gosh what excitement. yesterday i went jogging and after i got back i didnt have any lunch and then went out for an intensive afternoon of shopping. by the time we stopped to get some food i was starving and it was lucky cos what i ended up ordering was immense. the place we were at is some swiss chain store that sells gaufrés et glace et crêpes: yum. i got a cookies and cream thing, thinking it'd just be a bit of ice cream and maaaybe some sprinkles if i was lucky, and what i recieved was a bucket, with massive scoops of cookies and cream ice cream, chunks of biscuit with big pieces of melted chocolate inside, whipped cream, hot fudge sauce and chocolate sprinkles all piled together. it was so so cool!!! alexandra had something chocolatey and delicious as well and sophie got a crepe that they spread with nutella while it was still on the hotplate and then neatly folded up and handed to her in a little plate all melted and warm. safe to see we all felt tremendously full and satisfied after. i must return.

the other day at lunch with some people before we started they all said 'bon appétit' and then asked me what we said in australia before we started our meal. i replied 'err... bon appétit' and they all thought that it was really, really funny. i don't get why.

last weekend i went with charles and his grandma to la vogue which was on in the city, i think to celebrate rememberance day (11/11). all week i was trying to figure out from charles what a vogue was and he kept rabbitting on about fish for ducks which i found very confusing but its a carnival thing and thats one of the sideshows. we took the underground metro to get there and once the train took off i started finding it really difficult to stand up for some reason until we came out above ground and i realised we were going up at a 90° angle. it was a bit scary actually, we stopped at a station and then when we started again the lights flicked briefly and the train fell back down a bit and everything in the carriage that wasnt held onto or holding on moved south two metres and i got quite injured by a man in a leather jacket and his damn crossword. but anyway we made it there and walked around alot. it was like australian shows but the music the rides played- while still high pitched, too fast and with a disco beat- was sung in french. and also the food. OMG the food. on corners there were little stalls with signs saying marrons chaudes and 40gallon drums full of coals with chestnuts roasting on top. for a euro you get a cone full of them pulled out by a man with hands that are black from char and theyre really soft and hot and incredibly rustic and satisfying. theres also stalls which sell 30 flavours of fairy floss, which looked disgusting and had bizar flavours comme coke and pistachio and licorice. but what was truly awesome were the stalls that cooked churros and gaufres- OH MY GOD. churros are made from a dough that is squeezed in a long strip into hot oil and you get a dozen or so in a bag covered with nutella or sugar. but i had a gaufre and i can hardly even describe it it was so awesome. they squeeze batter into a waffle iron (but it was about twice as big as any waffle i'd ever seen) and then you get out a massive hot slab thats crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. they spear this with a special forky thing and then dip one side into a huge vat of melted chocolate and then AND THEN  they pile about 5 cm of stiff whipped cream on top. writing about it has made me want another one so bad but i'd probably die before it finished it. please please please have one if you get the chance. while they were doing that i was also watching them making crepes which was beautiful- they had a huge flat circular hotplate, maybe 50cm across that was very very smooth, and they rubbed some butter on it and then poured a dollop of crepe batter on and smoothed it out really really thinly with a little flat rake-like thing and just kept spreading it and smoothing it as it got all golden and crispy and then they fold it up with yummy toppings. i'll have to try one next. 

on sunday, the day after lunch with E's mother and father, we went together to a fresh food market a couple of blocks from where the appartement is. it was so so so cool. all these surly, scruffy, angry looking men with tonnes of colourful fruits et legumes in stainless steel bowls- you pick the bowl you want and they dump it in a paper bag, cough some tabacco on top of it and throw it back at you. people set up tables covered with mountains of breads and pastries and also cabinets on wheels that were full of cuts of meat, hundreds of differently shaped cheeses and fresh eggs. there were about a million people there and so much produce- we went at about 10am and i asked elizabeth what time the market starts and she told me 5!!!! thats well before sunrise and it would be so so cold. as elizabeth was buying some cactus fruit (which is very much disgusting, i discovered), i was watching a man behind us who was blow torching away the frost that was forming on some gas tanks sitting in the back of a tall trailer. it seemed to me not a terribly safe thing to do- anyway we walked around to the other side of it and it was a portable chicken rotisserie thing sitting on the trailer consisting of a wall covered in hot wires and spinning in front of it about 50 chickens on spits. elizabeth asked for un poulet plus gras which is more fatty/greasy and so the man took one of them off and dumped it in the tray at the bottom which was full of all the juices and chunks of lemon and garlic that run down. we had it for lunch and it was so freakin gooooood i could hardly believe it!!! we went to the market again this sunday and it was still really really cool, this time i saw an olive stall that also had bouteilles de huil and stuff but the olives looked amazing- they were on a very large trestle table in trays and there was about 25 big shining mounds of them in all different colours and sizes. I took a blurry photo but then i think the man started yelling at me and he was very large and angry looking so i excused myself and left. darn it!
 

ok so this first meal with elizabeths parents i thought was a special weekend-family/welcome-the-exchange-student-to-french-culture meal but i have since realised that its just how they eat all the time. that day we had i think whats called a salad niçoise, wtih beans, tomatoe and egg in a creamy sauce, then the meat we had just bought along with potatoes (PUREED father, how very french), then tangerines, then dates, then cheese and then coffee. and then boiled sweets for charles and i. and every course is bought out serperately and then cleared away before the next one, except the awesome crusty bread which is always on the table. i'm used to it now and eat slower but before i would pretty much be finished before anyone had even started.