"Fish Egg Spread"

Today was not my day.

Some classmates and I are going to Nice on the French Riviera this weekend. They bought their tickets a while ago, but I have a Eurail pass with two days of travel left on it, so I was planning on just using that. Turns out, France is the only country in Europe that requires Eurail pass holders to make reservations on trains, so I went to the train station today, hoping to make one. As luck would have it, all trains within a three-day time period didn't have any Eurail seats left, so I was forced to pay 170 euros for a round-trip ticket. I don't have any free weekends left, so I can't use the last two days of unlimited travel on my pass :/ Oh, well. C'est la vie.

Remember how my class went over by an hour on Thursday? Well, my professor felt bad that my "forty minute" presentation, which was actually more like an hour, got cut "short" due to the Louvre closing, so she e-mailed me this past weekend asking me to put together a powerpoint presentation on the things I would've covered if we'd had more time at The Louvre. She's so obsessed with art history, I think she genuinely felt that she was doing me a favor by asking me to make a presentation for today's class. She's one of the most long-winded people I've ever met, so today's powerpoint presentation ended up being another half hour because she kept asking me all of these philosophical questions pertaining to fashion. Two things that bore the life out of me? Philosophy and fashion. Needless to say, today's class was a drag.

Dinner tonight was quite the experience. Madame is a good cook, but tonight's consisted of just about all of the foods I don't like. I don't consider myself a particularly picky eater. I have my preferences, but I'll eat most things without griping. There are only a few things that I can't stand, namely meatloaf, pickled vegetables, mustard, and fish. Tonight's dinner had four of those five things. For our appetizer, Madame gave everyone slices of salmon. She knows I don't like fish, so she asked me if I liked salmon- I lied and said yes because I didn't want to be gênant. I doused the salmon in lemon juice and ate it quickly to get it over with. After that, they brought out a container filled with bright pink spread. They asked me if I'd like to have some, so I said yes, even though I was very weary of its ingredients. I took a decent amount because I didn't want to show them how averse I was to the mystery goo, but the first bite confirmed my apprehension. It was the fishiest tasting thing I've ever eaten. The label said "Tartinade aux oeufs de cabbilaud". I understood this much: Spread with eggs of _____. Since the spread was bright pink and tasted awful, I was pretty certain it wasn't eggs of chicken. I ate every last trace of it on my plate and washed it down with as much water as I could. After dinner, I ran to my computer to Google Translate "cabbilaud" The verdict: cod. Wonderful. I just ate fluorescent cod eggs. Excuse me, host family, while I go vomit in your bathroom for the rest of the night. The fun didn't end there- that was just the appetizer. I was looking forward to the pizza in the oven until Monsieur took it out and it was covered in olives. None of the kids like olives, either, so I didn't feel so bad about being averse to them. Nevertheless, I didn't let my disgust show and ate a big slice, olives and all. Finalement, we always have the same dressing on our salad. Tonight, Madame decided to change it up and give it a mustard dressing. Fantastic. With each dish, I was hoping that the next would cleanse my palate, but it just got worse and worse. Luckily, the dessert was tonight's saving grace.

Today is Geoffroy's birthday, so we had gâteau brûlé, which literally translate to "burnt cake". I thought Madame had maybe left it in the oven for a bit too long, but apparently you're actually supposed to burn the entire top half of the cake. It was cake, so of course I liked it, but I think in the future I'll stick to non-burnt cake. We also had a fantastic fruit salad of strawberries and mangoes.

Well, my friends, you win some, you lose some. Today's events were less than stellar, but as Annie reminds us, the sun'll come out tomorrow. The sun will also come out when I'm sunbathing on the French Riviera this weekend. Missy and I want to reward ourselves for our half-marathon by getting pedicures in Nice, which I'm really looking forward to. I can't wait for a weekend free of unending rain, philosophy, fashion, and fish eggs.

Affectueusement,

Katie