Recap of the last couple of weeks:
Alex and I went to Emily (another assistant)’s apartment in Raon l’Etape a town about 15 minutes away by train. And a town that makes St. Dié seem like a bustling metropolis in comparison. The streets were all deserted. All of the bakeries were shut down at lunch time when we arrived so we just went to the supermarket and bought stuff to make sandwiches. She gave us the grand tour which took about ten minutes and we saw Roan’s claim to fame—the “museumotel”. We’ve as yet to discover what the museum part is, but it’s basically just a hotel with each room being a little mushroomoid pod thing. While from what I can tell, the goal is for it to seem really trendy and modern, it kind of just reminded me of the smurfs. And it didn’t help that instead of being pristine and white like in the brochures (pictured below), all of the little pods were grimy and run-down.
The next night, Nicolas came over for a long overdue game night (Alex had taken great lengths to avoid us it seems, as we learned that he was in Paris-NOT fixing our internet). We played a game that was essentially balderdash—a game where you make up random facts that others will believe. It’s a game I love and it was way harder playing in French but still really fun. And I almost won—almost.
Most exciting: Erik has arrived! After a little snafu in the meet-up plan (I didn’t realize that the gare du nord is the busiest train station in all of Europe and, that being the case, that there were in fact two “Paul”s, the bakery we had agreed to meet in front of). We did eventually find each other though and had a lovely (though weighted down with luggage) afternoon in Paris. Since his arrival, we’ve been keeping busy eating bread and cheese and watching movies. I’m trying to convince him to do a guest blog, but he is reluctant. We’ll see..
The oven saga: I can’t even remember if I ever wrote about the ordeal of acquiring an oven. The basic idea is: despite the three of us dishing out 20 euro each, we didn’t acquire an oven. After MONTHS of trying to contact the shady website we had bought it from, Pascale finally got a hold of them and threatened them with “action” and so we were FINALLY reimbursed. (Moral of the story readers: when in France, avoid Monsieur Discount at all costs!) Pascale took Alex out oven shopping at the beginning of last week and so now…we have… AN OVEN! It’s a beaut—a sight for sore eyes. Tommy jumped straight into action buying frozen pizza’s galore. Erik and I were a little more patient (Erik is still in the midst of reveling in the glory of real French baguettes) and waited until yesterday to make some zucchini bread. Despite all of the measurement conversions we had to do from the American recipe I’d found online, it still came out delicious. And even Alex, who notoriously dislikes everything except spaghetti and meatballs (with sauce that isn’t too crunchy) admitted that it was tasty. Success!
Title + Pic= I thought you were preggers.
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