Spring Break on the Coast of Brittany

The kitchen of the country side house on the coast of Brittany.
My room.
The dinner table we ate at every lunch and dinner. We took breakfast in the kitchen.

Me, Claire and Claire's Mom drinking coffee outside after lunch.
I was helping Therese with her english homework. :)
Marylias posing outside of her window
The country house we stayed in while in Brittany. The open door to the left was my room.
Where we watched DVD's on my laptop after dinner :)

Sliced caramel apples with ice cream on a crepe. Now that was just my dessert. Ha! I had a gallette just before that!
Anamaleine and Elizabeth on the beach.
Marylias reading and Therese sitting on the rocks waiting for their sisters to finish making their sand castles so they can all go home. Everyone was tired that day :)
Me and some of the girls just waiting in the car.
Anamalein and Therese just lounging about.

Claire and I. She's the sweetest thang.
Me and Anamaleine, Claire's 9 yr. old sister. The only one I could truly communicate with.
When we got back to Rennes, Claire and her family really wanted me to try the Gallettes and Crepes in Brittany because they're supposed to have THE best Gallettes in France. OH AND INDEED THEY DO!!!!
A ham, cheese, and potatoe galette... delicious :)

Beautiful Garden in Rennes

There was this huge Chinese bird cage with THE MOST annoying birds put on earth. I didn't care for it much at all. They wouldn't stop yappin'.

I liked how these two tulips were a tad bit out of place. It made a nice color mixture.
I loved how this one tulip was "tout seule" <-- all alone.

This Garden was located just in back of the church that the Courreges family goes to every Sunday (and the same church we went to for Easter). It was probably the most beautiful garden I've seen since I've been in France. I forget the name of the church and gardens but Claire said it's very well known for Rennes.

Easter in Rennes!!!

All of us holding our designated eggs :)
My egg :-) I think Claire told her mom that I have special place in my heart for DARK chocolate. So, she got me a dark chocolate egg which was hollow in the center and there were smaller dark chocolate eggs inside. :) Marvelous! Just Marvelous!

Elizabeth and Anamaleine holding their eggs.

The Kitchen

Pictures of all the kids when they were younger.
One of the sisters rooms. She let me sleep in her room while I was in Rennes. THe bed I slept in :)

My first dinner with the family. From left to right (spelling of names might be wrong): Monsieur Courreges, Elizabeth, Marylias, Anamaleine, Therese, Me, Claire, France, Benoire and and Madame Courreges. Big family.

Claire and France's room. It leads directly to their cute backyard.

The cute backyard :)
Their house from the back.
The lounging-around-room.

HEY EVERYONE! I'm BACK!!! I lost my internet connection for a few weeks and I didn't know what to do with myself. Luckily, I was in Rennes and my family arrived shortly after so I was kept busy... but I have to thank the lucky stars (that would be Bruno, my Madame's son) for fixing the internet. I don't know for how long I'll be connected because it seems like its very On and Off-ish, but they gave me the website, user name and password to the router to try to fix it if it ever acts up again. :) I'm feelin' the trust.

Alas, where shall I begin? Well, my spring break was sensational :) I have never worked and thought soooo hard in my life! I woke up with a head ache, and went to sleep with a head ache everyday because I was hearing and speaking non-stop french. Only Claire would speak english to me but other than that, her other 8 family members didn't know english. Her 9 year old sister and I got a long very well :) She was the ONLY one in the WHOLE house (besides claire) that I could understand because.. well.. she spoke like a 9 year old, and I spoke like a 6 year old.. so we got along very well. Then again, I guess that doesn't explain why I was always playing ball with her out in the yard or playing with her and her barbies. Hm. Anyway, we got along swell :)

Claires mom prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner for us everyday. It was truly a treat :) I hadn't had home cooked meals since the first week I came to Paris. I ate my heart out and Madame was always pleased to see that I enjoyed her cooking sooo much, even if it was just pasta with a sprinkle of cheese on it. I didn't care. It was home cooked with LOVE!

