27 novembre 2009 (Day 88)
Today I learned about how oppressive the communist government of Vietnam is, that the lunch ladies can still an absurd amount of French fries in your kebab (which required Nana having to get a bag to put them in so I could eat the kebab), and how disturbingly cruel the reign of terror was.
We’ll skip to history class, because that is where the exciting stuff starts. First off Monsieur Touvron was being a tease today. I need a signature for back in the states and he was like, “No. Well, let me think about it.” And then he took the paper, read it and then said, ‘Okay, you weren’t lying. I tested my English and read it. I guess I can sign it.” We wrote a paper about our opinion about requiring children to learn the Marseillaise (the bloody national anthem of France). Afterwards we learned about Danton, who was actually a good (compared to his friend) guy, and Robespierre who thought that we should continue to chop off heads for the sake of perfection and virtue, who even killed his venal friend Danton who thought that they shouldn’t kill EVERY ONE. Robespierre’s terror came to a quick end a year later, after he had killed all his friends (he was a thinker, Monsieur Robespierre). The most disturbing thing that this dictator “In the service of the public” did was called a “marriage civil.” They would take two religious people of the opposite sex, strip them down, tie them face to face, stick them on a boat, and then blow up the boat and they’d drown together. Over 4,000 people were killed this way in Nantes, by Commerce and in front of the Mediatheque. This was called “noyades” but people were killed by the guillotine as well, especially with the Law of Suspects created in the spring of 1793. This law gave the citizen’s the right to tattle tell on their neighbors. If they thought you were wearing black because you were mourning the death of the king…off with your head. It was a pretty harsh time, but once Robespierre died it was the end of that (he was guillotined).
Today I had my “Thanksgiving” dinner. I went with the Seattle group by tram and then bus to a dinner at a culinary school held by their group. It was kind of weird having 15 year olds serve us, but it was really good. We actually got there an hour early (they told us the wrong time) but we had fun just talking.
So here we go for Thanksgiving French style:
Apéritif: orange juice or white wine with blackcurrants and a choice of these cute little sandwiches
Appetizer: smoked salmon on a salad with roasted pine nuts and a tangy dill cream and caviar
Plat: Stuffed turkey with chestnuts, butter sautéed potatoes with bacon and wild mushrooms
Dessert: Pumpkin (not from the can) and apple tarte (aka pie) with English Crème
After dessert dessert: café and an éclair and chocolate
I had a lot of fun talking to everyone at our table. We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving and walking back with Michael and the red with white polka dots umbrella that he borrowed. It was a decent walk to the tram stop and late as well. It made for some really interesting conversations about one girl’s neighbor and boyfriend at 1 am practically every night. I’ll leave it at that and say that she is considering having a greve (strike) so that they aren’t as noisy. There was a really cute kid, Nathan in the group who was full of surprises. Snowboarder, writer, French major, and classical music lover and critique (along with all the noisy stuff he listens to). Sadly he has a girlfriend. I also ate with Sam, Afton, Caroline, Michael, and Kelsey.
