dinner last night

Since everyone is going to be wakign up soon and I know Grandma reads this blog first thing in the morning, I am going to write one now about last night.

So I put a post on Couchsurfing.com (for anyone that wants to check it out) saying im new to Lyon and want to host a dinner party to meet new people and make some friends. So at first about 10 people answered saying they would liek to come, so I replied saying email me personally to confirm whos coming. And yesterday in the morning not that many answered so I went to the market and bought food for about 4 people (read yesterdays blog about the experience). But then other people started emailing me asking if they can come. so I had to run to a store to pick up more stuff. But it was a holiday here yesterday (memorial day) so I had to walk very far to find a store. Thinking I knew a short cut to come back home I took a street that I though was going south. Which it did but it also went east. So by the time I realized what I had done i was very far from the destination of choice. (oh when will I learn that streets here in france dont run north and south they are mostly diagonal.)

Anyways I finally got home and started to cook. I made a ratatouille, not cut up into a dice but nicely presented into a design, white rice and chicken. Everyone else brought somethign from their country of origin being appatizer, or dessert as well as wine. Oh and someone brought a wine from Alsace, it was amazing. Bonus that she sorta knows the winemaker, and puts in orders, and said if I wanted she will tell me next time she orders from him so I can get a few bottles for less than the store price. You have to belive me when I tell you it was a really delicious crisp wine that wasnt too dry and just enough flavours of the fruit. Just amazing!

ok back on track. So we had a yogurt appatizer from Switzerland, as well as a swiss beer. Wine from different regions of france, my dinner and I supplied the cheese. (dinner cost about 10 euros for me including the cheese) , then for dessert we had an asian black tea jello, fruit crumble (from the american inthe group) and finally we had a brazillian dessert, tough to explain but it was kind of like a taffy. Its basically condenced sweet milk, butter and coco powder. But we didnt have coco powder. What do you in france? Add NUTELLA!!! (It was my idea) and it tasted really good. You are supposed to cool down the dessert, but we all just ate it warm. HAHA!!

And in the end everyone had a great time. We all enjoyed ourselves, and the conversation flowed all night. Tonight though I organized a small get together at a bar near my old appartment so more people can join.

Now my roommate got some bad news, the french public system is screwing her over and shes a bit down so I am going to go cook lunch and drink wine and hopefully help her see the positive side of things.

Funny how even the french hate their own system and hate all the strikes and protests and paper pushing, and delays in everything...Even they think its kind of extreme!!

I posted the pictures from last night on my facebook!!

salute