Despite finding ourselves in the midst of summer (in mindset, not weather), the past week has been quite action-packed and the fun hasn't quite stopped yet. Oh, and I apologize in advance for the horrendous food photography to come, I cannot wait to once again have even a little natural lighting in our kitchen.
Let's see...where did we last year off? Ah yes, our Anniversary!
It was wonderful (if anyone was wondering), thank you all so much for the lovely comments here and on facebook. The past year has truly been an unfathomable and unforgettable experience, and I am so lucky to be here with Michael to enjoy it :-)
And how did we spend said Anniversary? Well, after the sheer gluttony (detailed in my previous post) of the last week, we opted for something a bit less rich but no less delicious. Don't as me how but some how we managed to locate some nice looking tuna (my favorite sushi fish which is nearly impossible to find in good quality, we hadn't had fresh tuna since the move, I believe the find was fate) and make our best homemade sushi to date. We finally figured the concept that "less is more" when filling sushi and actually ended up with pretty maki rolls rather than the exploding messes of rice that we normally end up with.
And the best part about sushi you ask?
You can eat a ton of sushi and never feel that disgusting, going to burst a rib, full feeling; and believe me, we did eat a ton! And as you can see from the picture above, we had a hard time not gulping it all down before opening our wine.
Our absolutely deliciously delicious bottle of Gewurztraminer noble grain. Actually, we didn't really drink it with the sushi because the millions of flavors in this delicious (did I mention that it was delicious?) bottle of wine would have been completely masked over by wasabi and soy sauce if we had tried them together. All in all, a wonderful dinner, a wonderful wine, a wonderful night and a wonderful year. I'm a lucky girl!
On Thursday I had my first four upcoming concerts with Méli Mélodie (my choir) in the nearby town of Hagondange. We performed a beautiful Latin Mass complete with an orchestra.
The Orchestra? Oh, here they are (this picture is completely pointless, I know, taken from the back row of the balcony)! The orchestra was wonderful to both sing with and listen to during the break between the Mass and our last piece, a Medley of Andrew Lloyd Weber music complete with Phantom, Cats, . It's always fun to hear the French pronunciation of "Ze Phahntom of ze Oopera is zhere".
Eek, double chin!! (on me, not the other girls) And here we are, Marie, Fran and I, waiting to go back onstage to perform the Weber piece.
On Saturday, GTL helped to host the first ever Jeux de Metz Technopôle in which all of the schools on the Technopôle were invited to the Lycée de Communication (next door) to participate in sporting events throughout the day. Michael had to help out for the summer Graduate Assistanceship and I went along to help so I wouldn't be bored all day.
This is what we did most of the day. We sat around...eating croissants (chocolate and plain...if you were wondering). Seriously, there were maybe 15-20 "workers" in and out of this room throughout the day; they managed to eat two huge (maybe slightly smaller than the box behind Jonathan on the right) boxes of croissants, each containing at least 100 croissants. Oh, that those fine gentlemen are (from the left) Emmanuel, Tony and Jonathan. They are also Summer Assistants for GTL. They are funny, funny guys.
Like I said, throughout the day there were various sporting events. And later in the day, we witnessed a Taekwondo demonstration.
First they did some 1 on 1 combat,
Then they did a partnered up, round-robin type demonstration (convoluted explaination, I know),
And finally, the only girl in the group did a great self-defense role-playing demonstration in which she slammed every one of her "attackers". Great stuff.
And guess what? Our own (French) GTL boys won 2nd place out of 11 in the soccer (football) competition (our American team was knocked out in the first game...I think)!
Here they are accepting their medals and trophy.
I'm so proud *tear*.
And to end out a splendid day we enjoyed a small buffet of finger sandwiches, paté and a wine fountain, then we heard some fabulous music.
These briney fellows here are Les Pirates (The Pirates). They are a wonderful, energetic, local band. We enjoyed their informal performance immensely (partly due to the wine fountain). I'll see if I can post a video in the next week or so of a song I managed to capture.
And for our fellow Gleeks out there, we found Artie's French, Pirate, drum-playing doppelganger here in Lorraine.
