Last night was one of our first meetings of Le Cercle Française- essentially, the French Club! That may sound really boring to you, until you realize that we just had pretty much the best first meeting you could ask for, in the form of a party!
Everybody convened at the French House, one of the foreign-language houses McDaniel holds (in addition to Spanish, German, Arabic and ASL) in North Village apartments. I was running late as usual- this has been a ridiculous week of constant work for me- but that meant that missed out on the quiche! I adore quiche. It is probably my favorite food (next to crêpes, but we’ll get to that later), that is when it’s Quiche Lorraine- essentially a flakey pastry crust, with an egg, cheese and ham filling. It’s delicious. When I was travelling in France, it was my favorite lunch to pick up from a bakery, but back here in the US I generally have to resort to making them myself. Getting off that tangent, the important thing you need to take away is that this party had quiche, which means that it was clearly getting off to a good start!
When I came, the apartment was full of people, from two of our fantastic French professors to a common room full of students playing that sticky-note-on-your-face game. I all but walked in the room and immediately had a name stuck on my forehead. The goal of the game was to ask yes or no questions (in French) about who your person was until you figured out who they were. We all had relatively famous French people- mine was Coco Chanel. It was hysterical seeing some of the names people got (our French professor had David Guetta). After a round of this we took a brief break before playing a new game. This I wisely spent nabbing some freshly made crêpes and spreading them with Nutella! Crêpes with Nutella are a famous French dessert, and are my other favorite food in the world. You can see why I enjoyed travelling in France so much! Crêpes are essentially a really thin pancake, and can be sweet (sucré) or salty (salé). Nutella is a chocolate-hazelnut spread that is often put on top of crêpes, but you can also use jam, sugar and lemon juice, and whatever catches your fancy.
Game time part 2? Scavenger Hunt! We divided into several teams and received our first index card. Each card contained a clue in French that would lead us to the location of the next card, and finally to the treasure! If you couldn’t tell, I love scavenger hunts. Both teams ran around the building searching for our clues until our opponents found the last clue to the treasure: a large jar of Nutella! It was a great evening to just hang out and speak French again, I’ve missed it since coming back from studying abroad in Belgium. Plus, how can you possibly go wrong with an evening containing quiche, crêpes and a scavenger hunt?
That sticky note game sounds like a great way to practice a foreign language!
Hooray for crepes!