The Gulf of Morbihan and Kouign Amanns

So the past week has brought me many new experiences, all of which I would do over again in a second, except for accidentally eating a rabbit's esophagus.

Saturday, I tried rabbit for the very first time. Alexia, my wonder-woman French mom, dished me up two morsels of meat. When eating rabbit, it is necessary to eat around the bones. As I was picking at the first chunk, trying to separate flesh from bone and other random detritus, I picked up a strange tubular thing with my fork and thought 'well, it doesn't appear to be meat, but it doesn't appear to be bone either... might as well try it', so  popped the little thing in my mouth and as I bit down on the rubbery little tube I realized that the morsel of meat I had been picking at was the throat of the rabbit, and what was in my mouth at that moment was it's esophagus. Needless to say, I will not be having esophagus again.The rabbit was good though! So I finished up my yummy meal when Alexia plopped another morsel of meat on the plate of Antoine, my genius host-dad. Perrine was immediately overwhelmed with disgust as she looked at the rabbit head on Antoine's plate and shouted "UGHH CA C'EST DEGOUTANT!!!". Funny thing is, this little rabbit head still had it's teeth in tact and perhaps the eyes as well, nicely cooked along with the rest of the body... I was a little grossed out and Antoine politely refused the head by saying he'd rather eat it later in private. (I'm pretty sure he was joking, as he also told me he liked to eat all the bones too and it was necessary that I ate the bones that I had left on my plate...) That was saturday afternoon.

Saturday night I went to a little fete for all of the people in the Pays-De-La-Loire who love traditional French folk dancing from Bretagne, the region north of the Pays-de-La-Loire. This special form of dance involves a lot of pinkie holding, doing the two-step while occasionally skipping and sliding, and constantly moving in one direction around the room. There are multiple forms of the traditional Breton dancing, my favorite being the one where one must hold two other people's pinkies with one's own pinkie, and then do a little two step while sliding to the left. When  you hold pinkies with someone, they're also holding someone else's pinkies. It's a long pinkie chain that can be 10 to 30 people long, and there are around 5 of these chains in the ballroom. I think the fun part of this dance is that your chain can't hit all of the other chains or the wall. It was like playing 'Snake' but on a much larger and traditional scale. There are also couple dances, and a skinny little bartender asked me to dance with him during one of these special couple dances. I agreed, because I wanted the cultural experience (I was not attracted to this tiny person), and discovered that he had very sweaty hands and that traditional Breton couple folk dances last too long. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the night on the whole and had fun dancing around with a ton of older French people. In fact, one older man told me that I had a good sense of rhythm. YESSS

Sunday, I went to the Gulf of Morbihan, located in Bretagne, and was totally floored by the beauty of the place and took around 16 seashells from the seashore, with intent of selling them and renaming myself Sally. (This is where you laugh) (Or not, because it really isn't funny) I can best explain this outing with pictures:

The Gulf of Morbihan is full of islands and many rich and famous people own property on them..

"Paris Brest"

MACARONS <3

After walking around the beauitful Gulf I tried something called a Kouign Amann, which is aptly named because Kouign Amann directly translates to "butter cake". (The words are from a celtic language) This delicious pastry is just flour, butter, sugar, and delicious all baked up... there is so much sugar that the crust is caramelized... this is the 8th wonder of the world and it must be shared with America. I don't understand it, the French eat more butter than Americans do yet on a whole are way skinnier... oh those French!!!

Monday and Tuesday came and went the same as usual: I ate delicious food, spoke some broken French, learned some new words, read aloud from a French text in a French Literature class and was not laughed at (phew), went to a piano lesson with Perrine, celebrated crepe day..etc...