In completely unrelated news (really), I've got a cold. I could feel it coming Friday night, and it probably didn't help that I stayed up late to watch the debate (midnight to 1 AM), then got up early to go on a class trip. A bunch of other students had watched it too, and they were all equally frustrated by a rather bizarre decision made by the French television network - namely, to dub the debate into French. That's right, the debate - the thing that 60 million people watch to judge the characters of the candidates - was dubbed into French. Dubbed! In French! Maybe if I keep writing it, I'll actually believe it (DUBBED!). I mean, there are lots of things that can be dubbed without major problems, but political debates aren't one of them. One girl in my class was so furious she threw her shoes across the room, while jumping up and down. I wonder what her family thought.
The class trip was to the village of Cerdon. (DUBBED!) First, we went to a tour of the copper factory, which was moderately interesting, but which I suspect the factory paid for, to get us into the gift shop. After, we went for apéritifs. We got a very nice rosé wine, and stale cheetos (I saw one girl dipping them in the wine, but managed to resist the temptation to try it). Then, we went to a restaurant where we got an enormous meal: bread, wine; salmon paté, broccoli, and rice; ham, potatoes, and spinich; a bowl of cheese, and oeufs à la neige for dessert, which was kind of like marangue cubes in caramel sauce. After that, we went to the Cerdon caves, which were easily the most impressive caves I've ever seen, and which I'm not going to bother describing. I took lots of pictures.
On a related note, I developed my first roll of film here. I've taken 4 so far, but I decided just to develop the first, in case I'd filled out the form wrong, and I'm glad I did: it costs 11€ ($14). It's weird that some things are so expensive, while others are very cheap. For example, I bought two French compilation CDs for under 12€ (combined), and I've seen lots of DVDs/videos for 5€. Oh, and roses are 2€ per dozen.
I've changed my mind about not talking about the caves. Near one entrance, we saw a bunch of kids (maybe 10 years old) scaling the cliff for some kind of day camp. Once they got to the ledge at the top, they attached themselves to a second rope and slid down to the other side of the ravine, over the heads of the people exiting the cave. The harnesses didn't look particularly sturdy (I saw a piece of one fall off as a kid was climbing). American parents would never have stood for it.
There were lots of people there the day we went, because it was (inter?)national speleology (spelunking) day. I think that's also why they had classical music playing in the caves. It was very eerie. The music was so soft you could barely hear it, and it wasn't clear where it was coming from. There were some hollow stone pipes that made a noise like a pipe organ when tapped, so I'd thought someone was playing them, for a while. The lighting was also creepy: the lamps were different colors, and in a some places they were set behind the jaws of stalagmites/tites, or behind paper-thin stone, so that the walls seemed to glow orange. It would be cool to go there for halloween (at midnight, preferably).That night, we had dinner guests at our house. I could understand a lot of what they were saying this time, but that's not the same as being able to join the conversation. They spent a lot of time talking about local construction projects. I suppose I could have said something like 'In the United States, we have construction, too.' Sigh... maybe next time.
The Netherlands are considering granting Anne Frank an honorary citizenship, because she'd said that she wanted to live there. I wonder if it's too late to make Shakespeare an honory American.
All the breakfasts cereals here are sweet. As far as I've seen, Special K only comes in chocolate. I tried a French hot dog last week. They take a baguette of French bread, cut it in half, scoop out the middle, and drop a hot dog in. It comes with a very strong French mustard. Sarah had ordered one a few days before me, but when she took a bite, she couldn't taste the mustard. So, she dipped the hot dog in a bowl of the stuff. That worked fine, until she took the last bite - also dipped in mustard - not realizing that all the mustard in the baguette had settled to the bottom. At first I didn't realize what was wrong - she just kept saying that her brain hurt, that it felt like something was burning inside her brain. Sarah's the same girl who's allergic to everything, so at first that's what I thought it was. She keeps breaking out in hives. She'd gone to Munich for Oktoberfest, and ended out spending most of her time there with another, also unfortunate, girl in our class, who has bronchitis and migraines. Apparently, they both got there and discovered that they don't actually like drunk people, or beer, so they watched a movie instead. They did a lot of other things too - drinking, wandering around, meeting people - but from the sound of it, the movie (King Arthur, in German) was the highlight. "Still," Sarah said, "it's good to experience things like that. It's like the mustard."
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