Riding and Raclette

*Note: this blog entry was composed on Thursday, December 1, but for one reason or another I'm just getting around to posting it now.

So my riding lessons have been a bit of a grab-bag of late. My afternoon lesson last Friday was great! I rode at the usual time, and this time there were four of us total (me plus three adults). We got to ride outside in the stadium jumping arena with the beautiful jumps! I rode a horse named Kippa who was a bit of a handful, but who I enjoyed quite a bit. He wasn't mean, but as Beatrice explained in the beginning of the lesson, I had to pay attention because otherwise he would take advantage of my lapse in concentration, stick his head down, and buck. It was quite chilly here last Friday, but since we hadn't had any precipitation, it was alright to ride outside.

Lo and behold, our third or fourth time warming up over a vertical, I asked Kippa for a bigger-than-usual jump (I had a choice between a very short distance and a longer one and picked the longer one). My instinct was of course to push my hands forward, to give him a bit more room for the longer jump. In this case however, that was the wrong answer. Just like Beatrice told me he would, Kippa stuck his head down and I went tumbling off. I wasn't hurt at all, just a bit sandy. It actually felt sort of good to fall. I haven't fallen in a long time (not including the 3 years or so I haven't been riding regularly), and I'm a bit relieved to have it over with. The rest of the lesson was great -- we got to jump a lot, and I stayed on my horse.

Then I went again this past Monday to make up the lesson I missed the weekend of the tournament in Tongeren. As with the lesson I made up on a Saturday, Marie (the director) didn't mention anything about the class size. I arrived for my 19h00 lesson and discovered we would be 11! We rode in the same ring, which was quite large enough for all of us, but when it came to jumping it took forever for each of us to take our turn. I rode Kippa again, and he was quite sluggish and not much fun. I was quite disappointed, because my Friday lesson had been so positive. I found it a bit unprofessional for the management to allow the lessons to become so big -- if I had known we were going to be 11 people, I probably would have waited for a different time, or used my lesson for one of the two-hour weekend stages (seminars). Oh well. I'm not going this Friday either, because I'm leaving to go Bruges, Belgium with Brooke!

So recently I have started dating a guy named Colin, who I met through the Ultimate team. Unfortunately I do not have a good picture of the two of us yet, but those of you who are curious can look back through pictures from tournaments (he's next to me in the group picture from Tongeren). He's my age and in his second year of a masters program in computer science at the university here. He joined the Friz'Bisontins the same night I did, so we're both relatively new to the team. On Tuesday some of his friends from his promotion (university program) invited us over to their apartment for a raclette dinner! Raclette is quintessentially Franche-Comtois. It's both the name of the cheese and the name of the aparatus you use to heat it up... and the name of the event which is consumption of said cheese, using said aparatus. Here's a pic of the aparatus:

Each person has their own mini rimmed-spatula, upon which they place a slice of raclette cheese. Then they stick it under the heat to fond (melt). When it's appropriately gooey, you take a potato from the bowl sitting on the top tier (not pictured), place the potato on your plate, and pour the gooey cheese over it. See picture below:

The result was, predictably, delicious. There were also assorted charcuterie (red meats, as in sausage and ham) which we could grill on the top layer. And of course we washed it down with some blanc du Jura, white wine from the Jura region. The whole experience was quite convivial, not unlike fondue, another Franche-Comtois favorite. They're really into melted cheese and potatoes around here.

It was also neat to meet some of Colin's friends from the university, and their girlfriends/friends. In total we were 6, which was a manageable number for me. When the group gets bigger than that, sometimes it's hard for me to follow the conversation, or I feel like I get lost in the different conversations which start up. That's not always the case, but I feel more at ease in a smaller group.

What else is new? I got my hair cut today! I've been scouting around for the cheapest places, and I couldn't find any which could beat Salon Gomina's 20 euro shampooing-coupe-brushing. Plus it's located at Place Flore, a 5-minute walk from my apartment. I was a bit nervous about getting my hair cut, although I really only wanted a trim (how bad could it be?) But it seemed like a situation in which a language barrier could have serious consequences, so I did a little research beforehand -- i.e. I asked the other teachers at lunch today. Here's what I learned:

Trim = couper les pointes
Side bangs (diagonal bangs) = une frange coiffée à la côté
Part (as in, how you divide your hair) = la raie
Hair straightener = un lisseur

And here was the result:

It was exactly what I wanted! In this picture, my hair actually looks longer than it did before the trim because the stylist straightened it afterward.

*Note from Monday, December 5 -- this afternoon I got a compliment from a bashful, blushing 2nd grade boy in my last class of the day: "Teacher, tu as une belle coiffure" ("Teacher, your hair looks really beautiful"). Haha it made me smile!