My first week in Montpellier

Hey everyone!  Here are some pictures of my first week so make sure to copy and paste this link and then click on "reverse order" on the slide show because I uploaded them backwards.

http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/krdorcas/My%20first%20week%20in%20Montpellier/?albumview=slideshow

So the first thing I noticed when I met my host mom was her pink hair! She was funky looking and although I was a bit nervous, I was excited as well.  We drove 10 minutes out of Montpellier to a town called Castelnau le Lez.  We turned on a street that looked kind of sketchy with houses really packed together, but when we entered her "maison" her house was like nothing I'd ever seen before.  Every wall was a different color, all the tables were mosaics, fake grass was on the walls in the hallway, tiles in the bathroom were spotted like cows, there was a yellow fridge and a dishwasher named "Maurice".  There is artwork everywhere, but in a really fun/ funky way.  They have the skinniest, scruffiest, scrappiest little black dog named Lily and she is just like a cat.  She will jump up so high right into your lap and she's so cute! She loves to play fetch, but since there are not balls in the house, she'll play fetch with anything including matches, woodchips and leaves from plants.  

I got settled and unpacked and we ate "déjeuner" which was chicken with a ton of cooked veggies, which smelled and tasted delicious.  Of course I got the try 4 different cheeses along with 2 types of baguettes and they were all so good!  Le "Roquefort" is a cheese that is super rich but so good.  Another one you can't even buy in America because it's not pasteurized or something so I hope I don't get too sick!  After lunch, our neighbor Isabelle came over with her exchange student Emily.  We had coffee, tea and "une galette du roi" for the celebration of epiphany.  Isa found "le truc" in the cake so she got to wear the paper crown for the day.  I then got to meet Vero's son Arthur who is 16, but I have yet to meet her youngest Virgile because they stay with their dad every other week.  We then went to the supermarket to pick up the dinner essentials...bread, cheese and wine.  

Although we were planning on eating at 7:30, a friend and fellow coworker of Vero (art teacher at an elementary school) came over with her boyfriend for wine and duck liver.  She asked me if I wanted some and as it sounded disgusting, I said no, but then I saw it and it was a pâté spread on bread so I tried and and it was très bien!  We had a red wine called Faugère from this region of Montpellier.  An hour and a half later the two of them left and we finally sat down for dinner at 9:00 pm.  We has a salad with a ton of great things in it as well as fruit salad for dessert.  Isa invited me to go salsa dancing with them, but I was too tired so I said "une autre fois" and called it a night around 11:00 pm.  An interesting, but fun first day!