The Great Apple Pie Adventure

Last night, Serena and Tessa hosted an international soirée at their house where everyone was supposed to bring a dish from their country. After considering the possibilities of what I could bring from the United States (hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, anyone?), I decided that it would be in everyone's best interest if I brought something for dessert. I toyed with the idea of pumpkin pie, which would have been quite appropriate as autumn has arrived and Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but I thought that might be too complicated locating the right ingredients. So I decided on an apple pie instead, equally appropriate for the season as well as equally American.

Baking an apple pie, however, did not come without some minor difficulties. What I learned is that improvisaton was key. First of all, there's the issue with the pie plate. Our typical, relatively shallow American pie plate with the tilted edges is not easy to come by. Instead, I borrowed a pan from Serena and Tessa (since they live in a fully equipped house) that was slightly deeper than usual and had edges that were vertical rather than slanted. Then I had an issue finding brown sugar at Carrefour. As an alternative, I found this sugar that was in cube form, combined with some sort of sugar caramel. I figured that would be an adqeuate substitute...

So I got home and started my pie from scratch, crust and all! With the rolling pin that I also borrowed from Tessa and Serena, I got the dough ready and attempted to lay it in the round pan... it took a couple tries to keep the dough from breaking and to get it wide enough. But eventually it all got done; I got the crust finished, cut the apples, and made the yummy butter-sugar-cinnamon glaze, and stuck the pie in my mini French oven. Needless to say, I was quite impressed how it came out, considering it was the first time I had attempted to make any kind of pie in a long time.



So at our soirée, we had a bunch of different things to eat! For appetizers, we had empanadas (from Colombia) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (from the good ole US of A). For the main course, the Italians made two types of pasta, one with a red sauce and one with tomatoes and shrimp. And for dessert, we had my apple pie and some chocolate cookies. It was great, and my pie was quite a succes! I'm gonna have to try to do some more baking during my excessive amounts of free time.

In other news, we've gotten another flatmate, who's taking the third room that was still open. His name is Benoit, and he is obviously French as well, which makes my mission to live with French people a double success! He's moved here from Tours in search of work, and he's going to start looking for a job in the restaurant industry tomorrow. The three of us get along really well, which is awesome, and I have a feeling that we're going to have a great time.

Even better news! The Bbox has been activated, which means that I have an excellent internet connection and I'm finally able to call home whenever I want! So I've spent a lot of time over the last two days calling people I haven't talked to in what seems like forever. It's really nice to know that I have this option, just so I can keep in touch with friends and family back home without having to worry about insane charges.

Tomorrow begins week number two of work... Let's go!

I'm a terrible blogger

So I'm apparently a terrible blogger. I've been in Annecy for almost three weeks with no update. Shame on me.

Needless to say, things have been going splendidly. Life has sort of been flying by; it's almost hard for me to believe that it's only been three weeks that I've been here. So much has been happening, so many good things.

The group of friends that I've been hanging with is just fantastic. It's a completely mixed group that consists of me, a Canadian girl (Hannah, with whom I shared a hotel room here in Annecy for four days before orientation), two Italians (Serena and Manuela), a guy from Taiwan (Victor), a girl from Mexico (Poema), and finally an English girl (Tessa). We all have an amazing time together, and it seems as if we've known each other for so much longer than a few weeks. And one of my favorite aspects of our group is that since we're all from different country, many of which aren't anglophone, we use French as our common language, which is exactly what we all came here to do. Many of the English teaching assistants have found themselves in groups mainly of English-speakers, and I would assume that they speak in English for the most part when there together. So I'm really happy with my group of good friends here.

I've also had good luck in the French department because I've found myself an apartment to share with a French guy who's here from Tours. He is really cool and super chill, and we get along really well. He's not home all that much because he works in restaurants as a cook and server with crazy hours, but when we are both around, conversation is easy to make. It's really awesome to be able to live with someone close to my age (he is a bit younger) because we have a lot in common. It's really great et je suis très content.

As far as my job is concerned, I really haven't done all that much yet. I just started this week, and it seems that, at least for the first few weeks, I'm going to be doing a lot of work with individual students on practicing for the oral part of the Bac, a huge exam that comes at the end of high school here in France. Basically, I have to give them a visual document (usually some sort of cartoon), and they have to analyze it. On on hand, it's nice for me because I don't have all that much to prepare really, but on the other hand, I have a feeling it might start to get a little old. I guess I'm just going to have to work with what I've got and get creative!

My computer has been giving me quite the headache recently, though. For some reason, it's just decided to start acting up for no reason. Last Tuesday or so it just started freaking out, freezing and all sorts of stuff. I called Apple on Wednesday and was on the phone for an hour doing all sorts of resets. After none of that worked, I decided to make an appointment at the Apple store in Geneva the next day so that I could have someone look at it directly. I'm really lucky to be so close to Geneva! If I were anywhere else in France, I would have a really hard time getting access to an actual Apple store.

Anyway, so I woke up at 5:00 am to take a 6:30 bus for a 9:40 appointment. I got there and the guy at the store commented on how darn slow the machine was working. I bought an external hard drive at FNAC before because I had a feeling we were going to have to do some crazy stuff that would possibly erase all my documents. So I tried to save everything while in the store, but after about an hour it wasn't really working. What they wanted me to do was to completely uninstall the operating system and then reinstall it. However, I would need the installation CDs, which happen to be in, you know, the US!! And it would cost about $100 to get new ones there. So I emailed my mom and asked her to ship over the CDs, I said I would go home to back everything up, and they said that I could do the uninstall/re-install on my own at home. So now I'm still waiting on the CDs, which should be arriving an the next couple days, God willing...

I also got a Bbox by Bouygues Telecom. For 30€ a month, I'll have high-speed WiFi internet, cable television, and a phone line that can call even to the US for free to both land lines and cell phones! Great news! I feel like I'm so out of touch with a lot of people back home, and I'm really looking foward to being able to call people when I want (working around the 6-hour time difference, of course). We've gotten ourselves a phone, and apparently next month my flatmate is going to be getting a TV and a computer, so we'll be splitting the cost in two, which will be great! Now I'm just waiting for the line to be activated, which should take another few days.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I hope that satisfies all y'all's blog-deprivation. I promise I'm going to be better. The last few weeks have just been a little overwhelming, to say the least.

A bientôt!