after that, I came home and worked on a presentation for tomorrow. Sam & I are presenting William James to our World Philosophy class, but it has to be 40 minutes long so it's kind of intimidating... We'll get through it though.

I had rock climbing class today, and am going to check out a gym with Ashton today. There's a party at this gym (it's called Roc n Stock) Friday and I want to go check it out and make sure I can get there okay before I try to go to the party Friday. Basically all I want to do these days is go climbing. I can't wait till it's nice outside and I can get on some real rocks!

It snowed today! But didn't stick at all. I was hoping it would snow enough for class to be cancelled but alas, that is not so. It was pretty though!

Well, I still have some more research to do to make this presentation 40 minutes long so I better get to it.

À bientôt!