Thanksgiving revelries, episode 1
And we’re back, sports fans! Or, at least, I’m back, returned from my trip to the wilds of eastern France. I had a wonderful weekend with Aunt Suse and her friend Jill, and am not looking forward to returning to the humdrum life of an English assistant. Oh well – only 19 more days until Christmas break and England!Aunt Suse and Jill met me in Reims early Wednesday afternoon. We took a brief tour of the cathedral, then went and had lunch at a brasserie that had been recommended to me. As we entered, the waiter asked us if we were there for lunch – I said yes. He then handed us three menus full of extremely expensive, large dishes. We looked at each other – this wasn’t what we were in the mood for. We started to slink out, but the waiter caught us. I explained our situation, and he said, “Oh, do you just want sandwiches?” We did, so we ended up having ham and cheese sandwiches – with butter. Blech. Oh well – when in Rome…
After lunch, we headed back to Laon, and after checking into the hotel, I left them to take a nap for a couple of hours. In the evening, they came over to my place for the 25-second tour (and to give me lots of DVDs and other marvelous goodies!) and to meet the other English assistants. We then went to a crêperie that Hannah and Lauren had been to and highly recommended. The restaurant was small and trés mignon (very cute), and their menu was prodigious. One and a half to two pages were devoted to each of the specialties that they serve – salads, galettes, and desserts. Aunt Suse and Jill had galettes, which are basically crêpes made with whole wheat flour, and I had a salad and a delicious dessert crêpe. The evening was made even more interesting by a very flirtatious waiter! He kept smiling at me and winked at me six or seven times.
Not really my type, but still, it was fun to feel attractive. On the way home, we stopped in for a glass of wine (or, in my case, a hot chocolate) at a bar supervised by an adorable old dog of the poodle variety. She was sitting at the table nearest the door, watching everyone who came in, and she allowed herself to be patted for brief periods of time before returning to her watch.
Thursday was a bit hectic, at least in terms of organization. I had the morning off from school, so the three of us met at my favorite patisserie, chose a few pastries, then walked up towards the cathedral. Aunt Suse and Jill wanted some coffee, so we smuggled our pastries into a café directly across from the cathedral, ordered our drinks and a couple of slices of quiche, and interspersed our consumption of the quiches with bites of the pastries, snuck when the proprietess’ back was turned. After stopping by the train station so that I could buy my youth discount card (50% off – whoopee!), they dropped me off at my school. Shortly thereafter, my afternoon schedule changed, and I had already told Aunt Suse and Jill when to pick me up. I knew that they were intending to go to the market that happens on Thursday mornings, which is about a fifteen-minute walk from my school. I made it to the market in about seven minutes, and found Aunt Suse and Jill. I gasped out the change of plans, and then walked around the market with them for a while.
Aunt Suse nearly got herself a houseboy. One of the vendors had some nice wool jackets that both Jill and Aunt Suse took a fancy to, and during the course of some good-natured haggling (with me as translator – cool!), the guy said that Aunt Suse should take him back to America with her. He then proceeded to tell her all the reasons why – he would cook, clean, do the laundry, be her chauffeur, take her dog for a walk… She was tempted, I could tell, but to the poor man’s dismay she decided to take only the sweater. As a last attempt, he pointed out how dashing his dreadlocks were!
Aunt Suse remained resolute.
Thursday evening we headed towards Strasbourg, intending to stay in Metz that night. More on wonderful Metz tomorrow…
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