Exploring Roussillon

Sunday, October 21

The past week has flown by and most of it as just been classes and life, so I'm not sure what all to share with everyone. The welcome with the mayor last Saturday was interesting. The castle was built in 16th century for an Italian cardinal, so the architecture is Italian in style, not French. The cardinal was an advisor to François 1st. And then in 1564 Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de Médicis stayed at the castles to escape some epidemic in Lyon, I believe. And while he was here, he signed the Edict of Roussillon, making January 1 the b beginning of the new year for all of France. Apparently up to that point, everyone had the same calender, but celebrated the new year on a different date. So within 50 kilometers of Roussillon, you could have 3 different years happening. It would be fun to go back and do the full tour of the castle, since we only got to see a small portion.

We had two other fun engagements last week. One was lunch with a woman named Elliet. She is married to a French man who works in the municipal government, but she is from Nicaragua. Every year she reaches out to the assistants, especially the Spanish one, and feeds them and is just a friend. And because her husband is in the government, I guess they have some pull if we need something. They have helped assistants in the past get new things for the apartment when something broke. She is very kind and lunch was delicious. We had some kind of curry chicken, rice, and zucchini in some kind of cream sauce.

The other fun thing was a dinner last Friday that the high school teachers had for us. They took us to a nice restaurant and we ate for 4 hours. The food was okay, but was very similar to anything we would in the US. The only exception was the foie gras and the length of time. But even though we ate for that long, we didn't eat that much. Dinner was 4 courses. The first was the wine aperitif, with wine (obviously) and some tapinade. The second was a small salad (like 4 pieces of lettuce) and a thing of foie gras for the bread. Although, it was not just foie gras, it was foie gras fondant. Apparently it was mixed with some kind of pate to make it smoother. It was still very good. Then dinner was the leg of small fowl with mashed potatoes and mushrooms. And dessert was chocolate and vanilla mousse (a small serving of each) with a small cookie. It was fun to listen to all of the teachers talk during dinner. I couldn't keep up with everything they were talking about, so it was very exhausting, but good practice.

I am slowly learning some things in Spanish and German. I can now say “Yo he camido tortilla de patatas” and “Ich habe tortilla de patatas gegessen” with both mean I ate tortilla de patatas. Tortilla de patatas is something the Spanish assistant found in the grocery store and she eats a lot of. It's a potato and onion kind of casserole/quiche thing. It's pretty good.

Other than that, everything has just been life and classes, which are still going relatively well. I am doing some activities about Halloween this week, which should hopefully be fun. I am also going on a field trip with some students on Tuesday to Lyon to see “The Death of a Salesman.” There is a Q & A with the director before and then the play the evening. All in French, but hopefully I can follow most of it. There is just this next week left of classes and then we have a 2 week break. I still don't really know what I'm doing for it. Most likely things relatively close and cheap, but thanks to the train, that can really mean anything.

From Roussillon with love