Un examen

Okay I have a confession to make.

I bought a chocolate chicken in a bag.

I couldn't help it, Franprix is stocked with all this Easter candy and I've been craving chocolate for days, and it was a chicken in a bag! How can you say no to that? And the nest of chocolate eggs = adorable. I have since devoured the chicken but the basket and the eggs are still safe... for now. I also fully intend to purchase a chocolate fish and/or one of those giant rabbits with the serial killer eyes. Mmm.

While we're on the subject of chocolate let me also show you what my host family put out as part of my Sunday breakfast yesterday morning:

OMG tiny delicious pastries! It was almost too cute to eat. Almost. There were three of them but two had already met their ends before I thought to record one for posterity.

That was the good food-related news. The bad news was that last night I experienced a dinner tragicomedy. Since we had our first art history exam today, I decided to skip the hassle of going out for lunch yesterday to give myself more time to study, figuring that I'd be fine if I ate my breakfast toast late and munched on the rice cakes in my room until dinnertime. By the time 7:30 rolled around I was slightly famished, and when my dad announced dinner was ready I was in the kitchen practically before the sentence was finished. Imagine my horror when the lid of a large stewing pot was removed to reveal.... broth. Approximately a gallon of water simmered gently before me, intermingling with spices, bay leaves, and a few whole onions and carrots clearly intended for flavoring rather than consumption. "I had a big lunch," said Christophe, cheerily, "so I'm not really hungry. But feel free to take as much of the bouillon as you like."

I slurped the flavored water in silence, not sure whether to laugh or cry. When Christophe excused himself at 8 o'clock to watch the results of the French elections on TV, I removed a carrot and onion with the hurried fear of a petty thief. Shoving them nearly whole into my mouth, I hoped that Louise would not choose this moment to make one of her ill-timed entrances and explain to me in puzzled French that I was not supposed to eat the stewing vegetables. I noticed some cheese behind the empty bread basket and took that as well, sectioning off as much as I deemed polite ("What happened to that new chunk of Gruyere?" "I think Sara ATE IT in one sitting last night!"). Then I cleared the table and slumped back to my room, feeling like a character from Les Miserables. "Broth!" I chuckled to myself, pulling my fourth rice cake of the day from its package. Hopefully tonight's dinner will prove more substantial.

Today we had an exam and it didn't go very well. Saturday study time was consumed by our field trip to Fontainebleau, and despite the fact that I spent all day Sunday taking notes it was hard for me to remember the titles, dates, and artists (who, as a rule, have no fewer than three names apiece-- Adelaide Labille-Guiard, Jacques-Louis David, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun) for the dozens of paintings and sculptures we've studied so far. Let's hope Susan is a permissive grader.

In much more uplifting news, I'm going to Switzerland for Easter! Lena and I and possibly Evelyn are going to catch a bus out of Paris this Thursday night for four fun-filled days in Geneva and Bern, the capital. The even cooler part is how cheaply we're managing to do it-- the round-trip bus is only 68 euros (approx $100) and the train to Bern will be about the same, but our accommodations will be FREE due to the genius of a travel networking website called Couchsurfing. The basic idea is that you create a profile with information and pictures about yourself and your travel experience or ambitions, and you can search other people's profiles from all over the world. Then if there's somewhere you want to go, you can look up other Couchsurfers in that area and send inquiries asking to "surf their couch" for the dates of your stay. If everyone is in mutual agreement about the details of the visit, you meet up with them at your destination and voila, free lodging in the living room!

The idea is that when you are not traveling you will also offer up your couch to potential travelers, but it's not a requirement in order to join the site. It's also not as unsafe as it sounds, since you can narrow your search results to people in a certain age group, people of a certain gender, people with profile pictures only, etc. And there's a vouching system that lets you see how many other Couchsurfers the person knows in the real world as well as testimonials written by and about them. Plus if you get there and the person turns out to be a sketchball you can just leave and find a hostel. I've been messaging Couchsurfers in Geneva, thinking I'd have pretty limited success since it'll be Easter weekend and all, but one woman actually wrote back and said she'd be happy to have us! She's a middle-aged tri-lingual employee of a bank in Geneva, and her testimonials from previous guests all say that she showed them around town and fed them traditional Swiss fondue for dinner. I want fondue! I told Diane that I expect this to be a whole new breed of small-scale adventuring, and I'm psyched about the money-saving potential as well.

Mountains of homework await me so I suppose I'll end there, but keep reading later this week for some tours of old churches and the recounting of my Switzerland tales after the holiday!