Friday 22 March 2013

High five for Friday!


Let’s share our five highlights of the week! I'm linking up with Lauren as usual.

 photo H54Fbutton-triangle_zps678b65ba.jpg

These are my highlights:

1. Birthday of a dear friend.
He invited us to go to a lovely Italian restaurant. I ordered the Calzone pizza and it was delicious!
My hubs ordered "something with pineapple" for dessert. They took it very seriously.



2. Mini cupcakes
Made them for our great musicians who are going to play the musical Chicago with us.

3. Post its
I’m such a nerd. I got this cute little book, filled with post its.
I fell in love. Why? Because the little coloured ones matched my big ones I already had!
The colours are off, but the big ones are exactly the same colours as the mini post its.

Friday 15 March 2013

High five for Friday!


Happy Friday everyone!
How was your week?

My highlights of the past few weeks:

1. Premiere Sister Act
My friend Mark got tickets from a friend and asked me to go with him. This show is a must see, so hilarious and the music is great! 


2. Seeing Les Miserables
A friend of ours, a great theatre teacher, directed Les Mis on the high school where he teaches. It was great.
And the best part? My husband, in a spot in the back, conducting the whole piece. And wearing a bow :-)

3. Home made Dutch pea soup
I don’t think I can explain this Dutch soup. It probably doesn’t seem that good if you see the pic. But it’s delicious. A thick soup, made of green peas. Yum.

4. A little break.
We had half an hour left before work so my intern and I got us a nice McDonalds burger. Did anyone read my Le MacDo post? I’m very curious what a American Macmenu looks like :-)
 

5. Watching Sex and the City.
While I was watching a rerun on tv, my hubs was playing with his Ipad. He overheard some whining from Carrie and immediately said: “Is she breaking up with the jazz musician?” I laughed and kissed him. Because he was right. That means I watched this show way too many times.

Happy weekend!

Linking up with Lauren from www.frommygreydeskblog.com.




Sunday 3 March 2013

Le MacDo. Fast food French style.



Or MacDonalds as we usually call it. In France, its nickname is Le Macdo. Yesterday I told you my MacDo experience deserved a post. Well, here it is.

We were on vacation in France last week. And hungry, but didn’t know where to find a restaurant nearby. And the supermarket wasn’t open on Sunday. Good thing we remembered the MacDonalds!
We never drove in the dark before, so it was kinda exciting. The road was very, very dark… and about 15 kilometres long, going up and down with many turns. But we made it! Yay, there’s the Macdo!
Let’s go through the McDrive.

Holy sh*t. This menu seems different. Do they have the same? Oh thank goodness, I see a Big Mac.
“Jejajieblableebleu le MacDonalds, blableebleu blieblaaaa s’il vous plait?”
“Uhmmm…. Parlez vous Anglais?”, I tried. (“Do you speak English?”)
“Blablibleublaaablie ”
Damn. Ok. Let’s just try in French.
“Je voudrais….. (“I’d like”)…. A menu Big Mac.” That’s not how I learned this language. Why did I forgot these basic things? Yep, I just called ordering at MacDonalds a basic thing. I can do it in Dutch, English and German. So French should be in my head somewhere.
“blabliebloujejajeja”, she answered.
I turned to my hubs and said I don’t understand her. He didn’t either.
“I don’t… Je ne comprends pas!” (“I don’t understand”)
Lightly irritated she continues, a bit slower, but still in bliebluebla. She repeats it a couple of times and finally says slowly:
“ blablieblue Anglais: medium ou large!”
Oooooohhhh, do I want a medium or large menu! She could have said that right away, jeezzzzz.
“Medium!”, I yell back.
“Coca?”
“Oui”
Then she says something which I think it means, “Anything else?”
So I order a second menu for the hubs. I recognize the medium or large question this time. But it’s not fair. Medium sounds like “maydeehume” and large like “larch” (ch as in the word French).
I’m not even hesitating about asking something else than a coke or asking for sauce. This will have to do.
“And… uh… et… une royal cheese, mais non menu!”
Oh my goodness, it’s a good thing my French teachers aren’t there. They would hit me in the face for such bad French speaking.

I do know, somewhere in a little corner of my head, that I should have said something like “A royal cheeseburger, mais pas de menu. S’il vous plait.” Or something. I’m not sure.
What I’m sure of, you say “s’il vous plait” all the time. I didn’t say it enough at the McDrive.

And we were being punished for it.
‘Cause when we got back at the cottage, we noticed the fries were cold. Like really, really cold. And they couldn’t have gotten that cold. I suddenly remembered being surprised to see that we could immediately drive away from the Macdo, ‘cause there were at least three cars waiting for their order.
Guess they wanted the stupid Dutch one to go. Give the cold fries to that car. To the woman who didn’t say s’il vous plait enough.
Oh well.
It tasted good anyway!



