French Stories that would be really bad bedtime stories; Part One

I have a bad habit of taking photos completely arbitrarily or not at all and thinking I'll post a blog of the day at the end of each day then ending up being busy being French and shiz, ergo I now have a mess of stories to tell and I was debating if I should lay them out in a few neat, orderly posts or just dump them on you with blatant disregard for order or narrative time flow like armfuls of random clothing thrown on the bed when I do my washing... which is rarely anyway. I have hereby decided this is a lovely idea (seriously...it's because it's lovely...not because I'm lazy) and have complied a series of eclectic stories from France for you to enjoy. I pay zero reverence to balance of time flowing in a sensical manner. Without further ado, I present to you:

French Stories that would be really bad bedtime stories

~A series of short stories and musings by a woman sitting in a French bedroom pretending to be French and sane and stuff like that

Story One: The tale of how Lisa became immensely fat

So I'm sure I've established by now that I'm basically being starved over here. I rarely get food to eat, and when I do it's only stale bread and vegetables. Hah. Seriously, if I haven't stressed enough yet how delicious this country is, allow me to regale you with my travels in food form. The update being the following highlights:

The other night we sat around having drinks and chatter before dinner and Patrick (my fake French Papa) heard me say I like scotch and we were talking about how in France it's only called whisky, so he opened a 15 year old bottle of scotch before I could work out how to say "No no really that's far too kind" in French. Freaking awesome sensation sitting inside sipping that when you've just come in from the cold and you can smell dinner about to be served.

All good stories should start with the main character getting slightly drunk before dinner

The story then progresses to some strange woman being allowed into a French university for the day to go with her French friend to her classes. The English class in the morning was interesting but a bit weird. They seemed to focus on learning things that didn't really seem insanely crucial to know when the students didn't really have a full grasp on some of the simpler concepts. What sort of language class teaches what it means to "clock in and clock out" or "knock off" and "enforce strategic planning" before they teach the difference between "he, she, his, her, my, yours, you, ours" :S Well anyway, for lunch we  went to a nearby bakery (I swear I've used the phrase "ca sents bon!" "It smells good!" so ridiculously many times). The bakery had an upstairs area, a little like an old European pub, very cosy. I had an awesome slice of pizza and a chocolate pie :D The afternoon lecture was surreal. Sitting in a dusty warm room with something like 5 students and one old professor who resembled something like a cross between Santa and David Attenborough who spoke the most rapid animated French and loved saying "Cuckoo!" when his students weren't paying attention.

Yes, hello, I would like...everything

We now flash forward through time, because it's my story and I can do stuff like that. I can also do stuff like this! Hello Renee and confuse many of you and please one of you :) Anyway, so back to our time machine story... we're now in the middle of our day exploring Aix en Provence at lunch in a little restaurant with Patrick and Chantal (neither of whom speak English just ps). The lunch was pretty nice but mainly I just loved the decore of the place. Plus there was this adorable little dog who I think belonged to one of the waiters. The little pup really wanted to be with his owner and kept finding a way inside and running over all happy then having to get taken back outside over and over haha poor little guy...

Have eaten snails. Am basically French now.

O hai guys I think you accidentally put me outside...guys...hello?

RETURN TO THE TIME MACHINE! Suddenly we're in yesterday's evening in the middle of eating a Chichi with Nutella (Nutella is everywhere over here! Which is just fine by me, I would hook that stuff up to my veins if I could...and if that didn't just totally defy the point since my veins don't have tastebuds...and if that didn't kill me) We had these after our walk up to Notre Dame in Marseille, sitting on a wall overlooking the port as the sunset with a group of awesome French friends. I seriously don't think life would get much better moments than this...

I can get away with this because the next photo is really pretty

So many classical little French houses overlooking the sea...ahhh :)

I think I live here now

Is your heart sighing its heart out? Yes, take a moment to enjoy the weird image of your heart having a heart as well as an ability to sigh, then come with me into the time machine again which now resembles the Willy Wonka boat (the old school film of course) with images flashing by you as we travel onto the next story. Except instead of unexplainably weird, horrible and totally irrelevant-to-the-plot-line-of-willy-wonka images (SERIOUSLY did we EVER get an explanation as to why that tunnel had to appear in Willy Wonka?!?) the images are of awesome things I've consumed here.

Ignore the girl.
It was essential for the story line.

So turns out I don't actually want to take you through a rape tunnel though. My tunnel would involve flashing images of French wine and cheese, a lot of petite coffees, more cheese and bread, more crepes, soup, avocado boats filled with a shrimp paste (sounds so so weird I know but it was DELICIOUS!), chocolate, fig jam and more things all of which I ate. The moral of this story is, if you don't want to get fat, don't go to France. But it's worth it...so go to France.

Story Two: The tale of two cities. Or more like one city. Actually just a provence. Aix en Provence. ... Coming next...when it isn't 1am here :) Bon nuit tout le monde!