Pau-lor Ice Caps

       Wow, a lot has happened since last week!
Saturday:
We went to Bordeaux, which had me getting up plus tot in the morning and running to the bus by 8am. Our first stop was a vineyard. Immediately stepping off of the bus we were greeted by a bear.  Well actually 2 bears, but instead of bears they were these huge mountain pyrenees dogs, (imagine a Saint Bernard hopped up on steroids) that turned out to be the sweetest guys i've met in France so far.  After attempting to mount the dog and ride off into the distance, we started the tour. (I posted a picture below of the big guy!) This place is amazing, and it was B-E-A-utiful. We walked along a dirt path, which over looked mountains and grapevines, and just stood there in awe before i proceeded to dance the actual "grapevine". I opted for the english tour because i was legitimately interested in the subject matter, and if it were in french i can assure you i would start day dreaming and wouldn't pay attention. Side note- I love french films, but i can only watch them when i'm wide awake, because if subtitles are present and i get tired, i can't just close my eyes, because then i've just lost half the plot of the movie. Similar to french tours. Anyways, even though the tour was an english i still didn't really manage to pay attention.. as usual. The second we walked into the manufacturing area the aroma of red wine took over, and i was getting drunk off the fumes. We moved from the manufacturing area to the basement where there were over 50 barrels of wine. I found out that each barrel costs approx. 600 euros, and can only be used 3 times, which at that point is sold for 20 euros to be used in a gardens. So moral of the story is, don't screw up the batch of wine. This certain vineyard produces white and red wines. The red wine is a half and half of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The white wine is...good. I don't know the kind it was. Oops.
As i was walking through the barrel room i stumbled upon a dusty bottle of wine from 1983, and the first thing i thought of was "would dad's happiness of having a bottle of '83 wine overshadow the fact that i was at the US embassy in France for stealing said bottle." Upon which point i decided to put the bottle back and proceed to the tasting. Now to my previous knowledge, from watching movies, i assumed wine glasses were only going to be filled with minute amounts of the drank, well i was wrong. We "sampled" 4 different types of wine, which were all poured to at least the half way line of our glasses. They were all pretty good, red wine has begun to grow on me within the last month, so i ended up buying 2 bottles, one for my parents and one for my host mom. Along with the tasting we were fed a wonderful arrangement of quiche's, pasta salad, bread galore, and some much needed water. It was all followed up by a phenomenal pomme tart that took all of our breaths away. I want to also point out that this day was the coldest one so far. It was freezing. The entire time. The chateaux where the tasting was held had the worlds largest fireplace, it was so big that the Vatican may call this place once the pope dies and use it to convey the smoke signals.

After the vineyard we drove into the center of Bordeaux and went on another tour. We went to a couple different Cathedrals, and lots of different centers where live musicians played fun toe tapping music. The best part of my day was that i got to see my old friend Florian. I haven't seen him since i went to Aurillac in 2006 and stayed with my penpal Paul. Flo lives in Bordeaux and although i only had a very limited amount of time, we caught up and walked to a beautiful "place" in the center of town. Et puis, the day had to end, and i hopped on the bus, and attempted to sleep for the 2 and a half hour drive back to Pau-ridise.

Sunday: Didn't do much, lounged around, and obviously ate lots of bread as usual.

Monday: I got to teach an English class! Toute seul! I'm the new assistant at the highschool Sainte Dominique in Pau. The english teacher sent an email to our USAC program directors who forwarded it to us, and i replied and was offered a time to come in, and it just so happens that i don't have class until 3pm on mondays. So i arrive at the school at 9am, meet the teacher, and am immediately thrusted into the position of taking 15 kids into a class room all by myself and have them converse with me. For the first 15 minutes we just talked about me, which was obviously amazing, and then the kids had to talk about a topic that i was told to hand out. It was an american cartoon on global warming. I had to listen to the kids talk about global warming and correct there english. It was so much fun. I really did love it. I've been looking forward to next monday since this past mondays lesson was over! New focus of study? Education? C'est possible. It just so happened that 2 of my new students sell pain au chocolate in their spare time, which i will most certainly use to my benefit in the future. This is an amazing experience and i am so glad to be volunteering my time.

Tuesday: My host mom took me to the casino for the monthly Pau "QI JEU". This is a 3 hour event where about 12 different teams of french people compete against each other in trivia. Questions ranged from "name that movie from the dialogue" to "which animal is not a logo in the NBA" to difficult math problems. (I wouldn't know how to do the math problems if they were in english!) Needless to say, the language barrier was quite difficult, but i managed to have fun with it, and even helped my team get 3 answers. Christine was extremely helpful, and extremely into the trivia. She is the team leader, and boy did it show. She had such awesome enthusiasm and she's a total dork just like me, and it didn't hurt that she bought the whole table a round of drinks. I opted for the Pina Colada. After the scores were tallied, for the first time in all the time Christine's been doing this trivia thing, our team got on the podium! We came in 3rd, it was very exciting, and i can't wait to be apart of it next month.

Wednesday: Not too much happened today, went to class, came home, and watched Gossip Girl, because a month without Serena VanDer Woodsen is torture. Class doesn't start until 11am tomorrow, which makes thursdays even better. Speaking of class, it seems as though i've been transported back into highschool. Anytime someone is talking in class my one teacher always just assumes it's me! My reputation has made it all the way to France.. I'll work on that.

Well me and a group of my friends are going skiing on saturday! Christine has given me snow pants, warm socks, gloves, a hat, and boots, so i'm all prepared. This will be my first time skiing on a real mountain, i wonder how it will compare to Wilmot Mountain's garbage mound, probably not much of a substantial difference i'm guessing... Well i'm tired, i just finished my book "The Help" and i recommend it to all my blog readers, and beyond, it was phenomenal, now my book choices are either French Smurfs Comics or my assigned francophone literature books. I think we all know which one i'll choose.

Sorry for the long post, i guess i should write a little more often. It's still cold here, but i guess it could be worse. I could be in Wisconsin, surrounded by cheeseheads.. Yes i watched the game, and yes i was quite dissapointed, i'm sure my screams could be heard all the way from France! I'm a cubs fan though so i'm very used to saying "we'll get em next year!! "

Bon Journée

MT