Monday, April 1, 2013

Beaches, Bisous, and Bonbons

Salut,

I'm writing on Easter Monday, a day that many people get to enjoy off of work and school (me included!). So I'm going to write about my Easter weekend, post a few pictures and a few observations.
First of all, Easter was fabulous. The weather was nice and the food was delicious. The day gets an A+.
One thing I introduced to my family was "Peeps". It was accidental, actually. Mother had sent me a package and I thought I would put them out on a nest of chocolate eggs I had bought to share. I figured they would serve no purpose in my room, so why not let them at least be a decoration?








Photo: Joyeuses Pâques! And Happy Easter everybody! Today I introduced my host family to purple"Peeps" and put them on a little nest of chocolate eggs. I didn't realize that they are not famous here! But they were well received for being semi-tasteless birds of pure sugar. (:

My host parents eyed the bird curiously and I ended up explaining the legendary peeps to them, not even noticing that they aren't popular in France. I must admit this is probably due to the fact that I was trying to not eye all of the delicious German kinder eggs on their shelves. The peeps were well received and thus four purple peep casualties followed. Goodbye, sugary sugar fluffs.

After a tasty potato and cheese omelet we went to the beach! Unfortunately it is not yet swimming time, but walking time. So we visited an old cathedral where there lay a couple popes, followed by the beach, and then sat and had drinks and talked for a while. Parfait!




 Oh! And my host family and I also took the lifts across the riviera. It was a pleasant, 4 minute ride in a small little box-like thing. Very cute! Good photo opp too.


Perrier..."so French" haha. 


 Statue of a fisherman. I believe it doubles as a light signal, but not exactly sure. !


That's not all, frankly. I wanted to make another point really quickly, as mentioned in my title. Something that has been difficult for me to adjust to has been the famous bisou francais.

That is, when people greet in Montpellier, it's typical to give 3 bisou: sort of like a kiss on the cheek, but not really, it's kind of more of a pretend kiss where you put your cheek on the other persons, or really close to and make a kissing sound.



It's somewhat like that, except I've never done it right.
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the greeting, but I am so awkward with it. And, on another note, I do not do this when I see my friends, but typically the two older women that I volunteer with will greet me this way. Except to make things more awkward, they do it only twice, which is not very typical. Also, many "older" French people I've been introduced to, who don't realize that it's new to me/a little uncomfortable will approach me and do it. Sigh, last time I did it I felt like a penguin, swaying from side to side..it was awful. Definitely not graceful with this. I guess I won't quite get the hang of this one...and that's okay with me.

Okay everyone, more post later!
"Gros Bisous" and Ciao!

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