Another Week of Day to Day Adventures

So, another busy week finished, and oh boy was I happy to get to the weekend. So, let’s talk about the week. Thanks to the Easter weekend, I didn’t have to start school until Tuesday. It was our second week of swim in P.E. and the focus was on freestyle technique(and we should note that here, freestyle is called “crawl.”) Since we go to the community pool, after break, we all grab our swim bags and walk to the pool. Then, we head into the locker rooms(it’s actually just one really big locker room for both genders and there are little locking cabins where you change.” We put our stuff in the lockers(you have to use a euro to take the key out, but once you get your stuff out, you get your euro back. Once in swimsuits(and it’s interesting to remark that all the girls wear one-pieces and all the boys wear speedos or speed shorts, since the grade is based on your time) we head up the stairs and separate in the shower rooms. Showers before and after the pool are compulsory, and we also have to walk through about 5 inches of water to clean our feet. Then, all 50+ of us students are squished into three lanes and told to swim eight 50-m laps for warm-ups. After that it is a few 100m swims, sometimes with kickboards or fins, and we finish off with one or two 50m sprints. The actual test for the bac that those in my class will do next year is 3 50m sprints, one freestyle(crawl) one backstroke(dos) and one breaststroke (brasse.) Even though we have an hour and 50 minutes for P.E. we really only spend about an hour in the water. Once back in the locker room(after showers where everyone washes their hair and everything) everyone changes, and then there is a rush for the few hair-dryers and a bit of pushing to get a spot in front of a mirror. Our teachers have to come through telling everyone to hurry up and forget about redoing their hair and their make-up so we can get back to school on time for lunch. So, anyway, enough about P.E. I’m sure it’s not as exciting for all of you as it is for me.

So, I had my first substitute teacher of the year this week. Here, they don’t give you a substitute just for one hour of one day. Here, we had an entire week without french class since the teacher was gone before we finally ended up with a substitute who will take us through until vacation. The teacher is nice enough, but it is hard to adapt to a different style of teaching of a class that I already don’t understand. And the worst part is...we’re starting poetry. Already my classmates don’t understand the poems, so I don’t have a chance.

Some of the kids at my school are currently hosting Spanish students for the week. At the beginning of the year, some of the kids in my class went to Spain and stayed with host families, so now those kids are here and staying with the kids in my class. My school even took down the French flag and put up a Spanish flag. Apparently the bus ride is 24 hours, so when the kids arrived on Thursday afternoon, they looked dead on their feet. They will stay for the week and leave again next Friday.

Friday was a nice normal friday with it’s nice two hours of math and no french class, and our usual Friday SVT test. Really, I feel like we have a test almost every other week. This one was all about the steps of protein synthesis, from transcription to translation. After school I got to have my guitar lessons and I can now officially play: Wonderwall, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and Hallelujah, as well as lots of exercises. I really enjoy having the guitar as something to practice when I’m not at all in the mood to do homework.

After guitar, despite the rain, I looked through the pantry, consulted my recipe. and then headed to the grocery store to pick up my ingredients. Actually, one of the best parts of baking is deciding what I’m going to bake, looking through all of the dessert blogs and comparing recipes. Since I had plenty of time on my hands, a list and a shopping bag(so I could blend in and not draw attention to myself) I spent a long time just wandering up and down the aisles. I discovered that they do sell oreo’s in a normal french grocery store. They are just about 4 euros( more than 5 dollars) for a package of 8. No big deal, right? I was disappointed in being unable to find rice krispy cereals( since we have a ton of marshmallows leftover from Diane’s birthday party and I wanted to make rice krispy treats) and I also couldn’t find graham crackers(disappointing since I wanted to make s’mores.) The grocery store in my town also has a little section with stuff from around the world. In “taste of Italy” we find pasta sauce, spices, and some specific pastas. in “taste of mexico” we find tortillas, salsa, doritos cheese sauce, and some spices. in “taste of germany” there is some random stuff and...krusteaz blueberry muffin mix. and...in “taste of the united states”...drumroll please: betty crocker fudge brownie mix, pepperidge farms chocolate chunk cookies, maple syrup, and mini jars of skippy creamy peanut butter. Anyway, enough about grocery stores. I’m just weird and really enjoy walking all around grocery stores. Actually, I feel like there are probably a lot of things in my own grocery store back home that I never really bothered to look at, so I can’t wait to come home with my newly opened eyes and explore my own local store. Really, I think that applies to everything. I feel like there must have been so much that I took for granted, that I missed, and I can’t wait to reexamine everything from my new perspective once I get back.   

