April 13th Sunday
I woke up at 11:30am. Today was going to be fun. Sarah Hutchison, the secretary of the TAM program was doing a site visit in Paris. She was taking us out to lunch at La Petite Chaise (as in UNC is paying!). The restaurant looked really fancy online. It claims to be the oldest restaurant in Paris. I called Karuna to see if she was coming. She said that she was too depressed to act cheerful at the lunch so she would stay at her friend’s place for now.
I showered and got dressed in my black skirt, a white blouse, and my pink scarf. I had a quick breakfast of scrambled egg and sausa
ge.
We walked to lunch at 1:00pm. We got to see Sarah as well as other various TAM alums. You could tell that they had the same connections with each other in their years as we have in ours. The conversation was very lively. We were missing two other diners though. Amanda and Casey had been really excited to come to the lunch. Adrienne tried to send them a text message to see where they were. They didn’t respond. I kept saying “Oh they should turn up. They were the ones that sounded so incredibly excited.”
The restaurant was decorated in an interesting fashion. We had a private room decked in pink wallpaper. There were paintings on the walls as well as angels painted on the ceiling. The room next to ours had yellow wallpaper.
The food was as amazing as one could expect from the restaurant. We had two or three choices of dishes on each course. For the first course, there were two choices. One was salmon marinated in dill with a mustard cream. The other was duck foie gras with an apple chutney. I had the foie gras. It was absolutely delicious. It just melted in my mouth. It paired nicely with the apple.
The main course came next. We could choose between a filet of white fish with a Norman sauce and roasted duck breast in a sweet and sour sauce. I had the fish and Adrienne had the duck. We were both quite happy with our dishes. Then we had dessert. Our choices were: nougat ice cream in a red fruit sauce, soft spice cake with a red fruit sauce, and a chocolate cake in crème anglaise. I had the chocolate cake. It actually was like a slice of chocolate mousse. It was incredible.
Included in the meal were bottles of wine. We had a white: Sauvignon de Touraine “maison Plouzeau” and a red: 1ère Côtes de Blaye rouge “maison Eymas.” There were also bottles of mineral water.
It was a lot of fun talking to all the different alumni. It was also reassuring. If they were all able to become successful after the program, we could too. I was really sad Amanda and Casey were missing it. It was funny that only 2 out of 5 current TAM students came to the lunch.
After lunch, Adrienne and I walked around with some of the alumni. It started to rain so they decided to go into a café. We realized we should head back because we had to get ready for another appointment. Our landlord’s daughter had invited us to go see a movie. We stopped by the apartment and found Karuna there with her friend Paul. We said hello and then headed out. We took the metro to the Opéra stop. We met up with Capucine and her friends. The movie we were going to see was Penelope. I realized I had seen some commercials for it before. It seemed really interesting to me. It was an American film. Normally, Capucine and her friends go to see the movie in V.O. (version originale) which means that it is subtitled in French. We went in to watch it and discovered we were in a dubbed version. It was dubbed fairly well but I’m not a fan of dubs. I like to hear the original voices of the actors. Nevertheless, it was a fun movie. I thought it was a cute film to pass the time. In case you haven’t heard about it, it’s about a girl named Penelope who was born with a pig nose. In French you pronounce her name “Peh-neh-lop.”
It was fun to get out and actually hand out with French people. Actually, one of the friends was Spanish now that I think of it. After the movie, Adrienne and I thanked Capucine for taking us out. We left on the metro to go back home.
Arriving at the apartment, we found Karuna still there but with Virgile. He’d been doing a fairly good job talking to her and helping get her mind off of Stan. He stayed with us for dinner. We cooked up some of our Basque chicken mixture. We also cut up some apples and cooked them in butter. Karuna also came up with the idea to cook up some of the bowtie pasta and mix it with broccoli. It turned out to be a really good meal. Virgile had also brought a bottle of wine which he admitted had been very cheap. He wasn’t sure if it would be good but we would find out soon. We popped the cork and poured some. It tasted awful. I couldn’t even finish my glass. It was just really bad wine. He said “I’ll have to remember not to get this one again.” Its name was Gamay so I came up with the pneumonic device of “Gamay jamais” (never Gamay). It rhymes. After that, Adrienne saved our taste buds by pulling out a really nice chardonnay. It was very good.
While we ate we entertained ourselves with some videos on Youtube. We had an interesting cultural question as well. Virgile asked us if he could smoke in our apartment. Adrienne and I really wanted to say no but we didn’t want to offend him. Adrienne tried offering the excuse, “Oh well I don’t know how our landlord will feel about that.” But Karuna didn’t let us worm out of it by replying “Oh he doesn’t mind. I’ve had tons of people smoke in here.” Ah. Well we finally caved and let him smoke. I thought it would just be one cigarette but he smoked three. After he left I made the decision to just say no to the next person who asks. I just can’t stand smoke in my living space. It dispersed in a day or two at least.
Virgile left and I got to talk to my parents for a little bit. I went to bed around 1:30am.
