cinémawww, théâtre, rugby et le foot

So it's Sunday........today was a relaxing day. Last Sunday I went to the Pyrenées with Sarah and her host parents. We drove up to ski town on La Mongie, then took a cable car ride up to the highest point in the French Pyrenées, Pic du Midi. It is an observatory, with astronomers and physicists that stay up there for a week at a time to do their research on the sun. The elevation was a little under 10,000 ft...so you can tell the difference between these mountains and the Rocky Mountains...yay for Leadville, CO at 10,000 ft!! It used to be only an observatory, but then in 2000 they built the cable car and made it t tourist attraction because they didn't have enough money for all the science equipment. Coincidentally it was science day, only happens twice the whole summer and fall, so we got a free tour of the gigantic telescope and we met the scientists and stuff. It was so beautiful at the top...I love mountains!!! Then I thought...hmm I did get accepted into 2 colleges in Colorado, and I could easily be a freshman at one of them right now....but I'm happy here!!!

The night before I watched France lose to England in the Capitole, after eating yummy Paella made by Antoine's mom, he's Spanish.
So this week...Tuesday night I went to the theatre, Théâtre Garonne, and saw "Derniers remords avant l'oubli" by Jean-Luc Lagarce. I'm not that experienced in contemporary theatre, but I really liked it and understood most of it. We talked about it the next day at school, so that was good. Wednesday Liza, Sarah and I saw "the assasination of Jesse James" after school, with Brad Pitt. In English, of course, and I really liked it. The music was all modern with a western movie, and I kept thinking that it would turn into a Moby song, haha, but it never did. It was good we saw it in the afternoon, because it's a long movie. Then Thursday was the strike against Sarkozy's new policies against functionaires, so 3 of my teachers were striking, so I only had school from 1-3pm. here are some pics from the manifestation. The trains and metros and buses weren't working, so only 11 people in my class were there. My host parents didn't strike, just because they didn't want to get behind in their classes, so we drove. Then after school, Fabien and I hung out because he was in the city during the day, then he could drive me to soccer. We didn't know what to do..so we went to the movies! I saw Michael Clayton, lots of thinking, but a good film. It's a little different than in champaign, because i live in a big city, so you just walk up to the movie theatre and see what are playing and go to whats convinient, no looking online or in the newspaper..i like it.

I'm officially on the TFC 3rd soccer team...my name Lise Geperlex...was on the wall. I know that that's me...but i guess they couldn't read my handwriting before because I wrote it when I was really out of breath lol. So that was exciting. I'll turn in my papers and stuff next practice, no hurry bc there's not a game for a while. Friday night I went to a soirée with my Rotary Club. It was a big dinner to finish their Ferrari fundraiser. In June they raised 15000€ for a children's hosptal by showcasing Ferarris, and selling tickets and rides etc. So yesterday, I did things around the house...then I went to the TFC vs St. Etienne football (soccer) match!! yeah!! It was so much fun. I went with Liza, Sarah, and Danielle, plus Liza's host dad and sister came with us. TFC lost 2-0, so it was fun screaming really loud. We experimented with the cool features on my camera, so thats why these pics look a little funny haha.


Then at night we went to Clementine and Emmylou's house for a dinner party, us "kids" didn't have to eat with the "adults" so we ate pizza and watched South Africa win the world cup! Congrats! And Sarkozy handed the cup over to the SA coach. It's funny, many people here wanted England to win bc they are from Europe...even tho they beat France and its, well, England. As for the divorce.... according to the opinions of the people sitting at my table at the Rotary soirée, that Cécilia is being seen kind of as a 21st century héroine because she stratagized and wisely played the divroce. They metioned Mme Bovary too. I guess their marriage was bad a while ago, so she purposely didn't vote at all in the elections, so her husband wouldn't get her vote. Then she waited until he was elected so she would be finacially stable when she divorced him. Now that he's president, she can get all those financial benfits when the divorce happens. Then they said she'll leave France and go to the US...so heads up for the tabloids! I guess she has a lover in Miami or something. Who knows. But many covers of newspaper say Deseperate Housewife...funny because EVERYONE here watches Desperate Houswives religiously.
But I have mastered the french dining course..I'm sure you don't care but here are my learnings:
1-apéro (cashew, cheese crackers, crackers etc. with champagne, marntini, pastis, liqueur etc)
2-everyone moves to the table for the entrée (soup, variety of veggies, fish, anything really)
3-plat principal (anything. today we ate confit de canard with mushrooms and baked pears)
4-cheese!! (always 3 types, a hard one like conte, a soft like brie, and a chèver or blue) w/salad
5-desert or fruit
6-café
These are the 6 steps. Everday weekday dinner omits step #1, but we have all the others. We usually eat fruit for desert, and I usually don't get coffee, sometimes a decaf. At the rotary dinner we even had 2 entrées..so 7 steps. On sat. night they started their apéro at 8:30pm and we left at 2am!! No joke! Lots of time is spent at the table in France. I'm sure you all needed that information. Today we had the 2 grandmas and the great grandma over for lunch. I noticed that Nadine adresses Rose (Antoines mom) by "vous", although they have known eachother since Nadine was 18, when my host parents met. This afternoon we went for a walk and I asked her about that. It's just a form of respect, even if you know them really well, like for 30 years! I like that in French, bc there are only a certain amount of people in your lives who get to be called "tu", apart from all kids and pets. So if you're a teacher you call your whole class "tu", well unless you are actually talking to the whole class, then its "vous", duh. It makes an intamacy that doesn't exist in english.
So yeah...enough for now. One week then vacation!! Going to Nice.
Lots of love, Liz