This was the first time that I spent Thanksgiving away from my family. Usually Thanksgiving is a chance for me to see all my favorite people in one location in good old West Virginia. This year I didn’t get to be a part of that celebration, but we did have our own thanksgiving festivities here in Ambialet. The day started out early with Art History class, yeah we didn’t get off because Thanksgiving is not a holiday here. Right after class French tv came to interview us and get a glimpse into our lives here at the monastery. Luckily I didn’t get interviewed or really have to say anything in French, I can’t speak it that well yet, but they did film us making pies. Once they left we ate lunch and figured out teams for our backyard American football game, blacks vs. white. I was on the black team. We all got dressed up and painted our faces (war paint) and headed down to the field, which was Margret and Peter’s yard since we live on a mountain with no flat land. We had a fun game, but sadly my team lost, even though we had Christophe who probably could have taken their whole team by himself if we were playing rugby, but he never played American football before and didn’t quite get the concept of two hand touch, let’s just say Hillary’s ribs hurt. He asked me before the game if he was allowed to grab people’s legs and tackle them that way, I said no, that could have been bad. It was really hard trying to explain the rules of football to him because we know little French and he knows little English, and how do you explain football anyway? It’s just football. But we all had a lot of fun and both Christophe and our chef Bernard, who also played with us, really want us to play with them again. Hopefully it will stay nice here so we get to play another game.
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| Black Team(: |
After the game we got washed up and ready for dinner. Students that study wine at a local University came and gave us a wine tasting lesson before we ate. Fun fact: the slower the wine runs down the side of the glass after tilting it, the more alcohol it contains. I also learned that the reason why you are supposed to spit it out is not only so you don’t drink too much before you taste the last glass of wine, but also because there is a secondary flavor that you get as it touches your lips. The students were really nice and they stayed for dinner. Some of them spoke some English but for the most part communicating was hard, but it was fun using the French that we know and trying figuring out what they were saying. We had an American style dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cranberry sauce (thanks to Uncle Tim!), and pie! Even though I really missed not being with my family on Thanksgiving, I still felt very much loved and happy with the family I have here in Ambialet(:
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