5

February 5, 2014

17:00

I'm waiting at the conservatoire with Mathilde and Clém. This morning I woke up at 11:30, and then Aline, Nadia, et moi ont allé manger le répas de midi avec la grandmère de Nadia. On the way we picked up Clémentine from her collège.

22:20

Ok I had to go quickly there and I didn't have time to really finish. I'll finish now. 

So we picked up Clémentine and drove to her grandma's house. It's not very far away. 

We had salad, pork with a really yummy curry sauce, squash gratin, and for dessert doughnuts and cheese (separately). She was really nice. 

Then we went to orchestra (there is only school in the mornings on Wednesdays) and met Mathilde at the conservatory. Their orchestra is very small, and has only two violas who are both quite shy. La directrice de l'orchestra wants me to play with them in a concert ce mardi, because I think I really support the viola section quite a bit.  Clém was saying at dinner that before you couldn't really hear the violas (and she sits right next to us-she plays cello) and now you can actually hear us. I think it's good. The music is catchy, but simple and fairly easy to sight read. I caught on fast. 

Oh yeah, I forgot: on the way to lunch we picked up a viola for me to use from a friend of Aline's (who's daughter is an OSEF exchange student as well- she has her canadian partner from Nanaimo there right now). It's a bit smaller than my viola at home, and therefore the sound isn't as satisfying, but it will do. I think it's better/easier than renting one. 

After orchestra, Mathilde had a violin lesson in the same building, and Clémentine went to the médiathèque (bibliothèque, mais avec l'accès aux média) to do done homework or read a book. I could have stayed, but I chose to accompany Aline to the market in a neighboring village. It was raining quite hard at this point, and she had meant to buy an umbrella  a couple days ago but forgot, so we stopped briefly at IKEA to buy 2 umbrellas (oh yes, did you know that there is an IKEA here?  I want to go around the entire building later on this week and see if I want to buy anything). 

When we got to the market, we went around and bought veggies, fruit, meat, milk, cheese, sheep's milk yogurt, everything. That took about an hour, maybe 45 minutes. I took some pictures there. We didn't buy any bread though: we had gone to the boulangerie earlier. 

Then we went back to the music school and found Clémentine and Mathilde, but Nadia was still upstairs with her chamber group (she plays piano), so we had a bit of time waiting for Aline to get back with Nadia. 

Now we've made it back to where it started before. It stared writing that bit before this one while I was waiting. 

Aline came with Nadia and all of us five girls headed home. It was a bit cramped in the car at this point: five people, 1 cello, more instruments, and all of the groceries, but we managed. On the way up the mountain, a couple blocks from home, we dropped off Nadia at her African dance lessons. Then there was more space in the car. 

When we drove up the driveway, Mathilde saw Albane (or "Babane" as Mathilde likes to call her) waiting for us in the yard. She was throwing the dog's toy for her: the dog is so friendly; every time she sees someone, she sees an opportunity to have her rope toy thrown, so she alway puts it by your feet and stands back, staring intently. If you move, she repositions the toy for optimum efficiency. 

Anyway, so Albane was waiting for us and she was so excited to meet me. She wanted to be the first Reveloise to meet me (and she was :) 

Then we all went inside and Mathilde, Albane and I sang/played a bunch of songs that most of us knew. Me on mandolin, Albane on guitar (she's really good), Mathilde on piano, and everyone singing. It was fun to play music again after about a week. They also knew a lot of English songs, and I learned some French ones. 

Then Mathilde had to go to karate and Albane left, so I started to upload more photos to imgur for this blog. I managed to get the photos from my iPod onto there, so you should be able to see them now. They're just lumped in with everything else. There are a couple pictures on there of the airplane meal that I took because I thought it was so strange. 

Then we all got called for dinner ("à table!"), which was a really good cheese lettuce and tomato salad, oysters ( I think? Or something similar) with a really yummy sauce, rice with sauce/cheese, and yogurt and cheese for dessert. Also, we have baguette with every meal. I haven't mentioned it specifically, but with every meal I've had in France so far there's always been a little slice of baguette placed beside the plate. Not too much, not too little. They're really good for mopping up any extra sauce on your plate, and also for eating with cheese. 

Then after dinner Olivier showed me a bunch of pictures from when they went to London, and I tried on some ski boots (we're going skiing this Saturday) which were unfortunately a bit too small. 

Then Mathilde got back home and we talked about the attitude of the kids at her school towards people with differences, and we decided it would be good for me to wear my wig for the first day at least. After that, I'm going to wear hats and maybe eventually come to school with nothing on my head. I don't know. I'll see what it's like tomorrow. 

Then I got a bunch of school stuff for tomorrow from Aline and went to my room and now I'm writing this. Whew. Busy day. 

P. S. 

I had a strange dream last night: I dreamt that Lise was a shoemaker or something and she had made this super amazing good quality stylish shoe (it looked like a bluntstone boot that was falling apart), and at first she got tons of publicity but then she got too famous and people really wanted that shoe (there was only one, you see). So one day she told me to get on my bike, and I held The Shoe in my hand as we biked as quickly as we could to a run down shed somewhere just outside the city. Then she told me to wait and guard the place while she took The Shoe inside. Next some people came along trying to kill her with knives for The Shoe, and I tried my best to stop them, and then someone who I thought was Lise's assistant or something turned traitor and pulled out her own knife, and then they all managed to get past me and Lise was killed. Then I got really sad and as I had no family left in the dream I had to join a traveling group of actors to survive. Then the rest of the dream is me being part of various plays from a caravan traveling around medieval/urban Europe. So as I said, that was a pretty strange dream.