I find it funny how other countries have slightly differerent MacDonalds menu’s. This French “pommes frites sauce” was like a mustard mayonaise. Much better than the ordinairy mayonaise, but also a lot different from the yellow sauce we get in Holland. Also, we got ketchup too. The size of the fries and drinks were the same.
People who’ve been to the USA always tell how big a Mac menu is over there. I’m very curious.
Who wants to take a pic of an American medium Mac menu and show it to me? How large are the drinks?

Anyway, I’m ending this post with one of my favorite moments in Friends: Phoebe teaching Joey how to speak French.
You suddenly know why I write “bleebluebla” when I’m referring to French talk.

Au revoir!



Saturday 2 March 2013

Sabrina's Seven Sins - SLOTH



The seven sins. Yep, I found a new project. When I blogged a couple of years ago, I had this idea. To link my blogging life to the sins.
Seven posts, seven stories, seven sins of my life.
But I didn’t know where to begin. What are my sins? And do I want to tell about them? Well, as you may guessed I put the idea of these seven posts in a little corner in my head where I couldn’t see it.

I quite forgot about it, until my hubs mentioned the sins last week. And I remembered my idea. And I thought, let’s give it a try.
So here’s the first one (not in any particular order), Acedia.

Acedia is the Latin name for sloth.
Laziness.
I can tell ya, between the busy hours of work, I am very good at laziness.
Like today. Remember my first Fridaypost? I went to France with my husband. Friends or ours have a lovely little cottage in Normandy, and we got to spend a week there, as a gift for our wedding.
We loved it so much, they said we could go more often if we wanted.
And so it happened that our friends didn’t go to their cottage last week (during springbreak) and they invited us to go instead. Yes please!

But it’s a dangerous thing.
Because, what can you do in a little cottage? Exactly, nothing. And even more dangerous, we even planned to do nothing. Not a single thing. We were there to get some rest, to get well (I had nasty cold) and to get a big break from working.
The little plans we had were visiting Caen, getting us some good Calvados (the apple drink of this area) and eating many, many, MANY delicious things. (and there’s sin number two, gluttony. Very good at that too.)

So there we were. Day 1. It’s cold. I feel sick-ish. Hubs is relaxing. There are warm blankets. There’s a bath tub. French food.
I’m reading my latest Cosmopolitan. Got lots of e-books. We took our laptops with us to play stupid games en to write blogposts. To make this laziness even worse, I brought dvd’s of Grey’s Anatomy, and my hubs brought a lot of movies. Thank goodness there’s no internet here. I’d be on Pinterest all day. We got a lot of “doing nothing” ahead of us.


And because it’s Sunday and the supermarket is closed and we don’t know any restaurants here (and it’s at least 45 minutes driving on dark roads), we went to get us some fast food. I’m getting more ashamed of ourselves as I’m writing this. We’re in freaking France. And we went to McDonalds. In our comfy clothes. We went through the McDrive of course.
That McDonalds in France deserves another blogpost by the way, ‘cause I totally made myself look stupid. Ever tried to order a menu in French? Go on. Try it. Not that hard? And then imagine someone talking back in French. In like, very-fast-train-French. Ahaa. Didn’t go so well, did it? I know all about it.

Anyway. Enough blogging for today. Hubs is waiting for me. Grey’s anatomy is starting.

And now… what’s your definition of being lazy? 

Friday 1 March 2013

High five for France!


Oh what a lovely week it has been. We’ve been spending a couple of days in Normandy, France. It was cold, but we enjoyed our days with some shopping, cooking, eating and watching movies.

My five faves of this week:

1. Driving to France
It took about six hours to get to Normandy. My hubs drove the whole way, singing all the time.


2. Basilique in Lisieux
It was peaceful and quiet, because of so little tourists in this time of year. So we got to take pics without other people on it and walk slowly through the basilique.



3. Les macarons
First time I tried it. Delicious! And now I know how they’re supposed to taste, I want to try making them sometime. Have you tried it? It seems to be not that easy.

4. Wine and food.
Lots. Of. Wine.
The French are serious about it. This is my hubs in the supermarket. So much too choose from!
And food... well, what's not to love about food. Hubs tried some new recipes.


5. Le MacDo
And yes, we went to the McDonalds one time! 
French McDonalds is just like Dutch McDonalds. Except when you have to order. Stay tuned for my Macdo-post this week! 

My hubs made pacmans from the French cheese. Not kidding.

Have a great weekend!

Linking up with Lauren!