Wild Irish Rose

Of course, it’s every European Study Abroad kid’s dream to spend St. Patrick’s day in Ireland if at all possible, but I like to think that we held our own in plain old Tours last night.

I spent Saturday afternoon watching the city hockey team absolutely crush its opponent at the local ice rink-who would have thought that the French would play such a brutal sport? Even though my group of eight made up more than a third of the fans, we had a great time watching the players and trying to teach the French people around us the cheers from Mighty Ducks.
After the game, we made a beeline for the Irish pub in town and met up with around two hundred of our closest friends. I’m happy to say that St. Patrick’s Day is alive and well in France, and we had a grand old time until the wee [folk] hours of the morning.

My Sunday was spent in the usual lazy weekend fashion with a book and iPod in hand. We had two very interesting meals-one delicious and the other nearly impossible to force down-but all’s fair in love and foreign cuisine, right?
Martine told me that she had bought something “unusual” for us to eat at lunch, but she refused to tell me what it was until we sat down to eat. When I saw the fur on my plate, I knew it was going to be bad, but I gave it my best shot. However, it turns out that veal brains tastes exactly as good as it looks. Let’s just pray that my host mom never serves that again.
Dinner was significantly better, and nearly made up for the gastronomic catastrophe that was lunch. Crêpes taste wonderful with just about anything, but the Moroccan spices and cheese that we had folded inside them tonight were amazing! Unfortunately, I didn’t quite catch the French names of the curry-like powders, so I have no idea what they were! I guess that means I’m just going to have to taste them all again so I can find out. 🙂