A few of my favorite things

So let’s talk food. I don’t know how I haven’t managed to bring this up yet, because food is very central to life in France, and is also pretty much all that us American’s talk about. Let’s just say, the food in France is awesome. Except for breakfast, which is very light and definitely not substantive enough by my American standards, all meals are multiple courses. This was a very hard adjustment for me to make at first, because I never knew how many courses we were going to eat, and I was always full before the end of the meal. Now that I’m used to it though, I don’t feel like I’ve had a proper meal, if I don’t at least have a yogurt or an orange for dessert. This is a big change for a girl who pretty much lives off of Luna bars and cappuccinos back in the states. I actually bought some granola bars the other day, and was surprised to find that my love affair with granola bars has ended. After all the fresh, good food here, I just couldn’t handle how processed and chemically the granola bars tasted. I guess I'll just have to live off chocolate croissants instead. What a shame.
I also feel like it is worth mentioning that I am not allowed to leave the house in the morning without drinking a coffee first. (Which, by the way, are drank out of bowls, not mugs.) I actually tried to do this once (I know, I don't know what I was thinking either), and got stared at like I was even more foreign than I already am. Woe is me, I'm just going to have to drink my coffee each morning.

On another note. Last night I went to a Gala put on by my host sister’s school. It was a very upscale event in the Hotel de Ville; the nicest location in town. My host sister is in a very elite academic program, and this Gala is a very big annual event; kind of their version of prom, except that parents and families are invited as well. The coolest part about the event (well, in my opinion anyway), was the dancing. Dancing at any event that I have ever been to, especially high school ones, is always a bunch of kids awkwardly shaking it on the dance floor. Not here. Nobody dances inappropriately, everyone does what they call “danse rock”. “Danse rock” is basically a mix of all popular types of ballroom, lots of moves borrowed from swing and salsa, but also very much its own dance.
A professor I was introduced to asked me if I was going to dance with everyone. When I tried to explain that I had NO idea how to dance like that, he reassured me that I’d still get a chance to dance, because there was going to be a waltz later. The implication of this being that obviously, everyone knows how to waltz. Wait... what?! Waltz? I have no idea how to waltz, neither does any other American that I know. But apparently, I was very much in the minority last night with my lack of dancing skills.
After the Gala, we went out to a normal discotheque (still in our formal dresses!) and danced like normal drunk kids. It was nice to be so uninhibited by the language for once.

And I just like shaking my booty.