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Published: February 8th 2012
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Hello All!
I hope that these cold months are all treating you well. Here in Grenoble we are experiencing one of the coldest temperatures on record for February and all of us here are sick of it! Even for a Canadian like myself I am finding the cold disagreeable. But like any good Canadian I look to the slopes to have fun during the long cold winter months!
Last week I got the chance to go to a ski resort with some of my old Belgium friends to have a little fun after the exams that I passed at the end of January. We stayed at a station called St.Francois Longchamp which is about three hours away from Grenoble in the heart of the French Alps.
The station was huge! It had around 20 chair lifts, and tons of runs of all qualities. We had a great time everyday trying out all the runs and getting back to our little apartment at the end of the afternoon to a nice hot bath!-which I enjoyed a lot since my residence on campus does not have one. During the night we partied in different rooms with other
youth and sometimes went to the local bar at the station; The Grotte de Yeti. We ate very well during the trip, enjoying the local products like Savoyard sausages and feasting on a racletteand even a tartiflette during the festivities.
A raclette is when you have a big hot heating plate and you melt cheese on it, and then put the melted cheese on potatoes and meat. It is very tasty and boy does it fill you up! Also there is not a vegetable in sight!
A Tartiflette is another dish of the region which is made by heating up potatoes, bacon, onions, and cream together in a dish and then putting it all in the oven to a golden brown color. There is also no vegetable in sight in this dish.
I learned how to make a tartiflette during a cooking class I took in the month on November, and it is very easy and very cheap to make! So it is a great dish for the winter months when you need something to fill you up quickly! I also learned how to make a Tarte Tintin which is an upside down apple pie famous
in France. It was invented by two female servers apparently that accidentally dropped an apple pie and decided to serve it anyways by hiding the damage upside down. Anyways my gastronomical knowledge is increasing in France, along with my pant size! This semester I have started to play badminton on a school team twice a week to try minimize this effect and to get ready for the summer months.
After 5 months of living in Grenoble and going to school, I no longer feel like an outsider. I even have to remind myself sometimes that I am in France, because everything here feels so ordinary now.
I have a life here, and its a good one. I know that it is going to be very difficult to leave to go back home because Grenoble feels like my home too. However I still have 4 months to go and I want to enjoy these last months as much as I can, so I avoid thinking about the end.
This semester I have more interesting courses with sometimes very colorful teachers.I have Introduction to History of Political Ideas which goes as far back to ancient time to
the thinking of Aristotle and Plato until modern day. Needless to say there is lots of information and I will have to revise a lot every week to remember what we covered in class. also have a Comparative Politics class, A Developmental Economics class, The second part of my French Society class from last semester, and lastly I decided to take a Professional French class which will help me learn how to write resumes and cover letters in the French style and perhaps learn about the French job market.. just in case for the future you know? :p
The next couple of months will be pretty quiet for me as I will not be moving around a lot. I am trying to safe money to travel around Italy this summer before going back home in August.
This weekend I going out for Sushi with some of my girl friends as I have not tasted any sushi since last summer in Canada, so I have some serious withdrawals. After we are going to watch a hockey game Grenoble Brulers de Loups against Angers. Apparently our local team is one of the best in France, so I am excited to see how they play, and if they are better than our Kamloops Blazers!
La vie est belle!
Your Canadian Traveller
Rebecca
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