Last Thursday night, Tania, who I work with and live near, invited us over to dinner at her place. We are very excited that Tania lives near us, because so far, our only interaction with our neighbours was at 1am in the morning when Liz was visiting us. The guy next door had rung the door bell and asked me what time it was. I had to think before answering - is this a rhetorical question? By a margin of 3 to 2, I decided that it was unlikely that he had just broken his watch and was hoping that his neighbour could kindly tell him the time, so I apologised for being so "loud" at 1am in the morning. Admittedly Prash was a bit more feisty about it pointing out it was just three young people enjoying a glass of wine and a very funny story being told by Liz. I think his margins were going the other way and he would have preferred to have told the neighbour the time and closed the door. I'm now a tad nervous every time I step outside of our apartment just in case I'm doing something inadvertently naughty.
Anyway, Tania and her family and friends are much nicer than our next door neighbour and we were not chastised (or asked what time it was) just because we were talking and laughing. Prash's French class that day had been all about learning words related to work "le travail", so he had plenty of vocabulary to try out over dinner - including the word "muter" which is the French word for a civil servant who is required by the government to move to another region of France to take up a posting. He used the word in relation to me, ie. I was "muté" to France by the Sydney office. I was very impressed - though I think it would be stretching the truth a little to say that I was forced to go to Paris by the Sydney office. I would probably more use the word "beg" and more in the context of me begging them to let me go. By the way, did I mention that Prash is now a fluent French speaker? I met his teacher this week and he said that Prash was an extremely fast learner. I felt like a proud parent at a parent-teacher interview.
Tania and her husband put on great feast and unfortunately, we were too impressed by the main course to remember to take a photo before digging in, but here is a photo of the cheese platter including not one, but five cheeses (that followed the dinner and preceded the dessert!). You'll just have to imagine the "tortilla", which is French for delicious tart with mashed potatoes, red capsicum, eggs and onion and the salad with melted goats cheese, cherry tomatoes, artichokes and olives.
And the dessert was from a patisserie which is like a haute couture fashion house and sells cakes which are à la mode, ie, No darling, strawberries were so last week, it's gooseberries now. The downside, Tania tells us, is that you can't go into the patisserie and know that you are going to be able to buy the cake you bought last time and loved. Luckily, the cake of the moment was amazing. Very tempting to go there everyday just to be in fashion. We are going to have to think hard of a menu when we invite them chez nous. Here is a photo of us after dinner.
You can't actually see Tania's daughter, Lilly, but she's just upstairs asleep. She tired herself out by diligently making some very intricate bouquets of flowers (or ice-creams - it was hard to tell) out of play dough at a little desk, showing them to us and telling herself off when one of her creations was "pas beau". She insisted on brushing her own teeth and putting herself to bed - very impressive I thought - until she was downstairs 5 minutes later having put herself to bed and woken up again. Tania's husband Jerry is an architect and a fan of a famous Australian architect called "Murdoch". I am ashamed to say that I've never heard of him or her but I'm proud nonetheless. Just like I'm proud of the Australian who is wearing a yellow jersey at the moment in the Tour de France, which I think means he is doing very well? We are planning to go and watch them ride down the Champs Elysées next week so I'll read up on it in the meantime.
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