Up to speed

Ok.  I feel bad that it has been three weeks since my last update.  There are a few things that I should say to bring you up to speed.

1:  I ate a sea snail.  "It's kind of rubbery," says my host mom while I am brandishing a three inch needle trying to fish this boogery glob out of its shell.  Probably not best to start a poor little American girl off on steamed, then rechilled escargots.  I would have had more success had it been drenched in butter and stuffed with garlic.  Anything to disguise the fact that I was about to eat a creature that leaves a slime trail behind it as it travels from place to place. 

2:  I ate the most incredible, heavenly, gut wrenchingly delicious pastry of my life.  The Kouing Amann is a specialty pastry of Bretagne that can basically be summed up in 4 ingredients- butter, butter, sugar and eggs.  There might be some flour in there but thats really just to hold together the fat and sucrose that create this chewy, swirled goodness.  It is the Zeus of pastries.  It reigns above all other desserts.  Our excursion last weekend was to the "Cornwall" region of Bretagne.  Pont-Aven is Kouing Amann central.  Maria was the first to try one of the 15 different flavors that the shop offered.  I have never heard someone speak so passionately about any food in my life.  And I made fun of her until the next day when I ate the Kouing Amann I bought.  "Elle, you look like you're going to cry," Maria says.  I wanted to.  It was that good.   I have to stop writing about it because  I am getting depressed that I dont have one in front of me.

3:  I am realizing, through my translation professors, that I dont speak English.  I speak American.  As much as I fought this idea, it is the truth.  I dont call diapers "nappies" and I go to college not "uni."  I didnt want the difference to be true; if it was that I spoke American instead of English, it would be like speaking Quebecois instead of French.  And I cant understand Canadian french to save my life.

4:  I watched Social Network in its original version.  You have to make sure it says VO (version originale) next to the title so that there are french subtitles and its not dubbed.  Have you ever listened to movies dubbed in french?  Painful.  And then, being American speakers, we understand the humor that doesnt translate.  And we look psychotic for laughing at something that wouldnt seem funny.  You could literally hear the whoosh of the jokes go whizzing over their heads.

5:  Finally, les retraites.  Protests and strikes all over the place with Marseille leading the pack. Television stations are talking about potential gas shortages while my professors lecture to the foreign students about the tendancy for my university to be rather "active" in the protests.  Two years ago, the students from Rennes 2 shut down the campus for 10 or so weeks.  In case you havent guessed by now, Bretagne is the rebellious cousin of the regional family of France, and they like it that way.