La Raclette

No, the title does not refer to a place, a class, or a sport.  It describes a delicious traditional French meal preparation technique, which I have had the good fortune of experiencing twice in the last week.  “Une raclette” is a table-top cooker, like a fondue pot but more sophisticated.  The top is a round, flat griddle, about a foot in diameter.  There is an inch gap or so underneath this, where the heating element is located.  Small, triangle shaped pans with handles go into this gap, where one melts cheese and warms other delicacies.  On the top, you cook veggies or meat (or in our case, fry cold cuts) or both, then scrape the cheese on top.  Delicious.

This was the first meal that I experienced in my host family, a mom, a dad, and a son who are quite nice and have been hosting students from California for ten years (TEN YEARS?!)… the mom is actually an American (and therefore the dad teases her quite a lot… “my American wife, she drinks too much”… imagine that in English with a French accent), she grew up in Texas and went to college at Whittier in LA.  French happens to be her third language.

My weekend en famille went quite well… Lauren lives across the street, so my “mom” took us to the train station to get bus schedules and then to the mall on Saturday.  After that, I went with her to a birthday party, where I was offered a job teaching English.  Apparently foosball and Borat are good conversation starters with the 13-16 year old age group.  There was a slight issue with the WiFi; Microsoft Outlook decided to delete some important emails, including the one with the password, but it was soon fixed.

I woke up Saturday morning to find my door open… strange, but didn’t think much of it.  Then, about 3 minutes later, the cat opened the door (yes, the cat opened the door… as in jumped and pushed the handle), ran in, and hopped up onto my lofted bed.  I attempted to chase it off, but it merely sat there and looked mad, as if I was disturbing it somehow.  I then employed Balam (my host brother, who is 10) to chase the cat away, which he did by yelling at it and making angry noises.  The cat is far too smart… it decided it would be funny to open the door to the bathroom yesterday while I was taking a shower… I heard a door open, didn’t think that it would be the bathroom, saw the door was closed, and then realized the cat was sitting there, looking at me as if I should have taken a faster shower so I could let him out of the bathroom.  It will be an interesting time here with the cat, to say the least.

Sunday included a trip to the Parc Bordelaise, a beautiful park in Bordeaux with a set of interesting animals in the middle.  There’s also a pond and a small café, and a puppet show on the weekends!  After lunch at Hippo (think gourmet hamburgers) where we heard the birthday song play about five times (apparently in France they find it amusing to blast a jazz choir singing you happy birthday over the restaurant PA system), we returned home, ate another delicious dinner several hours later, and Lauren and I figured out the bus schedule to take us to school the following morning.

After many days of trekking to campus and wandering the halls in search of schedules and departments (and thanks to the Centre de Californie’s subject binders) I now have classes!  Some classes, anyway… hopefully I successfully get into all my courses, because I have to go introduce myself to the professors after class (which starts officially this upcoming Monday), and I don’t have priority because I’m an international student.  Stressful, but the process is hopefully coming to an end, and I can already feel the relief at the end of the tunnel!

This weekend, after much ado, we have decided to go to Biarritz and San Sebastian.  Both beach towns, Biarritz is about two hours away and San Sebastian another two hours from there.  Be prepared for pictures!

Unlike Toulouse, I called ahead this time, but only to the hostel in Biarritz, because I speak approximately zero Spanish, so getting around and finding someplace to stay the night in San Sebastian will be the primary adventure of the trip, I’m sure!