Easter was great. I went to 9pm mass with them at their very pretty church and it didn't end until about 1am the next morning. When we got home from mass we all sat around the dinner table and had hot chocolate and bread while listening to Christian french music :) I was sooo tired but so happy to be there. The following morning Madame hid all the eggs for the little ones to find, and she even hid a big egg that she bought especially for me. One of the girls found it and gave it to me because I was oblivious to where my head sized egg was. heh. I'm a little rusty at Easter Egg Hunting :-)

After Easter the family and I stayed pretty much for the rest of the week on the southern Coast of Brittany in a CUTE house. We went to the beach EVERYDAY and I finally got some of my tan back. I think that was the first time that I had layed on a beach with my sweater and pants on, just sunbathing my face... it was still a little too nippy for me to take off my jacket and the ocean was WAY too cold, but that didn't stop Claire and her sisters from jumping in for a little bit. I decided to be brave too and dipped my toe in and then immediately ran back to my towel on dry ground. :)

I cought the train back to Paris alone (claire had decided to stay with her family in Rennes a little bit longer).. and when I stepped off the train, it was SPRING! The weather totally changed and it was hot and sunny! The trees had bloomed and Paris wasn't looking so gloomy any more :)

My family came to visit me in Paris but a few days later :) It was great walking to their hotel after I was done with my Grammar class, and taking them around Paris.. being their tour guide.. it made me realize how much I knew my way around Paris :) They came at THE perfect time because it was sunny and beautiful everyday (sometimes it was a tad bit TOO hot), but it's supposed to be rainy and cold right now... but for some reason it's July weather. However, when they left Paris.. this is the first time since I've been here that I've seen it rain heavy with thunder!! Usually Paris rain just spits at you, but today it poured hard and I can still hear the thunder. They brought the sun from hawaii and took it with them back to hawaii. The weather forecast says it will be rainy for the next week. Great.

All in all, I had a wonderful 2 week spring break and I'm just soo happy to have internet again :) I hope it stays like this. Ciao!

In Rennes, Brittany celebrating Paques

bonjour everyone and happy easter! I am in Rennes, Brittany at the moment celebrating Easter with Claire and her family of nine!!! She has six sisters and one brother! We just finished eating breakfast, which consisted of cereal, bread, nutella, coffee or tea, and then the mom hid the easter eggs and everyone went to find them. Im sorry if my grammar is horrible because Im using their home computer and its hard enough finding the period................. Mom, Dad and Mer, I sent you emails from my UH address but when I checked my sent box just now it said that I had sent no emails.......??? so Im a little confused about whether or not my email sent.

Last night, we didnt get home until about 1:30 am because we went to a late mass held at 9am and it lasted until 1am. It was ridiculously long but it was a very nice ceremony with everyone holding their lit candle and a cute baby got baptised. I am a bit tired because my brain never gets a chance to rest with all this french around me... but its absolutely wonderful. I like to talk with Claires youngest sister, I think she is 9, because its easy for me to understand her. I talk like a 7 year old and shes 9 years old so we get along quite well; HA! I highly doubt there will be wireless internet connection in the southern coqst of brittany, where we are going to drive in just an hour or so, so this will probably be my last post until I arrive back home in Paris. Family, I know I havent talked to you in a while but I hope you got my emails and know that im safe and having a blast with Claires family!! they have been spoiling me crazy, and they have been nothing but nice to me. I love hw the mom cooks every meal and shes a dandy chef!! love you guys and hope you had a happy easter!!!!

Macaroon Pistache

These cookie-brownie like pastries with a creamy center are absolutely marvelous! Macaroons are very popular in France.. just as much as their croissants and pain au chocolat's are. Claire had told me to try these parisienne Macaroons.. I was confused at first because I thought she meant the coconut cookies but I was SOOO wrong. I absolutely LOVE Macaroons. I've bought one everyday for the past 3 days now. They come in every flavor and color pretty much. The Pistachio and Chocolate are the most popular I think but, there's also strawberry, coconut etc. There's pretty much two sizes you can get them in: BIG, like the one in the picture or small, about the size of a quarter. They're bite size so we all know what that means.... they're even MORE dangerous than the big ones. You just pop them in your mouth like potatoe chips. I just skip all that and head straight for the big papa Macaroon. Pistachio is my favorite. The french love pistachio for some reason.. they sell pistachio ice cream as much as they do chocolate icecream. Same goes for their pastries... funny. Perfect for Mer, bad for Dad. Enjoy "eating with your eyes!" <-- that's what Claire said to me when she wanted to go look at some Pastries when we were passing by Le Grande Patisserie . "Allie, here, lets eat with our eyes!" So.. ENJOY... because I sure did ;-)