A Wonderful Weekend

Yesterday was suchhhh a big day!

First my friends and I went to a dégustation in a town just outside of Rennes. My host mom gave us free invitations to get in. There was sooooo much there! I drank so much wine, at so much cheese and bread and meat and it was all French and so delicious! 

Left to right: Peach cocktail (Amanda and me), wine (either Kelsey or Tanya's), cider (Breton specialty, so yummy! for everyone), more wine (either Kelsey or Tanya), wine again, and black beer (Kelsey).

Killing some time after the tasting. Kelsey and Tanya were, apparently, still being affected by the wine...

I love nougat sooo much...I got a violet flavored kind!

French band playing to add to the ambiance, it was perfect!

Amanda and I bought a bottle of "cocktail de pêche" which is like bubbly peach flavored delciousness. And it was rather cheap for something so good! I also bought violet flavored nougat. The vendor saw that I was disappointed when he told me one bar would cost about 8 euro so he searched through the pile and found me a smaller one so I only paid 4 euro :) (the cost was by weight)

Amanda with our cocktail in her backpack side pocket! 

Later in the day we went to my friend Tra's (pronounced cha) brother's birthday party in a nearby town called Vitré. It was SO MUCH FUN and I met some great new people, not to mention I got to spend some great time with my friends from Rennes. 

All of the delicious Vietnamese food!

Me with the birthday boy! His 18th, and you know what that means in Europe.

Overall it was a FABULOUS weekend! But the school work here is starting to build up so I've got a lot to do. Also this upcoming weekend I'll be going to Angers to visit my penpal Manon so I've gotta get all of my schoolwork done before I go! I'm really looking forward to it. That's the ultimate penpal goal, to make friends with someone via the internet (nowadays) and then actually get to meet them in real life!

This is Livio. He's French! We've actually become pretty good friends over the last few weeks. (I knew him before the party).

Yay for new friends! 

Other than that, my daily life here has also been a little different because my host mom's grandson is visiting. His name is Adrien and he's 4 years old, so we've got that little ball of energy running around and the other 3 kids are always all hyped up as well, so the house has become MUCH more lively. It's really cute when little kids speak in French though.

I can't say whether I prefer the household with or without so much energy, but you may be able to guess :p regardless, it's nice to have a little change!

We were tired waiting for the bus after the tasting...but that's a nice house behind us!

And in other news, it snowed again today...but it wasn't the kind of snow that will shut down the whole city though luckily. Well, I guess that's all I have to say...other than that I'm EXHAUSTED. I've got 4 tests coming up within the next few weeks, plus regular work, plus all of my traveling.

Tomorrow I don't have class until 6pm though. I can tell that for the rest of the semester, my philosophy is going to have to be "work hard, play hard" if I want to get the most out of this experience! (which I surely do)

Well I've gotta go set the table. Bonne journée tout le monde!