White Elephant

Since the last 2 holiday parties, Halloween and Thanksgiving, were awesome, we decided to do a White Elephant party.  I put a 10 euro limit on the gifts and planned to have it on a Monday night when everyone could come.  People kept asking me what kind of gifts to get and that is a hard question since people with white elephants can have hit or miss ideas.  And it is always funny to have those really dumb gifts but it is also good to have some awesome gifts too.  

Everyone brought a gift, some were wrapped and some weren’t.  I told them to wrap the presents, but those just ended up being the last gifts to be chosen, since opening a gift is so much more fun.  

I wrote all the names down and put them into a hat.  First up was Jordi.  He’s a goofy guy so it was a good person to start off the game.  He looked around, shook some gifts and finally settled on one.  He opened it and it was a Santa hat that said “Montpellier” on it.  The next gift chosen was a set of shot glasses, and this was also the first gift to be stolen.  It was also the first gift to be stolen 3 times so it was not steerable any more.  Some other gifts consisted of penis pastas, a tea kettle, a pillow, a head massager, candies, more candies.  

I think the group did pretty well wight eh whole game.  The steeling was solid, even though at first, people were reluctant (too polite) to do it.  But once a few people did it, people became ruthless.  Someone stole the Santa hat from Jordi so he was able to pick another gift….he chose another Santa hat.  It was the funniest moment of the night.  

Le Gala

Since October, there has been a French Master’s class in the room above us every day.  They are basically learning the same curriculum as us, but started in February 2013.  They have been more or less a mystery.  One guy, who was confident in his English, named Pierre, was the only person to talk to our class.  But then there we were invited to this “Gala” event that they organized.  This was our chance to get befriend the French students above us!! Before the Gala, all we did was watched them walk by our window and decide who was hot or not.  Sadly, there were not that many “hot” guys.  

The Gala was the Saturday after Thanksgiving! Can you imagine how eventful these few days were.  We did not know how to handle all the socializing that we had to go through!! Not really, I can talk a lot.  

It all started at 10 in the morning!! Bright and early.  But as the French do, when they say 10 they really mean 11 or 12 or 1…really anytime but 10.  There was a scheduled soccer game and rugby match.  I signed up for the soccer game (and was the only girl) but not for the rugby match because I did not want to break every bone in my body.  

I have not really played much soccer since i was 13 so my skill set is pretty low.  But because my parents are sports fanatics I like to think I understand how sports work.  I can understand the basic strategies on how to get a ball from your side to the other goal.  For some reason, my team did not.  We had “positions” but that did not matter.  I was a defender but then no one was up attacking the goal so I felt the need to go up since 5 guys were by our goal.  Then people would go from right to left just because.  People didn’t know what the weak side was and passing was not an option.  We did score…once.  Nevertheless, my team lost, and I looked like a girly girl trying to play.  

To redeem myself I got a game of volleyball going!!!! Can you believe it?!?! VOLLEYBALL!!! I hadn’t played for so long, and it felt so good.  I was not playing with anyone who had a lot of experience, but just jumping around and pretending to be a front row player was amazing.  

Eventually food was BBQed and devoured then it was time for everyone to go home and get ready for the dinner and dancing.  They had busses to bring everyone to and from the venue which was about 20 minutes away.  Everyone looked good dressed up in nice dresses and such.  It is always fun to dress up.  

At this part of the day we had a lot of wine and a 4 course dinner.  At one point in the meal a food fight erupted along with a paper airplane contest.  It was just with people we knew so we weren’t being too annoying.  

After dinner the party really got started: dancing, socializing, drinking, the usual.  I made friends with some of the French guys from the French Master’s program.  One was a French guy from Aix-en-Provence and another was an Italian guy who only spoke Italian and French.  The conversation is always more interesting when you are dancing around a few languages.  

Like I said, the busses were there to take us to and from the venue.  The busses coming home were scheduled for 1 am, 2 am, 3 am and 4 am.  When they had told us this before I was thinking “Who will be there until 4!?”  I was there until 4.  And the bus didn’t actually leave at 4 it left more around 4:45 since we didn’t board very fast.  It was funny though since it was the only bus left, everyone had to fit on it, so people were tripled up on seats, laying on the ground.  It was rumored someone was underneath the bus is the luggage section.  I was not home and in bed until 5:30!!!!! I had woken up that morning at 8 am and then went to bed at 5:30 a

m the next morning.  I woke up Sunday feeling as if I was hit by a train.  My body was exhausted from being up so long and playing soccer and volleyball and dancing a lot.  But the exhaustion was worth it, I had a great time!!! And the French people really were not THAT bad to hang out with.

An Epic Thanksgiving

After our very successful Halloween party, American holidays became an interest to my fellow international classmates.  Therefore, we decided to host a Thanksgiving get together.  How to make it authentic with the resources we had was going to be a challenge but we were up for it.

Challenge #1: Turkey

I don't know what it is, but France has something against turkey…or maybe the whole world except America.  In Australia I could rarely find turkey in the deli meats and the same issue happens here is France.  I don't understand, it is SO good.  But we could not find a whole turkey to bake so we had to improvise by buying rotisserie chickens.  I can explain further in the next challenge more about the food.  Funny enough, on Wednesday we were at the supermarket looking at the rotisserie chicken when we ran into other Americans that were thinking the same thing, substituting chicken for turkey. 

Challenge #2: Kitchen

Our first thought was to book one of the residences communal kitchens.  Some of them have an oven and some are just big rooms that have a stove.  We would have been happy with either…there were none available.  So we put our thinking caps on and tried to think how to make a TON of food with the little kitchenette that we have in our rooms.  Honestly, this was never actually planned so we winged it…VERY SUCCESSFULLY.  Molly and Monica slaved away in Monica's room with 3 toaster ovens and 2 burners.  They managed to make a metric shit ton of mashed potatoes, stuffing, roasted carrots, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted garlic, gravy, and warm up the chickens.  So now you understand why we went for the already cooked chickens.

Challenge #3: Place to hold 30 people

Thanksgiving is also a time of being with the people you care about.  Being a small class of 33 people that see each other everyday we have grown close.  To get the real feel and appreciation for Thanksgiving, I wanted everyone to feel the family vibe by being in the same cozy room.  All the kitchens in the residence were booked, so we had to improvise.  Javier, for some weird reason, has a room that is bigger (not by much) than anyone else's.  He offered to try and fit everyone in it.  I wish I new the actual dimensions but you should get the idea that these rooms are not big.  Miraculously, 5 tables fit into the room and about 30 people fit around those tables.  Amazing…. I think yes. 

Challenge #4: Get people to eat way too much and not be able to move

Having 30 people to feed is always a challenge.  A way to compensate was the delegation of appetizers.  But we needed to make sure that there was enough "traditional" Thanksgiving dishes to have everyone try.  We decided that 6 chickens, 20 sacks of potatoes, 2 big batches of stuffing and 2 bags of carrots would do.  Lets just say, there were a lot of full people and still a lot of food left over.  A lot of food left over. 

In the end, all the challenges were accepted and completed.  We somehow managed to throw another successful American party. Maybe a Christmas one will be next…