Let the french begin.

I finally slept through the whole night last night! What an achievement! It was raining when I woke, but I had planned on going to the shops with Léa to look for a printer. Usually, in Australia, if it's raining and I want to go out, I get too lazy and just don't go. But, it rains so much her in Bordeaux in winter, if you got lazy every time it rained, you'd be perpetually lazy. So, we caught the bus over to Meriadeck which is like a giant westfield, but much nicer. The printer I wanted wasn't in stock, so I have to go back on the 25th to pick one up. We then just picked up a few groceries and stuff. When we're shopping for things together, usually Lea will speak to the sales assistants for me because they speak so fast and she's much better than me at french. But, today when printer shopping, she made me talk! It was ok though, they realised I wasn't french and so spoke slower. Léa is very helpful in teaching me about the city - where is cheap to buy food, where to go and not go, where certain things are, etc.
After coming home, it was still raining, but I wanted to visit the wool store and buy some pastries because I hadn't even bought one yet! Léa gave me the name of a good boulangerie and I set off. I walked to rue Saint-Catherine (one of the main shopping streets) to look for a wool store. I found one which was very cute and VERY warm, and it was helpful because the women there couldn't speak english. Because it was raining, when I left I couldn't be bothered to go to the good boulangerie, so I just bought a cheesecake from another one on rue S-C.
By the time I got home, my other housemate had moved in!!! Woohoo! Her name is Leah too, I'm not sure what I'll call them both yet. Maybe I'll call the new one Demarle because that's her last name. She was out shopping when I got home though so I went and napped and met her for dinner. She doesn't speak much english, so we speak french. But she's lovely! The original Léa has stopped speaking english so much to me now, so we all speak french. It's difficult, but I can tell they speak slower when speaking to me which is just fine for me! We all ate a traditional dinner together. We had une raclette, which was absolutely delish!!! I wasn't a massive fan of cheese before coming here, but it's definitely growing on me. Une raclette is probably worth google imaging to see what it looks like, but essentially it's two hotplates on top of each other. The bottom hotplate has removable pieces, so you put your cheeses on that and your meats go on the top hotplate and you cook your own meal. You have it with potatoes. I ate mine mostly with thin beef strips, but we had all sorts of meats.

Léa (left, the original) and Leah (right, just moved in) with our raclette

After, for dessert, we had une galette de rois which is a religious cake that you only eat in January - usually on the 6th, but you can eat them anytime. I think it has something to do with wisemen... But I'm not exactly sure. It's a round cake and somewhere in it is cooked a porcelain figurine of anything. We had a madagascar galette so it was going to be a character from the movie. The person whose piece has the feve is the 'winner' or king and has to wear a paper crown. And I totally won! So I had to wear a crown for the rest of dinner haha

Moi with my crown and feve