Hello everyone!
Thought Id just do a quick update for you all...i dont even remember the last thing that I posted...Well i guess the last time i wrote was for the PLU blog so you should check that out via this link: http://plu-martinique-2012.blogspot.com/ and look for the one that i posted on the 23rd.
Soooo lets see where to begin... On Saturday we drove to a beach thats basically a real life postcard beach. It was goregous, white sand and palm trees, calm blue water...actually thats like the description of everywhere here. But it was super nice.
Yesterday I got to experience a bit of carnaval. So Carnaval is a big deal here and its basically like a huge party that never ends, well until Lent begins that is. Yesterday there was a pre-Carnaval parade in Fort de France. Hailey and I went with our family and with Talina, the granddaugther that we did not know existed until this weekend. Ha. Ya so long story short but theres this guy who randomly shows up at our house but we werent sure if he was our brother cuz our other host brother called him a friend but it is now 99 percent certain that hes a brother since his daughter is the princess granddaughter. Shes 5 and shes the bigggest chatterbox ever, made me feel a bit dumb cuz i couldnt even keep up with her, not even when we played a say-the-alphabet game. Ha. But she was our pal for the day. We got our faces painted when we got there and then wandered around looking at all the vendors selling foods and crafts. Watched some bands and traditional dancing. Then we waited a longggg time for the parade to start and once it started we waited a lonngggggg time for it to end. It was a parade of bands and each band had a group of dancers out in front. The bands were more like a drumline with maybe a saxophone or two. The best part were the costumes! They were so colorful and creative! We saw one group covered in chocolate, one with big peacock feathers, one with big spiral dresses, all sorts of different things! There were also a log of men in drag which i dont quite understand since homosexuality is not accepted at all here. And the people watching was very entertaining. There were tons of people there and it was like a big party. I cant imagine how nuts the real Caraval is - aparantly it goes on for 4 days and its nonstop dancing and singing and drinking all day every day.
Then last night we got home late and then ate Christmas dinner! I had asked our host mom earlier in the week what they eat for Christmas and so she made it to show me which i felt kind of bad about because its so much work for us to make our christmas dinner and i didnt want her to go through that again but she actually always spends that mugh time cooking so maybe its not that big fo a deal. We had some meat that i think was lamb with some sort of mysterious beans that she cooked all day long and rice. Ill never escape rice. We also had some pastries filled with fishy mixtures. Oh and that mroning she showed us how to make her special bread and hot chocolat so Ill bring that home and hopefully cook it for you all some day!
Lets see what else...theres the story of the president. Whoa. K so on Friday we went to tour the conseil regional. So i have to explain this a bit...Martinique is a part of France and in France there are regions and then the regions have departments within them but Martinique decided to be confusing so theyre both a department and a region but the region is still more important and i met the president of the region who is basically the most important dude here. My host dad told me he also used to be the major of Fort de France. Hopefully that made sense...now for the story. So we had a tour of the building and an elected woman, kinda like a congresswoman, showed us around and talked with us. We took a picture with a painting of Aime Cesaire who is like their hero here and then we thought it was the end of our tour. Wrong. We were just standing in a hallway when suddenly theyre like hes here hes here and reporters show up out of nowhere and bahjam theres the president and hes shaking my hand and asking us where were from. Whoa. Then next in line is the Prime Minister of Antigua who I also shook hands with and then more people who i couldnt figure out. Then we went into a room and it was a press conference! They signed a something that they called historical, i think it was to have closer relations between the two countries, and there were tons of reporters. They took tons of pictures and videos of us as if were celebrities or something and the president and the prime minister both said welcome to the American students and the beginning of their speeches! Afterwards we chatted with the president. He was really friendly and personable, like he is actually a real person! Who woulda thunk? He invited us to this spectacular show tomorrow night and said thatd hed get us tickets to get in. Whoa. He even said bye to us again when he drove past us and we were standing outside. So basically were buds with the president.
Today was the first day of school for the rest of the university. We found out that its against the dress code to wear shorts and so we got in trouble but oh well im only here on campus for 2 more days. We met some law students today. They are in english class so they spoke to us in english and we had an interesting discussion about the private life of politicians. They got really heated and I dont think it was the best way to get to know them but thats alright. I talked with a nice girl I was sitting next to and we ate tons of food. OHMAN i cant believe I havent blogged about this yet. So one of the specialties here is this thing called boudin, its like a sausage casing filled with mysterious red/brown mushy stuff. I ate it the first day I was here when i was living with that other family. Well we found out that its actually made of cogulated pigs blood. No lie. So today they served us traditional foods from Martinique and that was on the plate. Everyone else in the group freaked out about it but I decided to just adopt my dont think just eat policy and be polite and eat it. But ya, if you ever come to Martinique I wouldnt recommend the boudin. Anyways, we hung out with a couple of the students more afterwards and it was nice to just chat with them.
Unfortunately now is the time when the educational part is kicking all our butts. We have a big final exam on Thursday and then were all working on projects that are due before we board the plane home. I kinda wish I could just not do mine and not board the plane home. Haha. But mine is on the viewpoint that people have of the environment and im using the study i did in Madagascar as a comparison. So its an interesting topic for me its just that it has to be 10 pages long handwritten in French. Boo. So im going to get to work now.
Im not sure if ill be able to blog again before I leave but if i dont then ill try to throw one last one up while Im home. Thanks for reading about my adventures again! I cant believe that one year ago today was my first full day in Madagascar! Time flies! Seeya soon!
Jessica
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