a very french weekend!

Owen and I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with some of the students from Brens. Benjamin offered his apartment to us for the weekend. He picked us up in Ambialet Saturday afternoon and from there we ventured to Toulouse. He showed us around a bit and then we visited Geoffrey's work placement. This was a very big wine store and there were so many wines. My favorite part of the store was probably seeing the 16 liter wine bottles!! I can't believe someone buys those!! haha. We also tasted a few wines there and they were very good.

From there, we went to Benjamin's work placement. I really, really liked this place. It was a wine store, but also a restaurant. The restaurant is only open on certain days though. It was two levels and it was very relaxing and sociable. Many people come in there just to drink a glass of wine. It had a very modern style to it and I really liked it.

That night, Benjamin and Geoffrey showed us what they do on weekends. Of course, it consisted of drinking some wine! haha. So, we drank some wine and we met some of their other friends. They then took us to a discotech and it was a fun time! I thought it was crazy that we don't go out to the discotech until about 1am and it's open until 6am. Also, there were tons of older people there. And by older I mean people in their 40's and stuff; I was completely surprised! I would never catch my parents at something like that! haha

On Sunday, Geoffrey's family invited us over for a lunch. They were very very nice. His father and his brother spoke English VERY well; I was very impressed. I kind of feel bad that my French is so poor. His 13 year old sister spoke a little bit of English, but she said she is still learning. They cooked us a HUGE lunch. For the apperatif, we had muscles and a glass of sparkling wine. That was the first time Owen and I ate muscles and we really liked them! For our meal we had tomatoes and mozarella, pork and some type of potato. For dessert we had homemade cake and fruit salad. Not to mention, they had 3 different wines during the meal. Everything was very good! The family was very nice and welcoming. They showed us around their house and explained many of their traditions. Geoffrey's father also taught us French billiard. It was interesting; there are no pockets in the pool table and there are only 3 balls used. The que ball is hit and it must touch both of the other balls in one turn. It looks very difficult and you must be able to distinguish different ways to ricochet the ball. Owen and I were invited back whenever and they definitely want us to go back in April for some pork. They hang and dry their own pigs and they say it is very good that way.

We returned to Ambialet last night and finished up our French homework!! Overall, we had a very good weekend and got some good insight of life in French. And I must say, the lives we encountered were based around wine!