A Real French Weekend

The day after I got back from my solo trip I was in my room working on cleaning and getting organized back into routine, when Jaqueline came into my room and asked me if I wanted to go with her to get Mathias from school. I had never done that before so I decided I might as well go, plus I really want to get to know Jackie better. Mathias goes to school where they used to live across town so we took off walking early to be there on time. We were walking by the park when Jackie saw a horse and carriage and asked me if I had ridden it yet. I told her no so she paid for us both to go. It was really fun. We we riding though the streets and everyone was looking at us. We even went right though Place Plumereau. It was so much fun! We got off to get Mathias and we walked home. That's one experience I never thought I'd have in France :)

The rest of the weekend I spent with Romain. On Saturday the 8th there was a Soccer Tournament for middle school aged kids. We watched them and spent the day there with Romain's friends and family. It was a huge get together. There were people making cotton candy, hot dogs, and other carnival things. I was watching the players and imagining Romain being that small and playing. It made me laugh and I said, "They're so small!" He told me to wait till the next day...they'd be even smaller. So the next day we went back again. I got to meet Romain's aunt and Uncle, their daughter and her children. The kids playing were ages 5-8 I think. They were tiny! But it was really fun to be there with all of them. It was a very French weekend. I also ate a thing called Chichi which is actually Spanish churros but they were french style here and Romain's mother was making them so she insisted that I try before the tournament was over. They were so good. She said they used 33 kilos of flour that day to make the Chichi. That's a lot of Chichi!

Then on Wednesday Romain and his best friend Anthony took me to Chartres. Notre Dame is there, not the one of Paris, but one that is actually bigger than that. When we got there we met Fabrice, one of his other best friends, and his girlfriend Marie. They took us out to dinner next to the cathedral where we all got fajitas, except for Marie. She got the Jumbo Shrimp which she proceeded to take the shells off of with her knife. I had eaten a whole fajita before she had even taken her first bite. I wanted to pick it up and peel them for her. Haha Oh the French!

The next day we went to the cathedral. It was so beautiful. It's not symmetrical but it's so tall and the stained glass windows inside are so pretty! There is also a complete sequential sculpture of the life of Jesus on the walls around the front of the church. It was really incredible! Afterwards we went up into the church tower. It was so many stairs up but it was free (for European Union students under the age of 25 again :) ) and so all but Anthony got to go up. When were were up there we could see all of Chartres. It was gorgeous and I really enjoyed being up there. It's the only Cathedral tower I've been up into. After that we took the hour and a half trek back to Tours. I'm slowly knocking things off my to do list. And it was really fun to have a trip with Romain and his friends.

Some things I noticed this week:
The classic French girls style is a stripped blue/white shirt with skinny jeans and grey high-heeled cowgirl boots with a grey or blue button up pull sweater. You know they are French right away.
French park on the sides of the road everywhere but this parking is on both sides of the road, but its only on one side for about 10 meters and then it switches to the other side for a while and then back again. You drive back and forth and back and forth down the whole street.

Just a funny thing that happened the night after I got back from Chartres. We were walking home with everyone and Valeria pulled on my coat to pull me back to her and she grabbed the little strap on the back of my coat and pulled it really hard. It came off in her hand and the buttons went flying. It was so funny. She was going to fix it before she left but never got around to it so I'm bringing the buttons home with me....lol.