things I love

1. Gossip Girl. for so many reasons, not the least of which is the attractiveness of the entire cast and the scandals they all incite.
2. rediscovering old music
3. discovering new music
4. cooking
5. my family
6. my friends
7. Crémant d'Alsace
8. Chocolate
9. you get the picture...

Ok, well I noticed today that "blogger.com" wasn't one of my most visited sites, which means that I haven't been blogging as much, which obviously is a wrong that must be righted. Thus, here I am, after my Acualités français exam, blogging because I my brain is dead.

The only really notable things that have happened lately were that I cooked dinner last thursday and this monday, I took a test and I've resolved to lose the 5 ish pounds I've gained so far before spring break (ha that's not gonna happen lol).

Anyways, so on Thursday, I made dinner and it was so good, if I I do say so myself. I made rice, chicken with bell peppers, onions and broccoli stir fry, salad with Angelo Pietro dressing and brownies. And oh man, it was so fun and cathartic being back in the kitchen. Its sad, but cooking became one of my study breaks last semester, since if I started thinking about school while cooking I'd probably burn something or chop off a digit or something equally bad. And so that's how it was here too, I put on some music and got to chopping! and I loved it... I'm such a nerd in so many ways lol but then on Monday, I decided that since Thursday went so well, I'd cook again and I'd try something a little more adventurous. oops, not the greatest idea... I tried cooking with wine since I had some left over but I think I did it wrong. The dish (chicken with peppers, onions and tomatoes, it was different from thursday tho, I swear lol) turned out alright, but I definitely thought it was going to have a lot more flavor than it did. It basically had no flavor. I think I need to reduce the wine separately and then pour it over the dish, instead of trying to make it a sauce... I'll try that sometime (probably not when I'm cooking for everyone tho). I won't be cooking again for awhile though, sadly, just because my schedule doesn't really allow for it until after break, at which time I could make dinner like every other night. Oh well, soon enough, I'll get to cook whenever I want and then following that, I'll have to cook if I want to eat lol.

So the second interesting thing was my actualités test. The class is about french current events and its really made me pay attention to the politics here - people are much more involved and informed than in the US (I'm pretty sure some people even follow American politics, and EVERYONE follows American presidential elections and politics, it's interesting). Anyways, for the class, we have weekly assignments in which we get 3 articles and we have to analyze and compare them by using journalistic clues like different signatures, title styles, paragraph lengths, etc. Plus, on top of that, we have to "evite tout les fautes evitables gramaticales" (= get rid of all the grammatical problems you can, aka. agreement, conjugation, idiomatic phrases, cliches, etc mistakes). If we don't get rid of all of them, we get counted down a lot because those are the mistakes that are easily avoided by looking in a dictionary. It's a good lesson in discipline, but it is kind of difficult, because you have to pay realllllyyy close attention to everything. So, we had to do that for our test - compare and analyze the 3 articles, but without computers (we could bring dictionaries though). I think I did alright. I really can't tell though because it depends on how he grades, but I feel like I wrote the best I could in the given time and with the conditions.

Oh and regarding the list above: I just haven't made a fun list in awhile, so I figured it was about time...

10. good food
11. good grades
12. smiling :)
13. that's all for now, I'll continue (i'm sure) later!