Un, Deux, Trois, Souffle!

Day 2! Wow. I'm finally rested after all the jet-lag business, and so the first thing I did was...eat cake and bread! I've learned that the French not only have wine with their meals, but they have bread (baguette) with EVERY SINGLE MEAL, even breakfast (that's more than the wine can say). But often it's served with jam, fig paste, tomato paste, boiled egg yolks (foie gras) or Nutella! Yes, it's even in France. They also have GAP, Sephora, and tons of American music on the radio. What do you know? For lunch and dinner, wine is served with the main course, and champagne comes with the appetizer and dessert. Wowza. My room is really nice- it's lined with perfume bottles along the walls, and there are shelves stocked with random nic nacs and French poetry among other books. :) I helped make the croutons with tomato paste before the huge storm of people came to celebrate my host mom's mother's 90th birthday!!!! I made a new friend, Julie, who's about 8 years old. We played Uno (I haven't played that in years), and she showed me how to make an origami canopie and a portefeuile (wallet.) We had a 3 (?) course seafood meal- they eat SO much and SO quickly! I couldn't keep up! One of my host mom's sons, Olivier, was teasing me that we were eating horse and frog. And finally, we had a gateau de framboises (raspberry cake with ice cream). Delicieux. The title of this entry is what they say after they sing "Joyeux Anniversaire", right before someone blows out the candles. Then they light a really tall cylinder that shoots out sparklers...okay, that's a really bad description...does this exist in America? If so, I've never seen it, so I was super impressed. Then I went to visit Julie as she was drawing, and we ended up playing an imaginary game in which we used an origami book as a phone to call different animals. The we would tell the other what the animal had said and what we should do. It was awesome and completely absurd. It turned into a murder mystery/Grey's Anatomy episode very quickly. Then we played the hot potato game but with a hat, and Julie and I made up tons of different rules with it. At one point, she asked me, "Why aren't you speaking English?" haha. Great moment. Finally, we watched the beginning of a hilarious Japanese movie called "Piano Forest." Then I took "une tour" of the city with my host mom and another woman to see my school...only a 20 minute walk from the apartment! I have to go eat dinner now..."le miel" honey...mmm...qu'est-ce que c'est? Au revoir!