warhol

this doesn't have much to do with my french life aside from the fact that one of my favorite paris memories is going alone to the warhol exhibit at the grand palais, being completely taken by his screen tests, and standing watching them for an hour. which might be an example of why no one wanted to go to the museum with me. 


now they're at the moma and you can make your own screen test. 


c'est super chouette. 

chandeleur

so i've been really bad about posting the last few weeks. there's been a lot going on here, i was writing but being weird about posting, i was sick, but really i just wanted the ego boost of people telling me to post. this is largely an exercise is forced self-reflection, but it's nice to know people are reading, enjoying, and crying because of my blog. ego boost obtained, now there are a bunch of posts coming soon, one of which is about THE BEST DAY EVER. 

but to start off, yesterday was chandeleur! i celebrated chandeleur with my host family in paris, but only could recall that we made crêpes and there was something to do with candles because i remember my host mother jumped up screaming from the table in the middle of the dinner party because the garland around the mirror was on fire. unfortunately she jumped up screaming from the table occasionally because of hot flashes, so it took the rest of us a minute to figure out what was going on. 

anyway. 

chandeleur in english is candlemas, which in america we somehow turned into groundhog's day, which is a holiday my students found to be weird yet adorable. chandeleur is a catholic holiday for the day when christ was presented at the temple. it's the official last day of the christmas season and you wait until this day to take down your creche. traditionally you light all the candles in your house and make crêpes. while making them you hold a coin in your left hand and flip the crêpe in the air with your right hand and this is supposed to bring you good luck and prosperity. there was also something about keeping the first crêpe you make in the closet, but we skipped that part. 

here's my "kitchen", where all of this is going down. 

conveniently located 6 inches from my bed 

: 

i successfully flipped a crêpe

maddie successfully flipped a crêpe

chris tried to show off

and dropped it on the ground.

i think that means he's going to go broke this year. 

happy chandeleur!