The American Friend

On Friday, around 1pm we headed out to sight see. Leigh Harlow, my lovely tour guide brought me to two churches. The first was Saint Etienne and the second was Saint Sernin. the latter has quite an interesting story behind it, which I learned from my awesome guide. Saint Sernin was living in Toulouse trying to get people to become catholics and angered a bunch of pagans who dragged him through the city, killing him. They erected the church in his honor and it is very old. I almost like it when they don't refurbish any of the old stuff. I like to see how old it truly is.


St. Sernin

We returned home a little on the early side in order to be ready for dinner with the host family. Leigh lives with the real life version of the Von Trapp family, I wish I was kidding. There is mom and dad with four daughters and one son. Of the names, i remember Camille was the oldest, then Jean, Columbe, Izhar and Pierre. However, spelling is probably very far off, with the exception of my French name twin!

We had a version of Shepard's pie that was basically ground beef with mashed potatoes piled on top. It was delicious, but it did not stop there. Then they brought out the cheese and the crepes. Christine, Leigh's host mom, must have made 40 crepes and the kids were going nuts. Of course, nutella, jam, sugar and lemon juice were present to make the crepes taste delicious. My dear friend Jean ate 6 and I will admit I ate three. It was a hilarious dinner because I didn't speak French and Camille was trying out a few English phrases for me. Leigh was literally shocked that so much English was present. I was impressed by her French!

After dinner, we met up with the Dickinson kids to see a movie. it was only 4€ to see Wall Street and I am pretty excited since I saw the original one with Michael Douglas and a super young Charlie Sheen. It was very good, but confusing despite my business background.

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Saturday was an awesome day in Toulouse! First of all, I did laundry and had a chocolate croissant while waiting. Pastries and clean clothes go together so well. I had literally run out of underwear so I was wearing my soffe shorts under my sweatpants, which is totally unacceptable in French culture. I doubt they have a word for sweatpants, it probably roughly translates to devil incarnate for pants.

Anyways, for some reason, we were eating again shortly thereafter. We went to SLD with Alex and Doob, two of Leigh's friends in the Dickinson program. The French guys who work there basically knew them by name. I got a croissant with ham and cheese, which is very French. Then we headed to Rue Alsace Lorraine where pedestrians basically rule the street and cars attempt to drive down it. These are my favorites avenues in Europe, especially because nothing like this exists at home (daddio used to say they would send you to the can for 10-15 if you j-walked in DC). Anywho, we went into a real live shopping mall which was overwhelming since we had acquired Toot and her friend Emily as well. I was barely able to sightsee in a group, let alone shop with a gaggle of girls.

I will also mention, that shopping in France is overwhelming. French women dress so well all the time I find myself staring at them and wanting to replicate every piece of their wardrobe. I warn you all, I will be attempting to do this when I return to the state and o have more than 20 pieces of clothing in my possession. After shopping for a bit, we went to the Flowers Cafe which Leigh swore had the best pastries she has had so far. While they were in the pricey side, the banana milkshake and molleux de chocolat I have had thus far. It was all very French of course, enjoying the afternoon at an outside cafe with friends. If you couldn't tell, I am obsessed with cafe culture, like it's out of hand (kind of like my slight obsession with twilight which has lead to me rereading the book already, whatever).

That night we went to Nick's for dinner. Someone had produced a recipe for ratatouille and mixed it in with pasta which was quite good. I also had my first "dinner" crepe which was composed of ham and cheese and was quite delicious. Then came the dessert crepes! I made my own and I was quite proud of my crepe making ability and plan to bring the skill back to the states, I put a small layer of nutella and a layer of raspberry jam. It was scrumptious. I may have had two.



Later, Nick, Bobby, Leigh and I headed to the college bar district of town. This was an interesting display of French culture. The streets were packed with people, smoking of course, and chatting away in French. We hung out in a bar and one of Leigh's friends from class met us there (and bought us a pitcher! Yay to the French!). It was getting late (or early) so we walked back to leigh's house because public transportation stops runing around 1 am, an anomaly in Europe. I will admit to eating a kebab on the way home and a chocolate croissant, but it took us like a whole hour! No judgement.

To be continued again...