First Riding Lesson and Some Pastries

Hello all! Yesterday (Friday) afternoon was my first riding lesson at Les Ecuries de Chateau-Galland! It was a very nice day outside: probably about 55 degrees and sunny, but with lots of wind. In the morning I taught three classes, which all went fairly well. The best so far has still been Magali's CM2s. I'm teaching another CM2 class on Monday (their English lessons will be Mondays and Tuesdays, which is why I didn't have them this week), and I'm hoping they will be just as attentive and fun to teach as Magali's class. At this point I'm planning to do one curriculum for the CM2s, and another curriculum for everyone else. But we'll see how lesson #2 (a review of "What's your name?" and learning the numbers) goes.

So around 1:45pm I boarded the #6 bus in the direction of Tilleroyes. It took about 35 minutes in the bus, plus a 10 minute walk to get to the barn. When I got there Beatrice (the daughter of Marie, the directrice) was putting a bridle on a 6-year old they had just purchased at a stock sale of a Hanovarian farm. The mare has never been ridden before, and as of yesterday they were just working on voice signals (whoa, walk, trot, canter, etc) on a lunge line (for those of you who don't speak horse, this is a long "leash" usually made of fabric or nylon that the rider or trainer holds as the horse moves around them in a circle). Upon my arrival Marie noted that I was taller than she remembered, and that the "horse" (my quotes, not hers) Beatrice had assigned to me was probably going to be too small. She didn't change my mount though: I rode a pony (yes, a pony) named Quenotte. His name is a familiar term for a baby tooth, which I assume comes from his white (technically gray) coat. Quenotte is a Connemara, and a large pony, but still greatly resembled Jeremiah Bullfrog, the very first pony I ever rode in a horse show .... at age 6.5.

So you can imagine this lesson was not the most pleasant riding experience of my life. I have ridden worse ponies before, but I have also definitely ridden better. I can say one thing, it was easy to get on! I assume they assigned me the bombproof pony because they had never seen me ride before and wanted to play it safe. Despite the mismatch, I got to jump with the others (just a cross-rail with a vertical behind it, it couldn't have been more than 2-2.5 feet tall). There were two other people in my lesson: a man named Cedric and a woman named Emmanuel. We spent a lot of time in equilibre (two-point), which was sort of rough on my quads/thighs. I was already sore last night during Ultimate practice.

I had a really hard time understanding what Beatrice was asking us to do, and the heavy wind only made it harder to hear. I tried to follow what the other two were doing, and if I really wasn't getting it, Beatrice would mime what I was supposed to do. There is so much equestrian-specific vocabulary for me to learn; it's really intimidating. And a little frustrating too, because I come off as incompetent or uninformed in an area where I really do have a lot of experience. But everyone was very patient and Beatrice seemed pleased with my equitation. It seems like they carry their hands much further back than we do in American hunter-jumpers, because she kept telling me to put mine down and back. And I learned the term for "heels down!": baissez les talons! 

At my request, Marie loaned me a horsemanship book for beginners so I could learn all of the vocabulary. Steph and Charly were teasing me about it last night because most of the words are fairly common; but I think it will be really helpful for me, because I didn't even know the word for saddle!

So now for the food. Last Friday when Charly got back from Bordeaux he brought back with him six little cannelés, a Bordelais specialty. The cake itself is moist and slightly spongy and is flavored with cinnamon, vanilla, and rum. Charly bought them the day before he left (and the trip took a whole day), so he claimed these weren't as good as they would be fresh, but I thought they were pretty tasty:

Yesterday after my lesson I stopped at a boulangerie and picked up some multi-grain bread and two tiny pastries. This bakery, Le Moulin des Pains, was recommended to me by Gaël, one of the guys from the Ultimate team. It's one of the 3-4 bakeries near my apartment, and I asked him which of those is the best (he also lives nearby). I was pleased with his recommendation -- the multi-grain bread was quite good, and slightly less expensive than some of the others I've tried (although the loaf was pretty small). Anyway, I thought you might appreciate some photos:

These are the two mini-pastries, a Paris-Brest and a lemon tart. I had never heard of a Paris-Brest before and discovered it's sort of like a re-arranged eclair: the same eclair pastry and filling, but shaped more like an Orea. Lemon tarts happen to be one of my very favorite pastries, but the miniature format of this one meant that the ratio of crust-to-lemon filling was off: too much crust and not enough filling. Too bad!

Close-up of the Paris-Brest: it had both chocolate and regular cream filling, yum. 

And the multi-grain bread. I'm going to try their cornmeal bread next time, Moulin des Pains is the only one I've seen which advertises it. 

Now I'm off to make the long bus ride on the #1 to Chateaufarine, the grandes surfaces center (for us, those shopping plazas with Sam's, Best Buy, Rack Room Shoes, etc). I'm going to Casino Geant to try and find oatmeal and look at the prices for things like a hairdryer. I'm almost finished with Au Bonheur du Dammes and I'm definitely going to read it on the bus. Hope you all have a wonderful day!