So, once home from the grocery store, I put away my ingredients and attacked my homework so I could have it done for the weekend. That way, Saturday morning, as I got up, my first thoughts were on breakfast and my cookies. Since I needed to start using up all of my candy from christmas and easter, I made peppermint bark stuffed chocolate chunk cookie bars. I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough by hand(and that means everything by hand. I wasn’t in the mood to risk breaking my host mom’s hand mixer so...I took a knife to a giant bar of chocolate to cut it into chunks, creamed my butter and sugar with a knife and a whisk, and mixed everything together with a wooden spoon. Actually, I managed to give myself a nice blister from so much whisking. Anyway, I split the dough in half, pressed the first half into the pan, put in a layer of peppermint bark, and then put on a second layer of cookie dough. They turned out fabulously. Actually, here is probably a good time to throw out a tip I learned from my food blogging: when making cookie bars or brownies, line the pan with a big sheet of greased aluminum foil. Then, once you let the brownies cool in the pan, you can just grab the two sides of the foil and lift it all up. It makes cutting even squares a million times easier, and turns that annoying cleaning of the pan into just a quick wipe down.

The cooked cookie bars. It was impossible to know when they were done because I couldn't see anything and a toothpick test just hit the peppermint bark layer and came out chocolate coated. The foil was brilliant,  since after waiting an hour, I could just pull the whole thing out and chop my cookies into bars.

 So, the cookie bars turned out fabulously, even better than I was hoping for. The layers of white chocolate and dark chocolate of the peppermint bark stayed relatively intact, making a vein that ran through the bars, but the peppermint bits sort of melted and spread into the dough, spreading just a slight peppermint flavor throughout. I can’t wait to make them again. But, I know that the next time I make these, I’ll be stuffing them with twix bars to get a nice caramel and shortbread layer, too.

The finished cookie bars. They really were just great.

 I took the cookie bars to my AFS orientation on Saturday afternoon. They disappeared in under 15 minutes, so I would say they were a success. The orientation itself was...well, an AFS orientation. We spent a lot of time just sitting around talking, waiting for things to get started. Then, the volunteers decided that we needed to do an energizer, but none of them wanted to lead it so I ended up teaching a roomful of adults and teenagers how to play “Hunter.” Then, we talked about the dates of our activities and the rules for traveling, and had one-on-one interviews to take about how everything is going. That was it. I feel like we could have done everything in 1 hour instead of 3, but I guess the volunteers decided to give us lots of time to hang out and talk together, too.

The best part of Afs activities is just hanging out talking with the other exchange students.

Saturday night, I had a handball match. We won by three goals against the team that is ranked #1 and was undefeated until that night, so that was cool. I didn’t play much because our coach really wanted to win, but I didn’t really mind. I was too stressed that I would totally mess up and we would lose by one goal or something, so I was quite happy just clapping and coming in when my teammates needed a quick water break or had a slight injury. That was with the club handball team. With my school handball team, we are qualified for the national tournament, which is exciting. It is the week we get back from vacation, and we will leave Wednesday afternoon, play on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning. The only problem: that is the week of “les épreuves groupés” for the juniors. “Les épreuves groupés” means we have a week of school(well, actually is is Wednesday to Monday) where we don’t have class, we just have back to back long tests. It is like practice for the real bac when they will have all of the tests back to back without a ton of time to study for each one individually. So, that means that when we get back from the handball tournament, all of the juniors on the team will have to make-up all of those tests, and it’s not like we will be having extra study time while at the tournament. Personally, it’s not that big of a deal for me, but for the other girls on the team and in my class, it is really causing a problem.

On Saturday night, while chowing down on flammkuchen (which is sort of like pizza but with a really thin crust and cream and cheese and onions and ham, rather than your normal pizza toppings and tomato sauce) I talked a bit about politics. The first round of the elections are coming up, so I thought you all might like to know how the system works. Earlier in the year, the socialist party had a primary, but they were the only party to have one. Now, we are coming up on the first round of the real election. Apparently there will be about 10 candidates, including the current president. Everyone(well, it’s not required to vote, but most people do) will go to the polls and vote for their candidate. Then, the top 2(which we are basically assuming will be the socialist party’s candidate and the current president) will go to the second round, 2 weeks later. The other candidates who lost use that two weeks to barter with the winning candidates. For example, let’s say the representative for the moderate party got 5% of the votes in the first round. He might go talk to Sarkozy and say “Hey, I’ll tell all of my supporters to vote for you in the second round, but once you are elected, I would like one of the appointed positions in your government, like maybe minister of defense or something like that.” Even though I’m not a huge fan of politics, it was really interesting to learn something new.

So, that’s the dealio. My food blog reading hobby continues, and I now have a list of about 50 desserts(and at least half including the combination Peanut butter and chocolate) that I am dying to make. I also wanted to think about creating my own food blog when I get back and this blog becomes useless. But, there are a few setbacks. For one, there are apparently a bunch of copyright issues to be careful of, since copying and pasting a recipe to make your own pictures if just too easy. And Secondly, a lot of what makes reading food blogs fun is when the writers put their own twist on recipes. Like, they will link to the original, and then tell you all about their inspirational adjustments. I’m still learning how to succeed when exactly following a recipe, so I wouldn’t have much insight to share except “Hey, if a high schooler can do it, so can you.” So for the moment, I’ll just keep talking about what I make and we’ll go from there.

My host parents are home from their weekend away(a sort of business trip combined with a weekend out of the house and away from some stress) and life is on a pretty normal rhythm. There’s one week left of school and as the French say, “Vivent les Vacances!”