I woke up at 11:30am. Today was going to be fun. Sarah Hutchison, the secretary of the TAM program was doing a site visit in Paris. She was taking us out to lunch at La Petite Chaise (as in UNC is paying!). The restaurant looked really fancy online. It claims to be the oldest restaurant in Paris. I called Karuna to see if she was coming. She said that she was too depressed to act cheerful at the lunch so she would stay at her friend’s place for now.
I showered and got dressed in my black skirt, a white blouse, and my pink scarf. I had a quick breakfast of scrambled egg and sausa
ge.We walked to lunch at 1:00pm. We got to see Sarah as well as other various TAM alums. You could tell that they had the same connections with each other in their years as we have in ours. The conversation was very lively. We were missing two other diners though. Amanda and Casey had been really excited to come to the lunch. Adrienne tried to send them a text message to see where they were. They didn’t respond. I kept saying “Oh they should turn up. They were the ones that sounded so incredibly excited.”
The restaurant was decorated in an interesting fashion. We had a private room decked in pink wallpaper. There were paintings on the walls as well as angels painted on the ceiling. The room next to ours had yellow wallpaper.
The food was as amazing as one could expect from the restaurant. We had two or three choices of dishes on each course. For the first course, there were two choices. One was salmon marinated in dill with a mustard cream. The other was duck foie gras with an apple chutney. I had the foie gras. It was absolutely delicious. It just melted in my mouth. It paired nicely with the apple.
The main course came next. We could choose between a filet of white fish with a Norman sauce and roasted duck breast in a sweet and sour sauce. I had the fish and Adrienne had the duck. We were both quite happy with our dishes. Then we had dessert. Our choices were: nougat ice cream in a red fruit sauce, soft spice cake with a red fruit sauce, and a chocolate cake in crème anglaise. I had the chocolate cake. It actually was like a slice of chocolate mousse. It was incredible.
Included in the meal were bottles of wine. We had a white: Sauvignon de Touraine “maison Plouzeau” and a red: 1ère Côtes de Blaye rouge “maison Eymas.” There were also bottles of mineral water.
It was a lot of fun talking to all the different alumni. It was also reassuring. If they were all able to become successful after the program, we could too. I was really sad Amanda and Casey were missing it. It was funny that only 2 out of 5 current TAM students came to the lunch.
After lunch, Adrienne and I walked around with some of the alumni. It started to rain so they decided to go into a café. We realized we should head back because we had to get ready for another appointment. Our landlord’s daughter had invited us to go see a movie. We stopped by the apartment and found Karuna there with her friend Paul. We said hello and then headed out. We took the metro to the Opéra stop. We met up with Capucine and her friends. The movie we were going to see was Penelope. I realized I had seen some commercials for it before. It seemed really interesting to me. It was an American film. Normally, Capucine and her friends go to see the movie in V.O. (version originale) which means that it is subtitled in French. We went in to watch it and discovered we were in a dubbed version. It was dubbed fairly well but I’m not a fan of dubs. I like to hear the original voices of the actors. Nevertheless, it was a fun movie. I thought it was a cute film to pass the time. In case you haven’t heard about it, it’s about a girl named Penelope who was born with a pig nose. In French you pronounce her name “Peh-neh-lop.”
It was fun to get out and actually hand out with French people. Actually, one of the friends was Spanish now that I think of it. After the movie, Adrienne and I thanked Capucine for taking us out. We left on the metro to go back home.
Arriving at the apartment, we found Karuna still there but with Virgile. He’d been doing a fairly good job talking to her and helping get her mind off of Stan. He stayed with us for dinner. We cooked up some of our Basque chicken mixture. We also cut up some apples and cooked them in butter. Karuna also came up with the idea to cook up some of the bowtie pasta and mix it with broccoli. It turned out to be a really good meal. Virgile had also brought a bottle of wine which he admitted had been very cheap. He wasn’t sure if it would be good but we would find out soon. We popped the cork and poured some. It tasted awful. I couldn’t even finish my glass. It was just really bad wine. He said “I’ll have to remember not to get this one again.” Its name was Gamay so I came up with the pneumonic device of “Gamay jamais” (never Gamay). It rhymes. After that, Adrienne saved our taste buds by pulling out a really nice chardonnay. It was very good.
While we ate we entertained ourselves with some videos on Youtube. We had an interesting cultural question as well. Virgile asked us if he could smoke in our apartment. Adrienne and I really wanted to say no but we didn’t want to offend him. Adrienne tried offering the excuse, “Oh well I don’t know how our landlord will feel about that.” But Karuna didn’t let us worm out of it by replying “Oh he doesn’t mind. I’ve had tons of people smoke in here.” Ah. Well we finally caved and let him smoke. I thought it would just be one cigarette but he smoked three. After he left I made the decision to just say no to the next person who asks. I just can’t stand smoke in my living space. It dispersed in a day or two at least.
Virgile left and I got to talk to my parents for a little bit. I went to bed around 1:30am.
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